On the Doorstep

by Dana Corbit

  “We don’t know what her situation is, but it’s my job to find her.”

  “And arrest her?”

  She had him there. Personally, he might want to find Gabriel’s mother to make sure she was okay, but the state of Virginia wanted him to find her so it could charge her with a crime. Zach opened his mouth and closed it again. What could he say to that?

  “I just wouldn’t want to see her face more misery if she’s located,” she said. “She’s done a good thing by putting her baby in place where he could be found. Now he can have that good, loving home she wrote that she wanted for him.”

  “But she might be in real trouble, bigger trouble than facing criminal charges. We don’t know if she received proper prenatal or postnatal care or if she even delivered in a hospital.”

  “Zach, how do you know she even wants to be found?”

  “She might not, you’re right. But I have to find her and not just because of child welfare laws.” He tried to take a breath, but his lungs only ached the same way his heart ached.

  “I just don’t want her to end up like—” Zach stopped himself, amazed that he’d been about to say “Jasmine.” He’d told no one about his past, except his superiors at work, and he’d only informed them out of necessity. It was too painful, too private. Yet he’d nearly bared his scars to someone he hardly knew. What was wrong with him?

  “Like what?” Pilar asked.

  Zach shook his head. It was so clear that he shouldn’t have taken the assignment. If he had any sense at all, he would go back to the station and ask for it to be reassigned. But he wouldn’t, because to him this was more than an assignment. He felt a calling here to help, no matter how much it hurt. He might be the only chance that Gabriel’s mother had.

  Lord, please give me the strength to do the right thing. Please be with the baby’s mother. Show her that You care and that others care, too. Zach would have said “Amen,” but he got the feeling this situation was going to require a lot more prayers.

  “Like what?” Pilar asked a second time, apparently guessing he hadn’t heard her.

  “Like other women who’ve made mistakes.”

  He would have explained that he, like her, wanted the situation to be okay for the baby and for his mother, if Kelly Young hadn’t rushed up the sidewalk then, her long dress coat fluttering behind her like a superhero’s cape.

  “Why was the ambulance here? Is there anything wrong? Are you all right?” Her multitoned blond hair fluttered in the wind as she peppered Pilar with questions.

  Zach stepped forward to take charge as he was accustomed to doing, but Pilar, her posture straight, moved past him to the agency’s director. The jacket he’d placed around Pilar’s shoulders was now draped over her arm.

  “Everything’s fine, Kelly. I just found an abandoned baby on the steps this morning.”

  “Just?” Kelly’s eyes were wide as she repeated Pilar’s word. “You just found an abandoned baby? This is all we need.”

  Pilar looked back and forth between them. “Uh, Kelly Young, this is Zach Fletcher, a detective from the Chestnut Grove Police Department.”

  Zach nodded at the always-professional director. “Miss Young.”

  “Detective Fletcher,” Kelly responded before turning to Pilar. “We’ve met.”

  Pilar breathed in suddenly as she realized how the two had met—first during the investigation concerning the falsified birth records discovered at the agency, and again following the recent arson and vandalism investigation. As much of a revolving door as Tiny Blessings had been for police personnel the last two months, it surprised Zach that he and Pilar hadn’t crossed paths there before.

  Distress still lined Pilar’s face, but Kelly showed no outward sign of it. Just as she had during the earlier investigations, Kelly Young appeared professionally concerned but personally untouched by the surrounding chaos. Figuring the director was probably like him, adept at detaching herself from things that might clutter up her emotions, he filled her in on the details.

  “We’re not sure how long the infant was on the step before Miss Estes arrived.”

  How strange that he was back in his distant professional mode, when earlier he’d called Pilar by her first name. He offered the excuse that all members of their church were on a first-name basis, but even he didn’t buy it.

  “The infant is being taken to Children’s Hospital in Richmond,” he explained.

  Kelly didn’t say anything, seeming to quietly absorb the information.

  Pilar rested a hand on her boss’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I think everything’s going to be fine. The baby—his name is Gabriel—seems healthy. The Department of Children and Families will find him a good home.”

  Zach figured that if the director was worried about anything under all that composure, it would have involved damage control, rather than the foundling’s health and prospects. Pilar, on the other hand, seemed too intent on adopting out the baby before he even had a chance to locate the mother.

  “We’re still a long way from that happening,” he reminded her, but wasn’t sure she was listening.

  He let Pilar fill Kelly in on the rest of the story, listening in case she revealed more details she’d neglected to tell him. Still, the director remained calm, though even he recognized that the last thing the agency needed was to end up in the news again.

  “I thought I might visit the hospital later today, just to make sure the baby is okay,” Pilar was saying as Zach tuned back into the conversation.

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Kelly said before turning to Zach. “Is there anything else you’ll need from us?”

  “Not at the moment. But I’ll probably want to talk to Miss Estes again after I’ve followed up on a few leads.”

  With a quick glance toward her boss, Pilar handed his jacket back to him. “Thanks for that.”

  Kelly looked back and forth between them but didn’t say anything.

  “Sure thing.” After slipping his jacket back on and adjusting his shoulder holster, Zach pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to Pilar. “You’ll call me if you think of anything else, won’t you?”

