Operation Baby Rescue

by Beth Cornelison

  “Shall we begin?” Joleen said, calling the meeting to order.

  Though she was well-behaved, Isabel proved a huge distraction for Elise throughout the meeting. First Elise watched, mesmerized, as the little girl gummed the sugar cookie to oblivion. Then, when the first cookie was gone, Isabel sent Elise a wide-eyed look that clearly asked, “More?”

  Elise darted a glance to Jared, who seemed engrossed in what Joleen was telling Mr. Miller, and she furtively slipped another cookie to Isabel.

  “Kee!” Isabel kicked her feet happily and flopped back against her father’s chest to munch her treat.

  Jared spotted the new cookie and raised an eyebrow at Elise. She returned a shrug and a guilty grin that won an indulgent smile from Jared.

  After finishing her second cookie Isabel grew restless and wiggled free of Jared’s lap. He grabbed for the back of her shirt to catch her before she toddled off, but she tottered straight to Elise’s knees. When Isabel wobbled, Elise steadied the baby, who then grabbed Elise’s pants with a cookie-smeared fist for balance. Her heart somersaulted, and warmth expanded in Elise’s chest.

  “Sorry,” Jared said, reaching for his daughter.

  Elise batted his hands away. “She’s fine, Dad.”

  His look said, “Are you sure?”

  Nodding, she smoothed a hand over Isabel’s curls and met the girl’s blinking blue-eyed gaze. The full feeling in her lungs gave a bittersweet twist. Maternal yearning clawed inside her, but she fought down the ache.

  When Isabel held her arms up to her, a stab of tenderness and affection pierced her heart. Elise lifted Jared’s daughter onto her lap and gave Isabel a friendly smile. Isabel glanced once to her father, as if for reassurance and approval, then leaned into Elise’s chest with a shy grin. Spying the napkin that had held the cookies in Elise’s hand, Isabel tugged at the corner and craned her neck to look for more treats.

  “All gone,” Elise murmured.

  “Kee?” Innocent baby blues blinked at her.

  “Sorry.”

  Isabel gave a sweet sigh of resignation and stuck her thumb in her mouth as she tucked her head against Elise for the last few minutes of the meeting.

  Jared smiled at them as the meeting dismissed. “I think she’s made a new friend.”

  “Bribery works wonders.” She stroked Isabel’s back and gave Jared a wry look. “The question is, would she have been as trusting of me had I not fed her cookies?”

  Jared chuckled and lifted Isabel from Elise’s lap. “Oh, I’m sure the cookies were the deciding factor. She’s got a real sweet tooth, I’m afraid.”

  “Ah, a girl after my own heart.” She watched Jared shoulder the diaper bag and remembered her eagerness to talk to him about her fact-finding efforts this week. “I did what you suggested about arming myself with information.”

  Jared glanced up from tugging a sweater onto Isabel’s arms. “Oh, yeah? And?”

  “I found some interesting things.” She sighed. “I’d hoped we could get coffee again and talk about what I discovered, but…”

  He glanced from her to Isabel and back to her. “Oh. Sorry. Can’t tonight.” He paused and drew his dark eyebrows together. “Unless…”

  “Yeah?”

  “You could follow us back to my place. I brew a pretty decent cup of coffee, and my mother brought over an apple coffee cake this morning.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to impose.” Going to a coffee shop for a chat was one thing, but visiting Jared at his house felt…too personal.

  “No imposition. The coffee cake is low fat.”

  To buy herself time to think, Elise flashed a lopsided grin. “Low fat, huh? What are you telling me?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and chuckled. “I did it again, didn’t I? I wasn’t implying anything, I just—”

  “I was kidding,” she said with a laugh, compelled to save him from his embarrassment. Then before she could talk herself out of it, she added, “Yes, I’ll come. Thanks.”

  While Elise held Isabel, Jared keyed open his front door and led his guest inside. Isabel had fallen asleep in the car, and since he’d had the foresight, due to experience, to change her diaper and put her in her pajamas before he left the grief-support meeting, he only needed to slip her carefully into bed and she’d be down for the night. Fingers crossed.

