“Remember Maegan?” Daniel ran a hand through his dark hair as he leaned back in his chair. “She had that toy dishpan of hers, no bigger than a cereal bowl, and she’d say that she was done helping when she finished the beans in her pan.” His eyes twinkled.
“What I remember is how your dad sent you and Andrew and Rob out to pick butter beans while I was supervising the shelling, and you scamps filled buckets half-full with my empty hulls to get out of picking, because your dad had rashly said you could go swimming after you’d each picked a bucket.”
“Oh! Don’t remind me! Worst trouble I ever got into. That was one of the few times Dad tore up my tail—I didn’t think I was going to be able to sit down for a week.” Daniel looked over at Marissa. “Hey, ’Rissa, if you’re not going to help your mother out, how about you swap places with me?”
“No problem. I’ve shelled two pans already today, and I don’t even like butter beans—well, unless Ma cooks them.” Marissa surrendered her seat to Daniel.
Kimberly cursed her pulse as it kicked up a fuss at Daniel’s proximity. His big hands nearly touched hers as they reached into the dishpan for a bean to shell.
He spotted the baseball card where Ma had laid it on the table. “Man, that old thing. Look at all that hair. Ma, I’ll bet you were itching to get the shears after me when I sent you that card in the mail.”
“I was itching to have you close enough that I could get the shears after you—back then you were going from pillar to post.” She must have thought about how he might interpret her words and her face softened. “But I knew you were doing what you wanted, Daniel. You really loved baseball.”
Something—pain? Irritation? Whatever the emotion was, it flickered across Daniel’s face so quickly that Kimberly couldn’t decipher it. In its place was his usual cool, collected demeanor. “A boy’s game. Only think, I’d be nursing a blown-out shoulder and boring y’all with tales of my twenty seconds in the big leagues if I’d stayed.”
Marissa’s eyes rounded. She picked up the card. “Wow! You were a professional baseball player?”
“It’s not as glamorous as it sounds,” he said. The empty hull in his hand hit the bucket with a little too much force and bounced back out. “Besides, I was just good enough to make the minors. I didn’t really have what it took to make a career in the majors.”
Ma’s mouth compressed, and she appeared on the brink of disagreeing. Kimberly watched the struggle on her face, but in the end, she said nothing.
“So they fired you?” Marissa asked, with all the graceless tact of a soon-to-be twelve-year-old. Kimberly shot her a warning glance that Marissa didn’t even seem to notice.
He shook his head. “No...my dad died. And, well...”
“You came home to be fire chief like him,” she suggested.
“It didn’t happen quite that fast. I came home to—” Daniel met Kimberly’s eyes over the shared dishpan “—keep a promise.”
She shivered. To have a man who was that serious about keeping his promises...
Sometimes that would be heaven. After a lifetime of her mom never keeping her word, and her dad never being around to even try, Kimberly would love to have someone she could count on, especially to help raise Marissa.
But if Daniel could give up a chance at major league baseball to keep one of the promises he’d made, then Kimberly didn’t have a prayer of convincing him to break the promise he’d made to Marissa’s birth mom.
* * *
DANIEL FIDGETED IN the anteroom outside the county commission’s board office. The door was closed, and the small dusty room where he sat on the lone hard bench was deserted.
He glanced at his watch, checked his phone for messages. Nothing. His radio hadn’t squawked, either.
The quiet unsettled him.
For days now, the only calls the fire department had been getting were minor ones—a barbecue grill forgotten and aflame, a few grass fires on the interstate’s median because it was still so dry, a kitchen grease fire that the wife had put out with her home fire extinguisher by the time her rattled husband, who’d caused the fire to begin with, had hung up with 911. Shoot, the department had even rescued a literal cat from a literal tree.
Call Daniel superstitious, but a lull never boded well. For one thing, it made the entire crew anxious and antsy. He’d kept them busy with cleaning and scrubbing and even some painting—the fire station had never looked so good. They’d had plenty of time to cook the produce Ma had been sending, plus exercise as a group.
