Loe raamatut: «Little Girl Lost»

Hugh stared down at the windows of Faith Carson’s house.

He’d almost given himself away when he’d let his reaction to seeing Beth’s child for the first time get the better of him. Caitlin Carson was Beth’s child—he was convinced of it, although he couldn’t say how he knew.

But according to the law, Faith was Caitlin’s mother. He’d seen a copy of the birth certificate. Everything about it seemed to be in order. Still, he knew his hunch was right. Even though the accident that had killed Jamie and taken Beth’s memory had occurred a hundred miles away, he was sure his sister had been in this place. Here she’d given birth and for some reason, left her child behind.

It was the slightest of hunches that had brought him to Painted Lady Farm. A baby born to a woman alone, during a terrible ice storm. A woman who was a nurse and could have delivered a frightened teenager’s baby. A woman who was also a widow and had, perhaps, despaired of ever having a child of her own—and who might have been desperate enough to risk keeping another woman’s baby.

He didn’t know the details, but nothing he’d learned led him to believe that Faith Carson was a baby snatcher. He was determined to find the truth, but he had to proceed carefully. He wasn’t the only one searching for Beth’s baby.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marisa Carroll is the pen name of the writing team of Carol Wagner and Marian Franz of Deshler, Ohio. The sisters have published over thirty romance novels in the past twenty years and have been the recipients of several industry awards, including Romantic Times Career Achievement Award and a B. Dalton Booksellers’ Award. They have also been finalists for the RWA RITA^® Awards and have appeared on numerous bestseller lists, including the USA TODAY list.

Carol and Marian were born and raised in northwestern Ohio. They pursued careers in nursing, X-ray technology and the business community before entering the writing field in 1982. Marian is employed at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Carol is writing full-time.

Little Girl Lost
Marisa Carroll

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

THE CALENDAR SAID it was November, but the scudding gray clouds and lowering sky made it seem as though winter had arrived in southern Ohio. The maples and slippery elms had long ago lost their leaves. The mottled trunks of the sycamores blended into the white and gray of the storm clouds. Only the oaks held stubbornly to their tattered brown leaves, the way she had been holding stubbornly to her grief.

No, not stubbornly, Faith Carson told herself as she trudged along the path that skirted a small lake and ended at a tiny, hidden roadside park bordering her farm. “Surely six months isn’t too long to mourn a dead husband?”

She wasn’t talking to herself, not really. She’d addressed the question to her two-year-old Shetland sheepdog, Addy, trotting at her heels. She’d found Addy at the local animal shelter a few weeks after she’d moved into the echoing old farmhouse that Mark had inherited from his grandparents, and which, until three weeks after his death, Faith had never set foot in. Addy was the only friend Faith had at the moment. The little dog pricked her ears at the question and gave a yip of sympathetic agreement.

Six months. Not nearly long enough when that sorrow was coupled with the aching loss of a child barely conceived. Surely six months was only a beginning. Faith blinked hard to hold back tears as icy raindrops touched her cheeks. She had nothing left in her but a sense of bereavement so deep and unrelenting she sometimes felt as though she had died, too, on that mountain road in Mexico.

They had been vacationing, their first real vacation since their marriage, looking for the remote area where thousands of monarch butterflies came to spend the winter. Mark was a computer programmer whose passion was butterflies. It was a trip he had wanted to take for as long as she had known him. But a washed-out section of road and a blown tire had caused their rented Jeep to roll over.

Somehow, for some reason, her heart had gone on beating when Mark’s had stopped as she held him in her arms and their baby’s life drained away between her legs. A loss like that scarred the heart so much the healing might take six years, or sixty—or never come.

She walked out of the trees just behind the rustic two-sided building that, along with a pair of old-fashioned outhouses and a rusty jungle gym, were the park’s only amenities. An expensive, sporty blue car was parked in the graveled lot at the edge of the small body of water the county had named Sylvan Lake, but that was still known to the locals of Bartonsville, Ohio, as Carson’s Pond. A young couple, the boy’s arms wrapped around the girl, her head resting on his shoulder, sat on one of the picnic tables near the blackened fieldstone fireplace that took up the entire north wall of the building. Faith halted, half-hidden by a huge pine whose low branches brushed the ground, and acted as a windbreak on one side of the small picnic shelter.

