When Love Returns

by Kim Vogel Sawyer

  “Oh. I was hoping maybe…” She seemed so disappointed that Alexa experienced a brief pang of guilt.

  Alexa took a step toward her. “You were hoping what?”

  “Maybe we could be friends. There’s two other girls here, but they, well, bonded with each other. Girls don’t do threes very well most times. So I’m pretty much alone. I thought…” She shrugged. “Guess it was silly.”

  “Silly to want a friend?” Alexa shook her head, smiling. “Not hardly. What’s your name?”

  “Melissa.”

  Alexa reached to shake Melissa’s hand. “I’m Alexa. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You, too.”

  Melissa’s hand was like ice. With her uncovered head and hands and unbuttoned coat, the winter air would seem much chillier to her. Alexa stepped aside to allow Melissa to pass. “You’d better get rid of that trash and head back inside. You don’t want to get sick, especially since you’re—” She glanced at Melissa’s round stomach.

  Melissa stayed put. “This extra weight is like insulation. I’m warm enough.” She shifted the trash bag to the other hand. “If you aren’t pregnant, why are you here?”

  “I’m just kind of…” How should she put it? “Nosing around.”

  “Are you searching for information about an abandoned baby girl, too?”

  Alexa’s jaw dropped. She summoned Tom with a frantic wave of her hand.

  He rounded the car in the space of three heartbeats. “What’s the matter, girlie?”

  She grabbed his arm with both hands, almost dancing in place. “Tom, this is Melissa. She’s a resident here. And she just asked me if I was seeking information about an abandoned baby girl.”

  Tom aimed a shocked look at Melissa. “How do you know about that?”

  Melissa gazed at Tom with wary eyes. Under ordinary circumstances Alexa would have laughed at the young woman’s apprehension. Tom, tall and barrel-chested, seemed intimidating, but he was nothing but a big teddy bear. Even so, she hoped his appearance would coax Melissa into answering.

  The girl gulped. “I…overheard something.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  Alexa clasped her hands to her throat. “What did you hear? Who was talking?”

  Hunching her shoulders, Melissa sidestepped toward the dumpster at the far edge of the garage. “I don’t know if I should say. Ms. Reed—she’s the director—might not want me talking about it.”

  “Please, Melissa.” Tears pricked Alexa’s eyes, and the cold wind chilled the moisture, making her feel as though she blinked ice.

  “I—”

  “Melissa?” A strident female voice carried from the direction of the house. Melissa darted to the corner of the garage and peered around its edge. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “What are you doing out there?”

  Melissa glanced at Alexa and Tom before answering. “Just breathing the cold air. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Hurry. The thermometer says it’s only seventeen degrees.” A door latch clicked into place.

  Melissa scurried to the dumpster. Tom crossed to her in two wide strides. He took the bag, lifted the lid on the dumpster, and tossed the bag inside. Melissa sent him a bashful smile of thanks. She turned toward the house, but he caught her arm.

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble, but I really would like to know what you heard about the abandoned baby.” Tom spoke softly, kindly, convincingly. “She’s important to me.”

  Melissa chewed the inside of her cheek, her face puckered in uncertainty. “I didn’t hear much. When Ms. Reed found out I was in the reading room behind her office, she made me go upstairs. I just know a man was here asking about adoptions from twenty years ago. Especially the adoption of a baby who wasn’t born in the home but was left here.”

  Alexa’s pulse seemed to double in beat. Might her birth father have sought her out? She gasped a question. “Did you hear his name?”

  Melissa shook her head. She clutched at the collar of her coat, her gaze flitting back and forth between Tom and Alexa like a mouse planning its escape from a gang of alley cats. “No. But he said he was a…a private investigator.”

  She hadn’t expected that reply. Alexa gawked at Tom, who gawked at Melissa. He sputtered, “Did you say ‘private investigator’?”

  “He called himself a PI.” Melissa made a face. “He had out the record books and asked a lot of questions. So it seemed like he knew what he was doing.” She slipped her arm free of Tom’s light grasp. “I have to go in or Ms. Reed might come after me. If you want, go around to the front and ask to talk to her about what she told the PI.”

