The pregnant server pushed the swinging door from the kitchen open with her hip. Steam rose from the beef, vegetables, and mashed potatoes on two platter-shaped plates. Neither Hunter nor Ashley spoke, save to thank their waitress, until she set their plates on the table, asked if they needed anything else, and returned to the back of the restaurant.
Hunter picked up his fork, though he doubted he would be able to eat. His thoughts swirled too fast for him to think of cutting and chewing food.
Across from him, Ashley spread her napkin on her lap, picked up her own fork, and tucked into the fare without hesitation. She had had time to absorb the news of his mother. He hadn’t. He had barely begun to believe that Virginia McDermott wasn’t his mother.
“So who”—he set his fork on his untouched plate—“has been calling me and claiming to be my mother?”
“I wondered when you’d ask that.” Ashley raised a forkful of tender-looking roast beef to her lips. She chewed with such obvious pleasure and disregard for a dribble of thick gravy on her lower lip, Hunter’s stomach growled in protest of his lack of eating.
He cut off a piece of the beef and made himself eat it. Despite the gravy, the meat tasted like nothing and felt dry. When a try of the mashed potatoes gave the same results, he knew he was at fault, not the food.
He set down his fork. “It’s a hoax. The whole thing is some kind of elaborate hoax. I don’t have a living mother. I don’t have a sister.”
“You think?” She didn’t say it in that sarcastic tone too common in modern speak; she sounded sincerely thoughtful.
“What else can it be? I show up on a lot of newscasts, and this woman calls to claim she’s my mother but can’t possibly be, and—”
“She could still be a relative who knows the truth of your birth.”
Hunter startled. “I hadn’t thought about that. She did call me Zachariah.” His ears grew warm, making him oddly conscious that he hadn’t had a haircut for over a month and must look like an overgrown poodle.
He reached for his tea glass and discovered it was empty beyond a few melting ice cubes, though he didn’t remember draining it.
Out of nowhere, the server appeared with a pitcher and refilled his glass.
“You don’t like the pot roast, sir?” Her blue eyes pinched at the corners. “I can bring you something else.”
“It’s fine.” He didn’t want to be interrupted with such mundane things as whether or not he liked his meal.
“It’s delicious, Mary Kate.” Ashley touched the woman’s arm. “Mr. McDermott just received some distressing news is all. Maybe you all can wrap it up for him with some extra gravy so it doesn’t dry out when he reheats it later.” A small foot planted itself on his toes with just enough pressure to give him a message but not hurt. “You do have a fridge and microwave in your room, don’t you, Mr. McDermott?”
“Hunter, please, and yes, I do. This will be great later.”
It probably would.
The server’s face relaxed into a lovely smile. “I’ll just do that then, but go ahead and see if you want to eat more first.” Pitcher balanced on one hip, she bustled over to another table to refill one glass before whisking back into the kitchen.
“I didn’t mean to upset her.” Hunter made another stab at his meat.
“Mary Kate needs every penny of tip money she can get. If someone doesn’t like his meal, he doesn’t tip.”
“Should she even be working in her condition?”
“No, but it’s not like she has paid sick days or vacation to take under the Family and Medical Leave Act.”
Hunter’s brow arched. “You know about the FMLA?”
“Mr. McDermott, I graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University with a bachelor’s degree in nursing, and I have a master’s degree in nurse-midwifery from Shenandoah University, not because I couldn’t get into Georgetown’s program in nurse-midwifery, but because my family needed me closer to home. In other words, I am highly educated, trained, and experienced. I also read at least a book a week, some of it nonfiction, and I read newspapers from DC and Atlanta. I am a midwife in the mountains, not a middle school dropout. Now, do you want my help or not, Mr. McDermott, Hunter, or should I call you Zachariah?”
