But the screaming didn’t stop.
“Is she hungry?” He stared at the writhing, roaring infant with such terror that Dinah would have been tempted to laugh if she hadn’t felt the same way.
“She could be. Is there milk or formula in there?”
He produced a bottle half full of milky liquid with an air of a man triumphing at the eleventh hour. “Here. This should do it.”
Dinah picked her up, sat on the bed, and stuck the nipple in Tamsen’s mouth. Tamsen hiccuped and gasped around it, then after a minute settled down to suck.
“Thank God.” Matthew pulled the wooden chair away from the student desk and sat as if his knees had given out. “Where is your sister?” he asked again.
“She’s gone.”
“Well, yes. I hope she doesn’t plan to stay away long.”
“Permanently, as far as I can tell.” Dinah filled him in on the details, and when he didn’t believe her, he went and got the letter himself.
“This is preposterous.” He appeared in the bedroom door and held it out. “It can’t be legal. It looks like a printout from one of those ‘be your own attorney’ computer programs.”
“I don’t know if it is or not. All I know is Tamara came out here on purpose to leave the baby.”
“Surely part of it was seeing you.”
She didn’t reply. Had Tamara faked her happiness at the two of them being together again? She’d faked a lot of other things.
“So now what do we do?”
“We?”
“Yes, we.” Matthew gave her a penetrating look. “Unless you’d rather I take myself back out to the barn and we divide our duties along traditional lines.”
“What, women inside and men outside?”
“It may have worked in the old days but I can’t see much in it now.”
“True enough. But Tamsen is my responsibility.”
He shook his head. “She is her mother’s responsibility. The only responsibility we have is to see that she gets safely back to her.”
But when Aunt Evelyn called that evening just after supper—a supper that Matthew had thrown together while Dinah was trying to bathe the baby in the kitchen sink—they found it wasn’t going to be as easy as that.
“I got an e-mail from Tamara.” Aunt Evelyn didn’t bother with preliminaries. “TamaraT at Hotmail dot com, so we can’t trace it. She says she left my car at the Amtrak station here in Spokane with the keys on top of the left front tire. She sends her love.”
“But where did she go?” Dinah gripped the receiver with hands that had gone stiff and cold.
“No indication. Seattle, probably. Or Boise. Or Topeka, Kansas, for all I know.”
“Aunt Evelyn, we have to do something.”
“Your uncle and I will report her to the police as a runaway. I think it’s better if we stay here, in case she decides to contact us again. Or come home, even. Meantime, I hope you’ve got lots of formula and diapers on hand.”
She didn’t, Dinah thought as she hung up the phone. But she wasn’t going to need them.
She found Matthew at the sink, drying Tamsen off, much to the baby’s disgust. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going into town.”
“What for?”
“We’re going to introduce Tamsen to her father.”
THE WOMAN WHO opened the door to the modest split-level home broke into a smile when she saw Dinah. The smile wavered a bit when she saw Matthew standing behind her, and her eyes grew speculative.
“Dinah!” Her voice was welcoming, and she held the door open so that they could come in. Then she saw the baby carrier, and her smile dropped away in astonishment. “What brings you out on a cold night like this? And who have you got there?”
The door opened straight into a living room littered with toys, books, and pint-sized items of clothing. Without being invited, Dinah sat down on the couch. For lack of anything better to do, Matthew sat beside her. He wondered how the odd tableau looked to this woman. “Found Family,” they could call it. Like the found poetry he’d once assigned his students, they were patched-together and accidental. But there might be some beauty they could find between the lines.
Linda Bell, Dinah had told him on the way over, had five kids of her own, ran a day care center out of her home, was the worst gossip in Hamilton Falls—and was Tamsen’s grandmother. She just didn’t know it yet.
“Linda, we need your help.” Dinah pulled away the pink blanket that was draped over the baby, and Linda knelt to look.
“Isn’t she darling,” the woman cooed. “Are you babysitting? I’m so glad you came to me. I know how hard it must be, losing your dad and worrying about your mom, and now you’re looking after a little one. Well, I’ll help in any way I can. What’s her name?”
“Tamsen. She’s Tamara’s daughter.”
Linda drew back from the baby so suddenly Matthew thought she’d tip over and land on her backside on the carpet. “What?”
“Tamara’s daughter. I’m looking after her for a little while, but I need to—”
“Why have you brought her here? My goodness, Dinah, I thought you were more sensitive than that. People already think she’s—that Tamara and Danny—well, we don’t want to give them anything more to talk about, do we?”
Matthew stared at the woman. So much for beauty. She stood as far from the baby as she could get, her hands pressed against her black skirts as if the child were about to climb out of the carrier and throw up on her.
“Linda, I need to speak with Danny.”
“Why?”
Dinah swallowed. “He and Tamara were seeing each other. It’s time he took responsibility for his actions.”
“What actions?” Linda’s voice was dangerously quiet.
“Please don’t be angry with me. I know he said Tamsen wasn’t his when Tamara was first—” She swallowed again. “—Silenced, but that was a very natural reaction. He needs to come forward now.”
