“Is Maam and the baby okay?” Noah asked.
“They will be,” Michael said. “The baby has had her bath, and I’m pretty sure Keturah is also taking one right now.”
“Good.” Without another word, and ignoring Rachel and Ed, Noah headed straight toward the stairway. They heard his heavy boots drop onto the floor above their heads, then the bed springs creaked. Michael knew him well and could envision Noah crawling deep beneath the quilts. He was a stoic, quiet man who knew how to work hard, but emotional things took a toll on him.
“Did you find anything, Ed?” Rachel asked.
“The only thing I found was this.” The police chief handed her a newspaper clipping inside a plastic baggie. “It was wedged between the two front seats.”
Rachel held the baggie with one hand while still cradling the sleeping baby with the other. She glanced at the clipping and handed it back. It was an article that had been written up in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the opening of her husband’s restaurant, and it also covered how she had nearly died trying to save their son and a little friend from kidnappers just days before.
“Why would she be carrying around an article about Joe’s restaurant?”
“You didn’t look close enough.” Ed handed it back.
“Michael, could you turn the light up again?” Rachel asked.
He did, and she peered closer. “The address of Joe’s Home Plate is underlined… and the restaurant’s phone number is penciled in the margin.”
“You have any ideas about this?” Ed asked.
“Not a clue,” Rachel said. “Did you get hold of the woman who owns the car?”
“No,” Ed said. “I called, but there was no answer and no answering machine to leave a message.”
“So what now?” Rachel asked.
“I’ll call the Cleveland precinct nearest that address and ask them to send a couple uniforms over to see if they can find out anything. Until we hear something back from them, I guess what we need to do is call social services and take the baby to the hospital.”
Michael saw Rachel’s grip on the baby tighten. He decided to intervene.
“Normally I would agree with you,” he said. “But most hospitals are understaffed during the Christmas holidays. Foster care is always iffy, especially with a newborn. I don’t know anything about the legalities involved, Ed, but from a practical standpoint that baby is probably better off staying right here with me and the Hochstetlers than anyplace else, for now. Besides, the weather is awful. I would hate to see the newborn taken back out into the cold.”
“He’s right,” Keturah said, with some authority, as she and Ivan walked back into the room. “The first twenty-four hours of a newborn’s life is critical. This one has been through a great trauma. She needs to be held close today, not left to lay alone in a hospital nursery.”
“Hi, Ivan.” Ed nodded. “Hello, Keturah. I hear you saved a life tonight.”
“The Lord was with me,” Keturah said. “How is your new granddaughter?”
“Sophie and Teresa are doing well,” Ed said. “I appreciate you being there for them.”
Michael was relieved to see that Keturah was almost back to her old self. There was color in her cheeks and she was no longer shivering. She had put on a fresh, dark brown dress, and her hair was neatly combed back beneath a pristine white kapp. Although her hair was gray, she still had the dark eyes of her youth, and they snapped at the police chief now at the mere thought of taking that baby away from her care.
“Our whole family will be here soon,” Keturah said. “Including our middle son, John, and our daughter-in-law, Agnes. They have a two-month-old daughter.”
She said this as though it held great weight. Michael could see that Ed didn’t catch the import of her words. Instead, he stood looking at her blankly.
Michael explained. “I think Keturah is telling us that Agnes could have enough breast milk to feed the new baby, and that she’ll be here shortly.”
The chief colored at the mention of breast milk.
“Yes.” Keturah said. “Agnes is a very healthy young woman. She will be able to feed another baby. I sewed extra thick nursing pads for her just last week.”
Michael was used to Keturah’s matter-of-fact attitude about such subjects. He had grown up listening to it, but he was amused to see that Ed’s face had grown beet red.
“What do you think, Rachel?” The police chief quickly changed the subject. “Should we leave the baby here until we can locate the family? It’s not exactly protocol.”
“I think we’re lucky to have Keturah and Agnes willing to care for her,” Rachel said. “It would be difficult to find formula for her tonight.”
“It’s starting to snow!” Ivan pointed to the window where thick snowflakes had begun to fall.
“The temperature is dropping.” Ed glanced at the Lehman’s thermometer right outside the kitchen window. “The wet roads were getting icy as I was driving over here. D & S Towing is going to be busy tonight. Coming, Rachel? I think we’re going to need you.”
She stood, kissed the baby on her downy head, and handed her back to Keturah.
As Ed and Rachel walked back to their squad cars, the snow continued to fall, and the wind had, indeed, gotten colder.
“What a night!” Ed said.
“I agree.”
“Can you think of any connection you or Joe could have had with that young mother? Maybe something in the past. Her having that newspaper clipping with her is about the only clue we have.”
“It’s very odd,” Rachel said. “But I have a good memory for faces. I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen her before.”
“Do you suppose it could be someone Joe knows?”
“I have no idea. Joe knows a lot of people, but I can’t think of anyone from Cleveland he knows well enough for her to try to track him down. Most of his former friends are from the time he spent in L.A.”