Still, they were keyed up, and Daniel knew why. So many times such quiet was an omen of a big, deadly fire. It took him back to the tales they told of the fire that had taken his dad’s life: a quiet, restless early summer that exploded with a raging warehouse fire.
He shook himself and stared at the closed meeting-room door, willing it to open. All he had to do was give a five-minute presentation on the current state of the department’s budget, and then he was free to get back to his real job. He wanted to fight fires, not wrangle with the county commissioners.
The door did not open. For the dozenth time, Daniel stared down at the papers in his hand. This time, he couldn’t concentrate on the words and figures. Instead, he found his mind wandering back to the day before, the conversation with Marissa.
Maybe he could call Miriam—if he could track her down. She’d been pretty determined to leave her family and its twisted version of Amish faith behind, so there was a chance she’d embraced technology and the modern way of life and the internet would turn her up.
Then again, she’d been equally determined to hide from Uriel Hostetler, the so-called religious leader and Marissa’s birth grandfather. Old Uriel had wanted different things for his son, things that didn’t include an unwanted pregnancy, especially with a girl who didn’t fit into Uriel’s plans for his boy. Uriel had been grooming his son to take his place. Those plans had been put in jeopardy by the baby—what congregation would follow a boy with such a grievous sin in his past?
Miriam had been certain that he would kill her and the baby to hide his son’s moral lapse.
And after Daniel had met the man—and his weak-willed son—he could see why Miriam was afraid. She had no one to protect her, not even her own parents, who were so cowed by Hostetler.
Surely, though, there was a middle ground. Maybe Miriam could write out her medical history, give Kimberly just the facts she needed to keep Marissa safe.
Would it be enough, though? Or would Kimberly pick at that frayed edge of secrecy until she’d unraveled the whole story? That seemed more in keeping with her tenacious nature. She’d never let it alone.
A hinge squeaked, and Daniel’s eyes shot to the meeting-room door—but no, it had been the connecting door to the courthouse’s central hall. In walked the stooped figure of none other than Judge Stanley Malloy.
“Daniel, my boy! You’re the fellow I was looking for.”
Daniel’s mouth went dry. What did the judge want with him? Did it have anything to do with Kimberly’s request for medical records?
“What can I do for you?” Daniel asked. He scooted over and made space on the bench for the judge, who thumped across the room with a walking stick for added stability.
The thin old man, in a brown suit and tie and cream shirt, resembled a heap of dried fall leaves that could be blown away with a stiff gust of wind. He had to be in his early eighties, but despite the cane, he seemed as spry and sharp as ever, with no date for a retirement in sight.
Now he settled beside Daniel, mopping his pink pate with an actual linen handkerchief. “Whew! It’s hot out there, and none too cool in here. Trying to save money, I guess.”
“Are you waiting on the commissioners, too? They’ve been in an executive session for the past half hour—swore it would only take five minutes and for me to wait.” Daniel heard his tone slide into the slightest edge of grumbling territory.
“No, no. I called over to the fire department to ask you to come by, and they sa
id you were here in the courthouse at the county meeting. I was hoping to catch you before you left.” The judge planted his walking stick between his shiny brown oxfords and clasped the gleaming clear glass ball on top with both of his gnarled hands.
Daniel shifted on his end of the bench. “Here I am,” he said. “A captive audience, at least until that door opens.”
“I suspect we’ll have more than enough time, from the sound of their raised voices,” the judge told him wryly. “It’s about that child.”
Daniel’s stomach knotted even more tightly. “Child?”
“The girl you delivered, what, eleven years ago? Nearly twelve now. It was on the Fourth of July, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Funny, it doesn’t seem as though it’s been that long. I guess the hospital asked you to take a look at it?”
Judge Malloy winked. “Pauline did, and brought the request to my office herself, along with one of her apple pies. It was, if I do say so myself, one of her better ones. This time she went all out and used fresh apples. She doesn’t think I can tell the difference, but I can.”
Daniel couldn’t help but chuckle, though he did so with a sinking heart. Pauline’s apple pie and a case involving a kid? Malloy had probably already signed the order and was just talking to him as a courtesy.