She hadn’t expected anyone to be in the park on a day like this, certainly not a pair of amorous teenagers. She took a quick step back, deeper into the shadow of the pine. They hadn’t seen her. She could melt back into the woods, retrace her steps through the frosty grass and be home before the raindrops that were now falling steadily changed to sleet. Addy growled low in her throat.

“Shh.” Faith knelt down to fasten the leash she carried in her pocket to the dog’s collar before Addy could begin barking in earnest. She scooped the small dog into her arms and prepared to depart. The teenagers were absorbed in each other and didn’t look in her direction, but some trick of sound brought their words to her ears.

“Beth, we can’t stay here. There must be a town close by. Maybe it’s big enough for a hospital.”

“If we go to a hospital they’ll call your parents.” The girl cried out, a moan of pain and fear. These weren’t just two moonstruck teenagers making out. Something far more serious than that was going on. Addy whined nervously and squirmed in Faith’s arms. The boy turned his head and stared directly into her eyes.

“Help us,” he said, his face as gray-white as the clouds and the sycamore trees. He was blond, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, seventeen or eighteen at most. A good-looking kid, or would be if he weren’t half-scared to death. “My girlfriend’s having a baby. And I don’t know what to do.”

Faith couldn’t believe her ears, didn’t want to. He couldn’t have said what she thought she had heard.

“Please,” he said, raising his voice so there could be no doubt as he repeated the words. “She’s having a baby. I don’t know what to do.”

Instinctively Faith shook her head. “I don’t, either,” she murmured, but he couldn’t hear her above the moaning of the wind in the trees. And she did know what to do. That was one of the things that made her own loss so hard to bear. She was a nurse. She had the skill and knowledge to help save lives. Once, she had even delivered a baby herself. But that had been five years ago in the hospital emergency room where she’d worked while Mark finished up his graduate studies. She had been young and fearless, then. Now she was not. She hadn’t even set foot in a hospital since three days after her miscarriage.

The girl shifted her position, and Faith took a better look at her, her heart sinking. Her arms were wrapped around her swollen middle, which strained against the fabric of her pale-green sweater. She wasn’t wearing a coat and shivered in the cold air. She was very, very pregnant. Her face was white, her eyes dark with fear. “I—I hurt so badly. I can’t walk.”

Feminine instinct and medical training took over, marching Faith forward on stiff legs. She tied Addy to a sapling at the corner of the shelter and hushed her with a stern warning. The little dog dropped to her belly on the cold ground whimpering with anxiety, sensing the tension in the humans around her, but obedient to Faith’s command.

Faith looked from one terrified young face to the other. “She needs to be taken to the hospital.” She took off her all-weather coat and draped it around the shivering girl’s shoulders. She was wearing the sweatshirt Mark had given her for Christmas the year before, a heavy black one covered front and back with butterflies so she would be warm enough without her coat.

“No!” The girl panted, then bit her lip and groaned, a low, guttural sound. The sound of a woman who was almost ready to give birth. Faith’s heart hammered. This couldn’t be happening. Not today of all days. The day her own child should have been born.

“Your baby is coming, and it shouldn’t be born out here in the cold. I’ll give you directions to the hospital in Bartonsville. When you get there the nurses can notify your families—”

Silvery strands of gossamer-fine hair danced in the cold air as the girl shook her head. “I don’t have a family,” she said defiantly. “Only my brother in Texas.”

“What about you?”

“I—I don’t have any family, either,” he said miserably.

He was lying, but before Faith could call him on it another contraction rippled across the girl’s belly. Less than two minutes had passed since the last one. She had to move quickly or the situation would get out of hand. “I’m Faith Carson. I live just down the road at the bottom of the next hill. What’s your name, honey?”

“Beth.”

“And you are?”

“Jamie.” No surnames. Faith let the omission pass. For the moment there were more pressing matters.

“You’re the baby’s father?”

He nodded, his Adam’s apple working up and down in his throat. “Is Beth going to be okay?”