  He offered a hand, and she took it. Her hands were small and soft, but her grip was sure and firm, like the woman he’d imagined her to be. He couldn’t imagine, however, why he was reluctant to let her go.

  Because thoughts like that were unacceptable in the safe world he’d created for himself, Zach did release her hand and moved on to shake hands with Kelly. He needed to put some distance between himself and these people as soon as possible. Bending, he retrieved the basket and headed down the walk.

  Like the unwanted publicity for Tiny Blessings, there were plenty of things in this world over which none of them had control. Illegal activities that occurred at an agency before most of the current staff were born. A sister whose loss was neither explainable nor forgivable. Even mothers whose lives reached some desperation point where abandoning their children seemed like the only alternative.

  Zach could do nothing about any of these things, but there was one thing he could do, and he refused to stop until he’d finished the job. He was going to find little Gabriel’s mother.

  Chapter Three

  Kelly closed the door to her office and slumped behind the desk, able to breathe for the first time since she’d driven up the street toward work. Nothing like seeing an ambulance in front of her office, its lights flashing and siren blaring, to get the old blood pumping. What now? she’d wondered then. Now she just wondered why so many rotten things had to happen at one place.

  Her biggest mistake wasn’t in assuming that the situation at work couldn’t get any worse. It was getting out of bed today at all.

  “Why here?”

  But even as she spoke the question aloud to her office’s four walls, she knew the answer. She worked at an adoption agency after all. Many people probably assumed that a private adoption agency could take in a foundling and find him a good home. Few knew that the duty
fell to the Department of Children and Families.

  Kelly cringed over the publicity that was sure to come. Local reporter Jared Kierney probably would jump on this in a minute. Even if he took the human-interest angle, the agency couldn’t bear more attention, especially anything associated with a crime.

  Tiny Blessings had seen enough print the last several weeks to last a lifetime. First, there was the story Jared had broken about the falsified birth records she, Pilar and Anne Smith had found behind that false wall in the office.

  Kelly gritted her teeth and wished again that she had fired the office cleaning lady, Florence Villi, months before she’d had the chance to leak that information to the press. But the front-page article about the arson fire that destroyed most of those records topped even that.

  She could just imagine this newest headline: Baby Found. Discovery Adds to Agency’s Woes. She might as well kiss new donations goodbye after all this, and as a nonprofit organization, Tiny Blessings couldn’t afford to lose a single gift. Who could blame the Richmond Gazette for publishing the articles, though? Scandal made for good copy, and it sold newspapers.

  Still, it broke her heart to think of the huge black mark Barnaby Harcourt had painted on the agency’s reputation. For the right price, he’d helped wealthy families make their daughters’ problems go away through illegal adoptions. She still couldn’t understand how the money was worth violating the public trust. Tiny Blessings had done so much good over the years, placing children in wonderful, loving families. She ought to know—she was one of the first children placed by the agency.

  Someone knocked on the door just as a shaky feeling settled inside her and goose bumps appeared on her arms. She needed to get control of her emotions. Allowing this situation to become personal would be a mistake, and she couldn’t let that happen. She had a job to do, and she would do it, no questions asked.

  “Yes?” She pulled the sweater off the back of her office chair and draped it across her shoulders.

  Pilar entered the office. “Hey.” She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  Neither needed to point out the subtle workplace difference that morning. On ordinary days, Kelly’s office door was open unless she was meeting with adoptive parents or a mother considering adoption as an alternative. This would be no ordinary day for anyone at the office.

  “Sorry, I didn’t get the coffee made,” Pilar said as she slipped into the chair opposite her boss’s desk.

  Kelly laughed, appreciating Pilar, who was always trying to make those around her feel better. “Well, could you get on it?”

  “Right away, boss.” But Pilar stayed seated.

  Neither of them needed caffeine to wake up this morning, anyway. With her rolling stomach, Kelly doubted she would be able to choke down even half a cup.

  “Some morning, huh?” Pilar said finally.

  “That’s the understatement of the year.” Kelly took in the way Pilar was wringing her hands. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. A little shaken is all.”

  Shell-shocked was more like it, but Kelly didn’t call her on it. “I’ll write up a press release this morning. I’m also going to have to give Jared that interview he’s been begging for.” She shook her head. “And to think that last year we were dying for publicity.”

  Again, the room grew silent as each curled into her own thoughts. But Pilar leaned forward and rested her forearms on Kelly’s desk.

  “What about you? Are you okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? I wasn’t the one who just found a baby—”

  “You know what I mean. Did it make you wonder about your birth mother?”

  Kelly shook her head, but straightened in her chair. “Of course not.”

  For the umpteenth time, she wished she’d been alone when she’d come across her own altered birth records, and her friend Ben Cavanaugh’s, among the dozens in the hidden box. It was information she’d never needed nor wanted to know, and she wished her employees didn’t know it, either.

  Marcus and Carol Young were her parents, and that was that. She’d had the most perfect childhood a person could ever ask for, and she never would have betrayed their memory by digging up the past. Unfortunately, that past had resurfaced without any help from her.