  “I’ll take her,” he whispered. “As soon as I get her in bed, I’ll start a pot of coffee for us.”

  “Or…point me toward her room, and I’ll put her down. One less transfer that risks waking her.”

  He nodded. “Good thinking. Follow me.”

  Jared showed Elise to Isabel’s room and stood by the crib as she gently eased his daughter onto the mattress. Once she had Isabel positioned for safe sleep, Elise stroked his daughter’s curls and ran a crooked finger along her plump cheek. “Good night, sweet girl.”

  Jared studied the poignant expression Elise wore as she gazed at Isabel, and his chest tightened. An all-too-familiar ache and gnawing guilt ate at him. How many nights had he stood here beside Kelly as she put Isabel to bed? How could it feel so wrong to be standing beside his daughter’s bed with a different woman, and yet have it still feel so…right?

  Elise would have made a terrific mother. Still would someday. He had no doubt that Elise would be given a second chance to have children of her own. Fate simply couldn’t be so cruel as to deny this loving woman a chance to be a mother after all she’d already suffered.

  Elise drew a ragged-sounding breath and made a hasty retreat from the nursery. Concern jabbed him, but before he pursued her, he spread a light blanket over Isabel, turned on the baby monitor beside her crib, and shooed Bubba, who’d been sleeping on the rocking chair, out of the room.

  “Come on, Bubba,” he said to the sleepy cat, who rubbed against his leg. “Dinner time.”

  Bubba gave a rather girlish meow and fell in step behind him as he headed down the hall.

  He found Elise in the kitchen, filling the coffee carafe with water at the sink.

  “You all right?” He stepped up beside her and angled his head to get a better view of her face.

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  But he heard tears in her voice, and her hand shook as she poured the water into the coffeemaker.

  He turned and took the filters and coffee from the cabinet. Handing her a filter, he searched for the right words to comfort her. Knowing he had what she ached for but had lost sliced him with an odd sense of selfishness and guilty gratitude. Was this how survivors of a fatal accident felt about those who lost their lives?

  “Elise—”

  “It’s not what you think.” She faced him, and while her eyes were damp, she seemed remarkably composed. “Yes, I’m thinking about all I’m missing with Grace, but I got emotional because—” She sighed “—Isabel just looked so sweet and innocent. Peaceful. It was beautiful. I cry over things like sunsets and Christmas carols, too. I’m just a sentimental and weepy kind of girl. Sorry.”

  He eyed her through a narrowed gaze, gauging whether to buy her explanation. “Christmas carols, huh?”

  “Well, not the upbeat ones, but ‘Silent Night’ gets me every time. And ‘Away In A Manger.’” She held up a hand. “Don’t get me started.”

  “I’ll remember that.” He stepped closer and wiped the moisture from her bottom eyelashes with his thumb.

  She caught her breath, and her lips parted in surprise. He held her startled gaze, sinking into the fathomless blue of her eyes. Eyes like the ocean, deep and full of mystery. She grew still, except for slowly drawing her bottom lip between her teeth.

  The action drew his attention to her mouth, and he acknowledged again how beautiful she was. Not in a high-maintenance, movie-star way, but in a softer way that he found far sexier. He wanted to taste the lip she nibbled, kiss away the haunted look that shadowed her gaze and made her appear so…vulnerable. It was that fragility that made him step back and drop his hand. He liked Elise too much to do anything to hurt her or ruin
their budding friendship. Giving her his support and understanding as she negotiated the minefield of her grief was what mattered.

  He cleared his throat. “Regular or decaf?”

  She blinked as if shaking herself from a trance. “Uh, decaf, I guess.” She flashed a wry grin. “Not that caffeine is the reason I can’t sleep most nights, but why add fuel to the fire?”

  “So why have you been losing sleep? What did you find in your research?”

  “If you have a computer, I can show you.”

  “Sure, it’s set up in my office. First door on the left.” He hitched his head toward the hall. “Help yourself. I’ll be in as soon as the coffee’s brewing and I’ve fed the cats.”

