On the Doorstep

by Dana Corbit

  “How did you beat the ambulance here?” She glanced at his car, which was parked up the street near hers. Instead of waiting for his answer, she crouched to retrieve the thick blanket from the basket and wrapped it lightly over the baby.

  “I was on my way to work, caught the call on the police radio. I live close by.” He chose not to mention that he couldn’t have kept away if he’d been ordered to, that he had this overwhelming need to make a difference this time when he’d failed so miserably before.

  “When will the ambulance arrive?”

  “In a few minutes.”

  He checked down the street and hoped he was right. When he glanced back at Pilar, he caught her watching him with a strange expression. Was it wariness? Or curiosity?

  Pilar looked away, but Zach continued to study her, for investigative purposes only. She was dressed in what he would describe as one of her trademark outfits: a ruffled, feminine blouse and a pair of tailored black slacks. Though she usually wore skirts to church, the theme was the same. It wasn’t just her choice of clothes that made her look tall. She was at least five-seven in stocking feet.

  Others might have been surprised that he could give such detail about a woman he didn’t know well, or that he was noticing even more specifics about her now—such as her open-toe shoes and dark painted toenails—but Zach considered it his job to remember details.

  What he noticed at that moment was how natural Pilar appeared, swaying with a baby she’d just discovered, literally, on the doorstep. The infant looked so comfortable sleeping there, as if this morning was like any other instead of one that would change his life.

  She wrapped the blanket tightly over the baby, though she shivered herself. He was tempted to drape his herringbone sport jacket over her shoulders but worried it might offend her or make her more skittish. Her skin appeared to be the only thing keeping her from shattering into dozens of pieces.

  Her uncharacteristic vulnerability surprised him. The Pilar Estes he’d observed at church had always seemed so strong, so independent. Her life and her family, all active members at their church, had appeared too perfect for the two of them to ever be friends. He’d experienced too-perfect at home and knew now what a fallacy it was.

  But Zach recognized the importance of keeping a careful distance from case witnesses. He couldn’t worry about Pilar right now when his focus needed to be on this new case and the abandoned infant. When he stepped closer to get a better look at the baby, he tried not to notice that Pilar took an automatic step back.

  “He had a rough morning, but our little guy doesn’t look too worse for the wear,” he said, keeping the conversation light. “God was watching out for him.”

  The sides of Pilar’s mouth pulled up at that. “How did you know the baby’s name was Gabriel?”

  “There was a note.”

  She seemed to accept that and didn’t even ask to see it. “He probably wasn’t outside too long. The mother even knew enough to swaddle him tightly so he wouldn’t be able to move and maybe be smothered in the blankets.”

  Zach ignored the hitch in his throat and said a quick prayer of thanksgiving over the mother’s insight. The situation could have been a lot uglier. “It wasn’t an average person who abandoned this baby.” He pointed to the blanket. “Isn’t that cashmere?”

  Pilar traced her finger along the stitched edge and nodded. “The basket’s nice, too.” She studied it for several seconds, her gaze following the intricate weaving and designs. “Maybe even an heirloom.”

  The wheels in Zach’s brain started spinning. Clearly, the mother wasn’t destitute, so what had brought her to this point? Maybe she was a wealthy, married woman who’d become pregnant from an illicit affair. He doubted that idea, as other socialites would have noticed her pregnancy during charity guild meetings and country club parties.

  Maybe the mother had postpartum depression, or she was a pregnant teen with a pair of furious parents, just like Jasmine. He shook the thought away and tried to guess what the baby’s mother looked like. His hands perspired with the effort. Every time he imagined a blond woman with either blue or brown eyes, the image would transform into a wavy-haired brunette with the cutest dimples and blue eyes similar to his own.

  No, he couldn’t think about his sister here. Not now. He didn’t want to see that pair of caskets again, one white and impossibly small, and he didn’t want to wonder again how he might have helped if he’d only known Jasmine’s secret sooner. This time could be different. This time he could help prevent a crisis from becoming a tragedy.

