We had ourselves some good times until he gave me a baby.
She never mentioned how she felt about it. She simply said she was going home so her momma could take care of her.
He promises to make things right.
His wife couldn’t have more children but wanted another baby. He would adopt hers with his wife, and she would have enough money to live the rest of her life.
At that section, Hunter glanced around the barely adequate living conditions and wondered if the money had been what was promised or what had happened to it.
Beside him, Ashley turned the page, then rested her hand on his arm. She trembled, and a tear splashed onto the page.
Until that moment, he felt as though he were reading a story about strangers. Ashley’s silent tears reminded him that he was reading about the woman who claimed to be his mother, a woman who was more than likely related to him somewhere on his family tree.
His own throat closed and his eyes burned. He swallowed, blinked, and kept reading.
Sheila went home. I’m safe from Daddy beating me. He won’t harm the baby cause it means money.
But her daddy said he would get more money than Mr. M. offered. He would make him pay more if he wanted the baby, if he wanted Sheila to sign over her rights.
But Mr. M. just might walk away if Daddy gets too greedy.
Mr. M. Mr. M.
Hunter glanced toward Sheila Brooks. She slumped in the chair still, but he couldn’t tell if she continued to sleep. His throat clogged with questions he wanted to shout at her. His brain spun with a hundred denials he wanted to bellow to the hills until they came true. He swallowed them like tears and made himself continue to read how Sheila and her momma and Ashley’s grandmother planned to convince her daddy he couldn’t get a thing for the baby.
If I’m dead, then Mr. M. is the baby’s only parent and Daddy ain’t got no way to hold on to him.
That lawyer is right smart.
And could have been disbarred for such a deception. Ashley’s grandmother could have lost her certification. But lawyer, midwife, and Momma Brooks all swore Sheila died, hemorrhaging too quickly to get to any hospital. Sheila’s daddy found out. The truth couldn’t be hidden from him when nobody showed up, but by that time, the baby was legally signed over to the McDermotts and Sheila had taken the money and run.
I’ll come back from this flat land when everybody guilty is dead. And one day I’ll give this book to my son.
Her son. He was her son. Her son and Mr. M.’s.
Hands shaking and eyes blurry, Hunter flipped over the last page. The back of the notebook was stuffed with newspaper clippings taped to the pages, mostly articles in which he or one of the other McDermotts was mentioned, with the exception of four obituaries—a local attorney, husband and wife with the surname of Brooks, and Deborah Tolliver, a local midwife—all the information he needed to know that the McDermotts had lied to him twice, once when they led him through a lifetime of believing that Virginia McDermott was his mother, and second when they led him to believe that Richard McDermott was not his father.
CHAPTER 23
ASHLEY HAD BEEN so focused on the deception Gramma had perpetrated she didn’t make the connection between Mr. M. in the notebook and Hunter’s last name until he closed the notebook with shaking hands and she glanced up to see his face stark and white and that of someone about to go into shock. She reached out to him. “Hunter.”
He rose and strode across the room to stand beside Sheila Brooks’s chair, one hand on the back. With the other, he tugged off his glasses and folded the stems between his fingers. An iciness in his eyes suddenly softened, and he crouched beside her. “When did you come back?”
“Three years ago when I got sick.”
Sheila glanced at Ashley. “I got the breast cancer, but it’s spread. Got it everywhere.”
“Treatment?” Hunter asked.
Sheila gave out a harsh laugh. “Tried that. Didn’t do no good. Just made me sick.”
“There are good hospitals near me—”
“Don’t be a fool, son.” She rested her hand on his shoulder, her gaze gentle, something Ashley would call loving in other circumstances—or maybe giving up Hunter was the most loving sacrifice she could make.
Briefly Ashley remembered Mary Kate talking about giving up her children for adoption to give them a better life. A sacrifice of love.
“Treatment won’t do no good up north either,” Sheila said. “Doc says I’m going to go soon.”