“She needs expert care. You know that, don’t you?”

“We were looking for a hospital. We got lost. I’m—I’m not used to driving in the country. The road’s go every which way.”

“It’s okay. You’re only a few miles from a good hospital. I’ll give you directions, but you must leave now. Your baby’s going to be born very soon if I don’t miss my guess.”

“How do you know it’s going to be soon?” Beth was gasping for breath, clutching at Jamie’s arm with both hands. He stood beside the table, ramrod straight, breathing almost as hard and fast as the mother-to-be.

Faith sighed. “I’m a nurse,” she said. “I know.”

“First babies take a long time, I’ve heard. This—this only started about an hour ago.”

“Has your water broken?”

For a moment Beth looked puzzled, then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I didn’t know what it was at first, then I remembered from health class. It was this morning. Then the cramps started.” She began to sob. “I hurt so bad. I just want to get this thing out of me.” The sobs turned to a groan, and she dropped her hands to the tabletop, lifting herself into a crouch, straining against the contraction.

“Don’t push,” Faith ordered automatically. “Try to breathe through the contraction. Like this.” She made an O with her mouth and panted.

Beth tried, but she was too upset and in too much pain for the exercise to do any good. She cried out and her knees buckled.

Jamie had gone from looking scared to terrified. “Help us. I don’t know what to do. The doctor at the clinic in…back home…told us the baby probably wasn’t due for another three weeks.”

“Have you had regular prenatal care?” Faith asked.

“I—I just went twice. I had a test where they rub a wand over your stomach—”

“A sonogram,” Faith supplied.

“Yes. My baby’s a girl. But they wanted—” Beth broke off what she was about to say. Faith guessed it was that the clinic doctor wanted to notify her family. She was a little thing, and if she wore baggy clothes, like the sweater she had on now, she probably had been able to hide her pregnancy. “If we go to the hospital they’ll take my baby away.” Beth’s eyes sought Faith’s. They were blue Faith noted, as blue as a country sky on a cloudless June day.

“No they won’t. Not unless you want to give the baby up.”

“I want my baby.” Beth bit down hard on her lower lip as another contraction began.

“Beth,” Jamie said, his tone edged with desperation. “We’ve gone over this and over this. We don’t have any money or jobs or a place to live. How can we take care of a baby?”

“Other girls have. I can, too. You don’t have to marry me. You know that, Jamie. Your parents don’t want you to, anyway.”

“I—I just don’t know how we’ll manage—” He broke off as she cried out again. “Do something,” he pleaded to Faith.

“Do you have a cell phone?” she asked.

Jamie wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. “We lost it.”

So much for the easy way out.

Faith took one more look at the car. It was a two-seater. Warmer than the open shelter, certainly, and out of the wind, but with little room to maneuver. If there was a problem with the birth she would be at an even greater disadvantage shoehorned inside it than she was now. Beth moaned again, leaning against her young lover, straining.

“Don’t push,” Faith said sharply. Beth’s labor was progressing rapidly. Even if she left Addy behind and they all squeezed into the car, the baby’s arrival would probably occur before they reached the hospital. “We’re going to have to deliver the baby here,” she said with false calm.

Beth started to cry harder. “I think so, too.”

Faith reached out and touched her fingertips to Beth’s cold cheek. She couldn’t think about her own grief, couldn’t remember that she should be laboring in the same way as this girl, bringing the baby she had longed for so desperately into the world.

“It’s going to be okay.” She swallowed against the familiar lump of sorrow in her throat, made her voice as soothing as she could manage. “I’m going to deliver your baby and Jamie’s going to help.”

“Me?” He swallowed audibly. “I… What can I do?”

“Do you have any blankets in the car? Towels?”

“We have sleeping bags. And I have a couple of clean sweatshirts. Will they do?”

“Yes. We can wrap the baby in them. How about a pair of scissors?”

The last of the color drained out of Jamie’s face as he made the connection. He shook his head. “No scissors.”

“Not even cuticle scissors? A penknife, then.” Faith held on to her composure with both hands. It wouldn’t do to let these two terrified kids see that she was almost as afraid as they were.