  Alexa nodded eagerly. “Yes, we can—”

  Tom draped his arm over Alexa’s shoulders. “Thank you, Melissa. You’ve been a big help. You get on inside now before this cold air makes you sick.”

  Melissa nodded and hurried off.

  “C’mon, honey-girl. Let’s go home.”

  “But, Tom—”

  “Hush now.” He hustled Alexa to the car.

  In the warm interior Alexa gave him a frustrated frown. “Why don’t you want to talk to the director? She could tell us who’s searching for me.”

  He snorted. “I don’t need her to tell us.” He put the car in gear and headed for the alley’s exit. “There can’t be more than a dozen PIs in the Indianapolis area. We can research that on our own. Besides, I got the impression Melissa has a hard time staying on the director’s good side. If we go ring the front bell, the woman will most likely put two and two together and figure out she’s the one who let us know the investigator was there. No sense in stirring up tension between her and the lady she’ll be living with for quite a while to come.” He eased into the street, shooting her a warning glance. “Besides, that PI might not be searching for you.”

  Alexa bolted straight up and stared at Tom’s profile. “But it has to be me!” Tom chuckled. “Oh, of course it does. Because you’re the only baby girl who was ever abandoned in Indianapolis, right?”

  She slumped against the seat. The newspapers gave accounts of abandoned infants several times a year. Even Briley Forrester had been left at a fire station by his mother. Maybe somewhere a parent was abandoning a child right that minute. She bit down on her lower lip.

  “Now listen, Alexa. It’s possible he is hunting you, but it’s just as possible he’s hunting some other baby girl. So before you get yourself all worked up and excited the way you like to do, we need to explore some more, okay?”

  Alexa, still reeling from the emotional roller coaster of the past half hour, didn’t answer.

  He nudged her. “Okay?”

  She sighed. “Okay.”

  They left the residential area and encountered downtown, noonday traffic. Tom gripped the steering wheel with both hands and leaned forward slightly, his body tense. “Tell you what. While I’m maneuvering through this mess, why don’t you text Linda? Ask her what parts of your find-your-mother plan she got rolling.”

  “Why can’t I call her instead?”

  “Because your voice will distract me.” He grinned, waggling his brows. “And she needs to practice her texting. She’s terrible at it.”

  Alexa laughed. Somehow Tom always managed to pull her from the doldrums. “All right.” She set the keystroke clicks to Silent so the sound wouldn’t bother Tom and then typed a short note to Linda. On our way home. What did u do this morning?

  In only a few seconds, her phone’s vibration alerted her to Linda’s reply. She lifted her phone and read, Lost!

  Frowning, Alexa tried to decipher the cryptic message. As she was pondering, a second one popped in.

  Lots!

  She stifled a snort of amusement and tapped, Like what? A series of wavering dots let her know Linda was forming a reply. When it came, it filled the entire square.

  I went to the post office and set up a pobox PO. Box for you to get letters. I went to the newspaper office and paiiid for a personal ad asking for information about
a baby girl left behind a garage in Indianapapolis. I set up a account an account on social medium media so we can send a message there to lots of people at the same time. How do you backspace on thisthing. I want to fix my err

  A second box held the remainder of the message: Ors. Alexa swallowed a snicker. Then a third box—containing just the word Grrr—popped onto the screen. She forgot about not distracting Tom and burst out laughing.

  He grinned at her. “What’s funny?”

  She held up her phone. “You were right. Linda’s terrible at texting.”

  “Told ya.”

  “I’m going to put her out of her misery.” She applied her thumbs to the lighted letters. You did get “lost” done! Will show you how to correct err Ors when I get home. Will talk then, too. Love u.

  Linda’s reply followed quickly. Haha. Liucky for you I talk better than i type text. Love u 2.

  Tom took the exit for the highway, and his shoulders visibly relaxed as they left the city behind. Alexa waited a few minutes, making sure he was less tense, before speaking.

  “Tom? Do you think it would be all right if I went back to see Melissa sometime? You know, to visit her?”

  His eyebrows rose. “You wanna do that?”

