A Vineyard Christmas

by Jean Stone

  They made it without further disturbance. Inside the glass-walled room, Francine was in bed, staring out the window. Her breathing seemed steady.

  “Francine Gardner?” John asked.

  Annie was startled. She had no idea how he’d learned the young woman’s last name.

  Francine didn’t move.

  “Francine, I am Sergeant John Lyons, Edgartown Police Department. I understand you’re feeling better. We only need to bother you for a few minutes. First I need you to identify your baby. Then I need you to identify her father.”

  Annie wasn’t sure if John was overstepping legal authority by trying to get the girl to identify the father of her baby—maybe he wanted to determine if the couple had conspired to endanger Bella. Then Annie remembered that John knew what he was doing. And that he hadn’t pretended he was actually going to arrest anyone. Yet.

  Still, Francine didn’t move.

  John looked at Annie, who couldn’t imagine how atrocious she must look despite the mascara and the swish of lipstick she’d put on in Earl’s truck. She walked to the other side of the bed and stood between Francine and the window, in the girl’s line of sight.

  “Hello, Francine,” she said in a hushed voice. “I think Bella wants to see you.”

  The girl looked more tired than she had the day before. Her lower lip trembled; her huge brown eyes became glossy.

  “Please?” Annie asked. She held Bella down so Francine could see her clearly.

  A small gasp slipped from Francine’s throat; she made eye contact with Annie. Then she pulled her arms from beneath the sheet. Careful not to jar the IV needle on the back of her right hand, she reached up and took the baby. She drew her to her chest and closed her eyes. Bella stopped whimpering.

  “Francine?” John asked again. “Caleb is with us. He’s come to see you. Will you say hello to him?”

  She turned her head toward them.

  “Hey,” Caleb said. “Remember me?”

  Annie couldn’t see Francine’s reaction.

  “Please?” Caleb pleaded. “Will you please tell these people I’m not that baby’s fucking father?”

  Before the girl could answer—if she were going to answer—a woman walked into the room. She wore a crisp white coat. “I’m Dr. Richards,” she said. “This woman is my patient. I understand you refused to adhere to our regulation of only two visitors per room.”

  Aha, Annie thought, John wasn’t so convincing after all.

  “Police business,” John said. “Right now we’re reuniting a baby with her parents.”

  The doctor’s lips pursed, and she squinted. “I don’t think so.”

  “Please—” John began again, but the doctor raised her hand.

  “I believe you are mistaken. And whatever story you come up with won’t work, Officer. Believe me, we’ve heard them all.”

  “That’s Sergeant,” John replied, his cheeks coloring with a dark shade of annoyance. “Sergeant John Lyons. And, no, there is no mistake.” He pointed to Bella. “This baby is your patient’s daughter. And this young man”—he pointed to Caleb—“is its father.”

  The doctor grinned. “As I said, you are mistaken. Now, please leave.”

  “She’s right,” Francine said suddenly, her voice weak and raspy. All eyes in the room swiveled to the bed. “I’ve never had a baby,” Francine continued. “I’m not Bella’s mother.” Her eyelids closed.

  The silence that followed was punctuated by the beep-beep of a monitor.

  Then John cleared his throat. “Francine?” he asked. “If you’re not Bella’s mother, who is?”

  But the girl stayed perfectly still and didn’t, wouldn’t answer.

  “Bella does not deserve this,” John said emphatically. He put his hands on his hips as if daring her not to reply.

  Though Francine didn’t move, her small chest started to heave. Then it stopped. And started. And stopped. Completely.

  An alarm screeched, like a piercing, electric jolt. Green numbers flashed on the digital screens that were hooked to the wires connected to Francine’s arms. A bell rang. And rang.

  “Out!” the doctor yelped. “All of you. Get out right now!”

  Chapter 28

  It made no sense.

  Back in the corridor, John told Caleb to go home. “But don’t you dare leave the island, or we’ll have your butt.”