  “Hey, look at this.” Pilar spoke just above a whisper, waving a hand for him to draw closer.

  She showed him the label on Gabriel’s blue sleeper. He shrugged, no fashion aficionado. He took plenty of ribbing at the station for his wardrobe choices.

  Pilar pointed to the label again. “That’s definitely not Ralph Lauren. The receiving blanket, too. I could buy both of those for ten dollars together at any of the local discount stores. Why would a mother who could afford cashmere choose these?”

  “Maybe she couldn’t.” Could the blanket and basket have been products of a larceny? “I’ll check back at the station to see if there were any recent B and E’s—ah, breaking and entering cases—that might be related.”

  As if they’d called to coordinate their arrivals, the patrol car and the ambulance arrived at almost the same time from opposite directions. All the noise awakened the baby, who cried out the moment his blue eyes opened. Two emergency medical technicians emerged from the ambulance, and Pilar rushed over to them. Zach conferred for a few minutes with Officer Steve Merritt before the junior officer turned the case over to him.

  After he was gone, Zach scanned the crime scene for more clues. The suspect certainly had left enough to make him wonder if she wanted to be caught. Was abandoning her child a way of crying for help? He wouldn’t know until he found her, but he wanted to be that help if she needed it.

  Though he tried to focus on the crime scene alone, something kept drawing his attention back to the ambulance where Pilar stood. This time she wasn’t paying attention to him at all. She only had eyes for the baby who was giving the EMT hearing damage as he tried to get a heart rate.

  Zach figured from the baby’s healthy cry that he was going to be fine, but Pilar’s expression was stark and anguished. Was that just her empathy for the baby who had lost a mother that morning?

  For a few sick seconds, Zach was jealous of that baby. He wondered how it would feel to be the recipient of Pilar’s empathy or her compassion. Then he grabbed hold of his wayward thoughts. He didn’t need anyone to care about him. People who cared got hurt, felt losses so profoundly that their hearts seemed to have been riddled with bullets.

  Though he didn’t need it himself, Zach still valued the kind of compassionate care Pilar brought to her work. As a police officer, he’d seen far too few people who truly cared for their fellow human beings. The children of Tiny Blessings Adoption Agency were fortunate to have someone like Pilar on their side.

  Chapter Two

  Pilar took several long, deep breaths as she waited for her world to stop spinning. The knowledge that the baby appeared healthy wasn’t enough to slow this Tilt-A-Whirl she’d been riding on and couldn’t get off. If she looked up the word “surreal” in the dictionary, she would find a photograph of this scene outside the Tiny Blessings building. She would see flashing lights and uniformed emergency workers and a crying baby.

  And she would see the man she’d secretly mooned over for the last two years standing not ten feet away from her and still looking past her as if she was invisible. Obviously, the crisis hadn’t changed anything.

  She’d been overwhelmed enough just discovering the abandoned child, but that was before Zach’s deep voice had rolled into her ears and jolted her pulse. He was so out of context away from the church that it had taken her a few seconds to get her bearings. Not that she wouldn’t have recognized his voice anywhere, as many times as she�
��d overheard him talking with church friends and had wished he’d been laughing with her instead.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder, careful not to get caught staring again. She’d been humiliated enough the first time. He looked so strong and proficient, taking charge of the scene and offering direction to the young uniformed police officer standing next to him. Usually the one to volunteer to head projects, Pilar felt relieved to leave the situation in Zach’s capable hands.

  The wind was whipping through his wavy brown hair, forcing him to shove it out of his eyes. He wore his hair a tad longer than the current extreme styles, so it fell low across his forehead and curled the tiniest bit at his nape. Zach marched to his own fashion drummer, as well, even now looking endearingly rumpled in his sport jacket matched with a pair of khaki slacks that had never known a knife crease.