Now the judge’s eyes dimmed. “I remember that Fourth of July. I was out by the pool—it was one of Margery’s last summers. I didn’t have her with me too much longer. Cancer. A terrible thief.” He shook his head and returned to his narrative. “She came to me and said you were at the door. I had no clue what you wanted.”
“I sure appreciated your help that day, Judge. The hospital—the hospital was all set to turn her and the baby over to Uriel Hostetler... Well, her parents, but—”
The judge nodded. “Yes, if they’d released her to her parents, it was the same as putting her in Hostetler’s not-so-tender hands. That man. If he’d been here a little longer, I believe I would have had the pleasure of putting him behind bars, where he deserved to be. No, Daniel, I was glad to do my part to help that girl, and luckily you were right. The law was on her side.”
“So are you going to do it? Release those medical records?”
Judge Malloy didn’t seem in any hurry to answer the question. He pursed his lips, drew his brows together. His fingers smoothed over the glass knob on the walking stick again.
Watching him, Daniel had a fanciful wish that the clear globe would be a crystal ball, where the answers to his dilemma would magically appear.
“Daniel, I’ve reviewed Marissa’s records, and I believe they can be released without revealing Miriam’s identity. There’s nothing in them that leads back to her. I’ve read them very closely. Frankly, I’m surprised that Ms. Singleton doesn’t already have a copy—surely this hospital forwarded the case file up to the hospital in Atlanta when they airlifted the baby.”
A whoosh of relief rushed through Daniel. Kimberly could have the records and Miriam would still be safe.
“That’s great, sir! I know Kimberly will—”
The judge cleared his throat, an awful phlegmy sound that he followed with an apologetic glance in Daniel’s direction. “Ahem, allergies. All this Bahia grass. No, as I was saying, the records don’t reveal Miriam’s name. They don’t reveal very much at all, in fact. Maybe it was because it was a holiday. Maybe it was the ER doctor on duty. Whatever the reason, those records are extremely...scant.”
“Oh. So...”
“Ms. Singleton won’t find many answers in them, Daniel. She’s going to follow up with a petition to have the birth mother’s records opened up, I would bet you anything. It’s what I would do, and she seems, from the conversation I had with her on the phone, like a very intelligent, tenacious young woman.”
Daniel closed his eyes and sank back against the bench’s unforgiving back. The judge was accurate in his assessment of Kimberly. “Sir...”
“Perhaps this is, hmm...unconventional, a judge talking with someone in an unofficial capacity about a case before him. But this particular request—to release Miriam’s records—hasn’t come before me yet, and you were the one who had the strongest connection with Miriam.” Judge Malloy fixed Daniel with a piercing stare.
“You want me to... What, sir?” Daniel couldn’t contain his agitation any longer. He leaped up from the bench and started pacing.
“I’m considering this in my mind. It’s been many, many years, so has the threat to Miriam’s life been reduced? Is Uriel Hostetler even still alive? What harm would occur if I were to release those medical records?”
“But doesn’t the patient privacy law...” Daniel trailed off. “And the safe-haven law, too? Isn’t she protected based on those two laws?”
“Ahem.” The judge rubbed his mouth in thought. “It’s a gray area indeed, with no real precedent on the state level. The law concerning patient privacy does have some flexibility built into it for just these situations, on a sort of need-to-know basis if it involves a life-or-death matter. The safe-haven law... Well, I expect that any decision of mine to release the birth mother’s records could well end up before the state’s supreme court for a decision, if the hospital chose to fight it—or the birth mother.”
Daniel wondered if perhaps that was the judge’s biggest concern, that one of his last cases could be dragged out and eventually overturned on appeal, as he was nearing what had to be the end of his career.
Then Judge Malloy shrugged his shoulders. “That’s well and good—the appeals process can do what it wants. That’s what they’re there for. But I have to decide the question to begin with. Daniel—you remember this girl. And you know the Singleton woman’s situation. Is she...exaggerating her adopted daughter’s illness?”