  Caleb lopped away, a boy who had been scolded for doing. . . nothing, apparently.

  Annie paced back and forth, trying to calm Bella, who’d started screaming when the alarm went off.

  “Come on,” John said, “let’s get my dad. I’ll send Lou back to the station—he’s on duty, but I’m not. Let’s go to Linda Jean’s and try and figure this thing out.” He rushed toward the waiting area, leaving Annie stumped.

  Let’s get my dad?

  Let’s go to Linda Jean’s?

  Was this the same man who, mere hours ago, had told her she’d abused their friendship—a friendship she didn’t even really know that they’d had?

  “Bella,” she murmured, “one word of advice from your Auntie Annie. Be wary of any man’s word. Any man. Except, of course, your father . . . if we ever find him.”

  She realized this must have been what Winnie’s odd phone call had been about. Everything isn’t as it seems, Barbara’s message had been. It now looked as if that was true. Annie had been so focused on trying to find Bella’s father, it hadn’t occurred to her that Francine might not be her mother. But Barbara was a nurse. Right there at the hospital. Down the hall, around the corner. Perhaps she’d learned that Francine hadn’t had a baby. Perhaps that was why she’d told Winnie the message was important.

  Wow, Annie thought, as the news started to sink in.

  She supposed this meant that the island woman named Isabella—Annie’s far-fetched deduction—wasn’t Bella’s grandmother after all. So much for simple solutions. And so much for Annie thinking she could be a sleuth.

  “Annie?” John called from the far end of the hallway. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  They sat in the same booth where they’d sat the night before, which now seemed like eons ago. Earl had convinced John to let him take the baby back to Chappy: he’d said that two heads would be clearer than four, on account of one of the four being a fussy baby. No one pointed out that by then Bella was napping. Annie suspected Earl’s real motive was to make sure John and Annie had some time alone—maybe John had told Earl more about their “mix-up” than Earl had revealed to Annie. She was beginning to realize that, though the island often held sacred secrets for generations, the everyday ones were sometimes up for grabs.

  She toyed with her napkin, a little shaken by whatever had happened to Francine, hoping that, whether or not she was Bella’s mother, the girl was going to be okay.

  “I’m sorry I overreacted last night,” John said after they’d ordered coffee and scallops that the waitress promised had come from off Cape Pogue early that morning. “Most of all, I never should have said the part about you abusing our friendship. Because I don’t feel that way at all.”

  Annie toyed with her water glass, wishing she weren’t stuck on the Edgartown side of the harbor in her soap-making clothes, with hardly any makeup, and without her car. “I only wanted to keep Bella safe as long as I could. But you were right, John. I never considered the legal ramifications. I got too close to the situation, and I let my emotions get in the way.” It would have been nice if he contradicted her confession, but he did not. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for that, either. “Anyway, it seems now as if it’s all been for naught. We’re right back where we started, with absolutely no clue as to this baby’s history, except that she showed up on my doorstep in the middle of a blizzard and looks a lot like a young woman who isn’t her mother and like a boy who’s not her father.”

  John shook his head. “No. Thanks to you, we have much more.”

  The coffee arrived. Annie no longer used cream or sugar. Though she always had
coffee and tea on hand in the cottage, she’d given up lamenting that the Chappy store was only open in the summer. Instead, her taste buds had adapted to going without the extras—which was more convenient than taking the trip to Edgartown if she ran out. “What do you mean you have more?” That time, she was careful to say you without echoing his we. The more detached she could get, the better off she’d be.

  “You know the girl’s name is Francine. Which, by the way, I already knew, because my team found her purse and her ID at the Littlefields’. That’s how I also knew her last name is Gardner. And, yes, she’s from Wellfleet, or at least, that’s what it says on her driver’s license. We know that most likely because you are adopted she brought the baby to you; that maybe she thought you’d be more understanding than someone else. What we didn’t know was her link to the Thurmans. To be honest, I’m not sure how, or if we ever could have learned that. You also told us that, whether or not Caleb is the father, he does, in fact, know her. He knows her, and, good God, the baby really does look like him. As a cop, I don’t—I can’t—believe in coincidences.” He stirred in a couple of spoonfuls of sugar. “No, Annie, you’ve been helpful. You really have.”