  “Yeah. I think I do.” She envisioned the young woman’s haunted eyes. Loneliness had seeped from her. “It seems like she could use a friend.”

  He gave her arm a couple of pats. “That’s nice of you, honey-girl. She did remind me a little bit of your mama when I first met her—forlorn and just needing somebody to tell her everything’s gonna be okay.”

  “If she’s having a baby on her own and then giving it away, I don’t know how she’ll be okay.” Sadness struck hard. “Mom raised me, but I’m pretty sure she still thought about Anna-Grace a lot.”

  “And Melissa will think about her baby, too, no doubt.” Tom’s tone turned thoughtful. “But you know something, Alexa. You just might be the right person to help Melissa be ‘okay.’ After all, you were raised by a woman who didn’t give birth to you but who loved you just as much as any biological mother could love a child. If Melissa sees how you turned out—happy, secure, loved—then it could make her feel better about letting somebody else raise her baby.”

  Alexa nodded slowly. “You might be right.”

  “I might be right?” Tom laughed. “ ’Course, unless you’re Linda, you can’t always be right.”

  Alexa laughed, too, then she settled back in the seat and closed her eyes. Maybe God had brought Melissa to the alley when she and Tom were there so she’d be able to befriend the other woman, to offer her comfort and encouragement. Alexa hoped so. Because she wanted something good to come from the visit to that stark, cold place where she might have died twenty years ago, thanks to her birth mother’s heartless choice.

  Cynthia

  Not even during the exhausting infant and toddler days had Cynthia been so eager to send her children to bed. Holding back the information she and Mr. Mallory had uncovered proved torturous during the supper hour when Glenn, as was his custom, asked each of them to share their favorite part of the day. But she didn’t want to talk about it in front of Darcy and Barrett. Twice in the past week Darcy had mentioned how “neat” it would be to have a big sister. Even if they located the baby girl she’d given up, it didn’t mean the girl would want a relationship with them. She wouldn’t plant false hope in her daughter’s heart. But she could hardly wait to talk to Glenn.

  After supper the children sat at the kitchen breakfast bar and finished their homework while Cynthia washed dishes. Then, as a family, they watched television—two reruns of Glenn’s favorite show, M*A*S*H—before he led them in their short bedtime devotional. And finally at nine o’clock, Glenn said, “Okay, gang, sleep.”

  Cynthia gave each child a hug and kiss, laughing when Barrett made a horrible face and wiped his cheek. She didn’t care if he protested. She had never been hugged and kissed good night, and she would never send her children to bed without a sweet end to the day. Barrett would just have to accept it. Someday he’d look back and appreciate the affectionate routine.

  As soon as the children’s bedroom doors closed, Cynthia plopped down on the sofa next to Glenn and captured his hand. “Guess what!”

  He smiled. “I think if we take the time for me to guess, you’ll explode. You’re sitting on a powder keg, aren’t you?”

  What a perfect analogy. She let the keg blow. “The PI discovered some promising information this morning about where my baby girl might be.”

  Glenn set his Bible aside, his mouth dropping open. “Already? Where?”

  “In a Kansas town called Arborville.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  Cynthia laughed. “Neither had I. But when we were at the library, I did some research. It’s very small. The last census showed fewer than six hundred people live there. And it was classified as an unincorporated Old Order Amish and Mennonite community, with agriculture as its main source of revenue.”

  Glenn relaxed against the sofa’s backrest, and Cynthia shifted close. He slipped his arm around her, his fingers cupping her hip. “How did he come up with Arborville?”

  She wove her fingers through his and tipped her head to gaze into his attentive face. “Remember I told you how I watched an Amish woman pick up my baby and take her into the garage?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, Mr. Mallory found out that a teenager from Arborville was staying at the home at the same time I left my baby there. So she’s probably the one who found my little girl.”

  Glenn’s eyebrows descended into a puzzled frown. “Wait a minute. Are you saying an Amish girl was there having a baby?”

  “Apparently.”

  He whistled a soft whew. “I wouldn’t have expected that.”

