SOMEBODY'S BABY Read online

  Contents:

  October 1

  October 2

  October 4

  October 6

  October 9

  October 12

  October 14

  October 15

  October 16

  October 18

  October 19

  October 20

  October 21

  October 22

  October 24

  October 25

  October 26

  October 27

  October 28

  October 31

  November 1

  October 1

  Thirty-one days.

  Daniel Ryan stared at the calendar above his desk. October. If he lifted the page, he would see November first circled in red. That was his deadline. It would be one year since the Nashville lawyer had delivered his daughter to him, tiny, three months old, helpless—and unwanted by her mother. He could have her for one year, the lawyer had stipulated; then he had to return her to her mother. Thirty-one days more—that was all he had left with Katie.

  Swiveling in his chair, he watched his daughter sitting on the rug in front of the cold fireplace. She was surrounded by bright-colored toys, but it was her own feet that interested her most. The tiny white Nikes that he had so carefully laced on only an hour ago were gone, one on the stone hearth, the other half-under the sofa. The socks were off, too, left in an untidy heap on the floor, and she was bent over, studiously looking first at one foot, then the other. The position was too much for her chubby body, and she rolled over, giving a startled cry followed immediately by a bright laugh.

  Daniel felt a tightness in his chest. She was his daughter, with the same silky dark brown hair and the same unusual shade of dark blue eyes, and she was his life. How could he possibly give her back in thirty-one days to the mother who hadn't wanted her in the first place?

  He couldn't. It was that simple. Sarah Lawson could make all the demands she wanted, but she couldn't take his daughter from him. Katherine Ann Ryan belonged to him, and she was going to stay with him. The sooner Sarah accepted that, the better.

  He studied Katie as, feet forgotten, she reached for the Raggedy Ann doll that Mrs. Adams had made for her. The rag doll, with its carrot-colored yarn hair, was bigger than the girl, and its soft muslin face showed the stains of Katie's sloppy kisses. It was worn, soft and well loved.

  He looked for some resemblance to the mother who had without hesitation given away her daughter to a man she hardly knew, but he could find none. Sarah Lawson had dark blond hair and brown eyes, nothing like Katie's. She had been thin and not too talkative, and had been willing to spend the weekend with a man she had met in a bar. She had seemed warm and giving, but she'd turned out to be cold. Selfish. How could he possibly let Katie return to live with a woman like that?

  "Katie Ann," he called.

  She turned toward his voice, breaking into a bright warm smile when she saw him. "Daddy," she replied.

  "Daddy," he repeated softly, proudly. Not "Da-da." No baby talk for his little girl. Her vocabulary was limited, but the words she spoke were clear and correct. Daddy, eat, drink, go, baby, Katie. The word mother and its many variations were all but unknown to her. At fourteen months, mother was a foreign concept to her, one that meant nothing. He intended to see that it stayed that way. "Let's go to town, Katie."

  She struggled to her feet, using the heavy coffee table to pull herself up. She had been walking for four months now and found it pretty easy once she got on her feet. She started toward the door, wearing nothing but a diaper and a T-shirt.

  "Wait a minute. You can't go out half-dressed. It's too cool for that." He wished she could, he thought with a grimace as he scooped her into his arms. She was the sweetest, happiest baby a parent could ask for, except when it came to putting on clothes. She would go through life with no more than a diaper if it was left to her.

  He picked up her shoes and socks, then took her upstairs to her room, next to his own. After laying her in the crib, he gathered a complete outfit and laid it on the mattress beside her. Months of experience had taught him to have everything at hand; that way she couldn't start removing the hated clothes while his back was turned to get the next layer.

  She struggled and wriggled and chattered angrily at her father, but he succeeded in dressing her, shoes and all, then swung her up and hugged her. "You're a pretty girl, Katie," he whispered, hiding his face in her soft curls.

  "Katie," she echoed in her little baby voice. She pursed her lips in an exaggerated pucker and left a wet kiss on his chin. "Go."