  She sipped her coffee, wondering if she would challenge his renewed opinion of her if she told him about the other piece of information that had seemed minor at the time. Then she decided that since they didn’t know who Bella’s mother was, it was more important to worry about the baby and not about herself. “Speaking of coincidences,” she said, “I might know something else.”

  John leveled his pearl-gray eyes on her; his jaw tightened, and his lips slammed shut as if he were afraid of what he might say.

  “When it happened,” Annie continued, “I discounted it. Even more now that I know you found her ID. But a woman in Menemsha named Nancy Clieg makes baskets like the one Francine carried her in.” There was no need to drag Winnie into the drama, especially since it would only add to the confusion. “I went to see Nancy even before I told your father about Bella. She said the basket was too shoddy to be one of hers.”

  John snorted, as if he knew the woman so her reaction had come as no surprise. “Go on,” he said.

  “She’d been told that someone on the Cape had been making fakes and selling them in Provincetown. That was one of the things that led me to the ferry terminal, where I found the bus driver who confirmed that Francine had come from there. Once I knew she had, the story about the basket seemed insignificant. But now that we know Francine isn’t Bella’s mother, well, whoever bought it no doubt bought the basket in P’town. Which, as you probably know, isn’t far from Wellfleet. Maybe Bella’s real mother bought it. Or her father. Anyway, maybe you could track them down that way.”

  He drank his coffee, then set down his mug, while Annie’s heart started to thump-thump again. “We could have used that earlier.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry. But I never considered that Francine wasn’t Bella’s mother.”

  Pausing another moment, John looked around the restaurant. Annie couldn’t tell if he was assessing the facts, or if he was planning to bolt from her again. He turned back to his mug of coffee and sighed. “Anything else?”

  The scallops arrived, giving Annie another minute to gather her thoughts. “Yes.” She focused on her plate so she wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes. “I told you that, in Francine’s original note, she said the baby was named after her grandmother. Last night, after you left the hospital, I went to the maternity department. Bella was hungry, and I needed to heat a bottle for her. A nurse named Helene helped me out. While we chatted, she said she’d been in school with a girl named Isabella Wright—and that they’d called her Bella in grammar school. She moved off island with her family right after her high school graduation in 1995. Anyway, Isabella could be Francine’s mother—she’d be the right age. When I saw you later, I didn’t think it mattered anymore because, well, I still thought Bella was Francine’s daughter.”

  He lowered his eyes and dove into the scallops. “Doesn’t matter what you thought. You should have told me.”

  She looked down at her plate, but her appetite had waned. “I know. And I’m sorry, John. I should have told you everything. I should never have tried to solve this myself—I might have wound up costing Bella a lot. At least Francine is still alive, but you’ve lost precious time.”

  He nodded. “But that’s how a case goes sometimes. There are often lots of details that don’t seem related. Sometimes they are; most times they aren’t. That’s why we put them all into the file. But it’s okay, Annie. We’ll figure this out.”

  She appreciated his words, though his voice was a tad flat and unconvincing.

  Then he added, “I still need your help. Will you go back to the hospital? Hopefully, whatever happened with Francine—a seizure, an ‘episode,’ or whatever it was—wasn’t serious. I still think you’re our best chance to get her to talk. In spite of all that’s happened, she trusted you enough to leave the baby with you. Besides, once the doctor says she can leave the hospital, where’s Francine going to go? We can’t just give Bella back to her. For one thing, she tried to kill herself. We don’t know how unstable she is. Also, she left her on a stranger’s doorstep in the middle of the blizzard. Which screams ‘child endangerment.’”

