“Hold on,” Grace told Chelsea.
“Hey, what’s going on?” The man was tall—probably six feet—with a gut that hadn’t seen much exercise. He pointed up to the house. “That’s my apartment. My fiancée is in there.”
One look at the baby in the carriage, and Grace knew.
Chris’s brows shot up. “Is it? Is it her?”
Grace nodded. “It is.” She had memorized those steely blue eyes, that double chin . . . even the shape of her head under her pink hat.
She lifted the phone. “Chelsea? We’ve found her. Annabelle is here and she’s safe.”
“Oh, dear God. Leo . . . Leo, they found her!” Chelsea’s gasp for air dissolved into rapid-fire questions. “She’s okay? You’re sure? Where are you? Is she awake? Where did you find her?”
“She’s safe now.” Grace gave her the address and reminded her to drive safely. “She needs her parents to be in one piece.”
She put her phone away, bent down beside the stroller, and drank in the sight of Annabelle Green. The baby’s cheeks were bright with color, probably from the cold, but her stern eyes were alert and observant as Grace smiled.
“Look at you, calm as could be. We’ve been looking all over for you.”
Annabelle’s mouth curved, imitating Grace’s smile. She seemed to be well cared for, clean and warm. She wore a cute pink beanie on her head and a little quilted jacket zipped up to her double chin.
“So you’re Ralph Rosekind?” Chris asked.
“What? No. Ralph Amicci. We’re not married, but we’re getting married soon.”
Getting married soon. Grace wondered if Helen has used the baby as a means of getting Ralph Amicci to marry her.
“And what’s the name of the woman you’re marrying?” Chris asked.
“Janet Rosekind.”
“Figures.” Chris shook his head. “Yet another new name combination. She just can’t keep it simple.”
“Why are all the cop cars here?” The man’s irritation was mounting. “What’s this about?”
“We’re police detectives,” Chris said. “And your girlfriend is under arrest for the abduction of the baby you’ve been pushing in the stroller—Annabelle Green.”
“Come on, Annabelle.” Grace unbuckled the strap and lifted the baby out.
“Her name is Lily, and what the hell are you doing?” Amicci demanded.
“I’m recovering a child that was kidnapped earlier this week.” Grace rested the baby on her shoulder and moved away from the irate man.
“What the hell? She’s our baby. My girlfriend gave birth last month.”
“Yeah?” Chris asked. “Were you there for the birth?”
“I was out west, on my route. I drive a truck.”
“Let me tell you something about babies, Mr. Amicci.” Grace rubbed Annabelle’s back, instinctively resting the baby on her hip. “This child is nearly three months old. See how she’s holding her head up on her own? And even her size. Most newborns are only eight or nine pounds. This baby is not a newborn.”
“I’m telling you what I know, and I know that you’ve got my daughter, Lily, in your arms, detective. What you’re doing is wrong. You can’t just come in and take a man’s daughter away.”
“She’s not your daughter,” Chris said flatly, “and if you don’t calm down, we’re going to have to take you in cuffs, too.”
“I don’t care if you arrest me. I’m coming down to the station to file a complaint. Where’s Janet? She’ll straighten everything out.”
“She’s in the back of the patrol car.” Chris went over and opened the rear door. “But I don’t think she’s going to give you the answers you want.”
“Janet!” Amicci bent over, one hand on the roof of the cruiser. “What the hell? These cops say Lily isn’t ours.”
Janet—formerly Helen—blinked into the pale winter sunlight, then switched to indignant mode. “This is all a mistake. She’s mine.”
“Don’t fall for that,” Chris told Ralph. “Your girlfriend picked this baby from a group of infants she’s worked with. Haven’t you seen the baby shrine on the bedroom wall? Annabelle’s photo is up there.”
“Those are kids that Janet has helped. She makes sure their families get the insurance coverage they need.”
“Ya think?” Grace wondered if the big guy could really be so naïve.
“They’re marks,” Chris said. “I’d say your fiancée has been watching these kids since they were born, trying to figure out which would be the best infant to swoop in on and steal.”
