Little Girl Lost

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.