  Yes, Annie thought, that was the term she remembered. As much as she might want to disagree, Annie could not. And she was eager to check on Francine. No matter what—or who—the girl was to Bella, Francine didn’t deserve any more pain.

  Besides, how could she refuse John? She needed to make friends, not adversaries on the island. Her only choice would be to go back to Boston. But there was no longer anything—or anyone—waiting for her there.

  * * *

  After they finished their meals, John brought Annie back to the hospital. He said he’d go to the station and write up the rest of the information she’d provided, and then he’d start working on the leads. But he told her to call him if she learned anything. Even if it seemed insignificant.

  She promised she would.

  She went upstairs to ICU, where she was met with a surprise: the nurse at the desk said Francine had been transferred downstairs to a regular room. Annie frowned. “Didn’t she have a problem this morning?”

  “She’s fine,” the nurse replied with a small sneer. “She held her breath so the monitor would go off. She said it seemed like the fastest way to make all of you go away.” Either the nurse didn’t care about the patient’s privacy, or she was annoyed that Francine had been devious.

  The good news, however, was that Francine had talked.

  Annie thanked the nurse, went down to the first floor, and found the girl’s room. The television was on, but the sound was down. And Francine was sleeping, peacefully, as if she were Bella. Annie dropped onto a visitor’s chair in the corner of the room, half hidden by a curtain. She folded her arms across her gnarly sweater and waited.

  The room was barren except for sterile-looking hospital things, though not as many as were in the ICU. There were no flowers, no cards stuck to the corkboard under the TV, no personal items like slippers or a robe. There was only the small girl, asleep in the bed, without friends—without anything, as far as Annie could tell. She wondered if the staff had laundered her clothes and hung them in the narrow closet. If not, perhaps she could offer to do that. Francine would need clothes when she went . . . where?

  Annie sat, quietly thinking, considering what she could do to help the girl. She was so quiet that, when a young man entered the room, he didn’t see her in the corner. She had no idea who he was.

  He was fairly tall for a teenager. His buzz cut revealed dark hair; his sneakers looked new; his blue parka had ski lift tags fastened to the zipper pull. He moved close to the bed and bent down. “Francine?” he whispered.

  From where Annie sat she could see Francine’s eyes flutter open. “Go away,” she said.

  “Do you remember me?”

  No answer.

  “Jes
us, you have a baby.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to tell?”

  Annie stayed as still as a stone, as immovable as one of the ancient geological formations up island at Lucy Vincent Beach, hoping beyond hope that she wouldn’t be noticed.

  Francine gave no response.

  “You’ll ruin everything.”

  Francine was silent. Then she said, “Everything’s already ruined. My mother’s dead. My father is, too. I have no one. Except Bella. A baby shouldn’t have to live with a loser like me.”

  The boy shuffled his feet on the polished linoleum. “I’m sorry your mother’s dead.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Please, Francine. I’ll get you money. I don’t know how, but I’ll figure something out.”

  “Money isn’t going to help. I’ll still be alone.”

  “Money helps everything. That’s what my mom always says.” He reached up and ran his hand across his buzz cut.As he did, he caught sight of Annie. He snapped his head toward her; she saw his face clearly. “Holy shit,” he said and darted from the room.

  But Annie hadn’t needed to hear his crude language to know who it must be. Though they weren’t identical like Murphy’s twins, the boy resembled Caleb Thurman. In a flash, the pieces swirled as if in a kaleidoscope. Then they formed a total picture in Annie’s mind.

  Without hesitation, she pulled out her cell phone and called John. She wasn’t going to withhold this kind of information. Not for a second.

  When Francine heard Annie’s voice on the phone, she raised up on one elbow. She stared across the room at her, her sad eyes locked with fear. Annie told John to pick her up at the main hospital entrance. She added that he should not come alone. Then she hung up and went over to the bed.

  “Francine,” she said softly, “you don’t have to say anything. But I want you to know that this will be all right. You’ll be all right. And so will Bella. No one will hurt either one of you. That’s a promise.”