Ralph Amicci shot a look at his fiancée. “Tell him, Janet. Tell him the truth.”
“The truth is that Chelsea Maynard is a raving lunatic. An incompetent mother. When I heard she was thinking of killing her baby, I knew what I had to do. Annabelle is better off with us.”
“What’s with everyone calling her Annabelle?” Amicci sputtered. “You said you named her Lily.”
“Your girlfriend has a thing about changing names,” Chris said.
Ralph went to the curb and bent down to get in her line of vision. “You were pregnant all those months. If this baby belongs to someone else, what happened to our baby?”
“Of course Lily is ours.” And there was that scary shift again, madness slipping into her eyes. “Don’t worry, Ralph. This will all be straightened out. When the truth comes out, everyone will know that I did the right thing for my baby.”
“For our baby, right?” There was such earnestness in Ralph’s tone, Grace felt bad about the heartache in store for him.
The baby gave a little squeak in her ear, and Grace felt her squirm. Growing restless. She patted the back of Annabelle’s little quilted jacket and paced with her, moving out of earshot of the suspect.
All for the best.
Helen-Janet-what’s-her-name would be off the streets, and this little bundle of joy would be safe and sound, back with her parents.
Thank you, God.
Grace looked down at the little girl in her arms, seeing Chelsea’s eyes and Leo around the mouth. “This has been a good day,” she told her. “A very good day.”
Chapter 45
Chelsea spotted them as soon as she bolted out of the car. They sat in the open bay of an ambulance, Grace holding Annabelle in her lap while the paramedics checked her out.
“There she is.” Chelsea grabbed Leo’s arm as her eyes misted over.
Their baby.
“Hey, Annie-bananee,” Leo called when they were a few yards away, and just like that Annie turned her head toward his voice. Her blue eyes took them in. She really saw them. She recognized them.
And she smiled.
Chelsea pressed her lips together to keep from crying as she approached slowly, not wanting to scare Annie after a few days away, days of possible trauma.
But Leo—earnest, gregarious Leo launched into a joke and messed up her hair and held her in the air with a rant that made Annie laugh. He chattered on, telling Annie the whole story as he took Grace’s place on the back of the ambulance. He snuggled her against him, face out, as she always insisted.
“Yeah, I remember,” he said. “You always need to see the world. I know that about you, Annabee.”
Chelsea sat beside them, drinking in the details of her daughter’s features.
A mother’s inventory.
Her steely eyes were bright and alert. Her downy hair swirled over her pale, delicate skull. Chelsea took in her rosebud lips, her shiny nose, and those irresistible double chins that reminded Chelsea of an old grandfather.
She lifted Annabelle’s hand to kiss it, and noticed the perfection of her tiny fingernails, the delicate curve of her fingers, the whorls of her fingertips and lines of her palm that made Annabelle unlike anyone else on the planet.
It was as if she were seeing Annabelle for the first time. She had been cheated out of a glorious first look when Annie had been born. The hours of surgery and the weeks of recovery had removed her from her newborn daughter.
But not anymore. She could see Annie clearly, and she was coming to this as a whole person now. Time and medication and sleep had accelerated her healing, and she was hopeful that therapy would help her deal with it for the long haul. The dark side was still there, lingering at the edges, but it was a different world when you could keep depression on the other side of the fence.
She turned Annie’s hand around and planted a kiss in her palm. “Hold on to that,” she said quietly, and she and Leo both smiled when Annie squeezed her hand into a fist.
Chelsea let her head rest on his shoulder as her hand outlined Annabelle’s chubby shoulder. She would relearn every inch of her daughter with a thousand baths and diaper changes. It would no longer be baby jail, because she knew the way out. She would have her occasional nights out and even her work again. This time she would get help and figure out how to maintain some balance.
“How does our little girl check out, Doc?” Leo asked the paramedic who had given them some space.
“I’m not a doctor, but her heart and lungs sound good. You might want to bring her in to get checked out by her regular pediatrician, but this little girl doesn’t need to go to the hospital.”
