The Mountain Midwife

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  As if he could and still do his job.

  “It was a local anti–European Union organization, and that family and I were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “More like you were in the right place at the right time,” Dad interjected. “God is good.”

  “He is.” Hunter rubbed the back of his neck. It felt as though someone had replaced his muscles with steel bands.

  Even Mom quieted to think about that.

  Hunter was tempted to say good night and hang up, yet if he didn’t ask, didn’t set the nonsense to rest, he wouldn’t get the sleep he so desperately needed.

  He took a deep breath. “Mom, Dad, I got the weirdest message on my voice mail. Part of a message. The voice mail filled up and cut her off, but I heard enough.” He stopped and laughed. “Never mind. It had to be a crank call.”

  “You’re bound to get those after you’ve been in the news,” Dad said. “You shouldn’t have a listed phone number.”

  “Probably not, and I’d put this down as too ridiculous to think about, except the woman called me Zachariah.”

  Silence crackled along the phone line for half a minute, then Mom said, “Well, it is on your birth certificate.”

  “But no one has used it since I was in kindergarten, so how would some woman in the 540 area code know to call me that unless . . . unless—” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words “unless she’s telling the truth.”

  It was too absurd, too impossible.

  “Never mind,” he said again. “I think I’m suffering from delayed shock along with jet lag. Let me get some—”

  “Five-four-oh?” All of a sudden Dad sounded his sixty-five years and then some.

  “That’s southwest Virginia.” Mom’s voice had gone squeaky.

  And Hunter’s blood ran cold.

  “What—” Dad coughed. “What did she say?”

  His throat thick, Hunter shook his head to clear it from the nonsense of that message. But the twanging voice rang in his ears as if the message were playing over a loudspeaker in the room. “I feel ridiculous even bringing this to your attention, but she said . . . she said she’s my mother.”

  CHAPTER 3

  ASHLEY BOWED HER head and kneaded the taut muscles on the back of her neck. Unfortunately, the action brought her gaze in contact with the bloodstains marring the ivory tiles of her examination room floor. Now more brown than red, the stains lay as a stark reminder of what had taken place in her home during the night.

  “I don’t know what else to tell you, Jase.” She shifted her eyes to the sheriff’s deputy seated at her kitchen table, a cup of coffee before him, forearms resting on the pale wood with the relaxed posture of someone who had sat in that chair at that table with a cup before him many times.

  He had, from after-school snacks, to pizzas after high school dances, to a hundred glasses of sweet tea or cups of strong coffee in the intervening twelve years. He was her friend and had been since kindergarten. Not once had he sat at that table in an official capacity.

  The crackle of his radio blasted a reminder of his official capacity into the room, the words loud and clear. No one had seen the trucks Ashley described—for what her description had been worth. No hospitals within a fifty-mile radius reported the arrival of a woman who had given birth that night.

  “Let’s go through it all over again.” Jason Fox rose and crossed the room to the coffeepot. He held up the nearly empty carafe. “I don’t want to take the last of this.”

  “Go ahead. I can make more.”

  Or not. She had already drunk twice her daily caffeine intake. Though Jason was at least six foot four, he probably didn’t need any more either. On the other hand, both had been awake half the night and she had an appointment in four hours.

  She looked at the bloodstains again. “When can I clean that up? I have a patient to attend this morning.”

  “You may need to reschedule her.” Jason returned to the table.

  Ashley gave him a look of exasperation. “I don’t have any time to reschedule her, and it’s not like pregnancy can be put on hold.”

  “I’ve been assured the state boys will be here any minute.” Jason straddled his chair. “Now come sit down and let’s go through this again just in case you remember something else.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  A cat meowed and began to weave around her ankles.

  “If that was advice,” she said, stooping to pet the calico, “you need to be clearer.”

  “Meow.” The cat headed for the door to the basement, where plastic bins held cat food.

  “Ah, I understand that.” Ashley held up a hand for Jase to wait for her, then descended the basement steps to scoop food into the three cat dishes. Four more cats appeared, seemingly materializing from thin air, and began to purr around the bowls. Before heading back up the steps, she gave each one a pet or scratch behind the ears.

  Jason was nowhere in sight.

  “Did you leave?” Ashley called out. “Can I get a shower and go to bed?”

  No answer.

  Hoping someone higher up had changed their mind about her home being a crime scene and Jase had left, but knowing she wanted that too much to believe he was no longer nearby, Ashley pulled the plastic label off a package of homemade blueberry muffins from the freezer and set the foil-wrapped package in the oven. Jase and her patient that morning would appreciate the nourishment since she would, no doubt, leave the house without eating breakfast. Mary Kate was a server at a local diner who desperately needed to stop working twelve-hour days but couldn’t afford to. If necessary, Ashley could examine Mary Kate upstairs; she kept enough equipment in her car to manage, but climbing steps with her perpetually swollen feet would be another burden on the overburdened young woman.

  And what had happened to that other overburdened young woman?

  “Oh, why did I even answer the door last night?” She thumped her forehead against the dividing wall between the end of the counter and the back door. “Why? Why? Why?”