“Why?”
“Because—because Tamara has gone away, and a child needs at least one of its parents.”
“Gone away? Where? When?”
“I don’t know. This afternoon. She left the baby with me and drove away and no one’s seen her since.”
Matthew heard the pain in her voice at having to make such a confession about her only sister to such an unsympathetic audience.
“Left the baby. With you,” Linda repeated, as if this confirmed the opinion she’d had of Tamara all along.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say. But Danny should prepare himself for long-term.”
“Danny doesn’t need to prepare himself for anything but coming back to the Elect,” Linda snapped.
Dinah stared at her. “But—”
“I suppose you’ve had so much to deal with you haven’t had a chance to think about what’s happening in other people’s lives.”
Matthew winced at the needle sharpness in the woman’s tone. The effusive helpfulness had disappeared like steam on a hot day.
Linda Bell crossed to the window, giving the baby carrier a wide berth. “Danny left two months ago, after he heard that she—” She gestured at Tamsen, who, thankfully, was sleeping. “—was born.”
“Left?” Dinah sounded bewildered. Matthew felt rather bewildered himself. There was too much going on here for him to assimilate all at once.
“Yes, left. He left his home, his family, and his church, all because of your sister trying to pin this on him. Thanks to her, he’s lost his salvation. The good Lord only knows who that child’s father actually is. But it isn’t Danny.”
Dinah’s eyes never left Linda’s face as she picked up the carrier. Matthew got to his feet as well. He’d be glad to see the door close on this angry woman.
“Where is he?” Dinah asked. Her hand, gripping the handle of the carrier, looked drained of blood. The only reason she hadn’t dropped it was because the bones of her fingers were locked around
it.
“I doubt he’s run off to join her, if that’s what you were hoping,” Linda said. “He’s living with a worldly school friend at the other end of town. The Barings. But I wouldn’t recommend presenting him with Tamara’s child.” She leveled a look of extreme dislike at the carrier. “From what I gather, he never wants to see any of the Traynells again.”
DINAH KNEW THE Barings only vaguely through . . . an uncle? . . . a grandfather? . . . who bought hay every October. A stop at the pay phone by the Jiffy Market provided a phone book with an address, and fifteen minutes after their ignominious departure from the Bells’ they pulled up outside a shabby ranch home on Front Street. The street had been so named because it fronted on the railway line, back in the days when the railway had been more important than the interstate.
“It’s late,” Matthew offered. “Perhaps we should tackle this in the morning.”
But Dinah’s hands were cold and stark on the steering wheel, her mouth set in a grim line. “If she’s not coming back, somebody has to be responsible.”
“What are you going to do if this Danny really isn’t the father?”
Dinah shifted the truck into Park and shut off the engine. “He has to be. There’s no one else.”
The worldly boy who answered the door wore wrinkled jeans and a black T-shirt advertising a rock concert. He eyed Dinah in her black dress and coat as if she were a sideshow act at the midway.
Not that Dinah had ever been to a midway.
He leaned on the doorjamb and chewed on the pencil that hung loosely in his fingers. “Yeah?”
“Is Danny here?” Dinah asked.
“Maybe.”
“I’d like to talk with him for a minute, if he is.”
“You from his church?”
“I’m Dinah Traynell. He knows me.”
The kid heaved himself upright and swung the door shut without a reply. Beside her, Matthew shifted and reached for the baby carrier.
“It’s no good. Let’s try another time.”
Dinah couldn’t quite believe a stranger had shut the door in her face when she was so desperate. This was what you got with worldly people. She should have known better.
She turned away just as the door swung open again.
“Dinah?” Danny Bell flipped the porch light on and stepped out onto the mat. He wore no coat, though the air was chilly. “What’s going on?”
Dinah had never seen him wear color before. He wore a green T-shirt with some kind of cartoon character on it, and his jeans looked as though they’d been bought for a larger boy. About the size of the one who had answered the door.
A borrowed home. Borrowed clothes. What had happened to make Danny Bell leave his parents?
“We need to talk to you,” she said.
“We?”
Matthew stepped into the light, the carrier hanging heavily from one hand. Danny’s gaze glanced off it, dismissed it, and returned to Dinah’s face.
“If my mom sent you over, I can’t talk right now. I’m doing homework.”
“She didn’t. In fact, she wasn’t very keen about me coming over at all. It won’t take long, and you can get back to your homework.”
He leaned on the wrought-iron porch rail. It gave a little under his weight, and Dinah wondered if the flimsy thing would pop off altogether and dump him in the flowerbed, where a few cold daffodil shoots were trying to come up.
“What’s up?”
“Tamara came this morning from Spokane,” she began.
Under the porch light, Danny’s face seemed to thin, to pinch up and harden. “I don’t want to hear about her.” He pushed away from the rail and reached for the doorknob.
“Danny, wait.” She’d never touched him in her life other than the formal handshake of fellowship after Gathering, but extremity was pushing her to do a lot of things she’d never done before. She gripped his arm, just above the wrist, and pulled him nearer to the shallow steps where Matthew stood. “This isn’t about Tamara. It’s about the baby.”