“I have a penknife.” Jamie pulled a small one out of his pocket. “It’s sharp.”

“Good. That will do.”

She’d been burning trash earlier that morning so she had matches in her pocket. She could sterilize the blade to cut the umbilical cord. But she would need something to clear the baby’s nose and mouth, and something to tie off the cord. “Do you have any cotton swabs? Dental floss?”

“In my makeup case,” Beth groaned. “I have floss and Q-Tips. Will the baby be all right being born outside like this? It’s so cold.” She was shivering, but not entirely from the cold. Her legs were shaking hard, another sure sign she was far along in her labor.

“Everything will be fine,” Faith assured her, but she had no such assurance for herself. “Give me the knife.” She held out her hand. “I’ll deal with Beth’s clothes while you get the things we talked about.”

Jamie took off for the car at a run. Faith looked at the shivering girl on the wooden picnic table. It looked hard and uncomfortable but the only alternative was the stone floor. Thankfully Beth was wearing thin leggings and not jeans. If the penknife was sharp enough Faith thought she could split the crotch and panties and at least protect the girl’s legs and feet from more exposure to the cold.

She told Beth her plan and the girl nodded, lifting her hips off the table. Faith said a little prayer of thanks that Jamie’s knife was indeed sharp. The baby had not yet crowned but Faith was certain that one more contraction would bring the top of its head into view. She couldn’t risk examining Beth anymore closely for fear of infection later; she had no way to sterilize her hands. Washing them in the icy water of the old-fashioned pump outside the shelter house would have to do. But she couldn’t leave the laboring girl exposed on the table. She would have to wait on Jamie’s return to do even that much.

“Try to relax,” she said.

“Are you really a nurse?” Beth was half sitting, half reclining against Faith’s arm. But her weight was slight.

“Yes.”

“And you’ve delivered babies before?”

“Yes,” Faith assured her. That it was long ago and far away needn’t be said.

“You’re wearing a wedding ring. Do you have children?”

“No. I’m a widow.” The words came out tight and hard. There was no way she could stop them.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Beth said politely.

“So am I.”

“I have to push again.” The sounds Beth made deep in her throat were no longer quite human.

“Jamie, hurry!” Faith called over the rising wind and the sharp tattoo of sleet on the metal roof. Tiny icicles were already forming along the eaves, and the pine tree’s needles had begun to chime slightly whenever the wind set the branches swaying. Addy turned her back to the wind and dropped her head on her paws.

Jamie started the car and left it idling. He ran up the slope to the shelter, slipping a little on the icy crust forming on the brown grass. His arms were full of two down sleeping bags, a couple of red sweatshirts and a small plastic case, pink and sparkling—the kind of case teenage girls used to keep their treasures safe, emphasizing again how young they both were.

“Good thinking to start the car,” Faith praised him. “We’ll move Beth and the baby inside as soon as we can.” The baby was crowning and there was only time to lift Beth enough to slide one of the sleeping bags beneath her and to wrap the other around her as best they could. Faith murmured encouragement, forcing her breathing into a normal pattern, steeling herself not to show any of her own fear and uncertainty.

Another contraction, another long unearthly moan, and the head emerged. No one saw but Faith. Beth was staring fixedly at the butterflies on Faith’s sweatshirt, and Jamie was watching Faith, too, not wanting to look between his girlfriend’s legs.

Faith’s cracked and bruised heart began bleeding anew as she cradled the baby’s head in her hands. Oh, God, why did you have to ask this of me today of all days?

Aloud she said only, “Okay, honey. You’re doing fine. Just rest now, wait for the next contraction.”

Beth groaned. “When will it be over? It hurts too much. I can’t stand it any longer.”

“Yes, you can,” Faith said soothingly. “This will do it. Her shoulders will come out and the rest of her body will just slide along. I promise. Just push slowly and steadily so you don’t tear. You can do it, come on.”

“Please make it—” The word ended in a long drawn out moan as the baby’s shoulders came free and the rest of her small body slipped into Faith’s hands.

“You have a daughter,” Faith said. Mark had wanted their first child to be a girl.

