Whose Baby?. Janice Johnson Kay

be no assurances of unfailing love no matter what. Shelly would lose her grandparents, too, if it came to that.

      “Well,” Lynn said, “the reason I’m calling is that I’m considering having Shelly tested so we can lay this foolishness to rest. It makes me mad to have to subject her to needles and all that scariness, but I might do it. So what I wondered is, do you remember what Brian’s blood type is?”

      “Oh, yes,” his mother said promptly. “He’s O positive, just like me. What a good idea, Lynn! Doubts should always be laid to rest, don’t you think?”

      Fury kindled in her breast. Now that she’d gotten what she wanted, she let anger have its rein, sharpening her voice. “What I think is that all this is incredibly insulting. I understand that Brian’s still angry about our divorce, but you know me better than to believe this…this hogwash. You claim to love Shelly. You always say I should bring her for visits more often, that she’s adorable, that I should send pictures so you can show all your friends, and now you talk about her as if she’s tainted and you’ve always known something was wrong with her. She’s…she’s a bright, beautiful child whose eyes don’t happen to be blue. Well, I’m not Swedish, and I don’t expect my daughter to look like she is!” Lynn ended with a snap. “That’s what I think.”

      She didn’t wait for a response. She hung up the telephone in a righteous rage that deserted her too quickly. How could she get mad, when Shelly wasn’t Brian’s daughter? Maybe she was the one who was blind! Maybe she should have realized immediately that something was wrong, that the baby the nurses handed her was a changeling.

      But she hadn’t, oh, she hadn’t. Instead, the connection had been deep and instant, a mother’s love for this child and only this one.

      Well, the fierceness of her love hadn’t diminished. She would tell Brian that she wasn’t going to get Shelly tested, and if he cut his daughter off, so be it. She would let him live with a creeping feeling of shame. It would serve him right.

      She stood up, as wearily as if she’d just overcome a violent bout of flu, and turned off the kitchen light, using the glow from the bathroom to find her way to her bedroom.

      Life might get harder; Shelly would be hurt that her father didn’t want her. But no one must ever know.

      THE DREAM CAME EVERY NIGHT from then on. She was searching desperately for someone. For her little girl. First she was on the beach, and she’d been reading her mail, and the fog had rolled in, and she looked up suddenly and realized she couldn’t see her.

      “Shelly!” she began crying. “Shelly, where are you?” She leaped to her feet and spun in every direction, crying over and over, “Shelly!”

      She began stumbling toward the water. Boulders reared from nowhere, tripping her. The roar of the surf filled her ears, and she knew with sickening certainty that Shelly had been caught by a wave.

      But, no, she wasn’t on the beach at all. She was in a city, although the fog still played tricks with her eyes. The sound was from traffic. Oh, no! How could she have looked away, even for a moment? The sea was merciless, but cars were deadly.

      She searched the sidewalks frantically for a bright chestnut head. People passing ignored her. Then she saw her, out on the median, cars racing by without slowing at all for the toddler who teetered there. She wore rags; she looked like Cosette in Les Misérables, wretched and unwanted. Brimming with tears, her bright blue eyes met Lynn’s momentarily through a break in the traffic, but without recognition.

      My daughter doesn’t know me, Lynn realized with horror.

      “Stay where you are!” Lynn screamed. “Wait! I’m coming!”

      But her voice meant nothing to this child, and with greater shock Lynn discovered she didn’t know her own daughter’s name.

      Sobbing, the little girl stepped from the curb.

      And Lynn awakened, as she did every night, her screamed “No!” trembling on her lips and tears running down her cheeks.

      With a moan she curled into a ball and shuddered. At last she went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, then stared hopelessly at herself in the mirror.

      Of course she was having dreams; their content was hardly subtle.

      Somewhere out there was another little girl, one she’d carried in her womb. How many promises she’d made to that baby as she dreamed of the future! She sang to her and laughed and tickled her own belly when a tiny toe or elbow surfaced. She played music and danced and read aloud, just so her child would know her voice, would know she was loved.

      But, through no fault of her own, she hadn’t kept those promises. Her baby had never heard her voice again. Someone else had taken her home. Did these other parents love her and sing to her and tickle her toes? Or had she gone home with a teenager who hadn’t really wanted to get pregnant? Perhaps she was in a foster home, or had an angry father who shook her when she wouldn’t quit crying. What if she was slow to develop, but nobody was patient? Or what if they loved her, these parents, but they were raising her the only way they knew how, by spanking her when she got cranky or broke something, by screaming at her with the anger of their own childhoods in their voices?

      “If only…” Lynn breathed soundlessly. If only she could know. See that this other little girl was loved and cared for, read to and hugged, that her artwork was on the refrigerator for all to admire.

      If she knew, the dreams would go away.

      But how could she ever find out, without contacting the hospital and telling them? Without taking the chance of losing Shelly?

      That was the torment. Risk the little girl who was the center of her life, who meant everything to her, for the sake of one who couldn’t possibly remember her voice. Who would have forgotten her songs and the stories she’d promised to finish someday, when they could giggle together.

      She crept down the hall like a ghost to her daughter’s room, hovering in the doorway because the bed nearly filled the space, which in a house of this era had probably been meant as a sewing room or a nursery. Sunny yellow and black cats frolicked among sunflowers on the wallpaper that climbed the slanted ceiling. Yellow curtains covered the tall sash window. Under a pale lemon-yellow and white comforter, Shelly slept peacefully. Lynn could just make out her face in the glow from the hall, and thought, Ruth is right. She looks like a Celt from old stories, a fairy child, with that small, pointy chin, that high curving forehead and glossy brown hair as straight as promises that were kept.

      Risk her, for the dream child?

      Lynn closed her eyes on a soft, agonized exhalation. How could she?

      How could she not?

      CHAPTER TWO

      LATE AGAIN.

      Adam Landry swore at the driver of the car in front of him, which hesitated just too long and missed the one and only opening to make a left turn before the light became red.

      Damn, he thought bitterly. They’d both be sitting through another full light. And he was already—he snatched an edgy look at the clock on his dash—ten minutes past the closing of his daughter’s preschool.

      This was getting to be routine, and if he wasn’t careful they’d ask him to make other arrangements for Rose. But the Cottage Path Preschool and Day Care was the best.

      Oh, hell, why lie to himself? He didn’t know if it was best. He didn’t know a thing about it, except that Jennifer had chosen it, an eternity ago when she was pregnant and joyful, not planning to go back to work but figuring she’d need a place for drop-in sometimes.

      Over dinner, she’d told him about it, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. “It’s the Cottage Path Preschool. Isn’t that perfect? Can you believe it? Our Rose will trip up the path to the cottage. Oh!” She shivered in delight, and he’d momentarily seen the vision that had become the center of her life: a little girl with the same mahogany brown hair as her mommy, her legs skinny,