  She had answered the door because caring for those in need had been drilled into her since she was old enough to comprehend what that meant. Perhaps caring for others was in her DNA after generations of midwives on both sides of her family. Even when the practice fell out of fashion in the late 1800s, Docherty and Tolliver women practiced the art in the Virginia mountains. Her mother was the first one to receive a master’s degree in nurse-midwifery, and Ashley had followed in her footsteps when the door to becoming a doctor slammed on her dreams of being the first Tolliver female to go to medical school.

  To distract herself until Jason returned, she turned on the television she kept on a rolling cart in the kitchen. She could move it into the exam room for playing educational videos or to entertain children waiting for their mothers. A twenty-four-hour news program blared into the kitchen with some kind of news alert.

  Reflexively, her gaze shot to the screen, and her eyes widened in appreciation for the man caught in the camera’s glare. Tall and rangy, with rectangular glasses and tousled dark hair that should have been trimmed at least two weeks ago, he looked like the sort of college professor her friends and she would have gone googly-eyed over as freshmen. He wasn’t old enough to be a professor, though, or barely. Maybe a year or two older than her own twenty-nine.

  “The rest was pure coincidence with a happy outcome.” He spoke in the well-modulated, restrained tones of someone who had attended the best schools all his life.

  The shouted questions of reporters drowned what he said next, and the slamming of the back door on a blast of cold wind obliterated the reporter’s explanation.

  “Oh, him.” Jason’s tone held a sneer.

  “Who is he?” Ashley lowered the volume but kept her gaze on the screen. The picture of the man in the doorway remained shrunk in one corner while a video of the same man scooping up a child about to run into the street, several women running after him, and then an explosion filled the rest of the screen.<
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  “Some engineering type from northern Virginia was overseas and rescued a little girl from running into the street. Her whole family came running after him and got out of the way of an exploding car just in time because of it.” Jason nudged her arm. “Haven’t you seen the news in the past day?”

  Ashley shook her head. “I was driving all over Brooks Ridge yesterday seeing patients.”

  “Doing real heroic work.” Jason’s tone held more admiration than Ashley liked. “Not some rich guy who happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

  “Not every stranger would go after a little girl. Those women look about to lynch him.” Ashley turned off the set. “But I can see why he’s a sensation.”

  Jason groaned. “Not you too. All the women at the station are drooling. I think he looks like a nerd.”

  “He does, but he also looks . . .” Ashley paused to think of the right word.

  The roar of a car engine and crunch of gravel in the drive announced the arrival of someone. Many someones, judging from the number of slamming doors and voices too loud for the quiet night. Fortunately, her nearest neighbor lay a quarter mile away. Unfortunately, this was likely the tech guys from the state police, and she would not be able to go to bed for a couple of hours before her workday began.

  “Kind.” Ashley finished her thought, then pushed away from the wall and made more coffee. May as well tank up. The techs rapped on the back door, and by the time Jason let them in and they began to swarm into the kitchen, she had set out napkins and disposable coffee cups beside the carafe on the table. The sweet tangle of blueberries and cinnamon wafting from the oven announced that the muffins would be warm enough to eat in mere minutes.

  The men stopped and sniffed appreciatively. The state guys gave the coffee longing glances but set to work taking pictures, dusting for fingerprints, and collecting blood samples.

  Jason returned to the table. “Sit down, Ash. Let’s go over everything one more time.”

  “Let me get these muffins out of the oven first.” She opened the oven door, and her mouth began to water at the richness of cinnamon and brown sugar steaming into the air.

  Behind her, someone moaned.

  Smiling for the first time since the strange man and terrified young woman had stumbled through her door, Ashley slid the muffins onto a plate and set them on the table. “Help yourselves.”

  Jason did. The others cast longing glances at the pastries, then continued their work.

  “You can take them with you if you like.” Ashley peeled the paper off a muffin and took a healthy bite. Chewing and swallowing gave her a moment to think about what she had already said to Jason and how to begin again.

  “I’m recording this.” Jason set a digital recorder on the table. “Today is October twenty-second . . .” He continued with establishing time, date, and place, then turned the mic her way. “Go.”

  “From where?”

  “Start with what time they rang your doorbell and why you let them in.”

  In her examination room, something rattled and thudded.

  Ashley winced at the sound and the absurdity of Jason’s question. “It was just past midnight, and why wouldn’t I let them in? I knew at once that the girl was in labor. Her contractions were coming close together and her water had broken.”

  “How did you know—” Jason stopped at the look of disgust Ashley shot him. He shrugged. “I forget how highly trained you are.”

  “I took her back here to the exam room and . . .” She progressed through the series of events right up to the truck roaring up her drive and chasing the man, woman, and baby off in their vehicle.

  “He came within a foot or two of hitting me, and that was because I heard him coming and jumped out of the way.” She shuddered in recollection. “Did you get tire tracks?”

  “Not good ones. You must have just laid down a new pile of gravel. Most of the tracks were obliterated by the stuff sliding back into the depressions.”

  “Preparing for the winter.” Aware of silence, she turned to see the crime scene techs standing behind her, their equipment packed up, their faces grim.

