Little Girl Lost

Beth looked up from the baby to the car in the parking lot. “I don’t know if I can carry her that far,” she said. “I feel all wobbly.”

“Give the baby to Mrs. Carson. I’ll carry you.”

“Please be careful with her, Jamie. If you should slip on the ice…” Faith let her voice trail off.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised. His face was chalk white. Once more he refused to meet her eyes.

She ought to press him for some answers now that the immediate danger to mother and child was past. Where had they come from? Where were they going? The infant cried out again, and it sounded weaker than before. She had waited this long to ask those questions, surely a few minutes more wouldn’t make any difference. When Beth and the baby were safely in the small, but up-to-date maternity ward of the hospital there would be time for answers.

Beth had eyes only for the baby held tightly against her breast. Faith brushed her hand softly against the infant’s cheek. Her baby’s skin would have been this soft and rosy if she’d lived. There was dried blood under her fingernails just as there had been that awful day six months before. She dropped her hand quickly.

“It’s time to go.”

Beth’s blue eyes darkened to the color of a twilight sky. “Couldn’t we stay with you? You must live nearby. Just for a few hours…”

Faith shook her head. She couldn’t have a baby in her house. Not today. “We might get trapped there by the storm. There’s a bad one coming.” She gestured to the icy scene beyond them. “It’s already here. I promise you I’ll come to the hospital as soon as I can get back to my home and get my car. There’s no room in yours.”

“We’d better get going,” Jamie said. “I’m going to carry you, and Faith will bring the baby.”

Beth’s mouth tightened but she didn’t protest again. “Okay.” She lifted the small bundle toward Faith as though offering her the most precious gift in the world.

Faith swallowed hard again, but this time against the tears she could not let fall. How wonderful the fragile little body felt cradled against her breast. A tiny hand worked its way out of the folds of the sweatshirt and clamped onto Faith’s cold finger. The baby was a fighter, stronger than she looked. She could feel the baby nuzzling, searching for nourishment. Warmth pooled in her womb and her heart, melting a bit of the ice that sealed her emotions away.

Jamie scooped Beth into his arms, sleeping bags and all, and started down the slope at a quick pace. Faith looked down at the baby she held. “I wish you were my baby,” she whispered very, very softly. “I would love you and care for you as best I could if you were.”

But she was not. Faith’s baby was dead. Her husband was dead and she was alone.

That was the reality of her life.

Addy began bouncing up and down, straining at her leash, barking in short, frantic yips. Shelties were herd dogs, bred for centuries to protect their flocks. And when they didn’t have sheep to watch over they transferred those instincts to their human companions. She did not want to be left behind by her mistress, and she wasn’t shy about letting Faith know. “Sh, Addy. It’s okay. I’m not leaving you. I’m just taking the baby to the car. Then we’ll take the shortcut home through the woods.”

Faith turned her back on the indignant dog and stepped out from under the shelter into the stinging sleet just in time to watch Jamie open the driver’s door and look back at her over the roof of the car. “We can’t take her with us, Mrs. Carson. Not all the way to Texas. I know you’ll take good care of her. Keep her for us. We’ll be back. I—” His voice broke. “I promise.”

What happened next would stay in Faith’s memory until the day she died. The sleek blue car sprayed ice and gravel from its back wheels as Jamie roared out of the parking lot and fishtailed down the steep, narrow drive toward the county road that led to the state highway. For a split second Faith saw Beth’s face, her hands pressed against the window as if she were trying to escape, her mouth open in a soundless scream of anguish and protest.

“Don’t go! Don’t leave the baby.”

But they were already gone.

Faith was alone in the storm.

But not really alone.

For she held in her arms the one thing she wanted most.

CHAPTER TWO

Two and a half years later.

HUGH DAMON RESTED his forearms on the steering wheel of his much traveled Blazer and looked out on the tapestry of farm fields that stretched toward the low hills on the horizon. In the shallow valley below him a century-old brick house sat squarely in the middle of a grove of massive oaks and maples.

Painted Lady Butterfly Farm and Guest Lodging, stated a tasteful white-and-gold-lettered sign on the grass verge of the sleepy county highway he’d been driving since he’d left Cincinnati an hour ago. He hadn’t expected his search to bring him this far east, but it had.