“Good,” Leo said. “Because we want to take you home.” He stood up. “Let me just tell the detectives that we’re going.”
As he handed Annabelle over, Chelsea’s breath caught in her throat at the wonder of it all. Her arms knew how to wrap her baby securely; her lips traced the smooth shell of Annie’s ear. “Are you a miracle in my arms?” she whispered to her sweet-smelling baby.
Annie did not respond, but Chelsea knew the answer. She had known all along.
Epilogue
Annabelle’s baptism day was on a Sunday in May, one of those breaks in the weather that leaned heavily toward summer and drove everyone to dig out their shorts and flip-flops and hope that fair weather was here to stay.
Soon after they got home from church, Chelsea changed her little girl out of the fancy white dress that all of Melanie’s babies had worn. These days Annabelle was a busy little baby with a social life that included rolling around, and creeping to explore new horizons.
“Was that white dress too confining for you?” Chelsea asked Annie as she pulled stretchy pants on over her big diaper butt. “Don’t be a slave to fashion anymore. Now you can go out and dig in the garden, right?” She picked Annie up to take her downstairs, and held her at her shoulder for a minute, charmed by the way Annie tangled her fingers in her hair. At seven months, Annabelle didn’t have total command of her hands, but she had recently begun raking them through Chelsea’s hair, a gesture that melted her heart.
In the backyard, everyone seemed relieved to be outside in the sunshine. The fence was lined by the white blossoms of pear trees on Louise’s side, and red, yellow, and orange tulips on this side. Leo and Chelsea had planted the bulbs while in nesting mode last fall, and Annie liked the vivid blooms so much she always headed that way when she was in the yard.
Leo, Jake, and Mel’s husband, Andrew, were manning the grill, but Leo couldn’t resist sneaking away for a minute to come tickle Annie and make her laugh.
He had a gift for that—the laughter and song. Sometimes Annie cooed along with his crazy songs. It was the cutest thing, hearing them sing together.
“There’s the guest of honor,” Emma called from the picnic table, where she sat sipping ice water under a picture hat.
“Love the hat.” Chelsea sat beside her sister, letting her squirming daughter put her feet on the ground. “It’s very Greta Garbo.”
“It’s old-fashioned sunscreen,” Emma said. “I’m trying to avoid the chemicals, just to be safe.”
“You’re so good.” Chelsea leaned toward her sister with a smile. “I was just thinking what a relief it is that Jake turned down that job in Chicago. We would have missed you guys so much.”
“Really. You can only do so much Skyping.”
Chelsea propped Annie up in her lap and discovered the clod of grass in her fist. “Are you helping Mommy weed again?” she teased, plucking the clump from her fingers. “This one’s a natural gardener, like Mom. I think we have some trips to the Botanical Garden in our future.”
“The foliage in autumn . . . and the lights at Christmastime!” Emma pressed a hand to her mouth. “We can go, the four of us. Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m going to be a mom soon. I’ve read all the books and taken classes, but I know I’ll still make mistakes.”
“We all do,” Chelsea said. “Remember how I had to have that designer changing table, and how I had everything set up just so before Annie was born? Take it from me, perfection does not go hand in hand with parenting. But you find your new normal. And you probably won’t be taking a trip to the dark side the way I did.”
Emma sighed. “I sure hope not. But if it happens, at least now we know what to do.”
“And I can hook you up with an awesome therapist,” Chelsea teased.
Just then Nora came running over. Sam trailed behind her toting his large dinosaur. “Aunt Chelsea, can I follow Annabelle around?”
“Sure. I think she’s raring to go.” Chelsea set her daughter down and watched as her niece followed alongside her. “Don’t let her take you over to the tulips. She likes to smash the flowers.”
“Oh, Annie.” Nora bent over to face Annie. “Have you been smashing the flowers?”
“Mash da fwawahs,” Sam said with an amused grin.
Chelsea smiled back at him. Whenever she was around Melanie’s kids, she wanted to have more. “Pretty funny, huh?”