  “You have cats?” She glanced around the floor.

  “Why? Are you allergic?”

  “No. In fact, I have one myself. I just…didn’t picture you as a cat person.”

  “They were Kelly’s when we married. They’ve grown on me.” He put a can on the electric can opener and as soon as the motor whirred, Bubba and Diva trotted in from the next room and began circling his feet. Diva added a few loud meows, begging him to hurry.

  Elise chuckled. “Wow, the black one is hungry. Hope she doesn’t wake Isabel with that racket.”

  “Yeah, Diva’s got some pipes on her, doesn’t she?” He set the bowls of food on the floor, and the cats dived in.

  “Diva?”

  “Yep. And she lives up to her name. She can be a real prima donna, and she likes to hide Bubba’s toys.”

  “The buff-and-orange one is Bubba, I take it?” Elise squatted beside the chowing cats and scratched Bubba on the neck. “Wow, his fur is really soft.” Before rising again, she gave Diva equal time, then dusted cat hair from her hands and glanced at him. “So…any passwords I need to get logged on?”

  “Naw. It should be up and running.” He pried the lid off the can of coffee and watched over his shoulder as she headed out of the kitchen. Seeing another woman in Kelly’s kitchen, petting her cats, hadn’t been as strange or out of place as he’d thought it might. What did that mean? Was he finally moving past his wife’s death? How could he be when he still felt such a powerfully hollow ache in his soul when he thought of her?

  And just how many scoops of coffee had he put in the filter while his mind wandered?

  Jared groaned and eyed the grounds already in the basket, added one more scoop for good measure and started the pot brewing. When he reached the guest room, Elise had a message board open on his computer, and he pulled a chair over to the desk to join her. “Whatcha got?”

  She tapped a few keys, and the screen changed. “This is the website that Kim told us about. There are lots of subgroups depending on what you are interested in learning about or getting help with. Depression, grief, single parenting, missing children, divorce, various support groups for medical conditions… It’s a real hodgepodge.”

  “Looks like it,” he said reading over her shoulder, trying to ignore the tantalizing fruity scent of her hair.

  “I browsed the site, getting a feel for it for several nights, then the other day I posted about Grace’s death in the hospital to both the grief group and the Parents Without Children discussion. Turns out the Parents Without Children board is mostly used by people who don’t see their kids anymore because of divorce, but a few have had kids that died or were kidnapped or ran away.”

  Elise clicked a link to open that discussion page. “See, here it is. I had a few replies, most of them just commiserating and offering condolences, but one lady said that her sister had lost a baby right after birth a couple years ago.” She opened that reply, and pointing to the screen, she faced him. “And get this…she was at the same hospital as me. Pine Mill Community Hospital.”

  Jared sat back in his chair, stunned. “Wow. This is eerie.”

  “And when I did a search for infant death rates, I found an article about another couple in Pine Mill whose baby had died just after birth. It’s like an epidemic in that town! Three babies in just a couple years. And there could be more for all we know.” Her eyes blazed with fervor, and her voice echoed her passion.

  “Just being a devil’s advocate here. Three babies in two years is tragic but…well, maybe it’s not an unusual number. Did you find any stats on infant mortality rates?”

  She sighed and faced the screen again. “Yeah, and Louisiana’s rate is higher than the national average. But… my gut is telling me something is off. Something is wrong at that hospital, whether it’s negligence or foul play or…I don’t know what.”

  Jared steepled his fingers and tapped them against his chin as he mulled over the information. “Yeah, but you’d think if something bad was happening—whatever it was—that the health department or the state licensing board or law enforcement or someone would have stepped in by now.”

  “You’d think.” She frowned and stared at the floor, clearly lost in her own turbulent thoughts.

  He studied the screen, rereading the reply she’d opened. “Hey, you have four new replies. Want to check them out?”

  She raised her head. “I do?” Grabbing the mouse, she clicked the first of the new messages. More condolences. The second reply was a link to an article from the same lady whose sister had lost her baby with the comment:

  Here’s more information from the Pine Mill newspaper about my sister’s baby.