  “Why so much blood?” one of them asked.

  “She was bleeding more than normal.”

  She could have begun to hemorrhage again at any moment, especially with being moved so roughly, so soon.

  The rest of Ashley’s muffin turned to goo in her hand. “I left to call the hospital to warn them I was bringing her in and . . . the man took off with her and the baby. I’m sure they were running from whoever was in that other truck.”

  “Was she still alive when you left to call the hospital?” Jason asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you leave her?” Jason asked as he had earlier. “Don’t you have a phone in your exam room?”

  “I do, but my landline wasn’t working. Maybe the rain we had yesterday got to the cables belowground or something.”

  Over her head, Jason exchanged a glance with the techs, then he turned back to her. “The cable going into the house was cut.”

  CHAPTER 4

  HUNTER LET HIMSELF into his parents’ Great Falls house with the key he had carried with him since he was twelve and came home from boarding school for breaks. If he hadn’t wanted to avoid disturbing his parents, he would have gone straight to their house from the airport to avoid reporters. Either no one knew where the McDermotts lived, or reporters didn’t dare bother the residents of Great Falls behind their fences for something so trivial.

  He wouldn’t have bothered the residents behind the iron gates if not for that odd message and his parents’ reaction to it. They hadn’t laughed it off; in fact, they had suggested he make the forty-five-minute drive right then and there.

  The front of the house had been bright with lights, but the kitchen Hunter entered was dark save for a light over the stove, a bulb bright enough to show him an apple pie still steaming from the oven. Mom might have moved into the realms of the one-percenters after law school, but she was still a homemaker beneath the corporate sophistication. Rarely had they gone without homemade pies or cakes or cookies she had somehow found the time to craft herself. Hunter smiled and broke off a bite of crust.

  “I should slap your hand for that, Hunter McDermott.” Mom herself strode into the kitchen in three-inch wedge slippers, some velvety loungewear emphasizing her tall, athletic build. “If you want a piece, cut a slice. There’s coffee in the den.”

  “Thanks.” He kissed her smooth cheek. “A new hair color?”

  “Don’t try to flatter me. My hair is the same color it’s been since I was born.” She grinned and fluffed the shoulder-length fall. “Even if it comes from a bottle now. Now go into the den and I’ll bring in some pie. You’re probably starving.”

  “I don’t remember when I last ate.” He cast a longing glance at a fridge he knew would be stuffed with all sorts of delicacies.

  “You need a wife to feed you properly.” As she made her usual plea for him to marry and settle, she moved to the refrigerator and began to pull containers off the shelves. “Fruit? Cheese? Fresh vegetables?”

  “Give the man some real food, Virginia.” Dad appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face drawn, his dark hair looking more gray than Hunter remembered. “A roast beef sandwich at the least.” He held out his hand. “How are you besides hungry . . . son?”

  Hunter didn’t think he imagined the hesitation before the last word.

  He shook hands with his father. “Hungry.”

  Or maybe not. The cramping in his gut felt more like anxiety than starvation. But Mom would prepare a feast and he would eat every bite to please her. Feeding people was Mom’s way of showing she cared.

  Dad took those he cared about golfing. Unable to do that at one o’clock in the morning, he led Hunter into the den, a room full of overstuffed sofas and chairs and a sixty-inch plasma TV. From the fridge inside the wall-hung TV, Dad withdrew a can of soda and gave it to Hunter. “Or would you prefer coffee
?”

  “This is fine.” Hunter popped the top on the Coke and settled onto one of the chairs.

  Dad took the one opposite him. For several minutes they didn’t look at each other, nor did they speak. The house was too large for them to hear Mom busying herself in the kitchen. Though the TV was on a twenty-four-hour news station, the sound was turned down. The room lay so quiet Hunter heard the crackling of the soda inside its can. He looked at his father, wanting to say something to break the awkward silence, but no words came to him. Questions crowded his head as they had all the way from Clarendon. With Dad a dozen feet away turning a glass of Pellegrino between his fingers, staring at the fizzy water as though it held answers like some pagan scrying bowl, Hunter’s mind went blank.

  Then the news flashed a picture of him in the doorway of his townhouse, looking disheveled and annoyed, and the video of the rescue and explosion that had gone viral on YouTube, and Dad clicked the remote to turn up the volume.

  “Other than a brief statement outside his townhouse earlier this morning, McDermott has managed to elude reporters thus far,” the reporter was saying. “Further attempts for information have been unsuccessful; however, we do hope for an interview soon. Stay tuned to this station . . .”

  Hunter rose far enough to push the Off button on the set. “That will be the day when I give them an interview. I am no hero. I simply did what any responsible citizen would do.”

  “Apparently not so many would have picked up a strange child.” Dad set his glass on a side table and speared his fingers through his shock of salt-and-pepper hair. “We like to think we raised you right, even if we were away from home more than we were here. Sometimes the lure of money overtakes one’s life and one forgets what’s important.”

  “I always knew you loved me.” Hunter spun the soda can between his hands, making the crackling inside more frenetic. He didn’t look at his parent—the man he always thought of as his parent. “You managed to attend most of my choir concerts and basketball games.”