The color was high in her cheeks, and the gold lights flashed in her eyes like Fourth of July sparklers. Tendrils of her glorious hair escaped from its braid seemed to stand on end. And Hunter thought he had never met a more beautiful woman. The bite of beef in his mouth tasted like the most succulent fillet he had ever been served.
He swallowed and held out his hand, palm up. “I seem to have a few misconceptions. Do, please, forgive me for my ignorance—in all the forms that word means.”
“Of course.” She laid her hand in his.
Her fingers were long and slender, her skin impossibly smooth, nails short and clean and without polish. Hunter enclosed those delicate fingers with his for a mere heartbeat—and something inside him squeezed.
Watch out, he warned himself. She might not be an uneducated medical charlatan, but she is a lifetime away from you.
He was merely feeling vulnerable, isolated from the family he had thought his for thirty-two years, and now bereft of a mother he had never known. Ashley Tolliver was tied up in all this, unwittingly, but a part of it now, if he let her be.
“What can you do to help?” he made himself ask instead of accepting her offer straight off.
“Don’t you think you should try to find this woman claiming to be your mother and see what she’s after?” Her plate empty, she reached for a dessert card stuck behind the napkin holder.
“Not if it’s some kind of scam.”
“It’s not like she is going to kidnap you or something.” She tapped the dessert card. “They have great pie here. I can never decide between the Dutch apple and the coconut cream.”
Hunter stared at her. “I thought women didn’t eat things like red meat and potatoes and pie, especially not pie.”
“I lug fifty pounds of equipment up and down these hills, lift women who are nine months pregnant and gained all the weight they should and then some, and walk at least three miles a day in these mountains because I like it. I can afford a slice of pie now and then.” She raised a hand, and the server trotted from the kitchen. “Which is better tonight, Mary Kate?”
“The apple this time of year.” Mary Kate beamed at Hunter. “I see you found your appetite after all. Do you want pie too?”
“Of course he does, and coffee.” Ashley flashed him a sweet smile, and the pressure landed on his toe again.
He didn’t deny her claim until the server returned to the kitchen. “Coffee at seven o’clock at night?”
“Do you want to sit here and talk or not?”
“I guess I do.” Half laughing, he leaned back against the booth’s padding.
They were the only couple left in the restaurant now. Beyond the windows, rain fell in streaks turned red from the diner’s sign out front and silver from the parking lot lights. Headlights flashed by on the highway, but no one turned in. Hunter understood. Ashley was increasing the bill so the server could get a better tip. Not that the bill was all that much. Less than fifteen dollars apiece, he’d bet.
“So what are we going to talk about?” He glanced at the windows again, where a vehicle had just turned into the parking lot. “We can’t go wandering around the mountains if this weather persists.”
“It won’t. Maybe another day or two, and then we can go look for this woman.” She waited while Mary Kate served them their pie and coffee, then crossed the room to welcome the newcomers, three men in boots, jeans, and heavy wool coats. Then Ashley leaned forward far enough for her braid to slide over her shoulder and toward her coffee mug.
Hunter caught hold of the end before it slid into the hot liquid. For the moment he held the fanned ends, he registered that her hair was as silky as it looked, and an unreasonable temptation to tug the band down and free the layers of gold and caramel, mapl
e and honey and, yes, a hint of copper, burned through him.
He released the braid and tucked his hand beneath the table as though he were ashamed of his action.
She flipped her hair behind her shoulder and began to stir cream into her coffee. “Thanks. I’m forever getting it in my food. One day I’ll just cut it off.”
He wanted to protest against such an act of sabotage, but thought that too much like flirting, so addressed adding cream to his own coffee, though he usually drank it black, and took a bite of pie. Not as good as Mom’s—as Virginia McDermott’s—but delicious just the same.
“So where do we start?” he asked beneath the raucous dialogue of the men across the room.
“Tell me about Zachariah. How did a man from northern Virginia get such a biblical name?”