“I figured,” Ed said. “But it’s the only thing we have to go on except talking to the old lady who owns the car, and maybe getting a match from her fingerprints. What I can’t figure out is why she was on that particular road. It isn’t exactly a shortcut to the restaurant if that was where she was headed.”
“Me either, but it was dark. It was late. She was probably tired. Made a wrong turn, maybe?” Rachel pulled open the door of her squad car. “Let me know the minute you hear anything.”
“Sure will.” Ed had something else on his mind. “One more thing, Rachel. You know I’ve always liked Joe, but when I think of a young pregnant girl trying to make her way to his restaurant—well, I’m just going to say it—do you suppose there’s any way she might have had some connection to him? Things like that happen, and Joe is a good-looking man, and a former famous baseball player…”
Rachel stood very still as the snow fell heavily on her hair and coat. Ed thought there might be a chance that Joe could have been unfaithful to her? Just because a pregnant girl was carrying a newspaper clipping of his restaurant?
No way. On the other hand…
“Joe isn’t the only owner of the restaurant,” she said. “His brother, Darren, is also part owner. He was mentioned in the article too.”
“Might not hurt to ask them,” Ed said. “Maybe one of them were friends with her boyfriend or something. I know it sounds far-fetched, but that clipping is the only thing we have to go on for now.”
A voice crackled over the radio, giving a location.
“Bad wreck over on 93,” Ed said. “Meet you there.”
Chapter 12
When Cassie Pinson-Reynolds let herself into her lovely, fourth floor apartment, she was not happy. As she sank into her cream-colored couch and removed the high heels from her aching feet, the fact that she was not happy puzzled her. She clocked a breathtaking hourly wage as a corporate lawyer, could well afford this gorgeous apartment in a trendy section of downtown Columbus, and her closet was stocked with expensive clothes and shoes.
When she
was younger, she would have assumed that, when one got to this point in one’s professional life, happiness would be guaranteed.
But tonight there was no denying the fact that she was unhappy.
It was all Michael’s fault, of course.
It isn’t money alone that brings happiness, Cassie. It’s the people in your life and what you can do for them with it that brings happiness.
There it was again, her husband’s irritating voice in her head. She hated it when he started spouting the platitudes he’d learned from his Amish friends. It was a voice that she hoped would go away once he became her ex-husband. She hoped he was not going to be difficult about this divorce. He must see the inevitability of their split up. Their basic needs were just too different.
No doubt that was the thing spoiling her happiness. She needed for him to sign the divorce papers so that she could get this whole first marriage mistake behind her. Cassie did not like having loose ends in her life, and Michael had become just that.
Marrying Michael, who was the most decent man she’d ever met, was the only thing that had ever made her waver in her determination to make it to the top of her profession. She had fallen in love with him way back while they were still in undergraduate school, back when he was seriously debating whether to become a medical doctor or a veterinarian.
To her, it was a no-brainer. Become a doctor, of course. Preferably the kind that made a lot of money.
He chose to become a veterinarian.
She should have bailed right then, but she convinced herself that being married to someone with a nice, normal practice that involved taking care of fluffy old ladies cats and dogs wouldn’t be so bad. By the time she discovered that his real dream was to work with farm animals, she was already married to him.
She had been relatively happy as long as he was working for that animal clinic in Upper Arlington. He was a handsome man with blond, good looks. With her auburn hair and slim figure, she knew they made a striking couple. It was nice getting to introduce her good-looking husband to her business associates as Dr. Reynolds.
They really did have it all. Including that farmhouse over in Tuscarawas County that had belonged to his grandfather. Living in Amish country was all the rage right now, and property values had skyrocketed in recent years. It would only make sense for him to sell it and invest the money and she told him so.
Michael wouldn’t do it though. He had too much nostalgia for the place. She hadn’t fought him on hanging onto it. Especially since it seemed like property values would continue to rise in that area.
They had everything a young couple could ask for, and they could have had even more once she made partner at her law firm—which she was determined to do.
All it had taken for her dreams to crumble was one short call from Doc Taylor’s widow offering Michael the practice that the old veterinarian had built up over a lifetime in Sugarcreek. Her husband didn’t even take time to consider it or talk it over with her. He was so thrilled with the fact that the widow had chosen to call him that he had agreed to do it on the spot. It had been shocking how quickly he gave notice at the clinic where he worked. Even more shocking how quickly he began to pack, barely listening to her well-reasoned arguments as she tried to talk some sense into him. The man acted as though living in this apartment with her had been some sort of nightmare from which he couldn’t wait to escape.
Leaving her for another woman was something she could have understood. She’d be furious, of course, but it would have made some sense to her. It happened so frequently to couples, it was almost expected. But it was humiliating to lose one’s husband to… livestock.
“This is my dream, Cassie. It has been my dream ever since I was a little boy following Doc Taylor on his rounds. I’ve done it your way for five years,” he’d said. “Besides, you work so many hours, I barely ever see you.”