“What baby?”
“Hers. Tamara’s and yours.”
“There isn’t any baby.” His voice, which had started out sounding young and polite, hardened into something adult and unyielding. Suddenly Dinah saw part of the reason for Linda’s pain. But it didn’t stop her.
“Yes, there is. Right there.” She nodded at Matthew and the carrier. “Tamara left her with me and disappeared—we don’t know where to or for how long. But I’m not one of her parents. She should be with one of you. Not me.”
Danny stared at her, and to her surprise, he laughed. It was a soundless, disbelieving huff of air. “And you think I’m the father.”
“Well, yes. You guys were dating. Sharing a hymnbook.”
“So who else could it be, right?”
“Right.”
“Even if I was, Dinah, how would I take care of a baby? I’m seventeen. I’ve got two more months of school, finals, and gee, I’m living on a mattress on somebody else’s floor. I really know how to take care of things.”
“I don’t pretend to know why you’re not at home. But I’m sure your folks would help.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t. I’m never going back.”
She stood there, helplessly waiting for him to change his mind, to admit responsibility for his daughter and take this problem off her hands.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have a clue about a lot of things.”
“For once in her life, my mother didn’t spill her guts?”
“About what?”
“About why I’m here.”
“No. I could see she was upset about it, but that’s none of my business. The only thing I care about is getting Tamsen back to one of her parents.”
“Yeah? Well, you’d better talk to old Phinehas about it, then.”
She stared at him. “Why?” Phinehas was the last person she’d go to with a problem like this. Sure, he was the final judge in serious problems among the flock, but this was a family matter. She could take care of it, if she could just get the baby’s parents to own up and do the right thing.
“Tamara didn’t tell you, either?”
“Tell me what?”
“What I said. You want to talk to the kid’s father, you’d better go find Phinehas. It wasn’t me. We never even took our clothes off. But Phinehas, now, that’s different. Only he doesn’t ask first. He just takes what he wants and leaves the girl to deal with what happens.”
“What?” Dinah couldn’t form an intelligent sentence—couldn’t even get a breath to go into her lungs. She swayed, and the world tilted.
“I’m sorry you’re strapped with his kid, Dinah. But life’s not fair. Not for Tammy, and not for me. One thing I’m glad about though.” He spoke in a conversational tone, as if Dinah’s world hadn’t just torn itself apart and was drifting on the cold air like ash. “It made me see the Elect the way they really are. Any bunch of people who could let that guy get away with what he does deserves what they get. I tried to get Tammy to say something, but oh no, she’d rather let everybody hang it on me. And if she doesn’t care enough to tell the truth, then I don’t, either. I’m done with all of you. As soon as school’s out, I’m out of here. You can tell that to Tamara—if you ever see her again.”
He pushed into the house, and for the second time in ten minutes, the battered front door shut in Dinah’s face.
Chapter 11
MATTHEW FELT AS though he were walking in the pitch dark, on a path full of holes into which he could fall at any moment.
Somehow he managed to strap the baby’s seat into the truck and maneuver Dinah into the passenger seat without dropping either one. If he hadn’t, Dinah would probably have stayed on the lawn all night, staring in that eerie, unfocused way into the middle distance. He was beginning to have serious doubts about the young woman’s sanity. After all, how much abuse and how many shocks could one p
erson be expected to withstand before she broke?
He turned right onto the highway and pushed his foot down on the accelerator. She had broken once already. How could he have forgotten that terrible scene in the compost heap, when she’d lost her pet? That had led her straight to the river.
She had just learned her only niece was the child of rape—rape by the same man who had been raping her for years. Two girls in one family. And who knew how many others?
Grimly, Matthew fought down the un-Christian desire to throttle Phinehas, that white-walled hypocrite, with his bare hands. Instead, he kept both wrapped around the steering wheel and concentrated on getting everyone home safely.
It was like something out of one of those southern gothic novels his friend Paolo’s wife was so fond of reading, full of incest and betrayal and family secrets going back generations. Or worse, the whole situation in her church was a breeding ground for this kind of thing. From what he had been able to gather, the Shepherds of these poor souls were accountable to no one—except God, one presumed. And with no accountability and a congregation that catered to their every wish, it was only a matter of time before human nature got the better of them and they became corrupted by their own power.
No wonder Dinah saw God as an all-powerful old man dishing out punishment. When God’s representative to her was exactly that, how could she think anything else?
He glanced at her, but she was still staring straight ahead. Had she even blinked since he’d snapped the seat belt around the slender span of her hips?
He pulled into the yard behind the ranch house and got out to open the barn doors, then parked the truck in its spot next to the roofless Jeep in which they’d climbed the mountain—could it really have been just this afternoon?
With the baby’s carrier dangling from one hand and his other arm supporting Dinah, he got them both into the house and upstairs to Tamara’s old room, where Tamsen woke and demanded food. Dinah sat on the bed and unbuckled the baby.
“She’s wet.” Her voice sounded hollow.
“I’ll make some tea and heat a bottle.” He paused at the door. “Dinah.”
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