The house itself was a monstrosity of Victorian overindulgence that made the engineer in him cringe. Elaborate gingerbread gables and bay windows abounded. There was even a widow’s walk on the roof. But the native red brick had mellowed with the years, allowing the building to blend into its surroundings, and the ornate trim was painted a pale cream instead of white, softening the effect still more.

On the other hand the red, clapboard barn behind the house was a masterpiece of function and design. Set on a native stone base, it was large and imposing, with a high-pitched slate roof and the same cream paint on the doors and windows. A working barn from the looks of it. Through the open double doors Hugh could see a big green tractor and what looked like an even bigger combine, dwarfing a minivan. Farmers didn’t build barns like that anymore. They couldn’t afford to, and it was to the owner’s credit that she spent the necessary money for its upkeep.

Beyond the barn were fields of soybeans and corn, the beans barely higher than the lush green carpet of lawn that abutted them, and the corn knee-high only to a small child at this stage of growth. There was also a pond complete with a small dock and an angled telephone pole with a long rope attached, just perfect for swinging out over the water on a hot summer’s day.

A large fenced-in area several acres in size directly behind the big house wasn’t planted in any cash crop, as far as Hugh could tell, but seemed to be left as meadow. Spindly, dried pods of milkweed provided sentinel posts for red-winged blackbirds. Red, pink and yellow flowers bloomed among the waving grasses. At the very edge of what he now recognized as a naturalized garden, there was a greenhouse-type building.

The butterfly house he’d read about on the Internet, he supposed. Along with the three small, fifties-era tourist cabins to his left, it gave Painted Lady Farm and Guest Lodging its claim to fame.

Butterflies.

Beautiful, ethereal, innocent. And in many cultures said to represent the souls of lost children.

The stuff of his sister’s nightmares.

They were what had drawn him to this place.

Did it hold the answers he sought? Or was it just another dead end?

He’d find out soon enough. He turned his attention to the vintage cabins, one of which, the largest, he’d already reserved. They were painted the same cream color that highlighted the house and barn, but were accented in pine-green with window boxes filled with red geraniums, just coming into bloom. Round-backed, metal lawn chairs flanked the front doors inviting weary travelers to sit a spell and watch the sun set behind the hills.

The cabins, a reminder of times when travel cross-country was an adventure, not a blur of fast-food restaurants and strip malls glimpsed from a super-highway, were as carefully preserved and maintained as the barn and house. It was just good business to keep the place in top-notch shape, Hugh reminded himself. It was no indication whatsoever that the owner was a good and caring person who loved the land and its buildings. None at all.

A small sign, hanging beneath the larger one, proclaimed the farm and cottages the property of one Faith Carson and directed guests to the butterfly house for check-in, or to the back door of the main house if the butterflies weren’t in season. But butterflies were very obviously in season this late May afternoon. A big yellow school bus was parked in the gravel lot beside the barn. Small children raced around the yard, some brandishing what appeared to be large, colorful foam butterflies attached to sticks, the boys attempting to fight duels, the girls swirling around like ballerinas. It seemed he had arrived in the midst of an elementary school outing to see the butterflies that Faith Carson raised.

Now was probably not the best time to announce his arrival. He wanted to meet the object of his search alone. If he had to wait until nightfall to gain that advantage he would.

He put the Blazer in gear and drove up the gentle rise to the top of the hill. An old but well-maintained cemetery occupied the crest, weathered marble stones warming in the sunshine. The lettering on most of the markers was so faded he couldn’t read them from the road except for the newest one. The name engraved on the granite stone was Mark Carson and the date of death, just days short of three years before. It was the grave of Faith Carson’s husband.

Hugh pulled the Blazer onto the grass and opened the door. The air was humid, filled with the scents of newly turned earth and the sound of birds. A gigantic red pine shaded the oldest of the stones. As he walked, he realized many of the graves belonged to Carsons, some predating the Civil War if he was reading the faded numerals correctly. Probably all related to the dead man whose headstone drew him closer almost against his will. Hugh had no idea what it was like to have roots this deep.

