Little Girl Lost

Faith wanted to ask him more about what sounded like a fascinating life, but a blinding flash of lightning and the earsplitting crack of thunder that accompanied it brought her back to the situation at hand. This was no time for conversation, fascinating or otherwise. She gave one more troubled glance through the chrysalis room window into the habitat. The insects were on their own now. She couldn’t risk injury to Caitlin staying where they were. But how was she going to get her daughter safely back into the house?

The hailstones weren’t that large but they were coming down so thickly she had to shout to be heard. And the wind was picking up, too. There would be blowing leaves and twigs, perhaps even falling tree branches to contend with between here and the house. She didn’t even dare to consider what damage the storm was doing to the crops in the fields. “I can’t take Caitlin out into the storm.” She indicated the sleeveless top and shorts her daughter was wearing. Caitlin had her face buried in Faith’s shoulder. She didn’t like thunder and lightning, but she wasn’t unduly afraid of them. That might change if she had to go out in it unprotected.

“No umbrella or raincoat in the greenhouse?”

“Nothing like that.” The radio on the counter began to vibrate with the sirenlike alert that signaled a weather update. A disembodied voice announced a funnel cloud had been spotted about ten miles west of Bartonsville. It was moving northeast at thirty miles an hour. Everyone in the area was to take immediate cover.

“If it stays on course it will probably miss us but we need to get into the cellar,” Hugh said. She didn’t for a moment question the accuracy of his pronouncement. It had taken Faith weeks to orient herself to the land around Bartonsville after she’d moved to the farm, but it appeared Hugh had had no such difficulty.

She racked her brain for something to use to cover Caitlin. “I suppose we could wrap her up in one of the those nylon garden flags. They’re heavy enough to give her some protection.”

“It’s better than nothing.” Hugh reached out to slide the nearest off its pole, a springlike design of pink and yellow tulips on a green background. Faith’s eyes flicked past the display to the shelf of hummingbird and butterfly statues.

“Wait a minute. I have a better idea.” Faith darted around the counter. She pulled out a roll of packing material. “Bubble wrap! I keep it around to pack the figurines. We can wrap her in it.”

She was rewarded with one of his heart-stopping grins. “Great idea. Here, give her to me.”

Faith didn’t let herself hesitate. She couldn’t hold on to Caitlin and wrap her head and shoulders at the same time. Hugh held out his arms and Caitlin tumbled into his embrace. “Bubbles,” she giggled. “Poke the bubbles.”

“You can poke all the bubbles you want in the house, Kitty Cat,” Faith promised. “Just hold still now like a good girl.” Thirty seconds later Caitlin grinned out at her from a cocoon of packing material.

“Hey, you’re Cocoon Girl now,” Hugh said admiringly.

Faith laughed despite the anxiety that made her hands shake and her throat close. “Not Cocoon Girl. She…she needs to be Chrysalis Girl. We don’t want to take the chance that she’ll hatch into a plain old moth. We want her to be a beautiful butterfly, don’t we, sweetie?” She leaned forward and touched noses with her daughter. The spontaneous movement brought her close enough to feel the heat of Hugh’s body and the evocative smell of his soap and aftershave. She straightened quickly, taking a step back.

Hugh didn’t seem to notice her awkward movement. “Okay, Chrysalis Girl it is. Up, up and away!”

Faith tugged open the main door, the swirling wind working just as hard to keep it closed. Addy started barking, backing away, stiff-legged, as hailstones clattered on the paving stones just inside the door. “C’mon, dog. Move,” Faith ordered, but Addy was too excited and too frightened of the storm to be her usual tractable self. Faith made a dive for the sheltie but Addy bounced out of range. “Addy! Come. Or you’re going to get blown to Oz.” This time Addy obeyed the stern command and Faith lifted the little dog into her arms.

Hugh motioned her through the open door first and then pulled it shut with one hard jerk. The sting of hailstones against her cheek and head made Faith gasp. She took off across the gravel parking lot at a run, the dog squirming and whimpering in her arms. Hugh’s Blazer was parked under the big maple that shaded the back yard. Faith hoped a limb didn’t come down on it. Thank heaven, her own dependable Caravan was parked in the barn.

The ground was an inch deep with marble-sized hailstones. The footing was treacherous, almost as bad as it had been the day Caitlin was born. What a terrifying trip home that had been, the tiny newborn clutched tight to her chest, nothing to protect her from the sleet and wind but the sweatshirt she was wrapped in.

