When I Found You
Catherine Ryan Hyde
When I Found You is a wrenching, fast-paced story about the risks, sacrifices, and faith necessary to accomplish something larger than yourself— raise a child, save someone’s life, and follow your dreams, even in the face of crushing setbacks and staggering odds.
When Nathan McCann finds, and saves, a newborn baby abandoned in the woods, he asks the baby’s grandmother to someday bring the boy around to meet him. She agrees, but by the time she brings young Nat around, the boy is an angry 15-year-old with a police record and dreams of becoming a professional boxer. And she doesn’t just introduce Nat to his namesake, “the man who found him in the woods.” She washes her hands of Nat and leaves him with Nathan. Now Nathan must learn how to be both a father and a friend to a troubled kid who doesn’t want his help, doesn’t trust anyone, and doesn’t understand his own heart or the possibilities of his young life.
Surprisingly gritty but ultimately heart-warming, When I Found You will appeal to fans of Alice Sebold and Mitch Albom, and to anyone who has ever raised a child or followed a dream.
Contents
Part One: Nathan McCann
2 October 1960: The Day He Found You in the Woods | 3 October 1960: The Day He Lost You | 5 October 1960: The Day He Spoke His Piece For You | 7 October 1960: The Day He Tried and Failed to Find Out Why | 2 October 1967: The Day He Watched You to See How You Had Grown
Part Two: Nathan Bates
2 September 1965: Feathers | 3 September 1965: Different | 24 December 1967: Cold | 25 December 1967: Openings | 26 December 1967: Trades | 4 January 1968: The Issue | 20 March 1973: Where | 21 March 1973: The World | 22 March 1973: Over | 23 March 1973: Nothing | 30 September 1974: The Man | 1 October 1974: Nope | 2 October 1974: More Nothing | 4 October 1974: Mules | 17 January 1975: Oh
Part Three: Nathan McCann
23 September 1975: He Still Feels That Same Way Now | 24 September 1975: He is Willing to Die to Make It Happen | 25 September 1975: He Will Not Wash His Hands of You | 1 October 1975: He Still Doesn’t Really Know You | 2 October 1976: He Tries to Answer Why
Part Four: Nathan Bates
8 May 1978: Gross | 10 August 1978: Weird | 27 September 1978: Happy To | 3 October 1978: Inherent | 4 October 1978: Two Somethings | 6 October 1978: Late | 7 October 1978: Pro | 14 October 1978: Payday
Part Five: Nathan McCann
24 November 1978: You Would Think So, Wouldn’t You? | 25 November 1978: A World Without Boundaries | 4 March 1979: Like, Pretty Much Any Minute Now | 7 March 1979: Or Did You Used to Be Like Me? | 6 August 1979: A Very Good Question, Actually | 7 August 1979: The Debatable Value of Arguing with Life | 9 August 1979: Also Literally Terrible
Part Six: Nathan Bates
9 August 1979: Fragile | 11 August 1979: Business | 6 March 1980: What Fight? | 7 March 1980: Tremble | 8 March 1980: Seconds | 9 March 1980: Worse | 11 March 1980: White | 12 March 1980: No
Part Seven: Nathan McCann
1 August 1980: Various Forms of Resistance | 4 March 1981: Almost Any Idea Will Do | 6 March 1981: Other People Do This So Easily | 21 January 1982: A Semi-Voluntary Occasion | 11 October 1982: Mandatory Emotional Responses | 12 October 1982: But How Can I When They’re So Beautiful? | 1 June 1988: The Code You Don’t Ever Break
Part Eight: Nathan Bates
3 January 1990: Home | 4 January 1990: Exceptions | 15 January 1990: Cake | 19 January 1990: Stories | 28 January 1990: Reasons | 3 February 1990: Still | 20 February 1990: Support | 4 March 1990: Nathan? | 5 March 1990: Call | 7 March 1990: Why | 8 March 1990: Mad | 31 December 1999: Epilogue
Preview: SECOND HAND HEART
About the Author
Praise for Catherine Ryan Hyde
Also by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Copyright
For Harvey
Part One
Nathan McCann
2 October 1960
The Day He Found You in the Woods
Nathan McCann stood in his dark kitchen, a good two hours before dawn. He flipped on the overhead light, halfway hoping to see the coffeemaker all set up with water and grounds and waiting to be plugged in and set to percolating. Instead he saw the filter basket lying empty in the dish drain, looking abandoned and bare.
Why he always expected otherwise, he wasn’t sure. It had been years since Flora set up coffee for him on these early mornings. Decades since she rose early with him to serve fried eggs and orange juice and toast.
Quietly, so as not to wake her, he took a box of oat flake cereal down from the cupboard, then stood in the cold rush of air from the icebox and poured skim milk into a yellow plastic bowl.
You don’t have to be so quiet, he thought to himself. Flora was in her bedroom at the far end of the hall with the door closed. But he was quiet, always had been in such situations, and felt unlikely to change his pattern now.