  When she’d already watched him longer than she should have, Zach glanced back at her. The most startling pair of cornflower-blue eyes in, well, the history of cornflower-blue eyes, trapped her in their examining stare. Her breath hitched, and goose bumps appeared on her forearms, but she couldn’t look away.

  At first he didn’t, either—his eyes wide. What did he see when he looked at her? Just another witness to interview? A case number? A day on the job? She hoped he didn’t see her yearning. She’d hidden it so well before just as all secret crushes should be carefully guarded, but her resistance was down this morning, her self-protection compromised. She exhaled when he finally looked back at his fellow police officer, but she felt oddly disappointed.

  A hearty laugh pulled Pilar back to the commotion next to the ambulance.

  “This one’s got a pair of lungs on him,” said one of the EMTs.

  The other one laughed with him. “He’s just offended that you’re poking at him. I would be, too.”

  “You take him. I’ll call in his vitals.” Before the second guy could protest, the first was off with the radio.

  Gabriel continued to wail, his face becoming reddish-purple and his feet beating against the blanket. She couldn’t help smiling at him. He’d been dealt a tough blow that morning, but he was a fighter. He was going to be okay. She just knew it.

  Pilar touched his head once more, her fingers tracing a path through the sweaty fuzz, and then the paramedic took him inside the ambulance. Her eyes and nose burned. She should have been praising God that little Gabriel appeared to be all right. He would be fine, and Zach would locate his mother for him. That was what she wanted, right? With surprise and a fair amount of guilt, Pilar realized she didn’t want Gabriel’s mother to be found.

  As the ambulance pulled away from the curb, its precious cargo inside, Zach turned back to Pilar, anxiety heavy on his chest. He should have taken the easy-out clause Sergeant Roy Hollowell had offered him when he’d called in. The sergeant knew Zach’s history and was trying to save him some grief by not assigning him to the case, but Zach had insisted. Now he wondered why he’d volunteered to suffer.

  He scribbled again on his notepad, taking down crime scene details. Hopefully, he would find enough leads this morning to keep him busy all afternoon. He turned to Pilar, who was walking back toward him, the wind blowing dark bangs into her eyes. She shoved her hair back from her face and rubbed her hands up and down her upper arms.

  This time he didn’t bother worrying about offending her. Chivalry wouldn’t die under his watch if he could help it.

  “Here, take my jacket,” he said, already descending the steps and lowering it onto her shoulders.

  She started to speak, but he waved away her protests. “Don’t worry about it. I need to ask you a few questions, and I don’t want you to freeze while I’m doing it.”

  But she wasn’t listening to him as her gaze was focused on his shoulder holster and the .40-caliber semi-automatic that until then had been hidden under his jacket. He asked his first question to distract her.

  “Can you tell me the approximate time when you first noticed the baby?”

  Pilar’s head jerked until she met his gaze again. She chewed her lip for several seconds and then shook her head.

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay, but try to think back. Do you know how long you waited after discovering the child before you called police? Dispatch recorded your call at 0724.”

  Her gaze darted from the basket to the office entry and back before she turned to him, again shaking her head. Zach gripped his pen tighter but refused to become frustrated. Pilar was going to be helpful to him. He only needed to ask the right questions first.

  “Let’s start with something else. Did you see anyone suspicious-looking around the building just before or just after you found the victim?”

  Pilar rubbed her chin and looked at the ground. For a third time, she shook her head.

  Zach’s jaw tightened. Was she purposely being difficult, or did she really not remember anything? From everything he’d ever sensed from or heard about the ultratogether Pilar Estes, he would have expected her to be able to relate the story in minute detail. Was she hiding something? And if so, why?

  The basket drew his attention then, as full of questions as it was empty of its earlier contents.

  “Can you show me exactly where you found the infant?”

