The Mountain Midwife

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “That makes two of us.” He settled into his vehicle and restarted the engine. “If you have a mind to look, the birth was thirty-two years ago. October first. The mother’s name was Brooks. Sheila Brooks.”

  Ashley snapped her head around, sending her braid swishing across her back. “What do you want with a Brooks?”

  His eyebrows, straight, dark, and thick without being caveman bushy, shot up his high forehead. “You know the Brookses?”

  “This is Brooks Ridge. Of course I know the Brookses. I know at least a hundred people by the name of Brooks—first and last.” And every one of them related to her somewhere on the family tree. “Though I can’t say I’ve ever encountered a Sheila Brooks.”

  “Then it’s just a matter of finding the right Brooks, isn’t it?” Flashing that stomach-dropping smile again, he nudged the SUV forward to come level with her and held out a business card. “My e-mail and cell numbers are on this. If you find out anything you can tell me, will you be so kind as to contact me? You, um, do have e-mail and cell service out here, don’t you?”

  “Why, yes sir, we do.” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her tone. She might have even thickened her accent a tad. “And we even have running water and electricity.” She shoved the card into her pocket.

  She’d better get used to the DC snobbery and sense of superiority again if she wanted to return to attend medical school there—if she could get accepted to medical school there. The minute she opened her mouth, they would look at her askance until she proved herself capable of competing academically and socially.

  To give him credit, he ducked his head, his smile sheepish. “That was rude, wasn’t it?”

  “Just a little.” She relented. “But you have a name, why don’t you call her?”

  “I can’t find a listing anywhere, and when I tried to call back the number on my caller ID, I got some doctor’s answering service.”

  “Weird.” A wave of curiosity—and a few ripples of attraction washed through Ashley. “If I get a minute, I’ll see what I can find.” She faced him fully. “But may I ask why you are trying to find Sheila Brooks?”

  “You can ask.” He drummed his fingers—long, strong fingers—on his steering wheel and stared straight ahead out the window. “I have reason to believe she’s my mother and needs me to rescue my sister . . .” He took a deep, audible breath. “A mother and sister I didn’t even know I had.”

  “And your father’s name?” She posed the question slowly, hesitantly, already guessing the answer. More quickly she explained, “It might make finding information easier.”

  His face felt tight. “You’ll have to find my birth without that information. He apparently doesn’t exist.”

  HUNTER WATCHED ASHLEY Tolliver’s reaction to his announcement from the corner of his eye to see if it had any effect upon her demeanor—a bearing cooler than the mountain morning. He didn’t catch more than a swift motion, a raised eyebrow, a jerk of shoulder. What those movements conveyed by way of emotional or any other kind of reaction he couldn’t be sure without having seen her full-on. But a full-on look was probably not a good idea at the moment, in his weakened state of being physically and emotionally drained.

  Quite simply, Ashley McDermott was just too beautiful to look at face-to-face without the buffer of sleep and intellectual strength.

  He had always considered brown eyes uninteresting and dull, too much like the dirt he sometimes saw too much of in his work. But Ashley Tolliver’s eyes were more than brown. They shimmered with sparks of golden light despite the hint of redness in the whites suggesting she was as fatigued as he was. Likewise, her face sagged with weariness, yet the bruise-like circles beneath her extraordinary eyes emphasized the height and clear shape of her cheekbones, and her complexion could not be more pure and smooth had she been created of porcelain and cloth like a doll’s visage. Her loose jeans and heavy jacket disguised a feminine shape. He could only see that she was a little above average height for a female and on the slender side. With a face like hers, who cared what her form was. And that braid of hair shining in the sunlight would make any normal man want to tug the band from the end and pull the tightly bound strands free to see if they truly did ripple with half a dozen hues from honey to maple to gold.

  She took a step toward him, halted, then shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. McDermott, except—” Facing him fully, she worried her lower lip for a moment, then her shoulders rose and fell as though she heaved a deep sigh. “I may as well suggest that you not go hunting through the mountains on your own.”