  “Me neither.” Given the Amish’s close family ties and religious belief system, it didn’t seem likely one of their girls would end up pregnant out of wedlock. But knowing that a girl from a family so different from her own dysfunctional family could find herself in such an unlikely predicament somehow made Cynthia feel a little less guilty. She didn’t understand why, but she couldn’t deny a small sense of relief in knowing she wasn’t alone in making a grievous error of judgment.

  “So an Amish girl was there.” Glenn tapped his chin with one finger, his expression thoughtful. “She might have found your baby. But why do you think she took your baby?”

  Cynthia sat up, eager to divulge everything Mr. Mallory had told her. “First of all, the only record of an abandoned baby at the home is a boy from 1964. That’s long before I left my baby there. Mr. Mallory and I explored microfiche, and we couldn’t find any newspaper accounts from December twenty years ago about an abandoned baby girl. It’s as if I’d never even left my little girl behind that garage, and of course I know I did.

  “Plus, according to the home’s records, this Amish girl—her name is Suzanne Zimmerman—gave up her baby girl for adoption. It’s customary for the adoptive parents’ names to be placed on the birth certificate, so there shouldn’t be a birth certificate with her name on it as ‘mother.’ But he found the record of a birth certificate for a baby girl born the day after my little girl, with Suzanne Zimmerman listed as the mother and no one listed as the father.”

  Wonder bloomed on Glenn’s handsome face. “Cyn…”

  She nodded, her body quivering in excitement. “So Mr. Mallory theorizes this Suzanne Zimmerman didn’t hand my baby girl to the home’s director, the way I’ve always assumed. He thinks, instead, she just took my baby as a replacement for the one she gave up.”

  Glenn shook his head, his jaw slack.

  “Tomorrow Mr. Mallory plans to make some telephone calls and see if he can connect with the Zimmermans in Arborville. Oh, Glenn…” She tucked herself against his sturdy frame. Her chest heaved as eagerness tried to turn her inside out. “Just think. By tomorrow we might already know whether or not my little girl wants to meet me.”

  Glenn’s arms wr
apped around her and held tight. He rested his chin against her hair. “That would be an answer to prayer.”

  She sighed, closing her eyes. “Yes.” She tried to picture her daughter the way she might appear now, but somehow the only image she could conjure was of Darcy. She opened her eyes again and peered up at Glenn. “If my baby girl was raised Amish, do you think she’ll have any interest at all in meeting me? Do you think she’s ever been told she wasn’t born to her mother?” She jerked free of Glenn’s hold. “What if she hasn’t been told? What if my contacting her completely pulls the…the rug of security from under her feet? What if—”

  “Shh, Cyn.” He captured her shoulders and pulled her close again. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. We don’t even know for sure that Suzanne Zimmerman has your baby girl. There isn’t any sense in worrying about what-ifs until Mr. Mallory’s theory is proven.”

  She took several calming breaths. Glenn was always logical. Sometimes his penchant for logic frustrated her—couldn’t he get emotionally worked up once in a while?—but she realized the truth of his statement. Worrying accomplished nothing. And even though circumstantially it seemed as though they were on the right route to finding her baby, it was possible this would turn out to be a false lead.

  She needed to keep her emotions under control. But she’d waited twenty years to hold her little girl again. Now that the opportunity hovered just beyond her fingertips, all fear had fled, and only desire filled her.

  “I know you’re right,” she whispered against his shirt front, appreciating the strength of his arms, his comforting presence. “But I want to find her so badly. Mr. Mallory has enough money for a certain number of hours. He used up at least eight of them today.”

  Glenn pressed his lips to her temple. “If this is God’s will, Cyn, we’ll find her. Leave it in His hands instead of Mr. Mallory’s, okay?”

  “Okay.” She turned a hopeful look upward. “Can we pray about it together? Now?”

  His sweet smile provided approval. He slipped from the couch, and she joined him in kneeling with their elbows on the scarred coffee table where Barrett had carved his initials when he was five and Darcy had spilled lemonade, leaving a faded circular patch. Glenn had offered to replace the table with a newer one, but she loved the evidence of family life this old one reflected.