He’d left home at seventeen. And after their mother had died in a car accident five years ago he’d had no one but his half sister, Beth, in his life. To his eternal regret he hadn’t returned to Texas to take care of her then. Instead he’d sent her off to the father she’d barely known in Boston. She’d been miserable and lonely, and like many miserable, lonely teenage girls she’d gotten pregnant. And run away. The flight had ended in a terrible accident that had killed her boyfriend and robbed Beth of her memory and almost her life.

And had sent him in search of a child she didn’t remember.

A newborn baby that had disappeared without a trace.

Hugh hunkered down on the balls of his feet and peered more closely at the lettering on the stone.

Mark Carson

Beloved Husband of Faith

and

Father of Caitlin

The question that had driven him to this place wasn’t whether the dead man was the father of Faith Carson’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. But whether Faith Carson was actually her mother.

Or was the child she called hers, really his sister’s baby?

That was what he’d come to Painted Lady Farm to find out.

Faith waved the Bartonsville Elementary School bus out of the yard. Having 35 eight-year-olds underfoot for an hour and a half was exhausting. She wondered how teachers could do it all day, every day. Still, she enjoyed having the school groups come to the butterfly house. It was the kind of thing Mark would have loved to see happen.

She turned back to the T-shaped glass-and-metal building that had been specially designed by an entomologist friend of her late husband. The top portion of the T was a greenhouse, open-sided now that the weather was warm. It contained a small gift shop where she sold butterfly and hummingbird feeders and figurines along with gardening books and paraphernalia. It also contained tables of colorful bedding plants and shrubs that especially appealed to butterflies and hummingbirds, along with vegetable plants and kitchen herbs.

The butterflies themselves were housed in the back half of the building in a gardenlike setting that Faith had spent the entire winter after Caitlin’s birth creating on paper, and the summer after bringing to reality with hours and hours of backbreaking work.

It had taken a sizable portion of Mark’s life insurance settlement to build the greenhouse and butterfly habitat. Perhaps too much, but it had been for the best that part of her comfortable nest egg had been spent, since that had forced her back into working two days a week at the Bartonsville Medical Center. And being back at work had forced her back into society, which was important for Caitlin if not for herself.

At first she had avoided anything to do with the small farming community where members of her husband’s family had lived for four generations before his grandparents had moved to Cincinnati after the end of World War II. Now she was the only Carson who shopped along Main Street, belonged to the garden club and attended the church where one of the stained-glass windows had been dedicated in the family name, but she felt at home. She had put down roots. No more crisscrossing the country as Mark moved from one troubleshooting systems project to the next for the huge software conglomerate he’d worked for. Next year she’d enroll Caitlin in Sing, Giggle and Grin Preschool two mornings a week. Her daughter was bright and quick for her age. A slender, elfin-faced bundle of energy with silver-gilt hair and her own green-gold eyes.

The center of her universe appeared at the back door of the house. “Hi, Momma,” Caitlin called in her piping, toddler’s voice.

“Hi, Kitty Cat,” Faith called back, lifting her hand to shade her eyes from the bright spring sun. On the western horizon storm clouds had begun to form, not an unusual occurrence for this time of year, but it wouldn’t hurt to check the weather forecast when she got back into the house. It was tornado season after all. But for now the spring afternoon was perfect, warm and only a little humid.

“I awake,” Caitlin announced unnecessarily.

“I can see you are.”

“She did take a nice nap.” Faith’s older sister, Peg, appeared behind Caitlin and hooked her finger inside the collar of the child’s pink Winnie the Pooh embroidered sweatshirt to keep her from tumbling headfirst down the porch steps. “And she went potty like a big girl, too.”

“You did?” Faith clapped her hands, making her tone excited and incredulous.

Caitlin nodded vigorously. “Big girl.”

“You are a big girl. Mommy’s so proud of you.” Faith opened the wrought-iron gate that separated the old herb garden she was slowly restoring and Caitlin’s play area on the other side of the brick walkway, from the rest of the yard.

Faith gathered the little girl into her arms and hugged her tight. Caitlin was the most precious thing on earth to her. Her whole life revolved around her daughter. Having her to love was nothing short of a miracle.