Faith didn’t dare look back to see how her daughter was faring in Hugh’s arms for fear of turning an ankle and ending up on her bottom with an armload of indignant sheltie. She shoved open the wrought-iron gate to the yard and went directly to the house. Inside the kitchen she motioned Hugh to follow her down the steep, narrow cellar steps. The big whitewashed room contained her washer and dryer, the hot water heater and a huge old boiler that she was hoping would provide heat for one more winter before it died. Otherwise, the low-ceilinged, stone-floored room was empty except for some of Caitlin’s toys, an old castoff sofa and a small TV and VCR. She often brought Caitlin down here to run around and let off steam on rainy days. Faith hit the light switch inside the door. Thankfully the two overhead lights came on.

She kept a powerful flashlight and some candles and a lighter on a shelf by the stairs for an emergency such as this, but she hoped they didn’t have to use them. She turned on the TV, and muted the sound so that Caitlin wouldn’t become alarmed by storm bulletins. A map of the county filled the screen, and a dark red blotch, the indication of the strongest storm cell, was superimposed over Bartonsville, but it had begun to move off to the east. “I think the worst of the storm’s passed, thank goodness.” She glanced out one of the small windows, placed high in the thick, stone walls of the cellar. The hail had stopped; now it was only raindrops hitting the wavy glass.

She turned back to find that Hugh had set Caitlin on her feet and hunkered down beside her to unwind the bubble wrap cocoon.

As soon as she was free Caitlin bolted for the stairs. “Need Barbie.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Hugh’s long arm shot out and his fingers curled around the child’s wrist. Faith’s heart leapt to her throat. Caitlin was such a tiny thing, her bones so delicate he could easily hurt her and not even realize it. She almost cried out, but she needn’t have worried. His grip on Caitlin’s wrist was so light it scarcely touched her skin.

“I think I see Barbie over there.” He pointed to the seat of the old couch and let Caitlin go skipping off to retrieve the doll.

“She’s smart and fearless, isn’t she?” he said with a note of wonder—and love?—in his voice that sent shivers through Faith.

“She was born in the middle of a terrible ice storm.” Faith hadn’t meant to let that slip. She had perfected her story of Caitlin’s birth, but she never volunteered details. His actions had thrown her off balance, and it was too late to take back the words.

“Tell me about it,” he said, standing up, towering over her it seemed, although there was no more than three or four inches difference in their heights. The tone of his voice didn’t change, nor the look in his eyes, but Faith felt compelled to answer as though bidden by some unspoken command.

Suddenly she was afraid, completely and unreasoningly afraid, and the fear had nothing to do with the storm, but was caused by the man before her. She felt for a moment that he could see right through her and that he knew what she would say next was a lie. Her throat closed and the litany of carefully constructed half truths and fabrications that was her fortress, as well as her prison, wouldn’t come.

CHAPTER FOUR

FAITH OPENED HER MOUTH but no sound came out. She was suddenly thrust into the midst of her worst nightmare. In it, she was standing in a huge echoing chamber. Stern, shadowy figures sat in judgment of her, demanding to know why she had taken another woman’s baby. No matter how eloquently she tried to explain her actions, her motivations, no matter how she many tears she shed, slowly, inexorably, one of the shadowy figures would pluck Caitlin from her arms and melt away, leaving her alone. She would wake in terror, tears running down her cheeks and only a trip to Caitlin’s room and the warmth of her baby’s skin could dispel the dread.

It was the middle of a late May day, and she was wide-awake. This was not her dream. This was reality, and she had told the story many times before. Today would be no different, unless she allowed it to be. “There was no one to help me when Caitlin was born,” she said as lightly as she could manage. “My husband had died six months earlier. I…I was here alone.”

Raindrops glistened in Hugh’s dark-blond hair, the harsh light catching steaks of lighter gold that she hadn’t noticed before. He didn’t seem menacing anymore, although his dark gaze held hers. “You must have been very frightened.”

“It was terrifying.” The words were heartfelt. She had woven as much of the truth into her story as possible. She had become a very good liar, but she did it only when necessary.

“Did you try to contact the emergency squad? Bartonsville has one, I imagine.”

“There wasn’t time.” She forced herself to keep eye contact. She was back in stride now, back on script. “Contrary to conventional wisdom about first babies, labor went very quickly. The ice storm hit and a broken tree limb brought down the phone line. Thank God, the electricity stayed on.” That was true, too, but it had happened after she made her nightmarish trek across the ice-slick fields to the house, with the tiny infant barely clinging to life in her arms.