  “I go to some pretty remote and dangerous places in the world. I know how to defend myself.”

  “Not that.” She laughed aloud, a ripple of liquid sunshine to warm the day. “We aren’t a bunch of trigger-happy rednecks waiting to shoot anyone who comes near. Not that I don’t think some of those kind exist, but mostly folks around here are friendly. I am more concerned about you getting lost or that fancy car of yours getting beat up on the roads. Most of them aren’t paved and some of the hills get pretty steep and you won’t always find guardrails where you think you should.”

  “Nothing can be worse than some of the places I’ve been in South America or Africa, or even Europe.”

  “Suit yourself, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She started up the drive again, then paused long enough to toss over her shoulder, “I’ll do some hunting if I have time.”

  “That’s all I can ask.”

  But not all he could do. As she had said herself, this was Brooks Ridge. Surely someone would know where to find Sheila Brooks. She had lived in those hills for fifty years or so. She had to shop, work, go to church, do something in one of the small towns dotting the gaps between mountains. Surely the roads between towns were paved and marked well enough for him to begin his search there.

  He waved to Miss Tolliver out his window, but he didn’t think she could have noticed on her way up to the house he saw only from the end of the driveway because of the leafless trees. In spring and summer, the house would be hidden from the road—hidden and isolated.

  Was she there alone? She hadn’t seemed frightened when he pulled up. Surely, if a woman was safe alone in these hills, warnings from his parents and business partner were unfounded. Miss Tolliver claimed people didn’t run a body off with a shotgun if they accidentally got on their property. Still, he would proceed with caution. Before going anywhere into the depths of the hills and hollows, he would research at the nearest library and then return to his motel and get some sleep.

  He backed onto the road and headed for town. On the console beside him, his cell phone rang. He ignored it. Several messages pinged into place. He resisted the urge to glance toward the phone. The road before him twisted and curved and looped its way through ranks of old-growth trees arching overhead like a cathedral. Occasionally, a driveway broke the forest line. Even more occasionally, a road bisected the main one, one or two of those mere tracks someone had tried to cover with gravel. Most of the rock seemed to slide down to pile at the bottom of the steep inclines. Those roads must be nearly impossible in a rainstorm. He was confident his SUV could handle about any kind of terrain, but a muddy road that curved around a drop-off could prove as dangerous as ice. If he was to explore along these mountain tracks, he needed to pray no rain fell to hinder his progress.

  He had a mother who needed him—a mother who asked for his help to save a sister he hadn’t known existed twenty-four hours ago. A mother and sister who needed him were new concepts in his life. Virginia McDermott didn’t need anyone. His sister by his adoption, Sarah, was cut from the same cloth as his mother—as Virginia.

  Sheila Brooks claimed they needed him. At least that’s what it sounded like she said. The accent was thick, the speech of an uneducated woman, the sort of woman who would give birth at home with the primitive services of a midwife.

  Ashley Tolliver’s accent was nearly as thick, but she didn’t look primitive. Her jacket, jeans, and
shoes had looked fashionable, as far as he noticed such things, and certainly of good quality. A lifetime with the McDermott women had taught him about how to recognize quality. So maybe the accent was deceptive. The Tolliver drive had been well-maintained, the house large and painted a bright white.

  The Tolliver property didn’t speak of the mountain poverty he had read about in articles he found online while eating breakfast at a fast-food restaurant off the interstate. He had been expecting an endless parade of shacks and trailers on blocks.

  Relief washed through him as he slowed for a bridge over a broad creek and the entrance to the interstate on the other side. The largest town, Brooksburg, lay another five miles down the road. The library would be open now. He could begin hunting through telephone books and local newspapers.

  He moved into the right-turn lane as his phone rang again. He glanced down to see who was being so insistent. The numbers blurred before his eyes. He was kidding himself if he thought he could research without at least a few hours of sleep. With his motel closer than the library, he would do himself more good if he slept before he tried to research.

