Czytaj książkę: «For The Twins' Sake»

Chapter One
Seven weeks later

“I, Willem Michael Perry, in sound mind and body, hereby leave my second-rate wife, Sara Mayhew Perry, absolutely nothing.”

Sara sat in her late husband’s attorney’s office, not surprised by anything in the will. The insults. The disinheritance. She wanted to run out of here, put this—including her marriage to Willem—behind her, and go home with her seven-week-old son. If she even had a home anymore.

The lawyer, Holton Parrington, who’d grimaced through every word of the will as he’d read it aloud, put the document down on his desk and took off his glasses. “Sorry about all this, Sara,” he said, shaking his head. “Willem wasn’t exactly the nicest person, was he?”

Understatement of the year. Decade, maybe. But you make a deal with the devil... “No, he wasn’t.”

Her husband had died in a car accident five days ago. He hadn’t been a good person, but Sara hadn’t married him for his personality. She knew she wasn’t perfect, but doing what needed to be done had always come naturally to her, and she’d hoped she could help Willem change, that she would rub off on him, that impending fatherhood would mean something to him, but he’d actually gotten meaner, more spiteful, more controlling.

She glanced at the stroller to her left; baby Chance slept peacefully. She kept her gaze on him for a moment longer; her son was all that truly mattered. Nothing else.

“Willem also left a letter to you and instructions that I read it aloud in the event of his death,” Holton continued. “It’s sealed, and I have no idea what’s inside. Ready?”

Sara sighed inwardly. “For more bashing? No. But I guess this will be the end of it.”

The lawyer nodded. He put his glasses back on, then slit open the envelope and pulled out one sheet of paper, written in Willem Perry’s unmistakable, perfect handwriting.

“‘Sara, if you’re reading this, I’m dead,’” the lawyer read, pausing as if bracing himself. He cleared his throat and continued. “‘I don’t know what got me in the end, but I hope it was quick and painless and that I lived till at least ninety-three like my father.’”

Willem hadn’t made it to his twenty-ninth birthday. He’d been reckless with the brand-new Porsche, a gift to himself for becoming a father, and had been going more than ninety around the rain-slick curve on the winding service road into town.

“‘I debated about putting what I’m about to say on paper,’” the lawyer continued reading, “‘but decided I couldn’t—make that shouldn’t—take it to the grave with me. Oh yes, I want you to know. You deserve to know. Brace yourself, darlin’.’”

She was already doing that. Who knew what Willem was capable of? She did, actually. She wished she’d known the extent of his cruelty before she’d agreed to marry him. She’d known he was a snob, but he’d been so kind to her before their wedding, and she’d had such faith she’d turn him around. Back then, she’d thought his worst trait was talking down to waitstaff in the nice restaurants he’d taken her to.

She’d never take anything at face value again. That was for damned sure.

She sucked in a deep breath. Whatever it is, whatever his last laugh is, I can take it, she told herself. I’m stronger than I know. Just keep chanting that and maybe it’ll be true.

The attorney glanced at her, and she nodded.

“‘Our son’s twin sister didn’t die during childbirth,’” the lawyer read on a gasp, his eyes widening.

Sara gasped too. What? They stared at each other, his face as pale as hers must be.

The lawyer sucked in a breath and continued reading. “‘The female twin was frail, much smaller than the male. But very much alive. Thank God I’d insisted on a home birth with a midwife, or I’d never have been able to do what I did.’”

She grabbed the sides of the chair. Her mind went blank, the air whooshing out of her, blackness threatening. What did you do, Willem? What the hell did you do?

The lawyer leaned back, took off his glasses and scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Finish the letter,” Sara said, hearing the panic rise in her voice.

What happened to my baby girl?

Holton nodded, his expression grim. “‘I threatened the midwife and paid her off not to call for medical intervention and to back me up when I told you the female didn’t survive the birth. Don’t be too hard on the poor lady. She accepted the bribe for the same reason you married me. She desperately needed the money.’”

The lawyer glanced at her then, and Sara, feeling her face flame, lifted her chin.

“‘I told you the baby died,’” the lawyer continued reading, “‘then while you were sleeping, I drove it out to Noah Dawson’s place—’”

Sara bolted up. “Noah? Noah has my daughter?”

Her head was spinning. Her daughter was alive? And with Noah Dawson?

“Let’s finish the letter,” Holton said. “There’s only one paragraph left.”