“Exaggerating?” Daniel froze midpace. Here was his out. If he told the judge that Kimberly was a drama queen, someone who was simply chasing a diagnosis, he had no doubt that Judge Malloy would deny Kimberly and that would be that.
All he needed to say was that Kimberly was so overprotective that the kid had never been allowed to climb a rope ladder. Boom. Case closed.
He couldn’t do that, though. Kimberly had her reasons for being so cautious. He needed to tell the truth—and yet still convince the judge to continue to protect Miriam.
“Well?” the judge prompted.
“Kimberly is a very protective sort,” Daniel allowed. “But I think she’s got reason to be. Of course, I haven’t talked to any doctors, but Marissa herself has told me about how puzzled her doctors are.”
“Hmm. And your judgment of Ms. Singleton? Is she astute? Does she seem to be the overreactive type? Or can she, say, read the body language fairly well of a doctor? Understand what a person is trying to tell her?”
For some reason, the first thing that came to Daniel’s mind was how he had almost given Kimberly a peck on the cheek the day before when he’d walked in the kitchen. He hadn’t thought about it—it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to bend down and brush her cheek, flushed with the warmth of supper cooking on the stove.
And Kimberly had realized he’d been about to do it—which made it even more mortifying.
“She’s—she’s very astute,” Daniel got out. “And she doesn’t miss much at all. But, sir...isn’t there some way that Miriam can be protected?”
“Oh, now.” The judge rose from his seat, his knees creaking so loudly that Daniel could hear them. “I can only answer the legal niceties of the case, Daniel. What I can decide is whether Ms. Singleton is entitled to even a redacted medical file. Everything else? Well, that’s above my pay grade. If the law is on her side, then, yes, she gets the whole ball of wax.”
“Is it, though? The safe-haven law was designed to protect babies—and their birth mothers. It was designed to—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” the judge said, cutting off Daniel’s words. “I remember one case where a birth mother came before me—she didn’t even realize she was pregnant until very late,
and then after having the unwanted baby she tried to smother it. Told me that her boyfriend had sworn you couldn’t get pregnant the first time. Ruined two lives, she did, because that baby was never right. No, sir. The safe-haven law is a good one—most of the time. And I’m inclined to let it have all the teeth the legislators intended it to have. But...” He frowned, raised up the head of his walking stick and jabbed the glass globe in Daniel’s direction. “You, now, you have a different quandary altogether, son.”
“Sir?” Cold anxiety puddled in Daniel’s stomach. What had he not thought about?
“The doctors, the paramedics, the nurses...even I as the judge on the case—all of us are sworn to never let Miriam’s name pass our lips. But not you. You were just a Good Samaritan. As I read it, you aren’t bound by the safe-haven law, no more than any other bystander would have been.”
“What?” Daniel gaped at the judge. “That can’t be right. I mean, she came to the fire station. I was on duty at the time. She—Miriam—thought it was all official. So did I.”
“No, sir, Daniel. Like I said. Maybe ethically you shouldn’t say anything. But in the eyes of the law? You’re the only one who can legally tell Ms. Singleton what she needs to know.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
KIMBERLY STOOD ON the narrow front porch stoop of the neat and tidy ranch-style house and pressed the doorbell again.
Again Gail Korman did not answer the door.
Kimberly chewed on the inside of her lip. She peered at the text message Gail had sent her—yes, she had the address right, and the time and date.
So where was Gail?
The retired nurse hadn’t struck Kimberly as the forgetful type. No, Gail Korman had repeated the address and the appointed date and time and then offered to send it in a text message.
Kimberly surveyed the neighborhood, hoping for a nosy neighbor to appear.
But the nearby houses, almost carbon copies of the Korman house, with its redbrick veneer, white trim and black shutters, seemed abandoned. No cars stood in any of the carports or driveways, no curious eyes peered around drapes. The only noises that Kimberly could hear besides the cawing of a raucous blue jay were a low hum, like a car being vacuumed out, and the faint sound of music. She couldn’t tell where they were coming from.
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