Child of Mine (2 page)

Despite the lull of ocean waves, she slept fitfully.

Kelly checked out of the hotel the next morning and drove the short distance to LAX. There, she took the midmorning commercial flight to Atlanta, then on to Akron, Ohio.

On the plane she sat next to a white-haired woman in a pretty black-and-white polka-dot dress, who introduced herself as “Doris, from Minnesota,” and pulled out of her purse a batch of pictures. She showed off her five grandchildren—all brunettes, as fate would have it.

“You remind me of my daughter,” Doris said. “She's thin, like you. Too thin, really.”

Kelly smiled.

Enduring another thirty minutes of benign small-town conversation, if only to appease the woman, Kelly nibbled on the standard flight fare of pretzels, washed down with a cup of orange juice.

“Would you like my pretzels, too?” Doris asked. “I have more snacks in my purse, if you'd like.”

Kelly thanked her politely but was glad when the doting woman nodded off to sleep.

Kelly closed her own eyes as images of darling little Sydney emerged. Slipping deeper into her reverie, Kelly prayed silently, grateful that things had gone so well. Relishing the breeze from the small air nozzle above her, Kelly was barely aware of the passing landscape thirty thousand feet below.

Could it finally
be her?
Kelly thought before dozing off.

W
hat
'
s
taking
her
so
long
?
Jack Livingston wondered. It was just after nine that evening and already fifteen minutes had ticked by since he'd sent Nattie up to get ready for bed. Typically, she would have come bounding down in a matter of minutes, taking as little time as possible for fear she might get trapped into the fearsome “sinkhole of bedtime.”

Jack tossed his flight charts onto the coffee table and sighed. Leaning his head back on the sofa, he closed his eyes and focused on the patter of rain outside, letting his work concerns wash away. He heard the muted sound of a car muffler outside, growing quieter as it receded, and in the kitchen the fridge buzzed softly.

Nattie had occupied herself with a book earlier, while he'd studied the charts, mapping out their next big adventure—this one to coastal Maine. Someday, he hoped to fly her through the Rocky Mountains. The last time they'd flown together, he'd even let her talk on the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency, or CTAF, raising a chuckle from fellow pilots. “You keep yer uncle in line, little one!”

“I'm trying!”
she'd radioed back, catching Jack's eye and giggling.

Jack was about to check on Nattie when his cell phone rang. He
rose from the sofa and snatched it from the end table. He greeted his sister, San, whose given name was Sandra—though she had been known to give him a withering stink-eye if he dared to call her that. “Well, you won't believe it, brother dearest.”

Jack could see Nattie's closed bedroom door from where he stood. “Just a sec.” He covered the receiver. “Nattie?”

He waited a moment and heard a muffled reply, “I'm okay.”

Meanwhile, San had been barreling forward with details of her terrible day. While she chattered, Jack wandered to the tall window and observed the heavy cloud cover darkening the sky. The stars and the full moon were no longer visible.
Another stormy night in Wooster, Ohio
.

Across the side yard, recently married Diane Farley, her strawberry blond hair cut short, stood next to her new husband, Craig, in the kitchen washing dishes. Sometimes, like today when Laura had to leave a few hours early, Diane would watch Nattie for him. Diane and Craig spotted him and waved.

“Distracted, aren't we?” San muttered into the phone.

“Greeting my neighbors,” Jack said.

“How're they doing, by the way?”

“Terrific,” he replied, ignoring the insinuation in her tone:
“You sure missed the boat with her, didn't you
?”

Sparing him further grief, San asked about Nattie. Jack filled her in. The fact was, nothing much had changed since they'd talked last. San went silent for a moment. “So, tomorrow's the school meeting?”

“The final one for the year,” Jack confirmed and wandered into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and looked inside. Remnants from Laura Mast's Amish feast—chicken, flavored with garlic—filled his senses. His mouth watered, but he closed the door.

“What's Laura think about all of this?” San asked.

Jack was surprised she would solicit their nanny's opinion. “She thinks Nattie will grow out of it.”

“Laura said that?”

“Not in so many words.”

San paused. “Okay, change of topic, Jack-O'-Lantern. Someone asked about you today. Anita Goodrich. You and Nattie met her last summer at my office picnic. Remember?”

Faintly,
Jack thought.

“She's pretty. And funny. And she likes kids. Nattie hung all over her.”

He nodded as if San could see him and noticed that Laura had forgotten to start the dishwasher. “I'm sure Anita is very nice,” Jack replied, meaning it. With his free hand he opened the washer, finding the dispenser loaded with soap and ready to go.
That's strange
.

Jack pressed Cancel, waited a moment, then pushed the series of buttons. This time when he closed the door, the dishwasher began its soft humming, followed by the swishing of water.