  Rides in the pickup truck were a rare treat. She didn't even mind the infant seat that kept her securely strapped at Daniel's side. They carried on a lively conversation all the way into town, with Katie repeating words that she knew and gurgling nonsensical responses to everything else.

  Daniel parked near the town square, underneath a red-and-gold banner announcing the annual fall Harvest Festival, and freed Katie from her seat. She looked longingly at the park, where two small children played together while their mother read a magazine in the cool morning sun. She was approaching the age where she would need exposure to other children at least occasionally, Daniel thought with a grim sigh. He wasn't quite certain how, but he would manage it. He would give her everything she needed.

  Zachary Adams's office was located on the square in an old stone building. Daniel greeted the secretary, Zachary's sister, Alicia, with a polite nod, then asked, "Is Zach busy?"

  "I'll see if he can talk to you now." She smiled at Katie, touching a hand lightly to the girl's hair as she walked by. A moment later she returned, gesturing to him to enter the office.

  Zachary Adams was the attorney in the town of Sweetwater. He was also the only one in town who knew the identity of Katie's mother, and the only one who Daniel considered a friend. He greeted his unexpected guests with a warm smile.

  They were an odd sight. Daniel, at six foot four and well over two hundred pounds of solid muscle, was the biggest man in the county. Perched on one hip and supported by a massive arm, Katie looked tiny and delicate, like a miniature baby doll in the arms of a giant.

  "Hey, Katie," Zachary greeted her as he stood up. He came around the desk and tugged gently at her curls, and she graced him with her sweetest smile. "What brings you two into town?"

  "I need some advice."

  Zachary gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. He took one, while Daniel settled in the other. "I take it this has something to do with Katie," he said solemnly, "and the fact that your year is almost up."

  Daniel nodded solemnly. "I want to get permanent custody."

  Zachary had expected as much ever since the pretty lady lawyer had shown up in Sweetwater with Katie in tow. He knew his friend well, knew how he prized his solitude up there on his mountain, but knew, too, his loneliness. To Daniel, the baby had been an unexpected gift from heaven, and Zachary had known he wouldn't be able to give her up. Taking Katie from him would be like taking his reason for living. That knowledge made him word his response carefully. "What I would like to do, Daniel, is wait until the beginning of November. See if Sarah Lawson shows up. Then we'll move."

  Daniel's scowl was fierce. "If she does show up, it'll be too late. She'll take her away."

  Zachary watched Katie struggle against her father's restraining arm. "It's all right to let her down. There's nothing here she can get into."

  As soon as she was on the floor, Katie took a few faltering steps, fell on her diaper-padded bottom and immediately turned her attention to removing her shoes. When she succeeded in removing one, she held it above her head, triumphantly calling it to her father's attention. His responding smile was edged with resignation.

  "It won't be to
o late," Zachary said, returning to their conversation. "Because if Sarah does show up, you're not going to give Katie to her. I'll have the papers ready to file, and we'll ask the judge to leave Katie in your custody until the final disposition is made. Since Katie knows you, and her mother is a complete stranger, I'm sure he'll do it." He watched as Katie removed the second shoe, then peeled off her socks. That task completed, she rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled off to explore the office. "How well do you know Sarah Lawson, Daniel?"

  He shook his head. "I don't." He had gone to bed with the woman, but he knew little about her beyond the fact that, between them, they had produced Katie. Sometimes it shamed him that he had been so intimately involved with a stranger, but then he looked at Katie, and the shame was replaced with love. If Katie had resulted from that weekend together, there could be nothing shameful about it.

  "If she comes back for the baby and you take her to court, you're going to have to prove that Katie is better off with you, that Sarah is unfit to have custody of her. Does that bother you?"

  "She gave her own baby away. She doesn't deserve to get her back."

  "She didn't 'give' her away," Zachary disagreed. "She gave temporary custody to the baby's father. That doesn't make her a bad mother."