Faith couldn’t help herself, her eyes sought her daughter across the room. She was seated in front of the old TV, oblivious to their conversation and the dying storm, engrossed in an episode of Rugrats. “We were cut off from the outside world for the first three days of Caitlin’s life.”

She had made diapers from an old flannel blanket she’d found in a back bedroom. Then she’d taken a plastic sandwich bag and poked a hole in one corner with a pin. She’d dissolved a little sugar in warm water and put the glucose solution in the bag, twisting it into a cone, as though she were a chef preparing to frost a fairy cake. She had coaxed Caitlin’s tiny mouth open with the tip of her little finger and pushed the makeshift nipple inside. Fortunately, Caitlin’s sucking reflex was strong and Faith was patient. Eventually the baby swallowed an ounce of the liquid.

After she’d held the newborn close to her breast and wrapped them both in blankets until the worrisome blue cast to the baby’s skin had been replaced by warm pink. They’d stayed snug and warm in their isolated cocoon as the storm raged, and when they’d emerged a transformation had taken place that was as complete and life-altering as that of a caterpillar changing into a butterfly.

Caitlin had become Faith’s child as surely as if she had given birth to the infant. She had labored to bring her to safety through the storm. She had fed her and bathed her and held her close so that she slept against the beating of Faith’s heart.

She’d loved her.

But she’d known she couldn’t keep her.

The ice melted the fourth morning after the storm, and life began to return to normal, but Faith remained closeted in her big, old house.

She knew Beth and Jamie would lose custody of the infant the moment Faith stepped into the sheriff’s office and told her story. The baby would go into the system, into foster care. If she was lucky it would be to a loving home. But it could be months, even years, until all the technicalities were sorted out. Sometimes bad things happened to children caught up in the system. Faith didn’t want to think of that. So she stayed put, telling herself it was still too dangerous to drive. She would wait for the phone to be repaired and to give Jamie and Beth time to change their minds. For a little longer she could make believe she had what she wanted most—a child of her own.

And then the newspaper had come.

Faith closed her eyes and could see as clearly as if it were still in front of her—the headline about the ice storm. Below it was a sidebar of storm-related deaths in Ohio and surrounding states. In Indiana, the story read, a hundred miles from Bartonsville, there had been a pileup on the interstate during the height of the storm. Eleven cars had been involved, but as of press time there was only one death, a seventeen-year-old male from Massachusetts. His companion, a teenage girl, was not expected to live. The couple was identified as Jamie Sheldon of Boston, and Beth Harden of Houston.

Jamie and Beth.

Was it only a coincidence that the first names were the same? Or was the child in her arms an orphan?

There were no further details of the accident that she could find. No mention of Beth having recently given birth, or any indication that a search for the infant had been started. Faith waited all that day and the next for someone to come and claim the child. With each passing hour it became evident that it was not going to happen. The young parents had died without telling anyone about their baby.

It was as if she didn’t exist.

It was as if she were really Faith’s.

And in the end it had been remarkably easy to make Caitlin legally hers.

In Ohio, she learned from the Internet, either parent could register the home birth of a child simply by appearing, within ten days, at the records office of the county in which the birth had taken place. No other witnesses were required, no medical records were needed. Only her own declaration of parenthood. That was her first lie, but one she told gladly. Within fifteen minutes of arriving at the courthouse she’d left with a birth certificate that declared Caitlin Hope Carson was her daughter.

She became aware she had been silent a long time, too long. As it sometimes did the guilt at what she had done burst out of the locked corner of her mind. She didn’t want to talk about Caitlin’s birth anymore. She didn’t want to lie to Hugh anymore. “The storm’s passing. I think it’s safe to go back upstairs.”

He made no objection so she turned off the TV and took Caitlin in her arms. Once back in the familiar surroundings of her yellow-and-white kitchen she felt her confidence returning and the guilt retreating.

“Do you have other family in the area in addition to your sister?” Hugh asked, leaning back against the granite countertop, arms folded across his chest. His shirt was still damp from the soaking they’d gotten. It pulled tight across his chest with the movement and Faith’s mouth went dry with need and wanting. She carried Caitlin to the bay window that faced the fields and watched as the dark menace of the retreating storm clouds broke into tatters of gray smoke.

“My husband has a few distant cousins in the area, but otherwise, no. Peg and her boys are my only living relatives.”

Caitlin wriggled to be free, so Faith set the little girl on her feet. Caitlin then bounced over to Hugh where she began to tug on his pant leg. “Cookie, please.”

