Embraced by Love by Suzanne Brockmann

Author:Suzanne Brockmann
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345480477
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2004-09-28T04:00:00+00:00

“What’s up, Luce?”

Cooper stood in the doorway of the little girl’s bedroom, Ben slung on his hip.

“Nothing.” Lucy didn’t look up from the child-sized table that was in the corner.

“You doing some drawing?” he asked, taking a step into the room.

“Yes, sir.”

“Lucy, my name’s Cooper. It makes me nervous when you call me sir,” Cooper said. “Call me Cooper or Coop, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cooper sighed, and came a little bit farther into the room. It was a little girl’s room, complete with pink lace and frills. The curtains were hand-made—Carla’s work, no doubt—and hand-worked shelves held a fair amount of books and toys. The room seemed made for another child—a child who laughed and smiled and played and made noise. Lucy did none of those things. She didn’t even cry.

“Mind if I look?” Cooper asked.

Lucy shrugged.

He turned the light on and sat down on an impossibly tiny chair, with Ben on his lap.

Lucy was drawing pictures of puppy dogs—using the drawing he’d made on the back of that old envelope as a model.

“Holy sh—” He stopped himself in time. “Hot dog!” he said instead. “Lucy, where’d you learn to draw like that?”

She was good. She was better than good. She was four years old, and she had a sense of perspective and depth in her little line drawings that most adults would never achieve.

She shrugged.

“Can you draw a picture of Ben?” he asked her, putting a fresh piece of paper in front of her.

She shook her head “no.”

“I’ll draw Ben first,” Cooper said, “so you can see how I do it, okay?”

She nodded.

Holding Ben on his lap with his left hand, Cooper quickly did a rough sketch of the little boy. It was cartoonish, but enough of Ben’s good-natured exuberance came through.

Lucy watched seriously, then picked up her pencil and drew a fairly accurate copy of Cooper’s picture. She didn’t draw painstakingly slowly the way most children did—instead she moved her pencil quickly, imitating the way Cooper had drawn.

“Hot damn—dog,” Cooper said. He looked at Lucy and pretended to squint at her suspiciously. “How old are you really?” he asked.

“Four.”

“Nah,” he said. “Twenty-four maybe, but not four.”

She didn’t respond to his teasing. She didn’t react at all. In fact, she turned away and began another drawing of a puppy dog.

Ben began to fuss and Cooper stood up. “Ben’s hungry,” he said. “How about you, Luce? Want something to eat?”

She shook her head.

“See you later, then,” he said.

She didn’t answer as he left the room.

There had to be a way to get through to that kid, he thought as he took Ben down to the kitchen.

Ben burbled happily as Cooper strapped him into the high chair. Cooper heated a jar of strained peas in the microwave and mixed up a bowl of rice cereal—using infant formula instead of cow’s milk. He could hear Josie in the dining room, still talking to David on the phone.

She’d spread the contents of her briefcase across the dining room table, along with her laptop computer. She’d been on the phone almost constantly since ten o’clock last night.

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