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"Well hello there, darling," Ian Doyle murmured to the small girl that had just run headlong into his leg. She clutched her hands tightly in the fabric of his pants and stared up at him with huge amber eyes. She ricocheted off him a little and stumbled back a few steps before falling onto her diaper-cushioned bottom. He would've reached out a hand to steady her, if both his hands hadn't been tightly clenched in the fists of his young son who couldn't quite walk on his own yet.
A young woman – a nearly identical version of the toddler, like someone had stuck her in the dryer to create a smaller copy – came jogging up and quickly righted the child before she'd had time to realize what had happened to her and start crying.
The young woman, who he doubted was even twenty-one yet, looked up at him and flashed an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that, we're still working on 'stranger danger'..." The toddler, presumably her daughter, appeared to be trying to climb up her back, intent on sticking her finger up her mother's nose.
"Lottie, what happened to your ball?" she said pointing to the pink ball bouncing off in the opposite direction that the toddler invariably claimed as soon as they arrived for each weekly Baby 'n' Me session.
When the child darted off, her mother gave another apologetic look and opened her mouth to say something when he interrupted, "It's perfectly alright. Perhaps she just has excellent taste in playmates." He grinned.
Her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment and she replied, "Or...she was just looking for something to wipe her nose on. I am so sorry." She pulled a package of baby wipes from her back pocket and handed him one.
He glanced down to the gooey smear on his khakis and shrugged. "Hardly the worst thing that's gotten on my clothes lately." He lifted his son into his arms and, having been reminded of the subject, gave a cursory diaper check. "I'm Ian," he offered his free hand to shake, "And this is Declan."
"Emily," she replied, smiling, tickling the little boy's chin. "And you've already met Charlotte." She sat down beside him and his son and the small boy immediately crawled towards her, seemingly mesmerized by her glittering bracelet.
Ian quirked one eyebrow, apparently surprised. "I'm impressed," he said quietly with a small nod towards his son, "Declan's very shy – doesn't usually stray that far from me."
She chuckled softly as the toddler started handing her blocks from the nearby shambles of a forgotten half-built castle. "Clearly, I don't have that problem." From where she sat, Emily could see her daughter talking animatedly to a set of twins that didn't seem particularly interested in the conversation.
He laughed a little, nodding, his gaze following the girl with a small smile on his face.
"You don't see a lot of dads at these things," Emily said after a long moment of silence. She gestured over her shoulder to the only other father who'd attended with his son, not appearing nearly as happy as Ian to be there. "Usually just guys whose wives force them to go."
His gaze seemed sad for a moment as he looked at his son who had settled quite comfortably in Emily's lap. "I'm afraid his mother had no interest in being in his life," he said quietly. She reached across and rested a comforting hand on his knee. "Frankly, she didn't particularly even want to have him..." After a moment, he seemed to remember that they had only just met and perhaps he was oversharing.
Charlotte chose that moment to rejoin her mother, grabbing a large fist-full of her hair and tugging sharply, effectively breaking any tension.
He studied her for several minutes rather intently, watching as she untangled the little hands from her hair and kissed the child's palms until she giggled. He watched as Charlotte seemed confused by the interloper who had bogarted her mother's lap and couldn't quite figure out how to take it back until Emily made room for her to sit and started bouncing her knees until both children let out peals of laughter. He watched as Charlotte started coughing and Emily covered her mouth just in time to catch the sneeze that followed with barely a grimace as she wiped her hand on her jeans.
Finally, sensing his stare, Emily inexplicably got annoyed. "I know what you're thinking, go ahead and say it. Yes, I look too young to have a two year old. No, I'm not babysitting, she's not my younger sister, niece, or cousin. I'm eighteen and I have a baby and I'm entirely aware of..."
Ian started shaking his head. "No, no, Love. I was just admiring your beautiful little girl. She resembles you so strongly. You'll be beating back her suitors by the dozen in a few years."
Emily's cheeks colored a little and she looked away to hide the faint smile playing across her lips. "Well, your son is certainly making a good first impression," she said as Charlotte wrapped her arms around Declan and attempted to plant a big drooly kiss on his cheek.
"The natural Doyle charm at work." Around them, the playgroup was starting to wind down. "Would you like to grab a coffee?" Ian offered as the two of them attempted to wrangle their children into shoes and coats.
Hoisting Charlotte onto her hip, Emily nodded. "I'm in no hurry to get back to the Home."
"The Home?" he asked, placing emphasis on the definite article. The two of them walked down the street side-by-side to the coffee shop on the corner, Ian pushing Declan's stroller, Emily with Charlotte clinging onto her like a vice.
She shrugged as she sat down and preoccupied herself with fishing a handful of arrowroot cookies out of her diaper bag, then offering one for each toddler to gum. "My mother kicked me out," she continued when Ian returned with their coffees, her voice quiet. "It was either ask for help or spread my legs to keep us off the streets. Lottie and I live with a bunch of other teenage mothers and their kids...it's a gong show, 24/7. This is the one night a week I feel relatively sane."
Ian gave her a look and she looked over to see her daughter with soggy cookie mashed into her hair and she sighed heavily. "I said relatively..." His hearty laugh made her feel better.
"I think you're doing admirably as a parent." She looked at him with disbelief, seeing as her daughter had apparently been deliberately doing her best to mortify her all evening. "Terrible twos notwithstanding," he amended.
"To be fair, I probably deserve it. I've been told I was a holy terror."
There was a few minutes of relative silence as Declan's eyes started to droop and Charlotte told an animated gibberish story to her baby doll and Ian looked at Emily as if she were the most fascinating thing on Earth.
"Charlotte is a beautiful name," Ian murmured eventually, tickling the child under her chin, producing a peal of giggles. "It suits her wonderfully. Is it significant in some way?"
Emily looked embarrassed for a moment. "It's actually a funny story...I think. I had picked out a name for her when I found out I was having a girl, but then she was born and she definitely wasn't an Autumn. And then I got all freaked out that I couldn't pick the 'right' name for her and that would make me a terrible mother, so I ended up taking her home without a name. I basically spent the first month panicking constantly because I couldn't even do the first thing right. Eventually I totally broke down because I was convinced I would forget to ever get her name registered on the birth certificate and then she'd go to get her driver's license or something and they'd realize I hadn't named her, so technically she didn't have a name and then everyone would start calling her Voldemort because she'd be the girl who Shall Not Be Named. So, I opened up a name book and pointed randomly at a page and it turned out I really liked the name I landed on and that's how I named her."
There was a long pause and then she added, "Luckily she wasn't a boy or she'd be named Kilgore." Ian chuckled at her cheeky grin. "And, by the way, if you say that in a house full of teenaged mothers, you will become a complete social pariah."
"I take it not a lot of Vonnegut fans in that particular demographic?"
Emily rolled her eyes. "You'd think a bunch of teenage girls who birthed bastard children out of wedlock wouldn't be so quick to judge." She sighed wistfully. "I can't wait to get out of there..."
Ian reached across the table to gently rest a hand on top of hers, squeezing it comfortingly and she tried not to smile when he did because she'd just met him...and that's sort of how she'd ended up here in the first place. But in that moment, she couldn't quite bring herself to care.