As he sat down at the cool Formica table to eat his cereal, he heard Sadie, his curly-coated retriever, awake and ready to go, excited by the prospect of a light on in the house before sunrise. He sat listening to the periodic ringing of the chain-link of her kennel run as she jumped up and hit it with her front paws. Born and bred for just such a morning as this, Sadie recognized a good duck-hunt at its first visible or audible indication.
He often wished he could bring her into the house with him, Sadie who gave so readily of her time and attention. But Flora would have none of it.
• • •
Nathan stood in the cool autumn dark, a moment before sunrise, his shotgun angled up across his shoulder.
He insisted that Sadie obey him.
He called her name again, cross with her for forcing him to break the morning stillness, the very reason he had come. In the six years he’d owned the dog, she had never before refused to come when he called.
Remembering this, he shined his big lantern flashlight on her. In the brief instant before she squinted her eyes and turned her face from the light, he saw something, some look that would do for an explanation. In that instinctive way a man knows his dog and a dog knows her man, she had been able to say something to him. She was not defying his judgment, but asking him to consider, for a moment, her own.
“You must come,” she said by way of her expression. “You must.”
For the first time in the six years he’d owned her, Nathan obeyed his dog. He came when she called him.
She stood under a tree, digging. But she was not digging in that frantic way dogs do, both front feet flying in rhythm. Instead she gently pushed leaves aside with her muzzle, and occasionally with one front paw.
He couldn’t see around her, so he pulled her off by the collar.
“OK, girl. I’m here now. Let me see what you’ve got.”
He shined the light on the mound of fallen leaves. Jutting out from the pile was an unfathomably small — yet unmistakably human — foot.
“Dear God,” Nathan said, and set the flashlight down.
He scooped underneath the lump with both gloved hands at once, lifted the child up to him, blew leaves off its face. It was wrapped in a sweater — a regular adult-sized sweater — and wore a tiny, well-fitted, multi-colored knit cap. It could not have been more than a day or two old.
He felt he would know more if he could hold the flashlight and the child at the same time.
He pulled off one glove with his teeth and touched the skin of its face. It felt cool against the backs of his fingers.
“What kind of person would do such a thing?” he said quietly. He looked up to the sky as if God were immediately available to answer that question.
The sky had gone light now, but just a trace. Dawn had not crested the hill but lay beyond the horizon somewhere, informally stating that it pl
anned to come to stay.
He set the child gently on the bed of leaves and looked more closely with the flashlight. The child moved its lips and jaw sluggishly, a dry-mouthed gesture, as if mashing something against its palate, or, in any case, wishing it could.
“Dear God,” Nathan said again.
He had not until that moment considered the possibility that the child might be alive.
He left his shotgun in the nest of leaves, because he needed both hands to steady the child’s body against his, hold the head firmly to his chest. He and his dog sprinted for the station wagon.
Behind them, dawn broke across the lake. Ducks flew unmolested. Forgotten.
• • •
At the hospital, two emergency-room workers sprang into rapid, jerky motion when they saw what Nathan held. They set the infant on a cart, a speck in the middle of an ocean, and unwrapped the sweater. A boy, Nathan saw. A boy still wearing his umbilical cord, a badge of innocence.
As they ran, rolling the cart alongside, a doctor caught up and pulled off the knit cap. It fell to the linoleum floor unnoticed. Nathan picked it up, stowed it in a zippered pocket of his hunting vest. It was so small, that cap; it wouldn’t cover Nathan’s palm.
He moved as close to the door of the examining room as he felt would be allowed.
He heard the doctor say, “Throw him out in the woods on an October night, then give him a nice warm sweater and a little hand-knit hat to hold in his body heat. Now that’s ambivalence.”
• • •
Nathan walked down the hall and bought a cup of hot coffee from a vending machine. It was indeed hot, but that’s all that could be said for it.
He stood for several minutes in front of the coffee machine, gazing into its shiny metal face as if looking at a television set, or out a window. Or into a mirror. Because, in fact, he could see a vague, slightly distorted reflection of himself there.
Nathan was not a man given to eyeing himself for extended moments in mirrors. Shaving was one thing, but to look into his own eyes would cause him to demur, much the way he would if looking into the eyes of another. But the image was just ill-defined enough to cause him no stress or embarrassment.
So he stood for a moment, sipping the dreadful coffee, allowing himself to take in the evidence of his own sentience. Feeling, in a way he could not have explained, that some history was being shaped, the importance of which could not be fully estimated.
Something had been set in motion, he allowed himself to think, that could never, and perhaps should never, be reversed.
When he had finished the coffee, he rinsed out the cup at the water fountain and refilled it with fresh water.
He walked back out to the station wagon to offer Sadie a drink.
• • •
Twenty or thirty minutes later the doctor came out of that room.
“Doctor,” Nathan called, and ran down the hall. The doctor looked blank, as if he could not recall where he’d seen Nathan before. “I’m the man who found that baby in the woods.”
“Ah, yes,” the doctor said. “So you are. Can you stay a few minutes? The police will want to speak with you. If you have to go, please leave your phone number at the desk. I’m sure you understand. They’ll want all the details they can get. To try to find who did this thing.”