  This time she didn’t hesitate at all. She climbed the porch steps and peered down at the open basket, the cashmere blanket folded inside it. Her posture relaxed, and she pressed her lips together as if holding back a smile. When she glanced back at him, she raised an eyebrow though she easily could have said “duh” at the lame question, worthy of a rookie cop.

  All right, Fletcher, pull it together. Her opinion of the way he conducted the investigation shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.

  “Of course. The basket,” he muttered. “Did you move it, or did you find it right there on the porch?”

  “Right there.” She studied the container for several seconds more, and then her gaze shot up. “You said there was a note. I didn’t see one, but then I never thought to look for one. Where did you find it?”

  Who was asking the questions now? It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “In the basket.”

  She really smiled this time, an expression so warm it could have melted ice along the banks of the James River. The smile gave him the same jolt he’d experienced when he’d caught her staring earlier. She’d met his gaze squarely then and hadn’t bothered to look away.

  Mirth danced in her glistening black eyes now, but earlier he’d seen something else entirely in them, intense and soulful at the same time. Perhaps he’d only reacted to Pilar’s need to connect with another human being on a day when she’d witnessed a tragic side of humanity, but he’d felt her reaching out to him. Stranger still, he’d been tempted to reach right back.

  That fact alone should have sent him hightailing it back to the station so he could ask the sergeant to reassign the case. He didn’t do relationships of any kind, let alone the male-female kind. He liked being alone. He was good at it. And people who were good at being alone didn’t have to risk losing anyone important to them.

  And yet Pilar’s smile drew him in. That shouldn’t have surprised him. He’d seen at church how adults and children alike gravitated toward her as she met each with her welcoming smile. This time, though, she’d directed her grin at him, and he liked that more than he cared to admit.

  “Why didn’t I think of looking there?” she said when the lull in the conversation stretched too long.

  “You were too busy making sure the baby was okay.”

  “True.” Her smile was gone.

  Why did he suddenly want to perform clown tricks or do a stand-up routine to make her smile again? Still, he had a job to do, and he didn’t have time to kid around.

  “The note was buried under the blanket. We’ll see if we can pull any prints from it. Want to see it?”

  He slipped back on the plastic glove from his pocket and opened the brown paper sack he’d placed the letter in. He carefully unfolded the piece
of thick, ecru stationery.

  “It’s addressed to the staff of Tiny Blessings. It says, ‘Please find my baby boy Gabriel a good home full of love. And tell him I love him.’”

  When Pilar didn’t say anything, he decided he couldn’t blame her. He was having a hard enough time scaring up sympathy for this mother who claimed to love her baby, and he didn’t work in a field full of childless couples desperate to adopt. He could only imagine the mixed feelings Pilar must have felt.

  “Gabriel.” She nodded, her gaze distant. “It’s perfect for him. He’s named after an angel. You know that story, of how Gabriel appeared to Zechariah to tell him his elderly wife, Elizabeth, would have a son, right?”

  Zach shot a sidelong glance at her, convinced he hadn’t heard her right, but she wasn’t laughing.

  “The same angel who appeared to Mary later, telling her she would give birth to Jesus,” he said to prove he did know what she was talking about. He wanted to ask Pilar what her point was, but he doubted she had one. Why were they reciting biblical stories when they should have been out finding Gabriel’s mom and protecting her from making mistakes that couldn’t be fixed?

  “Yes, his name is perfect,” she said, nodding her agreement with the choice.

  The conversation was so strange that Zach wasn’t sure how to respond. Maybe she just needed him to cut her some slack since she’d been through a harrowing morning. She wasn’t herself, and probably needed a friend. Though he knew better, he was tempted to volunteer for the job.

  “Pilar,” he said in his gentlest voice, “you do see that Gabriel’s life isn’t perfect, don’t you? You have to see that he needs his mother.”

  She stiffened and looked past him at the street, which was beginning to fill with cars as the rest of Chestnut Grove headed to work.

  “She probably had very good reasons for leaving her baby,” she said, but didn’t sound convinced.