“But—” Hunter blinked several times and returned his glasses to his nose. “Is that why—” He cleared his throat. “Is that why you finally contacted me?”
“Nope. You’d have done fine enough never knowing about me.” Sheila rested her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes as though speaking took up too much energy. “I didn’t have nobody—” She sighed. “Anybody else to ask. So when I saw you on the television saving that stranger, I figured you’d be all right helping your own kin.”
“My own, um, relatives? You mean I really do have a sister?” The tenderness with which he spoke to his mother brought tears to Ashley’s eyes.
She perched on the arm of the sofa, feeling like an intruder, tempted to leave them alone together, yet needing to stay in the event she could do something to help.
“You have a sister.” Sheila dashed the back of her hand across her eyes. “My little Racey Jean. She’s got herself into trouble and now she’s gone. I haven’t seen her in months. She ran off with that no-good boyfriend of hers and Jeremiah went after her.” She sniffled. “And now the baby’s been born by now, and I won’t get a chance to see any grandbabies before I go.”
Seventeen. Baby born by now. No-good boyfriend.
The words raced around Ashley’s head like rats lost in a maze. Repeating. Repeating. Repeating. Echoing behind them was the sensible No way. No way.
“Mrs. Brooks—Mrs.—” Ashley leaned toward the woman, toward Hunter’s mother. “What does Racey Jean look like?”
“Oh, she’s a pretty girl. Brooks through and through like I was.” Sheila’s tired, worn face brightened. “Light-blond hair halfway to her knees and eyes as blue as Zachariah’s.”
Heart thudding painfully hard in her chest, Ashley stood, trying to catch her breath. “Was she due a month ago? Did her boyfriend maybe beat her? Could she—”
“Ashley.” Hunter’s sharp bark of her name stopped her spate of questions. “What’s going on?”
But Sheila was on her feet, stumbling toward Ashley. “You’re the midwife. Did she come to you for help?”
“I think maybe she did. A man brought her.” Ashley caught Sheila by the shoulders to steady her. She was all fragile bones covered in skin. Too frail to last long. The effort of standing made her tremble.
“Did he kinda look like a black bear, all hairy and rough?” Sheila demanded.
“Perhaps you should sit down.” Hunter moved up behind Sheila and touched her arm.
She shook him off and focused on Ashley. “Was he?”
“No, he was big, but he had red hair and pale eyes.” She looked at Hunter over Sheila’s head.
Understanding dawned and his lips parted. His fists clenched.
Sheila pressed her hands to her lips. “Jeremiah. I’ll kill that boy. I swear I’ll kill him if he took her away.” Her strength gave out and she swayed back against Hunter.
He half led, half carried her to her chair and tenderly wrapped her in the afghan. “Can I get you some water?”
“No, nothing.” She waved him away. “Unless it’s that useless son of mine.”
Ashley returned to the arm of the sofa. “He took the girl away from me after the baby was born. I was worried about it all, so I called the sheriff. They found the baby at the hospital. She’s in custody of the state now, but they haven’t seen hide nor hair of the mother.”
“Jeremiah.” Sheila pounded her fists against the padded arms of her chair. “He didn’t have no call to be ta
king her away like that and abandoning my grandchild.”
“Where does he live?” Hunter asked.
Sheila snorted. “He’s supposed to live here. But he ain’t never around. He used to come by to give me firewood and food and take me into town to the doctor. But the clinic sent a van to fetch me last time after I missed an appointment.”
She glanced up to Hunter. “That’s how I managed to call you. I sneaked into the doctor’s office when I was waiting and called the information for your number. But your machine cut me off the first time and the doctor was coming the next, so I had to go fast.”
“You have no way to call anyone?” Hunter sounded as appalled as Ashley was.
She knew people still lived in primitive—by modern standards—conditions in the hills and hollers around Brooks Ridge, but the notion of no telephone or cell service shocked even her.
