For The Twins' Sake. Melissa Senate
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threatening. What did you do, Willem? What the hell did you do?
The lawyer leaned back, took off his glasses and scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Finish the letter,” Sara said, hearing the panic rise in her voice.
What happened to my baby girl?
Holton nodded, his expression grim. “‘I threatened the midwife and paid her off not to call for medical intervention and to back me up when I told you the female didn’t survive the birth. Don’t be too hard on the poor lady. She accepted the bribe for the same reason you married me. She desperately needed the money.’”
The lawyer glanced at her then, and Sara, feeling her face flame, lifted her chin.
“‘I told you the baby died,’” the lawyer continued reading, “‘then while you were sleeping, I drove it out to Noah Dawson’s place—’”
Sara bolted up. “Noah? Noah has my daughter?”
Her head was spinning. Her daughter was alive? And with Noah Dawson?
“Let’s finish the letter,” Holton said. “There’s only one paragraph left.”
Sara nodded, tears brimming as she dropped back on the chair.
The attorney cleared his throat. “‘With my male heir healthy, I had no need for a sickly-looking daughter. To be quite honest, I don’t particularly like girls. They grow up to become conniving users, don’t they? I drove the baby out to Dawson’s cabin and left her on his porch with that starter kit the midwife had on hand and a note saying it was his baby and his responsibility. For all I know, the twins are his. Maybe you were cheating on me with him during our entire marriage. Since I don’t know whether any of that is true, it means it could be. Since it could also not be, I’ll leave my son the bulk of my estate in trust for when he turns twenty-one. The rest will go to the development of a golf course named in my honor. You, as you already know, get nothing. Not a cent.’” The lawyer paused and put down the letter. “That’s the extent of it. It’s signed ‘Willem Michael Perry.’”
My daughter didn’t die. She’s alive.
“For the past seven weeks, Noah Dawson has had my daughter?” she whispered, the blackness threatening again.
She tried to remember back to the moment when the midwife—a gentle woman in her early sixties who’d come highly recommended—placed Chance on her chest. Tears had been brimming in the woman’s eyes over what Sara had assumed was the loss of the baby girl she’d helped deliver. Sara had felt so woozy, despite Willem’s insistence she take no drugs. She must have fallen asleep hard after initially nursing Chance, because she’d woken up hours later, Willem letting her know Chance was sleeping like a champ in the nursery and that the midwife had gone home and that they’d taken care of the details for the loss of the twin.
She’d been so woozy still, her head feeling like it was stuffed with cotton, and she’d been so grateful that she hadn’t lost both babies that she’d made her way to the nursery and held Chance against her. Her precious son had gotten her through the terrible truth that his sister hadn’t survived. Over the next few days, Willem had resumed his usual twelve-hours-per-day work schedule, so she hadn’t had to deal with him controlling her in person, though he’d left detailed emails about how to hold Chance, feed him, his nap schedule, and that no one was to visit until he’d had his shots.
Her baby girl was alive. And Sara wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Willem had slipped something into her water during labor, some kind of drug to keep her off balance and to make her sleep hard afterward.
Why would he take the baby to Noah, though? Willem had hated Noah Dawson.
“Sara, I’m afraid I have to prepare you for the possibility that the female twin didn’t survive Willem’s actions,” the lawyer said, shaking her out of her question. “Left on a doorstep in the middle of the night? The second week of April, when it was still a bit chilly? Who knows when Mr. Dawson discovered the baby? If he was even home at the time? Didn’t he very recently inherit the old Dawson guest ranch? I read that they’re set for a grand opening this weekend, but I can’t imagine how, given how run-down the place was.”
She hadn’t known Dawson’s was reopening. She’d heard that Noah’s widowed father had died and that he’d left the dilapidated ranch to his six children. She’d thought about going to the funeral but wasn’t sure she’d be welcome. She’d been showing then and didn’t want to make Noah uncomfortable, so she’d stayed home. She also would have had to get around Willem about where she was going, and she hadn’t had the energy for that.
When she’d woken up about three hours after giving birth, the rain had been coming down hard. Willem had left their daughter on a ranch porch in the middle of the night during a rainstorm? The Dawson ranch in Bear Ridge was over an hour away from the Perry house in Wellington.
She swallowed back a wail building up deep inside her. “I’m going to see Noah now. My daughter is alive. I feel it.”
“I hope so, Sara,” Holton said. “It seems clear that Willem expected this letter to be read decades from now. There are two bombshells, really. Your daughter. And the midwife’s culpability. We can discuss options for how to proceed there.”
She’d deal with that later. Right now, she only wanted to see her baby girl with her own eyes. Hold her. Get her back.
She reached for her long cardigan and put it on, then gripped the handle of Chance’s stroller. He was fast asleep.
“Sara, again, I’m very sorry,” Holton said. “I hate to bring this up right now, but I do need to tell you that you’ll need to vacate the house within fourteen days. You may take your personal possessions, but everything else now belongs to the estate. If there’s anything you’d like to take, do it before tomorrow, when the appraisals will begin.”
She nodded again. She couldn’t wait to leave that house. Where she’d move, she had no idea. But she did know where she was going now.
To see Noah Dawson. And get her baby girl.
“Should we give Bolt an apple slice?” Noah asked his baby daughter, snug in the carrier strapped to his chest.
He stood at Bolt’s stall in front of the small barn beside his cabin, the mare nudging his arm for her apple. “We should? I agree.” He pulled the baggie of apple slices from his pocket.
Annabel didn’t respond, but according to the book on your baby’s first year, she wouldn’t make sounds or coo for another couple of weeks.
He’d learned quite a bit about babies in the past seven weeks. He’d been right that Annabel had only been hours old when she’d been left on his porch. Doc Bakerton had been a grouch at being woken up at 2:20 in the morning—until he’d seen why Noah had come blazing over.
Because Bakerton was getting up there in years—nearing eighty—and had long been a rural doctor, he hadn’t said anything about calling the sheriff or social services. Noah had showed him the note he’d found in the carrier, and that had been good enough. “The system doesn’t need another abandoned baby when the perfectly good father is standing up,” the doctor had said with a firm nod. Bakerton declared the infant healthy but small, recommended two possible pediatricians to follow up with and sent Noah on his way to beat the worst of the rain.
And so a little over twenty minutes after arriving, Noah had taken the baby home, shell-shocked but focused on the immediate here and now, not even tomorrow. The doc had given Noah some samples of formula and more diapers and wipes and had made a list of the basics Noah should buy in the morning.
Some of the shock had started to wear off while he’d been at Bakerton’s, mostly because he’d realized he could simply leave the infant with the doctor, who’d call