  “I just hope baby Gabriel’s okay.”

  Pilar might as well have slugged Kelly, as effectively as her words knocked the wind out of her. How could she have only been thinking about their agency and her personal mess when that baby had lost his mother that morning?

  She concentrated on Pilar, who was staring out the office window toward Main Street, though from that seated position she couldn’t have seen anything outside. For someone with olive skin, she appeared pale. She gripped and ungripped her hands.

  “You’re more than a little shaken, aren’t you?”

  At least Pilar didn’t bother to deny it this time. The corners of her mouth turned up in what could barely be called a smile.

  Kelly reached across the desk and squeezed both of her hands. “He’ll be fine. How can he not be? He was already fortunate enough to have been left on the steps for an early riser like you.”

  Pulling her hands away, Pilar rubbed her upper arms as if she’d become chilled. “I just can’t stop imagining what might have happened to him if I hadn’t gotten there. If he’d been out there, exposed to the elements, where just anyone could have taken him.”

  “But it didn’t happen that way. He’s safe now and in capable hands. Detective Fletcher will have the case under control in no time.”

  Pilar stiffened, her hands becoming still on her arms. After several seconds, she glanced across the desk, her expression too casual. “You think so?”

  Kelly thought something, all right. She’d had a fleeting suspicion earlier, but now she was convinced. Why had Pilar been wearing Zach’s jacket in the first place? And why had she been uncomfortable returning it with Kelly there?

  “He’s a great detective.” Still, she couldn’t resist adding, “He’ll probably need to ask you more questions about the case, though.”

  “Oh.”

  Oh was right. Biting her lip, Kelly managed not to laugh. In the whole time Pilar had worked at Tiny Blessings, she’d gone on maybe a handful of dates, and it was a pretty empty hand at that. She was pleased to realize her friend wasn’t immune to the handsome Detective Fletcher.

  As immediately after work as she could without leaving before five or speeding, Pilar arrived at the door of the downtown tri-level that felt as comfortable to her as her parents’ home.

  The warmth that poured out of the place the moment Naomi Fraser opened the glass storm door made Pilar smile. Naomi’s vivid blue eyes glistened in the late-afternoon sun as she nabbed Pilar for a not-so-quick hug against her pillow-soft body.

  “You sure made it here fast.”

  “Traffic was good,” Pilar managed to get out, still enclosed in that warm embrace. If there had been traffic tie-ups she might have been tempted to drive on the sidewalk, but Pilar didn’t tell the minister’s wife that.

  Naomi let go in her own sweet time and took a step back as if to appraise her guest. She shook her head, her no-nonsense short haircut fluttering and falling back into place, and gave Pilar one more squeeze for good measure.

  That Naomi always hugged like she meant it was one of the things Pilar adored about the woman she’d known since her days on the church’s infant cradle roll. There were plenty of other reasons to like someone who wore pearls with blue jeans and never sugarcoated the truth, but Pilar liked the hugs best. And it was a well-known fact that one of the best advertisements Reverend John Fraser had for his church was his redheaded darling of a wife.

  “Good traffic is a blessing, and so are babies.” Naomi’s eyes danced with excitement as she led Pilar to the dark-paneled family room and gestured toward the portable crib in the corner. “You were right—he’s a baby doll.”

  Her pulse racing, Pilar could barely restrain herself from
sprinting over to the crib, grabbing Gabriel and holding him against her heart. She forced herself to slow down by studying the Frasers’ clean but lived-in house. The stacks of books, Bibles and crossword puzzle magazines, so different from her mother’s immaculate home, made the room seem as relaxed as the family itself.

  Proud of herself for her control, Pilar finally was close enough to peek over the edge of the crib’s mesh side. Gabriel lay there on his back, with one arm he’d freed from his swaddling blanket pressed against his jaw. Until her lungs started aching, Pilar didn’t even realize she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled it slowly.

  “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” Naomi asked.

  And alone, she wanted to add, but she only nodded. When she couldn’t resist any longer, she reached over the side of the crib to brush his damp hair. He slept so soundly that he didn’t move, except for the even rise and fall of his chest.

  Naomi stepped close and whispered, “He’s been sleeping like that almost since he got here. Those doctors probably wore him out.”

  “They said he was all right, didn’t they?” Her question sounded too sharp in her ears.

  “Of course,” Naomi said, though she studied her for a few seconds. “He’s a perfectly healthy baby boy. And really new, too—no more than a few days.”

  “I still can’t believe Gabriel ended up here. I was so surprised when you mentioned it on the phone earlier.”

  “It shouldn’t surprise you too much,” Reverend Fraser said as he crossed from the kitchen back to his study, a handful of chocolate chip cookies in his grip. His wire-rim glasses were perched on his nose like always, but he wasn’t wearing his clerical collar.

  “We’ve been licensed foster parents almost ten years now. Somebody’s always coming or going through that door.”

  He pointed to the mantel and to the wall collages where photographs of John and Naomi’s two adult children, Jonah and Dinah, and teenage daughter, Ruth, shared space with pictures of at least thirty other children.

  “But not—” Pilar stopped herself before saying “my baby,” but just barely. “Not the baby I found.”