Sara nodded, tears brimming as she dropped back on the chair.

The attorney cleared his throat. “‘With my male heir healthy, I had no need for a sickly-looking daughter. To be quite honest, I don’t particularly like girls. They grow up to become conniving users, don’t they? I drove the baby out to Dawson’s cabin and left her on his porch with that starter kit the midwife had on hand and a note saying it was his baby and his responsibility. For all I know, the twins are his. Maybe you were cheating on me with him during our entire marriage. Since I don’t know whether any of that is true, it means it could be. Since it could also not be, I’ll leave my son the bulk of my estate in trust for when he turns twenty-one. The rest will go to the development of a golf course named in my honor. You, as you already know, get nothing. Not a cent.’” The lawyer paused and put down the letter. “That’s the extent of it. It’s signed ‘Willem Michael Perry.’”

My daughter didn’t die. She’s alive.

“For the past seven weeks, Noah Dawson has had my daughter?” she whispered, the blackness threatening again.

She tried to remember back to the moment when the midwife—a gentle woman in her early sixties who’d come highly recommended—placed Chance on her chest. Tears had been brimming in the woman’s eyes over what Sara had assumed was the loss of the baby girl she’d helped deliver. Sara had felt so woozy, despite Willem’s insistence she take no drugs. She must have fallen asleep hard after initially nursing Chance, because she’d woken up hours later, Willem letting her know Chance was sleeping like a champ in the nursery and that the midwife had gone home and that they’d taken care of the details for the loss of the twin.

She’d been so woozy still, her head feeling like it was stuffed with cotton, and she’d been so grateful that she hadn’t lost both babies that she’d made her way to the nursery and held Chance against her. Her precious son had gotten her through the terrible truth that his sister hadn’t survived. Over the next few days, Willem had resumed his usual twelve-hours-per-day work schedule, so she hadn’t had to deal with him controlling her in person, though he’d left detailed emails about how to hold Chance, feed him, his nap schedule, and that no one was to visit until he’d had his shots.

Her baby girl was alive. And Sara wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Willem had slipped something into her water during labor, some kind of drug to keep her off balance and to make her sleep hard afterward.

Why would he take the baby to Noah, though? Willem had hated Noah Dawson.

“Sara, I’m afraid I have to prepare you for the possibility that the female twin didn’t survive Willem’s actions,” the lawyer said, shaking her out of her question. “Left on a doorstep in the middle of the night? The second week of April, when it was still a bit chilly? Who knows when Mr. Dawson discovered the baby? If he was even home at the time? Didn’t he very recently inherit the old Dawson guest ranch? I read that they’re set for a grand opening this weekend, but I can’t imagine how, given how run-down the place was.”

She hadn’t known Dawson’s was reopening. She’d heard that Noah’s widowed father had died and that he’d left the dilapidated ranch to his six children. She’d thought about going to the funeral but wasn’t sure she’d be welcome. She’d been showing then and didn’t want to make Noah uncomfortable, so she’d stayed home. She also would have had to get around Willem about where she was going, and she hadn’t had the energy for that.

When she’d woken up about three hours after giving birth, the rain had been coming down hard. Willem had left their daughter on a ranch porch in the middle of the night during a rainstorm? The Dawson ranch in Bear Ridge was over an hour away from the Perry house in Wellington.

She swallowed back a wail building up deep inside her. “I’m going to see Noah now. My daughter is alive. I feel it.”

“I hope so, Sara,” Holton said. “It seems clear that Willem expected this letter to be read decades from now. There are two bombshells, really. Your daughter. And the midwife’s culpability. We can discuss options for how to proceed there.”

She’d deal with that later. Right now, she only wanted to see her baby girl with her own eyes. Hold her. Get her back.

She reached for her long cardigan and put it on, then gripped the handle of Chance’s stroller. He was fast asleep.

“Sara, again, I’m very sorry,” Holton said. “I hate to bring this up right now, but I do need to tell you that you’ll need to vacate the house within fourteen days. You may take your personal possessions, but everything else now belongs to the estate. If there’s anything you’d like to take, do it before tomorrow, when the appraisals will begin.”

She nodded again. She couldn’t wait to leave that house. Where she’d move, she had no idea. But she did know where she was going now.

To see Noah Dawson. And get her baby girl.