“She wants an Oreo. They’re behind you.”

Hugh swiveled his head and shoulders and spotted the big plastic jar filled with cookies. “May I?” he asked.

Faith nodded. He didn’t look out of place at all in her kitchen. He leaned down and lifted Caitlin into his arms, letting her open the cookie jar and extract two of them all by herself. “Bite for you,” Caitlin said and pressed the cookie to Hugh’s lips for him to take a bite. Hugh went very still for a moment, then opened his mouth to nibble on the cookie. Caitlin shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth. “Good?”

“Very good.” He lifted one hand and smoothed it gently over her hair. “Thank you, Caitlin.” Faith went all shaky inside. It looked so right somehow, Hugh holding her daughter in his strong, tanned arms.

He put Caitlin down and she raced through the archway into the dining room, where they never ate, but where she kept many of her larger toys.

Silence stretched between them, and it made her nervous. She returned to the subject of family because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “You mentioned a half sister, I remember. Do you come from a large family?”

He grew very still. “My parents are dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded shortly. “Beth is my only sibling. She’s twenty.”

“Beth? Is it short for Elizabeth?”

“No, just Beth.”

A little shiver skittered across her nerve endings. She could never hear that name without associating it with Caitlin’s sad and pretty mother, especially when she had just been thinking of her such a short time ago. “It’s…it’s a pretty name. Are you close?”

“As close as she’ll let me get.” This time she didn’t imagine the pain in his voice. It was raw and real. “She’s got a lot of problems right now, both physical and emotional. She was in a bad accident some time ago. It’s been a long road back. I wasn’t there for her when I should have been and now…”

“And now she won’t let you be there for her?” Another Beth. Another accident. Another stinging memory evoked.

“Not as much as I want to be.”

“I’m sorry.” Impulsively she laid her hand on his arm and immediately wished she hadn’t. His skin was warm as sunlight. The feel of rough hair and the solidness of bone beneath her fingers reminded her that she was a woman who had been alone for three years. “I know it’s none of my business but perhaps, it would be better if you spent the next few weeks with her instead of remaining here.”

“She’s in Texas. I need to be available to the architect in Cincy on two hours’ notice, or I would go home.”

“She has no one else?”

“Her father.” His brows drew together in a scowl. “My stepfather is living, but he and Beth are estranged.”

“I see.” His expression warned her not to inquire further. “You could bring her here.” She spoke the words without thinking.

He looked down at her hand, then lifted his gaze to hers. He watched her for a long moment, his eyes as shadowed as the stormy sky had been. “You mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. This place brought me comfort and peace after Mark died. It might do the same for your sister.”

“Comfort and peace. She could use both of those.”

“She would be most welcome.”

He leaned closer and Faith felt herself drawn to him as though by an invisible magnet. He reached out and she held her breath certain that he meant to touch her cheek or even to take her in his arms. But she was mistaken. Hugh let his arm fall and took a step backward, leaving Faith feeling chilled. He was silent a long time, then his jaw tightened and he gave a short, sharp nod, as though coming to a decision that had been difficult to make. “You’re right, Faith. I think it’s time I brought Beth to Painted Lady Farm.”

HUGH PROPPED HIS FEET on the knee-high, stone wall that bordered the tiny patio behind his cabin and leaned back in the red metal lawn chair, slouching down far enough in the seat to rest his head against the round back. It was getting to be a habit sitting out here at twilight. The only other guests, a middle-aged couple in a car with Michigan plates staying in the unit next to his, seemed settled in for the evening, and he had the place to himself. He looked up at the faint scattering of summer stars. Off in the west the last of a glorious orange-gold sunset had faded into purple and gray. The storms of the afternoon had passed off to the north and east, taking some of the humidity from the air.

He’d been sitting in the same spot for the past hour observing Faith go about the business of closing the greenhouse. He’d watched as a tall, dark-haired man and two small boys in a pickup had driven down the lane and walked to the edge of the cornfield with her. He could hear the boys whooping and hollering in the backyard, running up to the pond to throw something into the water, then scurrying back down the bank. Caitlin had followed close on their heels, her small legs pumping to keep up.

Faith had called out a warning to the boys and obediently they had each taken Caitlin’s hand and led her back to her mother. Faith gathered the toddler into her arms. She’d waited, cuddling her daughter, as the boys ran off again, and the man waded into the rows of new corn to check for damage. Steve, the brother-in-law, Hugh had decided, and the boys would be his stepsons, Faith’s sister’s children.

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