“The cell phones don’t work out here and no phone lines come down this way. But we got electricity and running water. And Jeremiah was better about coming home than he is now.”
“Does he have a phone?” Hunter asked. “We could call when we get a cell signal.”
“I don’t know the number.” Sheila fixed her shadowed eyes on Ashley. “Can you get my grandbaby to me?”
“We might be able to.” Ashley ran through all the protocols of getting information she could think of. “What of Racey Jean’s can you give us? I mean, her social security number? Her date of birth? All these kinds of things will help us find her. What about a picture?”
Sheila pointed to a shelf above the TV. “It’s all up there. I can’t reach it now.”
Ashley couldn’t either, so Hunter fetched down a photo album and an ancient Bible. For several minutes, he stood gazing down at the Bible as though he had just discovered gold. Perhaps to him he had. An entire family history lay within those pages. Births and deaths of his ancestors for generations back.
Ashley recognized it. The Tollivers had one nearly identical to this one. She took it from him and flipped to the back. Racey Jean Davis. She copied the information onto paper Sheila directed her to in the drawer of a side table.
“I’ll get this to my friend at the sheriff’s office.” As an afterthought, she wrote down Jeremiah Forest Davis’s information as well.
Hunter looked over her shoulder the whole time, his hand touching her hair, his breath rasping in his throat.
“I’m in here.” He spoke in a croak.
“Of course you are.” Sheila’s voice was gentle. “You’re a Brooks.”
He was also a McDermott.
And Sheila’s death was recorded.
Ashley’s stomach rolled at the thought of what her grandmother had done, protecting Sheila and the baby from Sheila’s abusive father, but breaking the law nonetheless.
She could only try to undo any damage the deception had caused.
She held up the photo album. “May I take a picture out of here?”
“If it’ll help you find my Racey Jean, you can take the whole thing.” But she reached out her hand. “Can I see it first?”
“I’ll only take one picture and leave the rest with you.” Ashley removed a photo that looked like a school picture a year or two old. Racey Jean had a shy, sweet smile that went straight to the heart, rather like Hunter’s, and her face would have done well for makeup modeling it was so smooth and perfect in the delicate bone structure. She didn’t need makeup, though she wore a little too much in the picture.
“What else do you need?” Ashley glanced around, seeking something else, another clue.
“I’ll bring some wood closer to the door for you.” Hunter crossed to the front door and turned the knob. A blast of cold air nearly snatched it from his hand. He forced it shut and shook his head. “On second thought, I think you should come with us. The weather is getting bad out there.” He looked at Ashley. “I didn’t see anything about snow in the forecast, but I think I saw some flakes out there.”
“We’re on the far side of the Ridge. The sun might still be shining on my side.” She set the photo album beside Sheila’s chair, taking a look at the pills when she did so. A generic narcotic. Sheila must be in terrible pain, but she was hiding it. Gramma had been the same way.
“I have lots of room at my house,” Ashley said. “You are welcome to come. You’d have a TV and a telephone and heat.”
“And I’m only a few miles away at the motel.” Hunter strode to the stove, where the fire was beginning to lose its warmth, needing either more logs or to be put out altogether. “We can get you good care.”
Sheila was shaking her head the whole time Ashley and Hunter laid out their plans. “I want to stay here. Racey Jean won’t know where to find me.”
“We can leave a note.” Ashley picked up the pencil and pad of paper she had used for writing down Racey Jean’s information.
“I could get you a room at the motel,” Hunter suggested. “You’d be more on your own then, if you’d prefer.”
So he had figured that out about her, about most of the local people, already. Ashley’s heart leaned toward him. How she cared about him. How she cared for him.
“Or we can send out nurses,” Ashley suggested. “I know several . . .”
Sheila was shaking her head again. “I’m tired. I’m just tired.” She levered herself to her feet and began a shuffling gait to the trailer section door. “I need to sleep.”
Ashley and Hunter both reached out their hands to her, offering help. She waved them off, still wrapped in her afghan.