Caitlin hugged her back then wriggled to be free. “Cookie,” she said emphatically. “I want a cookie.”

“I could go for a cookie myself. How about you, Aunt Peg?”

Peg glanced at her watch. “No cookies for me. I’m dieting as usual.” Peg was two inches taller than Faith and full-figured. She had their mother’s dark-brown eyes and rich auburn hair. She was five years older than Faith’s thirty-one, and had dropped out of college to raise her younger sister when their mother had died of kidney failure when Faith was fifteen. Their quiet, hardworking father had died just a few years later—of a broken heart, Faith often thought.

A year and a half earlier Peg and her two boys had moved to Ohio from upstate New York to be closer to Faith and Caitlin. At Christmas she’d married Steve Baden, who farmed Faith’s acreage for her, and whose large and close-knit family had taken all three of them under their wing.

Peg was also the only other person who knew that Caitlin was not Faith’s biological daughter.

They walked back into the kitchen, and Faith went to the cookie jar.

“Two cookies,” Caitlin demanded.

“I think I’m raising a Cookie Monster here,” Faith lamented, handing over the demanded treats.

“Are you kidding? She’s an angel compared to Jack and Guy at that age.” Peg rolled her eyes. Her boys were seven and nine and every bit as ornery as their mother proclaimed them to be.

Peg looked at her watch again. “I’d better be going. Steve’s cutting alfalfa at his uncle’s place, and I should be home when the boys get off the school bus, or they’ll trash the kitchen making snacks.”

“I really appreciate your watching Caitlin this afternoon.”

“I love watching my adorable niece.” Peg had never once let slip by word or action that Caitlin wasn’t Faith’s daughter. Despite her profound misgivings over Faith’s actions, she’d accepted Caitlin completely. “What’s on your agenda for the rest of the afternoon?”

“Caitlin and I are going to gather up the feeding dishes in the butterfly house to wash them for tomorrow, and then we’re going to walk up the lane to make sure the big cottage is ready for our new guest. He’s supposed to be checking in this evening.”

Peg’s eyebrows went up a fraction. “Is he by himself?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Why do you ask?” But Faith thought she already knew the answer to that question. Peg worried about her.

“Just curious. You’re so isolated out here.”

“I’m not isolated. You spend too much time watching those women-in-jeopardy movies on the Lifetime channel. I’m as safe here as you are a mile down the road.”

“I have a husband. You’re alone.”

“But not lonely,” Faith said, firmly, if not altogether truthfully. She had loved Mark, and with that love she had given him faith and trust and honesty. She couldn’t envision a relationship that didn’t contain all those elements, and she could never be honest with a man again, not completely. She had a secret to keep. Now that Peg was married again it added another layer to Faith’s burden. Because of what she had done two and a half years ago, Peg could never be totally honest with her new husband—for her sister’s sake.

“Okay, I know when to change the subject.”

Faith shook off her heavy thoughts. “And if my guest puts one foot wrong I have a vicious watchdog to protect me don’t I, Addy?” At the mention of her name, the sheltie pricked up her ears and wagged her tail. She’d been pouting a little all afternoon because Faith had made her stay in the house while the schoolchildren were visiting. Not all of them appreciated being herded around the yard by a wet nose.

“Watchdog, my fanny. She’d let the devil himself inside if he called her a pretty girl,” Peg snorted. “Well, I’m off. I need to run into the IGA and pick up some bread and milk to feed the horde. Anything you need I can drop off on my way back out of town?”

“Not at the moment, but thanks for asking.”

“Bye-bye.” Caitlin, her mouth still full of cookie, hugged Peg’s plump thigh.

“Bye, sweetie. See you Friday.”

Caitlin ran to the breakfast nook’s bay window and watched Peg get in her pickup and drive off. “Watch Blue’s Clues now,” she announced as the sound of the rough-running engine faded away.

“I have a better idea. Want to go see the butterflies?”

“Yes.” Caitlin clapped her hands and nodded so hard one of the little butterfly-shaped clips in her hair came loose and the silken strands floated around her face. Faith sold the clips in the gift shop in a myriad of sparkling colors. They were very popular with the little girls who visited. “See ’flies.”