“I always wondered that myself. I didn’t get called that at home. They called me Hunter. But when I started elementary school, the teachers called me what was on my records as my legal name. It took about three years for my parents—the people I thought were my parents—” He stumbled to a halt.
“Call them your parents. They raised you.”
“They lied to me.”
“Well, there is that, but they surely loved you and cared for you.”
“They did. I had everything I needed and most of what I wanted.” Tenderness toward the McDermotts softened his heart, yet the pain of betrayal remained, an acute jab to keep the wound festering with anger. “They lied to me.” He repeated the claim through a tight throat.
Ashley’s eyes clouded, and she reached out a hand to brush a light touch across his. “That has to hurt. I can’t even begin to imagine how that must feel. But they are your parents, so let’s keep this simple for now, okay?”
“Okay.” Hunter managed a smile. Somehow, her blend of sympathy and practicality helped ease his hurt.
“Good. Now then, your parents got the teachers to call you Hunter? Didn’t you wonder why you were called Zachariah if your parents wanted you called Hunter?”
“I did when I got a little older, but they said it was a family name and they decided it didn’t suit me.” His mouth twisted. “Another lie.”
“Not exactly. It is a family name—a Brooks family name. I doubt there have been fewer than two hundred Zachariah Brookses born over the past two hundred years.”
“Two hundred? Now how would you know a thing like that?”
“We are proud of our heritage. Brookses, Tollivers, Gosnolls. We’ve all been in these hills for the past two hundred years and then some.”
“I didn’t think this part of the state was settled back then. Weren’t there Native American attacks still?”
“I’ll show you the old stockade walls everyone lived behind. The old house got burned by renegades during the War Between the States, but some of the stockade survived.”
Hunter could only gaze at her in wonder. She knew these kinds of details about her family heritage, about popular names and how a house had burned during the Civil War, about stockades to protect against attacks by the native, displaced peoples, and how many babies her grandmother had delivered. And he knew nearly nothing about the backgrounds of the people whom he believed to be his family. As far as he knew, the McDermott side at least didn’t have much knowledge of their past. How fine to belong to something larger than oneself, a whole world of cousins and aunts and uncles and ancestors.
Then it struck him—he did belong.
He gripped the edge of the table like an anchor to hold him in this moment. “So do you think I really am a Brooks?”
“Do you doubt it?”
“Well, that woman on the phone has to be lying.”
“She does, but that doesn’t mean nothing else is true. My grandmother’s records are meticulous. Your own parents confirm your adoption. Why wouldn’t it all be true?”
“Because I want it to be? Because I don’t want it to be?”
“You’re going to have to figure that out for yourself.” She forked up the last bite of pie on her plate and popped it into her mouth.
Hunter did the same, and they chewed in silence, drowned in the half-drunken voices of the men across the room consuming coffee and enormous burgers with equal gusto. He listened to them for a full two minutes before realizing he couldn’t understand a word they said.
He looked at Ashley. “Can you understand them?”
“Of course.”
“It’s English?”
Her entire body stiffened. “Of course it is. In fact, some linguists think it’s nearly Elizabethan English.”
He thought of saying something teasing about her own accent, but noting her stiffness across from him, he changed his response to, “No wonder Shakespeare was so hard to learn.”
Ashley visibly relaxed, and he realized she must have expected derogatory remarks about the local accent. How she must have been teased or looked down on in DC, that prestige-mad town. He was glad he hadn’t poked fun at her pronunciations, even if his doing so seemed harmless to him.
Then she smiled at him, and he wasn’t sure he could think, let alone remember where the conversation should lead next.
He feared he was a little smitten.
She pulled up her sleeve in a businesslike fashion and checked her watch, one with a plain leather band and large face complete with a sweeping second hand. “I should go. Do you still want to try to hunt this caller down?”