  The only motel Hunter had found in the general vicinity of Brooksburg, the town named for Brooks Ridge, on which it was nestled, boasted no more than two floors with ten rooms on each. It overlooked the highway and a handful of fast-food chains, but was clean and convenient. At that midmorning hour, it was also quiet.

  Hunter turned off his phone before he reached his room and wasted no time in getting ready for bed. Once stretched out on the cold sheets smelling of industrial bleach, he found his mind racing around his conversation with his parents, the voice mail from the woman he now had reason to believe was his mother, and the midwife—the current midwife, not the one who had likely delivered him.

  Ashley Tolliver. Despite looking as fatigued as he felt, she was stunningly pretty and far too young for her profession. Or for what he thought someone in her profession should be. “Midwife” conjured visions of old ladies with white hair and piercing blue eyes, not rippling golden-brown tresses that must hang below her waist when not caught up in a braid and velvety brown eyes warm enough to banish the chill from the day.

  And he was delirious with lack of sleep to be thinking that kind of nonsense.

  Hunter laughed at himself and rolled over. To banish the pretty midwife from his head, he began to make calculations for his next tunnel project, one Stateside for once, though more than halfway across the country.

  The trick worked, and he slept for nearly eight hours, far longer than he intended. Although he felt refreshed, the library was closed, but a call to his home voice mail, besides giving him more offers to appear on one silly talk show or another, held another message from Sheila Brooks at the number that rang to a doctor’s office.

  “You shoulda come. I’m ’fraid ’t’s too late for your sister.”

  CHAPTER 8

  ASHLEY WOKE REFRESHED and glad of it. She faced a full day of patient visits both at her home office and on the road. She also hoped for an hour or two to start going through Gramma’s records from thirty-two years ago. She should have the night before, but she had Skyped with Momma and Daddy, who had noticed her fatigue over the video feed, which led to explanations and a final breakdown of tears.

  “I am so inadequate in what I can do,” she had finally admitted.

  Their faces registered concern, love, and understanding. They didn’t give her a lot of platitudes about how everyone felt that way at times, that God gave her the skills she needed when she needed them, or how she knew she was good at her job. They simply prayed with her to have wisdom in the work ahead of her, and they prayed for the young woman and the baby.

  “And we’ll be home by Christmas,” Daddy assured her. “We can talk about this medical school notion then.”

  Ashley cringed at his use of “notion.” It wasn’t a whim; it was a plan.

  “Like who will take care of the practice,” Momma pointed out.

  Ashley had bitten her tongue on the response, “Maybe you all can stay home and take over for me for once.” That wasn’t nice. Third-world countries needed midwives as badly as Appalachia needed doctors. For the midwifery work, Ashley had plans.

  Sofie would pass her certification exam and be happy to take on the practice. She would make more than enough money to live on and be able to send more home to Brownsville to her family.

  But what if Sofie didn’t pass her exam because she wasn’t in Virginia? What if she didn’t return?

  Ashley’s sense of refreshment and well-being vanished like the morning mountain mist melted under the sunshine. Momma was right. She couldn’t leave her patients and potential patients high and dry without a midwife to serve them while she danced off to medical school. The only other midwives in the area were two who worked with the local ob-gyn, Tim White, and who practiced in the hospital only. They wanted regular hours; good for their personal lives, but not so good for the patients. A woman could choose to use a midwife, but she wasn’t guaranteed to have the same one with her at her baby’s birth as she had been seeing in the office visits.

  Would one of them perhaps consider changing, though, taking over Ashley’s practice? Her closest friend, Heather Penvenan, might. She often seemed restless working under the restrictions of a medical doctor and within the strictures of the hospital.

  Ashley decided she would set up a lunch date with Heather and discuss the matter. Somehow God would provide. He was opening the door to go to med school; he would take care of a little thing like a midwife to serve Brooks Ridge.

  Or maybe not so little, but still . . .