Don't die on me,
he thought. He'd just replaced the furnace last fall, and two months ago the transmission in his pickup had gone out.

“So why not ask her out?” San suggested.

Call Waiting was beeping in his ear, cutting out San's words. It was Laura.
Didn't she just leave the house?
So this had to be important, but San was still making her case for Anita, and before he could excuse himself from his sister's vise grip, he heard the final
beep beep beep.

I'll call her back,
he decided.

“I've got Anita's number if you want it,” San pressed him.

Jack flicked off the kitchen light, then went to the living room and turned off the lamp. In the darkness, the now steady rain sounded ominous.

“Don't you think it's about time you got back in the dating scene?” she quipped, then added, “Before you're a certifiable old man.”

He chuckled, then glanced upstairs to the sliver of light beneath Nattie's door. “I'd better check on Nattie-bug. Love you, sis.”

“Take care of my darling,” San said, sounding mildly peeved at his brush-off. “And call me after the school meeting, okay?”

Jack promised and hung up, but instead of rushing upstairs, he returned to the fridge, grimacing at San's determination to get him married. While pouring some orange juice, his thoughts returned to Nattie, but he resisted the urge to hover more than he already was, recalling San's frequent refrain, “
Give the kid some breathing room, Jack!”

He noticed Nattie's latest list of favorite foods, taped to the outside of the refrigerator, written in red marker:

Top Five Summer Foods:

1) Pop-Tarts—(Big Shocker!
)

2) Anything Amish, but only if Laura makes it, otherwise not so much.

3) Ice cream, especially cookies and cream

4) Spaghetti (Did I spell it right?)

5) Green beans—Ha, Ha! (You know I'm kidding, right?)

He smiled at number two but seriously doubted Amish food was Nattie's second favorite. Certainly not before ice cream. Placing Laura's cooking at number two and posting it on the fridge was Nattie's way of telling Laura,
“I love you.”

Jack glanced up again at Nattie's closed door.
Relax,
he told himself, heading for the stairs.
She's fine.

But that wasn't true, was it? As far as Jack was concerned, Miss Natalie Livingston—known to one and all as Nattie—hadn't been fine in a very long time.

Just after nine-thirty that night, Kelly Maines tried to start her finicky fifteen-year-old Toyota Corolla and marveled when it actually turned over. She eased the car out of the corrugated
metal car shelter, the motor ticking like a time bomb. Turning on the windshield wipers, she headed for the convenience store where she worked, ten miles from the tiny walk-up apartment she rented in town.

Joe Callen, the general manager, graciously allowed Kelly to set her own hours, sometimes as few as ten a week, depending on her circumstances, whether she was in town or out, or whether she was busy trolling for money, a task that was becoming more difficult as the years passed. Without her friends Chet and Eloise, she would have gone broke years ago.

While she needed little money to exist, just enough to pay rent and keep the fridge minimally stocked, she needed a lot of money to pay the bills that mattered most: airline tickets, hotel bills, and of course, Ernie's investigating fee, well deserved but expensive nonetheless.

Kelly arrived at work ten minutes early, wearing her convenience-store uniform, with enough time to psyche herself up for a shift that was becoming more and more daunting. The work wasn't difficult, but getting to sleep afterward often was.

While waiting in her car on the dimly lit side of the building designated for employees, she listened to the local Christian station. She detected the scent of hickory smoke from the steak place across the street and jumped at the sudden clang of the metal Dumpster behind her. She jerked around to catch her co-worker Len's bright grin as he waved to her while heading back in the rear door. Attempting to calm her nerves, she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, focusing on the imminent test results from her excursion to California.

She mustn't let herself get too excited, but it was nearly impossible not to imagine
what if
.

Tense at the thought, she plugged her phone into the cheap cassette tape adapter and switched to her own music mix, then opened her wallet and stared at Emily's baby picture, taken nearly nine years ago. She hummed along with an older worship tune.

The memories rushed in. Music had a way of doing that, taking her back to that pretty pink-and-white nursery where she'd soothed her newborn baby in the wee hours, sometimes gently moving about the room to the beat, whispering along with the words, imparting her own love of Jesus to her infant. How she'd lovingly dreamed of their future as mother and daughter, a future that once seemed so bright with possibility.

With five minutes until the start of her shift, Kelly cut the music and prayed silently, finding it impossible not to think back to her visit to Malibu and the encounter with adorable Sydney, her latest prospect.

She finished her prayer and opened the car door, then headed up the shimmering sidewalk to begin work for the night. The gentle rain misted her face, but she paused long enough to take in the convenience store sign, bright red against the darkened sky, a harsh reminder of what her life had become.

It won't be forever,
she promised herself, whispering the prayer she'd been praying for more than eight years.
Please keep her safe.