Little Girl Lost

“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.

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