“No mashing da fwawahs!” he announced as he followed the girls across the lawn.
“Guys, here’s the watermelon, all cut up.” Melanie came through the gate carrying a big bowl. “Come and get it before the gnats do.”
As neighbors and friends began to arrive, Chelsea went inside to feed Annie. She was settling into the couch when Grace Santos arrived with an adorable teenage boy.
“This is my son, Matthew,” Grace said.
Chelsea was impressed by the dark-eyed boy who shook her hand. “The guys are playing Nerf football out back,” she told him. “And there’s plenty of food and a cooler full of drinks.”
“Okay. Mom, can I have soda?”
“You can have one. I’ll be out in a few minutes,” Grace said as he headed out the side door.
“What a nice boy.”
“He’s a good kid. Though when I look back to when he was a baby, I think it’s a miracle that he and I are both still here. I suffered through some terrible visions, thinking of ways to end my pain. Back then, postpartum depression wasn’t on everyone’s radar. Some people still didn’t believe it was real. A lot of doctors weren’t aware of it.”
“Some doctors still aren’t aware of it. My doctor kept saying I just had the baby blues.” Chelsea shivered at the memory of those days. As if Annie could feel her discomfort, she squirmed in her arms. “I know, pumpkin. Bad memories all around.” She shifted the baby to the other breast.
“Annie seems to be thriving now,” Grace said.
“She’s doing well. We all are. After what we went through with Annie, Leo and I have gotten better at not sweating the details. I’m taking it one day at a time, getting help when I need it. And Leo—he was carrying this family for a long time. He’s glad to have me back in the land of the living. Sometimes I worry about the depression returning if we have another baby, and I really want Annie to have a sibling.”
“I think worry is every parent’s middle name.” Grace leaned back against the couch, looking more relaxed than Chelsea had ever seen her. “We worry about them when they’re little. We worry when they can leave the house on their own. I don’t know if the worry ever ends.”
“You’re such a Yoda.” When Grace laughed, Chelsea added, “Really, you’re so wise, Grace. You had faith in me when I didn’t believe in myself. I have to thank you for that. I think those first cops on the scene wanted to arrest me when Annabelle disappeare
d, and I was such a basket case, I probably would have incriminated myself, babbling on. But you knew what was going on. You knew I was in distress.”
“I just read people well.” Grace shrugged. “It’s my job.”
“Speaking of that, what’s the latest in the case?”
“They’re still in the exploratory phase, taking depositions, but the psychologist has been making some headway with Walker.”
Helen Janet Walker had been charged with kidnapping in the second degree, a crime with a sentence of up to twenty-five years in jail.
“Did you figure out which job came first—the baby nurse gig or the insurance rep?”
“It was Sounder Health Care. She worked for the company for five years, and during that time, she had a baby with her former husband, Kevin Walker. Janet was an examiner, approving insurance claims, when her baby died in his crib—SIDS, apparently. The psychologist learned that it became difficult for her to process claims for families with newborns. But after a while, she turned it around, thinking that, with all these people having babies, she was bound to find some couple who didn’t want theirs. When the opening came up for the New York area hotline rep, she jumped on it, knowing it would narrow her cases down to a specific area.”
“So calculating.”
“That’s the thing. She saw herself as a savior. She was only going to save a baby who wasn’t wanted.”
Chelsea looked down into Annie’s sleepy gaze. But you were wanted. You are wanted and loved.
“When the plan didn’t seem to be coming together fast enough, she thought of the baby nurse thing. She got the idea when she saw Helen Rosekind’s obituary in the news. Somehow she convinced the agency she was legit, and then she sent flyers to the families she had marked through Sounder Health Care.”
“Conniving and surprisingly smart,” Chelsea said. “She was probably a great employee for Sounder.”
“Yeah, they loved her . . . until this broke. Now the company is trying to build safeguards into the system so that no employee has total access to customer accounts.”
“Did you know the president of the company called us to apologize?” Chelsea had felt uncomfortable talking with him. “I told him that I just wanted my claims processed. After that they turned things around in forty-eight hours.”
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