  It did in Daniel's eyes. Any woman who didn't love her child enough to care for her, to love her, wasn't worthy of the title of mother. "I picked her up in a bar, Zachary. What kind of woman would go to bed with a man she met in a bar?"

  Zachary's smile was amused. "That works both ways, Daniel. What kind of man would go to bed with a woman he met in a bar?" The smile turned into a grin. "That doesn't make you a bad father, does it? And it doesn't mean that Sarah is a bad mother." He sighed softly. "What I'll do is get in touch with a private detective in Nashville and see what he can dig up on Sarah. The more we know about her, the better prepared we'll be in court."

  "He'd better find something," Daniel said grimly, "because I'm not letting her have Katie. I can't." Although it was spoken quietly, calmly, it was a promise. A vow that he would never break.

  Sarah walked across the yellowing grass, weaving her way around the stones, then stopped and knelt on the ground. Immediately she felt the cold damp seeping into her jeans. Everything here was cold, even on the hottest day of summer. She didn't think she could bear the winter's chill in this place.

  "I have to go now," she murmured, reaching out to pluck a weed from the base of the white stone. "It's time." Tears filled her eyes and made her voice catch in her throat. For the past three years she had cried so easily. The tears had been the only outlet available to vent her sorrow, her rage and anger and bitterness, and she had cried, every day and every night. Now it was done. As soon as she had her baby in her arms, she would never cry again.

  Katherine Ann. Almost a year had passed since she'd seen her little girl, since she had held her one last time. Katherine had worn a disposable diaper and a tiny pink dress, had been chubby and perfectly formed, with ten fingers and ten toes and dimpled knees and a tiny perfect Cupid's-bow mouth.

  Now she was more than a year old. She was bigger, taller, walking and talking and helping to feed herself, and she wouldn't know Sarah from the man in the moon. But Sarah would know her. Her daughter might be a year older and completely different from the tiny baby she'd last held, but with a mother's intuition, Sarah was positive that she would know her.

  She touched a hand to the marble headstone. It was like ice. For months she had been like that—frozen, unfeeling, as dead inside as Tony was. But Katherine wasn't dead; she was waiting in a tiny little town called Sweetwater, waiting for her mother to come and get her. Katherine was the bond that had kept Sarah going. "I'll come back," she whispered to the stone. "I'll never forget you. I'll never stop loving you."

  Slowly, stiff from the chill, she got to her feet and walked away. She didn't look back at that lonely place. She didn't need to. It was burned forever into her mind.

  Sweetwater was a three-hour drive from Nashville. Sarah sat for a moment in the car that held everything she owned: her clothes, worn but serviceable; a box of books; another box of pictures of Tony and Katherine and Sarah herself; a box of linens; and a fourth box of dishes, cheap aluminum pans and cheaper plastic plates and bowls. Once she'd had china and designer clothing, a television and stereo, an expensive car and a nice home. Then Brent had left, and Sarah had sold everything to pay Tony's medical bills, and it still hadn't been enough. She would work the rest of her life and never pay all his bills.

  Beth had advised against this move. Let the final month in her agreement with Daniel Ryan pass, the attorney had insisted, then pick up Katherine as arranged. But Sarah couldn't wait any longer. She wasn't going to ask Daniel to return her daughter to her a month early, but maybe he would let her visit. Maybe he would let her see Katherine and help with her care for the next month, so that by the time November first arrived, Katherine would be used to her mother and would be happy with her.

  She drove at a safe speed, not because she was cautious by nature, but because, after a hundred and fifty thousand miles, the secondhand car that had replaced her BMW didn't have the power to speed. She used the time to think, to plan her strategy.