“Leave that woodpile by the door, Zachariah.” The screen door slammed behind her.
“I can’t leave her.” Hunter glanced around the bleak room, the dying fire, the trees lashing in the wind. “She has nothing.”
“I can’t stay. I have patients to see in the morning, a couple close to their due dates. And there’s no food here. She needs food. Canned soup if nothing else.” Ashley fingered the paper in her pocket. “And I need to talk to Jase.”
“I could go back with you and pick up my SUV and get groceries, then return.” He looked at the glowering sky again. “If I can get back.”
“Do you want to maybe arrange for some care for her here? I mean—” Ashley drew her braid over her shoulder and toyed with the end. “I’m thinking she might need to be in hospice care.”
“Hospice?” Hunter jerked back as though she had hit him. “She’s not that close to the end, is she?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think maybe she is.” She reached out to him, rested her hands on his chest. “I’m sorry. You just learned about her. You just found her. And I could be wrong. I’m not a doctor, after all.”
Odd how she didn’t feel her usual bitterness when speaking that disclaimer.
Hunter covered her hands with his, pressing them against his sternum hard enough for her to feel his heart beating strong and firm, a little too fast. “You’re probably right. I just don’t want you to be. I want to know more about her, about her life. She made a lot of bad choices, and yet there’s a strength in her, and I can’t help but think she loved me.”
“Of course she did.”
How could she not love him?
Ashley didn’t even want to think about where that thought came from.
She drew her hands free. “We’d better get going. Do you want to leave a note?”
He nodded and scrawled a message on the tablet, then left it on the side table. While Ashley picked up their untouched teacups and returned them to the kitchen, Hunter banked the fire and carried a number of logs to stack beside the stoop. The dogs had stopped barking. Either they were used to the intruders or someone had taken them inside.
Which was odd. Once they were in the Tahoe and on their way, Ashley mentioned that to Hunter. “Someone is looking after those dogs, and if they’re Jeremiah’s and he hasn’t been around, who is?”
“Perhaps this boyfriend. Perhaps my half brother is around enough.” He speared his fingers through his hair. “My half brother. A gra
ndfather who abused my mother. Half siblings who are involved with who-knows-what, but probably something illegal. What am I supposed to think about being related to people like that?”
“My sainted gramma falsified official documents. The thought—” She swallowed.
“I didn’t grow up with people who break the law.”
“You think I did? I mean, I did, but I didn’t know. She was never caught and it was for a good—” The more she defended her grandmother, the more annoyed Ashley grew. She glared at Hunter across the dark cabin of the Tahoe. “Like lobbyists never break the law? I might be a dumb mountain hick, but I see the news and know better.”
“My parents haven’t.”
“That you know of. They just lied to you all your life and even after you found them out.” Her throat closed and her eyes blurred. She blinked hard to clear them for the sake of driving safely, as the road didn’t have any place to pull over for miles.
“Where do you get off being so self-righteous? Your money and being from the City on the Hill makes you better than us down here, including your own kin?”
“Ashley, I never meant—”
“What did you mean?”
Hunter didn’t answer. He removed his phone from the glove compartment. It pinged and buzzed, indicating that texts and voice-mail notifications were getting through.
“I’m going to see what I can do about getting her someone to stay there. My siblings are apparently unreliable, and I can only do so much. I have work waiting for me in DC.”
“And a family there too.” Ashley seized the opening to redirect the conversation away from her tirade, since apparently Hunter didn’t want to discuss the subject of family criminals any longer.
Hunter focused on his phone. “Yes, a family there too.” His thumbs flew over the screen. He held the instrument to his ear for a moment, then texted some more before laying the phone in a cup holder. “That will take some more getting used to, Michael and Sarah being my brother and sister too. And Dad . . . I don’t know what to do about that. Confront him? Ask for proof that Sheila Brooks Davis is telling the truth? What?” The last word held desperation.
The Mountain Midwife Page 23