Knocked back to reality and the purpose of this dinner, Hunter glanced at the rain beyond the windows, at the other diners, at the crumbs of pastry on his plate. Finally he settled his gaze on Ashley and knew the only reason to say yes now was to see her again, an intriguing but useless proposition. They lived hundreds of miles apart, even when he was home, which wasn’t often. He couldn’t begin to find time to get to know her better. The woman behind the phone calls was a fraud. His biological mother was dead. He thought he should mourn her, yet he hadn’t even known her. He mourned the lack of truthfulness in his life.
With great reluctance because doing so meant he would never see Ashley Tolliver again, he shook his head. “Not now. There’s no one to find.”
CHAPTER 11
ALTHOUGH THE IDEA of someone cutting her phone line brought her moments of uncontrollable chills from time to time, the next week passed in soggy peace for Ashley. Peace, if one discounted that she kept too many lights on throughout the night, obsessed over locked doors and windows, and never went anywhere without her cell phone close at hand.
Rain continued to fall, though not hard, which was fortunate for her multiple home visits on the Ridge and in the valley. She’d gotten adept at getting herself out of the mud and avoided any disasters, both personal and professional. November looked like it was going to continue to be a peaceful month, just getting her prepared for December when she had five patients with due dates. Managing those without a birthing assistant like Sofie was going to prove a challenge.
She had heard little from Sofie. Texts and calls and even a few e-mails went unanswered with two exceptions, one when she landed in Brownsville, and the other the day before when she responded, THINGS NOT GOOD. NOT SURE WHEN BACK.
Ashley needed to find another person to help with assisting births, someone she liked and trusted. She had a list of willing nurses who liked to take an occasional assistant or private job. Stephanie had already hired one of them to be with her during and after the birth of her child. Few of Ashley’s patients could afford such a luxury. Mostly Ashley paid for help herself in situations where she needed someone to corral unruly children and, too often, dogs wanting to be a part of the birthing process.
Anyone the patient approved of could stay in the birthing chamber, but Ashley insisted they maintain a semblance of order and listen to her when she told them to do or not do something. The mother’s and baby’s lives could depend on a child not tumbling into the oxygen machine or breaking the fetal monitor. Both had happened—more than once.
With that in mind, she finally managed a couple of
hours on a day when Heather wasn’t in Dr. White’s clinic so they could meet for lunch. They took separate cars in the event one of them had to leave in a hurry and drove north to Christiansburg. In Brooksburg, they too often got interrupted by former patients or those hoping to be patients, so the seventy-mile drive was worth the effort. As she sped past the motel on the highway, Ashley looked, as she had for the past week, to see if a white Mercedes SUV graced the parking lot. She wasn’t surprised to see it was no longer there. She hadn’t heard from Hunter McDermott and expected he had gone home.
She wasn’t surprised. She had delivered him quite a blow on top of the information his adoptive parents had slapped him with. She hoped he had gone home to make peace with those who had raised him and presumably loved him. If he changed his mind and decided to look up the woman who had been calling him, he knew where to find Ashley. Too big a part of her wished he would. The sensible part of her, that pointed out how she didn’t have time for getting to know him or any man better, said his staying away was just as well. And yet . . .
Refusing to be disappointed, she merged into the traffic on I-81 and drove north to U.S. Route 460. Sunshine replaced the clouds halfway there, and she opened her window a few inches, allowing the wind to ruffle her loose hair. For one day in a month, other than Sunday mornings long enough for church, she wore a dress and heels. Her medical equipment was packed into the back of her SUV, but her handbag was a precious designer one her eldest brother and his wife had given her for Christmas the previous year.
“Don’t forget you’re female,” Jen, her sister-in-law, had said.
“I am all about being a woman,” Ashley responded. “Women taking care of women.”
“But a feminine woman,” Jen persisted. “You are too dedicated to your work.”
Ashley hadn’t argued that she wasn’t so dedicated she intended to stay. As soon as she had her replacement, she would go to med school, but not to leave the mountains behind. She would serve them better, treat the women better.
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