Faith smoothed Caitlin’s hair back from her face and secured it with the retrieved clip. “Come on, then. We’ll go before any more customers drive up the lane. We’ll have them all to ourselves.” She carried Caitlin outside and into the greenhouse, then placed her in the lightweight folding stroller she kept just for this purpose. Caitlin loved the butterflies, but the insects were far too fragile for the toddler to be let loose among them.

They crossed through the greenhouse and Faith opened the first door to the butterfly sanctuary, automatically glancing to the left into her tiny cubbyhole of a breeding room. An array of gray-and-brown chrysalises hung from a foam board in an alcove, carefully suspended from a pin with a head color coded to the species waiting to emerge. To a casual observer they appeared wizened and dead, but inside they pulsed with life and in a few days a new batch of jewel-winged butterflies would be ready to release into the habitat.

This was her second shipment of tropical and ornamental butterflies this season. Their life spans were short, and she needed to restock the habitat every few weeks with specimens she ordered from a breeder in New Jersey. Someday she would like to raise the exotic forms of the species herself, but she would need a much larger operation and more disposable income to house and winter over the specific plants each species needed to breed.

Caitlin chuckled as the gentle puff of air from the specially designed door—which blew air back into the habitat so that the butterflies couldn’t escape—lifted the fine strands of her hair. It was very warm in the glass house, more humid than the outside air, at least for the time being. Faith turned on the exhaust fan in the far gable of the building. The opening was covered with fine netting so none of the butterflies could be sucked outside.

“Pretty!” Caitlin squealed, reaching for a huge blue morpho as it glided swiftly by. The spectacularly colored tropical butterfly was one of the visitor’s favorites.

“Daddy liked them, too,” Faith said. To everyone else, Mark was Caitlin’s father, just as Faith was her mother, and it wouldn’t be natural not to talk to her about him. Above all else Faith wanted everything she did for Caitlin to seem natural.

She glanced through the chrysalis-room window that gave a view of the parking lot. It was empty. She’d probably have a spate of customers again in the early evening if it didn’t rain, but now the two of them were alone.

She picked Caitlin up and sat down on one of the rustic wooden benches that were scattered throughout the habitat. She’d made the butterfly house as near to a tropical garden as she could manage. There were paving stone pathways, raised beds of verbena, impatiens, butterflyweed, rudbeckia. The plants all in shades of pink and blue, purple and yellow that butterflies loved. She’d added large specimen plants, ferns, small trees and host plants like dill and parsley, Queen Anne’s lace and African milkweed, to encourage the laying of eggs and as food for emerging caterpillars.

Steve and Peg had helped her build two waterfalls of lightweight landscaping rock—it was how they’d first met—a small one directly across from the door, and a much larger one that climbed almost to the ceiling in the farthest corner of the house so that the sound of falling water was everywhere. She loved this place, and Mark would have loved it, too. If he’d lived.

But if Mark had lived she would not have Caitlin.

She seldom let herself think of the dark days after Mark had died anymore. She preferred to believe her life had started the day Caitlin was born. It was a task she was mostly able to accomplish.

The sun disappeared behind a cloud and the butterflies disappeared from the air almost as swiftly, settling on leaves and flowers and feeding dishes to await the sun’s return. Faith stood up, deciding to come back for the dishes later, and set Caitlin back into the stroller, then checked her backside in the long mirror beside the door. Butterflies often landed on visitors unawares and had to be carefully removed before anyone left. Today no colorful hitchhikers had attached themselves to her.

A rumble of thunder came rolling across the fields, so faint and far away it was felt more than heard. The wind had shifted while she was inside the butterfly room and the big baskets of red and white impatiens and trailing blue lobelia were swinging wildly from their hangers.

“Darn, I should have asked Steve to take them down for the afternoon when he was here earlier,” Faith muttered half to herself, half to Caitlin. The hanging baskets were some of her best sellers and she didn’t want to see them ruined by a storm. Her brother-in-law was six foot five and he’d hung the baskets high enough so they weren’t a hazard to the skulls of customers, but they were out of Faith’s reach, even standing on her tiptoes.