  If she knew more about Daniel Ryan, it would make her task easier, but, she was ashamed to admit, she didn't. He had told her a little about himself—where he was from, what he did for a living, that he wasn't married and, most importantly, that he loved children. His actions over the short weekend had told her more—that he was a good man, an honest man, a gentle man. She had thought at the time he was a man she could care about, if she'd had any caring left to give. But she'd given every part of herself to Tony, to the heartrending twenty-four-hour-a-day job of watching her son die.

  She had been to Sweetwater a week ago had found Daniel Ryan's house and, luck being with her, had found an abandoned farmhouse only a few miles away. The For Sale sign had lain broken and faded by the side of the road, but she had deciphered the phone number. The real estate agent had been glad to unload the house; the owners, who lived in town now, were happy to have even a temporary renter after years of trying to sell. The place was in deplorable condition, but all that mattered to Sarah was its location. She would be close to Daniel. Close to Katherine.

  She passed the highway sign declaring that it was ten miles to Sweetwater and began slowing down. The road that led to her new home was a few miles beyond that sign. Last week she had driven past it twice before getting its location fixed in her mind.

  She turned off the narrow highway onto an even narrower gravel road. As it twisted and climbed its way up the mountain, gravel gave way to dirt, packed hard by the occasional traffic, baked hard by the sun.

  It was nine miles to the house. Through careful questioning of the agent, she had learned that it was two miles farther by road to Daniel's house but less than a mile if she cut across the fields and through the woods. As soon as she reached her temporary home, she intended to find out if the information was correct.

  Recognizing the faded sign still lying on the side of the road, Sarah slowed and turned into the driveway, steering to avoid the potholes, and parked near the house. What had once been a well-tended yard was no longer distinguishable from the open field that surrounded the house on all sides. She picked her way along the faint path, overgrown now with weeds, to the front of the house.

  It was a neat boxy square, four rooms downstairs, four rooms up. Its straight lines were softened by the wide porch that circled along the side, across the front and down the other side, and by the intricately turned spindles that supported the porch railing. The house had last been painted blue gray, the shutters steel gray, the railing and spindles white, but the paint had weathered badly. It was cracked and peeling and in many places gone altogether.

  This house had once been someone's joy, Sarah thought with a glimmer of sadness as she carefully stepped over the broken floorboards on the porch. Now it was neglected, forgotten, allowed to dec
ay gracelessly. She felt as if she had been decaying, too, gradually withering away ever since Tony's illness had been diagnosed. But no more. For Katie's sake, she was taking control again. She had found the will to live again, to love again.

  The key grated in the lock, straining to twist the rusted tumblers; then the door swung open. Footprints, hers and the real estate agent's, looked ghostly in the heavy layer of dust that coated the floor and everything else. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling, and crackly brown leaves and twigs had blown in through a broken pane in the front window. It would take a lot of hard work, but she was used to hard work. She could make it habitable.

  She walked past the sofa sitting alone in the living room, through the dining room and into the kitchen, where the refrigerator and stove that she had asked the agent to find for her stood, ancient but apparently serviceable, along with a rickety table and two chairs. She opened the refrigerator door, and a naked light bulb came on in the back. The air was musty but cool. Next she tested the faucet at the sink, watching the rust-colored water drain and slowly clear. As the agent had promised, the electricity was on and the pump was in working order.

  Twisting the handle to the off position, Sarah raised her eyes from the sink to the window above it. Daniel Ryan lived on top of the mountain, the agent had told her. Through the trees bright with their autumn colors, she could make out a shape high on the mountainside. That must be his house.

  After taking time only to change into a pair of tennis shoes, Sarah set out across the wide meadow. It was warm and sweet smelling there. In the spring and summer it would be filled with wildflowers. A few hardy ones remained in bloom even now. When she reached the woods, the land began to climb steeply, all the way to the top of the mountain.

  There was a clearing at the top. Sarah remained at its edge, quiet and motionless in the cover of the dense growth. Her breathing was rapid and irregular, both from the hike and with anticipation.

  There it was. Daniel Ryan's home. Katherine's home.