“How is the boy?”
“What kind of shape is he in? Bad shape. Will he survive? Maybe. I don’t promise, but he’s a fighter. Sometimes they’re stronger than you can imagine at that age.”
“I want to adopt that boy,” Nathan said.
He felt more than a little bit stunned to hear himself say those words.
First of all, he had not really known this to be the case. At least, not in words. Not in an identifiable sense. It was as if he had told the doctor and himself in one broad stroke. And, secondly, it was unlike him to share his thoughts easily with others, especially if he had not had sufficient time to mull them over, grow accustomed to them.
It seemed this was a morning of unlimited firsts.
“If he survives, you mean.”
“Yes,” Nathan said. Already stung by the gravity of the warning. “If he survives.”
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “Adoption would not be my department.”
• • •
He told the story in earnest detail to the two policemen when they arrived and took his statement, careful to stress that the real hero was sitting out in the back seat of his station wagon.
“Baby’d be dead if it wasn’t for you,” the more vocal of the two policemen said. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, the type who seemed to rely more on brawn than intellect to guide him through this life. Normally Nathan would have been intimidated and repelled by such a man, law officer or not. So it raised a strange and conflicted set of emotions when the policeman spoke to him as a hero.
“And Sadie,” Nathan said. “My dog. She’s a curly-coated retriever. She’s a remarkable animal.”
“Right. Look. We know you’ve got stuff to do, but we need you to show us the exact crime scene.”
“No inconvenience,” Nathan said. “I was on my way back there now, to retrieve my shotgun.”
They began walking toward the hospital parking lot together.
“I want to adopt that boy,” Nathan said. Not so much to bare his soul, but in hopes of being steered in the right direction. He felt an unfamiliar sense of haste, as if something could slip away from him if he didn’t hurry and pin it down.
“We couldn’t tell you nothing about that,” the policeman replied.
Nathan wisely resisted the impulse to correct his grammar.
• • •
He would never have found the spot the first time without the help of his dog, as stated. That much was a given. Now he realized he likely could not find it again without her. Not for the sake of his shotgun, and not for the purposes of the law.
Initially he left her in the car, worried that she might in some way disturb the crime scene. Or that the policemen would somehow think she might.
It never occurred to him that he could not walk, in a direct line, back to the scene of such a momentous discovery.
For twenty minutes or so he walked around in a circle, noting that every tree looked very much like every other. He should have been paying better attention, he told himself. Perhaps even to say he berated himself would not have been stating it too strongly. He prided himself on the careful situational awareness of a hunter. But his routine had been destroyed earlier that morning, and everything had been changed. By the time he had realized the importance of noting and memorizing his surroundings, he had been shocked into a state of being unable to do so.
And he was inordinately embarrassed about that, now.
And, in addition to feeling humiliated by the two officers who watched him fumble about lost, he also registered that his grandfather had given him that shotgun as a gift, and that it was irreplaceable.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was so stunned to make the discovery. I guess I didn’t properly note my surroundings.”
“Just take a deep breath and keep looking,” the larger, more vocal officer said.
“Maybe if I could get Sadie out of the car? She might go right to the spot.”
“Fine, get her,” he said. As if Nathan should have done so sooner.
She went right to the spot.
It took Nathan and the two officers a moment to catch up with her. And during that moment, Nathan worried terribly that she might disturb the crime scene. She might begin digging again. Although, he told himself, she had been digging at the crime scene already. But still he braced himself, needing her to behave perfectly in front of the police.
She didn’t dig, or in any other way affect the pile of leaves. She just stood with her nose twitching, as if the earth under her feet might harbor an inexhaustible supply of abandoned newborns. And that another might be just about to surface.
Nathan caught up to her, and held her by the colla
r.
“Good girl,” he said, and picked up his priceless shotgun.
He stood looking around, memorizing his location. Searching for clues that would distinguish this tree from all other trees. That would allow him to find this place again. A bit like locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen, his brain told him. Something his grandfather had used to say.
He watched the officers marking off the area with crime-scene tape. And wondered, in a vague sort of way, why. It was a pile of leaves. What would it tell them? How would it help them find the person who had committed this terrible act? So far as Nathan could see, it had nothing to say.
“Where do you suppose she got a tiny knit cap the size of a newborn’s head?” Nathan asked. Probably just to feel somehow connected to the moment again. “After all, the baby was just a few hours old. I can’t imagine that left much time for shopping.”
“I imagine she knitted it,” the quieter of the two officers said. “Can’t say for a fact, but it makes more sense.”
Another silent moment.
“If they find her, they won’t give her custody of the child again. Will they?”
The bigger, more vocal officer seemed to be studiously ignoring him.
“I think she’s made the point that she doesn’t want it,” the quiet one said.
“If she changed her mind, I mean.”
“Well, she can change her mind all she wants. But she’ll be in prison. For a very long time.”
Nathan felt heartened to hear that news.
“Maybe call the department of social services,” the more vocal cop said, correctly sensing where Nathan was headed with this. “Now, if you don’t mind, Mr. McCann, we’ll take it from here.”
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