  Elise followed the link to the article, and her shoulders drooped. “Oh, looks like the sister’s baby is the same one I read about. This is the same article I found in my search.”

  “So…just two babies in two years?”

  “Plus Kim’s.”

  “But she was at a different hospital.” His comment earned him a scowl.

  “Yeah, but… Are you having second thoughts? Even two at one hospital is too many. I bet if I keep looking, I’ll find more cases like mine and Kim’s.”

  The desperation in her tone bothered him, and he studied her fiery expression. “To what end?”

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Why are you looking for more cases like yours?” he asked carefully, his tone low and gentle. “Is it a need to feel you aren’t alone? A mission to discredit the hospital? Are you thinking of building a class-action lawsuit?”

  She furrowed her brow, looking a bit poleaxed. “I…I don’t know. I guess that depends on what I find out.” Her expression turned angry, and she folded her arms over her chest. “Besides, you’re the one who said I should arm myself with information. So I am. Why have you changed your tune?”

  “I’m not saying I’ve changed my mind.” He wrapped his fingers around her elbow and met her glare. “I just want to be sure you know what you’re getting into. Are you prepared for what you might learn? Are you willing to take action if you find misfeasance or malpractice?”

  Her anger faded, her expression softening to despondency. She opened her mouth and closed it again without answering. With a sigh, she turned back to the computer and stared at the screen.

  Jared watched her, his heart aching for her. He regretted having encouraged her to undertake what could end up being a painful and fruitless search for answers. Maybe there was no good answer to why her baby died. At least he could blame the drunk driver for taking Kelly from him.

  After a minute, she moved her hand listlessly to the mouse. Her expression downcast and discouraged, she clicked open the next message to her. More condolences—along with a phone number to call if she wanted to buy insurance. Sheesh. Some people.

  The subject line of the last reply read, “Your baby.” Elise opened the message, and Jared read over her shoulder again.

  Check your email. I may have information about your baby.

  The message was signed MysteryMom.

  “Huh.” She shifted on her chair and cast a glance to him. “What do you suppose…?”

  He shrugged. “Check your email.” While she navigated to a new web page and accessed her email account, he pulled his chair closer to the desk so that he wa
s beside her.

  Elise scrolled through advertisements for refinancing her mortgage, fliers from stores and jokes from friends until she found the email from MysteryMom.

  She opened the email and leaned closer to the screen to read.

  Dear Elise, I read your post on the Parents Without Children message board with a heavy heart. Losing a child is every mother’s worst nightmare, and the last thing I’d ever want is to add to your pain. But the circumstances of your story rang familiar to me, and I took the liberty of doing some digging. I have powerful contacts with access to reliable information about birth records and have made it my mission to help mothers like you—and I do think I can help you. Not wanting to raise false hope for you, I triple-checked my information before contacting you.

  Elise, my sources tell me that your baby might be alive.

  Chapter 4

  Elise froze. She stared at the message while a numbing disbelief swept through her. With an odd buzzing in her ears, she read the email again. And again. It really said what she thought. Was Gracie alive?

  A strangled noise between a gasp and a whimper rasped from her throat.

  “Oh, my God,” Jared groaned. “Ignore it, Elise. Just delete it. Some people are just cruel beyond belief.”

  His voice roused her from her stupor, and a jolt of adrenaline rushed to her head, clearing the fog of shock. In its wake, her entire body revived with turbulent chaos. Her limbs shook, her stomach roiled, her head spun. She cast a confused glance at Jared. “What?”

  He waved a hand at the screen in disgust. “Some crackpot is just yanking your chain, playing on your emotions. You watch. The next thing he’ll send you is a request for money to help him locate your baby. If it’s not a scam, then it’s some jerk who gets off on giving desperate people false hope.”

  She fought for the breath to speak. “You…don’t think it’s real?”

  “No way.” He met her gaze and frowned. “Wait, you’re not taking this seriously, are you? The guy didn’t even sign his name.”