“That’s billable hours, Michael,” she’d said. “I’m not exactly twiddling my thumbs over at Blackwell, Hart & Cooper. I work hard! I’m climbing the ladder faster than any female attorney ever has done there. I’m trying to make a better life for us.”
“If you really want a better life for us, then turn in your resignation and come with me. We don’t have to wait for a better life. We can have one in Sugarcreek without you having to work so hard. I love you, Cassie. I want to be with you, but I’m not staying here. Not any longer.”
And that was how her marriage had ended. Not with an affair, or from abuse, or financial wrangling. They didn’t even have any irreconcilable differences, except this one thing. He wanted to practice his profession in a rural area, and she most certainly did not. It might not seem like that much of a problem to many people, but to her it was an unsolvable problem. The only way they could stay together was if one of them was profoundly unhappy.
She was determined it would not be her.
So here she was, with a husband who planned on spending the rest of his life mucking around in people’s farmyards and pastures. He even seemed to be under the impression that he could make a decent living doing this. Her guess was that about half the time he would forget to charge anything for his services. That was the type of man he was. Compassionate to a fault.
Except toward her. Apparently her great need to build a career she could be proud of in law did not compute with him.
Sugarcreek was over a hundred miles away. Considering what they both did for a living, a compromise was not an option. She did work a lot of hours. He was right about that. Ninety hours per week was not unusual. Sometimes there was a small crisis. If so, Blackwell, Hart & Cooper expected her to be ready to drop everything at a moment’s notice and come in to the office. As a country vet, Michael would have a few random days off, but he still needed to be available around the clock. Sick cows did not observe office hours.
In Michael’s eyes, she knew she was the one most able to pick up and move. He seemed to think she could just hang out a shingle on Sugarcreek’s Main Street and start taking on cases.
It wasn’t that simple. She knew how hard small-town lawyers had to scramble to make a living. The fact that she’d landed this job straight out of college was a small miracle, even though she did have a stellar resume. She was impressing the daylights out of them with her smarts and hard work. Making partner someday really was a possibility. If only Michael was willing to wait.
Glancing at her watch, she realized that she had spent a full fifteen minutes staring into space, thinking about Michael. That was not acceptable. As usual, she had brought at least four hours’ worth of work home with her tonight, and it was already eight o’clock.
After a quick shower to sluice the grime of the city off, she carefully rebandaged the small incision from the biopsy her doctor had insisted on doing the week before. She wasn’t particularly worried about it. There had been two other biopsies in her past—both benign. She had a tendency toward fibroid cysts. The doctor had suggested she cut down on caffeine. That was a laugh. With her job load, that was not going to happen any time soon.
Now dressed in her favorite silk dressing gown, and with her wet hair still wrapped in a thick towel of Egyptian cotton, she nuked a frozen low-calorie dinner and sat at the dining-room table eating while she worked.
Two hours later, for a brief moment, she allowed herself to glance out the window at the night sky and wonder what Michael was doing. On her way home, the city had been packed with last-minute shoppers and was aglow with Christmas lights. She, on the other hand, was spending Christmas Eve in the company of a stack of legal papers and an empty, microwaveable, plastic container.
Not a big deal, she told herself. Christmas was just a date on the calendar.
She put a fresh pod in the Keurig coffee machine, carried the cup back to the table and dove back into her work. It took focus and determination to climb the ladder at Blackwell, Hart & Cooper. Michael wasn’t the only one with childhood memories and dreams. She had memories and dreams too. Memories she would never tell him, and dreams that
she had every intention of achieving with or without him.
Michael’s dream was to be a hero to the farmers around the village of Sugarcreek.
Her dream was simpler. To make enough money that no one could ever call her “trailer trash” again.
Chapter 13
With no farm-animal crisis happening, and with no reason to go home except to stare at those blasted divorce papers, Michael was grateful when Keturah invited him to stay on for the Christmas brunch their family would be enjoying.
“You need to eat with us.” Keturah lifted a pan of homemade buttermilk biscuits out of the oven. She had taken a quick nap after Rachel left, and now appeared re-energized. “There will be so much food, we won’t know what to do with all of it.”
“I’d love to,” he tucked the baby’s receiving blanket in a bit tighter as he sat in the kitchen rocking chair, enjoying the sight of Keturah and Ivan rushing around getting ready for the rest of their family to arrive. His stomach rumbled and he realized he’d had nothing to eat since lunch the day before… except for the Pepto Bismol. “What are we having?”
“It will be a simple meal this year,” Keturah said. “Agnes and John are bringing the sausage gravy. They have an abundance of tasty meat after butchering one of their hogs last week. Her family uses a different recipe for sausage than I do. She’s from the Gallipolis settlement, you know. They do things a little differently there. It’s very good sausage. I think I might like it better than my own recipe.”
“Seems like forever since we had supper,” Ivan said. “It was an awfully long night.”
“That is true.” Keturah paused and stared out the window for a moment, as though momentarily reliving the horror of the night before. “I’m so grateful that it is daylight again.”
Love Rekindled: Book 3 Page 6