  Buoyed by this idea, Ashley made herself breakfast while watching a morning news program in the kitchen.

  “Mr. McDermott has gone to ground, but we have spoken with his mother, a prominent DC lobbyist . . .”

  Ashley’s head snapped up from contemplating her plate of eggs—not burned this time. A well-preserved woman in late middle age stood on the steps of a stunning house. “We are quite proud of our son.” She spoke in the same well-modulated tones the man in the Mercedes had used.

  But he wasn’t her son.

  Ashley missed what else the woman, Mrs. McDermott, said. She did catch the panoramic view of grounds, stable, and all the trappings of country wealth the broadcast wanted the viewers to catch about this influential family. The disconnect was obvious. A man like Hunter McDermott couldn’t have come from Brooks Ridge stock. Something was too peculiar here for words.

  Setting her dishes in the sink, her breakfast half eaten, she retrieved his business card from her coat pocket and tucked it into the drawer of her desk for safekeeping. By the time she finished cleaning up after her breakfast preparations, fed the cats, and inspected her exam room, her first patient’s Lexus was pulling up the driveway.

  Stephanie bounced in with an energy belying her thirty-four weeks of pregnancy and threw her arms around Ashley’s neck. “I am so excited. We finished decorating the nursery last night, and it is gorgeous.” She sang the last word and danced toward the examination room. “My husband has been such a trouper working every weekend, and Mom has outdone herself making curtains and pillows and—let me show you pictures.” She pulled out her cell phone.

  “I guess I don’t need to ask how you’re feeling.” Ashley smiled and took the proffered iPhone.

  Stephanie was a model patient—other than continuing to work too many hours and rest too few. Tall and not just slender but fit, she seemed impossibly more beautiful in pregnancy than she had before, with a sheen of joy shining from her green eyes and glowing on her skin. She ate exactly what she was told to, took her vitamins, and exercised an appropriate amount.

  “This is beautiful.” A little ache tugged at Ashley’s heart as she flipped through photographs depicting a nursery bright with greens and yellows like springtime itself. It was cheerful and warm and possessed everything a wealthy baby could need and then some. “You’re so talented with this sort of thing. I wouldn’t
have a clue what colors went together.”

  “I don’t either if they’re not Manolos.” Stephanie’s trilling laugh rang out. “And speaking of shoes. Will my feet ever fit into my shoes again?”

  “Probably. You’re going on thirty-five weeks pregnant. Swollen feet are normal.”

  Just to be safe, and with Mary Kate still on her mind, Ashley scanned Stephanie for signs of swelling elsewhere. But her fine-boned face remained delicate and smooth, and her wrists extending from the sleeves of a designer maternity suit displayed the ends of the ulna and radius bones with appropriate detail beneath smooth skin.

  “Shall we go into the exam room so I can take a look at things?”

  “Yes, let’s. I have to get to work.”

  While Stephanie removed her jacket and tugged down her skirt, Ashley gathered up her stethoscope and Pinard’s, one for the mother’s heart, the other for the baby’s. Both sounded good, strong and regular; the baby’s fast, the mother’s only a little higher than that of a healthy nonpregnant woman. Likewise, Stephanie’s lungs were clear and her blood pressure perfect. Would that all Ashley’s patients could be so physically fit.

  Once Stephanie had restored her immaculate appearance, Ashley perched on the bed beside her, hands on the knees of jeans that looked more worn and scruffy than usual next to Stephanie’s suit that managed to appear fashionable even over a baby bump. “Everything looks good, but how are you doing, really?”

  Stephanie shrugged. “You said it yourself—all is well.”

  “Your vitals are good, but tell me if anything is going on beneath the numbers. You’re still working this late into your pregnancy. Is that all right?”

  “I’m tired,” Stephanie admitted with reluctance, “but mostly only after I put in a twelve-hour day.”

  Ashley sighed and gave her a severe look. “You have got to stop that. You need rest now because you’re not likely to get a great deal after the baby is born.”