“Your arm?” he said thickly.
“From holding the baby. I can’t feel my fingers any more.”
Pat dragged himself back to reality. Here he was, ready to do the caveman thing and drag her off to bed, and she was pinned to the chair by a twenty – two – pound baby. He was losing it. His elevator wasn’t going all the way to the top these days. Residency had been too long. He was suffering from social deprivation. He carefully took the baby from her and laid him down on the plump two – cushion couch that served as a room divider.
Megan stood and stretched, rubbing life back into her arm. “Did you find Tilly?”
“No. Her apartment was locked, and she didn’t list any relatives on her medical history. I’ve talked to her neighbors, been to the train station, the bus station, called the airport. She’s vanished.” Pat set a paper bag on the floor by the fireplace. “I brought us some burgers.”
He stoked the embers and added an armful of logs while Megan arranged the fries and shakes and cheeseburgers on the huge brick hearth.
“I can’t believe she did this,” he said. “She seemed like such a nice kid, and I know she loves this baby.”
Megan sat Indian fashion on a red braid rug and took a bite of her cheeseburger. “She must have been desperate.”
“No one should ever be that desperate,” he said angrily. “This kid is going to become a ward of the state. What the hell was she thinking?”
Megan swallowed, but the cheeseburger felt stuck in her throat. “What do you mean, he’ll become a ward of the state? Tilly said she’d only be gone a couple of weeks.”
“I can’t keep this child. I have to turn him over to the authorities.”
“Why? Why?”
Oh, boy, Pat thought. He’d seen that look before. It happened shortly after childbirth. As a pediatrician he had a healthy respect for the protective instincts accompanying motherhood, and after two hours of exposure to Timmy Coogan, Megan had obviously caught adoptive hormonal maternalitis. He suspected his chances of prying the kid away from her were zip. He chewed his French fries while he weighed his options.