“The baby’s not breathing,” Jamie whispered.

At the words, Beth—who’d dropped her head against his shoulder—jerked upright. “She’s not breathing. She’s all blue. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. She’s cold, that’s all.” Faith said another silent prayer that she was speaking the truth. She wiped the baby’s face and head with one of the clean sweatshirts, then bundled her into a second, careful not to entangle the umbilical cord. She took a cotton swab and cleaned out her mouth and nostrils as gently, but as thoroughly as she could. It wasn’t ideal, she really needed a suction bulb, but it would have to do. She tapped her middle fingernail against the soles of the infant’s feet, then a second time a little harder. The baby’s eyes popped open and she looked directly at Faith. She blinked once, then opened her mouth, took a deep breath and began to wail. The cry was weak and thready but the most beautiful sound Faith had ever heard.

“Look. She’s turning pink,” Beth murmured. “May I hold her?”

“Of course you can.”

Faith placed the baby in her mother’s arms, pulling the edges of the sleeping bag more closely around them both.

“She’s awfully tiny.” Jamie’s voice cracked as he spoke.

“She’s perfect,” Beth murmured. “Just perfect.”

Faith handed the matches to Jamie, who couldn’t seem to take his eyes off his daughter. “Here, sterilize the knife blade with these. The afterbirth will be coming soon and we’ll need to get the cord cut and tied. Do you want to do it?”

He shook his head. “You do it.” His expression was suddenly grim.

Faith didn’t press the matter. Beth was already beginning to breathe heavily with the beginning of another contraction. “This won’t be as bad,” Faith promised. “It’s the afterbirth, the placenta.”

Beth shook her head, smiling down at the tiny infant in her arms. “It’s okay. I can handle it. Now that she’s here, it’s worth it. Oh, Jamie,” she whispered, looking up at the boy with love shining from her sky blue eyes. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

Jamie didn’t smile back. He looked as if the entire weight of the world had shifted onto his shoulders. “She’s so tiny. How will we take care of her?”

“We’ll manage,” Beth declared.

Jamie didn’t speak again.

Faith delivered the placenta a few minutes later. It appeared to be intact and there was little bleeding. She recited a silent prayer of thanks. With any luck she would have her charges safely in the hands of the competent staff at Bartonsville Medical Center in a very short while.

She bundled the afterbirth into the oldest looking of the sweatshirts Jamie had brought from the car. “We should take this along to the hospital for the doctor to check. You do realize that Beth and the baby need to be seen by a doctor? Your daughter is very tiny,” she said quietly, so that only Jamie could hear. “She seems to be healthy but she might have some difficulty with her breathing, or regulating her temperature. Newborns sometimes do. She should be where she can be monitored.”

“Problems breathing?” His nostrils flared and he swallowed hard. “Like needing oxygen and everything?”

Beth had overheard. “No. She’s fine. We don’t need to go to the hospital.”

“Even if she is okay, we don’t have any bottles or milk or diapers—”

“We can get them. And I’ll nurse her,” Beth said defiantly.

“You don’t even know if you can. What if she gets too hungry? Or something like Mrs. Carson just said happens? We wouldn’t know what to do.”

“We’ll learn.”

“I’ve never even held a baby. She’s so tiny.” There was real panic in his voice. “We only have about sixty dollars left.”

“It will have to do,” Beth said, her eyes glued to the baby.

“That’s barely enough for gas. No way can we stretch it to buy food and formula and diapers. I don’t even know what else we need. I can’t use the credit card—” He broke off realizing that he’d probably said too much. He glanced at Faith and his eyes were desperate, the reality of responsibility overwhelming any joy he felt at his child’s birth. “Maybe it would be better if we—”

“No!” Beth’s refusal cut off what he meant to say.

Faith interrupted. “We can work everything out when Beth and the baby are safe at the medical center.” The ice storm had hit in earnest while Faith had been preoccupied with the baby’s birth. Already a silvery sheet of ice covered everything in sight. It was going to be tricky walking home for her car, but there was no way she and Addy could fit into the sports car for the ride to the hospital.

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.