“Should we give Bolt an apple slice?” Noah asked his baby daughter, snug in the carrier strapped to his chest.

He stood at Bolt’s stall in front of the small barn beside his cabin, the mare nudging his arm for her apple. “We should? I agree.” He pulled the baggie of apple slices from his pocket.

Annabel didn’t respond, but according to the book on your baby’s first year, she wouldn’t make sounds or coo for another couple of weeks.

He’d learned quite a bit about babies in the past seven weeks. He’d been right that Annabel had only been hours old when she’d been left on his porch. Doc Bakerton had been a grouch at being woken up at 2:20 in the morning—until he’d seen why Noah had come blazing over.

Because Bakerton was getting up there in years—nearing eighty—and had long been a rural doctor, he hadn’t said anything about calling the sheriff or social services. Noah had showed him the note he’d found in the carrier, and that had been good enough. “The system doesn’t need another abandoned baby when the perfectly good father is standing up,” the doctor had said with a firm nod. Bakerton declared the infant healthy but small, recommended two possible pediatricians to follow up with and sent Noah on his way to beat the worst of the rain.

And so a little over twenty minutes after arriving, Noah had taken the baby home, shell-shocked but focused on the immediate here and now, not even tomorrow. The doc had given Noah some samples of formula and more diapers and wipes and had made a list of the basics Noah should buy in the morning.

Some of the shock had started to wear off while he’d been at Bakerton’s, mostly because he’d realized he could simply leave the infant with the doctor, who’d call whoever needed to be called. The sheriff. Social services. And that would be that.

But what Bakerton had said kept echoing in his head as he’d watched him move that little stethoscope around the tiny back and chest...when the perfectly good father is standing up.

Noah Dawson, perfectly good father? He would have burst out laughing if the situation hadn’t been so incredibly lacking in humor. Thing was, after all that he’d been through, all he’d lost, after the bad day he’d had with a sick calf, Noah had appreciated the extra show of faith in himself as a human being, and Bakerton had uttered the right words at exactly the right moment. The note said the baby was his. The perfectly good—or able, he figured Bakerton had meant—father was here with the infant, doing exactly what he should be doing. That was two for two on the faith scale.

He’d driven slow as his late grandmother’s molasses back to the ranch in the pouring rain, and once inside he’d gone straight to his laptop, holding the tiny baby along his arm as he watched a YouTube video on how to mix formula, how to hold the bottle—how to hold a newborn, for that matter. Turns out he hadn’t been doing that too wrong. He’d watched each video twice. By the time he’d closed his laptop, word had come that the river had flooded and two roads into town were impassable. He’d breathed a sigh of relief at the timing; the baby was safe and had been checked out, and Noah had what he’d needed to get through the night. The universe had been looking out for Noah lately.

They’d both survived that first night. While feeding the tiny infant, he’d realized he’d have to name her, and Annabel popped into his mind and that was that. He’d refused to let himself dwell on why.

Annabel Dawson. It wasn’t official anywhere, not yet, but he’d have to deal with that too—getting Annabel a birth certificate while worrying that some bureaucrat would demand he hand his baby over.

His baby.

How Noah had gotten from where he’d been the night he’d found Annabel to his baby rolling off his tongue with ease was anyone’s guess, but it had happened, and no one was more surprised than his sister. When the roosters had announced it was officially morning, he’d called his sister, Daisy, who lived out in Cheyenne, and boy, had she been in shock. She’d driven up by early evening and helped him so much—with Annabel and the ranch—the baby making her smile when he’d catch her looking so worried so often. Daisy had been close to five months pregnant then and wouldn’t say a word about who the father was. She’d seemed relieved to have a reason to move somewhere, even to the family ranch, with its tangled roots and all.

Up until the moment he’d found Annabel, he’d spent the four months prior rebuilding the Dawson Family Guest Ranch. That had changed him, turned him around, made him a better person and had to have something to do with how immediately responsible he’d felt for the baby left on his porch—his baby. Add that to a tiny finger clutching his pinkie while feeding her. Being up all hours of the night checking on her—sometimes just to make sure she was still breathing. Googling “lullabies newborns like” and then playing them, and then singing them himself while sitting in the rocker he’d gotten from the town swap shop. Changing diapers. Playing peekaboo. Reading the pertinent pages of Your Baby’s First Year and googling all the little things Annabel did that he wasn’t sure was normal. Like burping so loud from that tiny body.