The Secret of Cherokee Cove. Paula Graves

unavoidable.

      “Thanks for cleaning up,” she added, waving her hand toward the much neater room.

      “Not a problem.”

      As Nix took a step toward the bedroom door, Dana caught his arm, stilling his movement. He looked down at her hand, then slowly lifted his gaze back to her face. Heat radiated from his tall, broad-shouldered body, washing over her in a flood that set her own skin tingling.

      “Yes?” His voice was like silk over sandpaper.

      “You know something about my mother, don’t you?”

      Nix recoiled slightly, the movement clearly involuntary. Dana stared at him, watched the color suffuse his face as his gaze slid.

      Her pulse notched upward, fueled by a river of dread flowing through her veins to settle in the center of her chest. She took her own step backward, until her knees hit the edge of Doyle’s bed and she sat abruptly, curling her fingers into the bedspread.

      “What did my mother do?” she asked, her voice tight with alarm.

      Nix made himself look at her, his dark gaze unfathomable. “If the story I’ve heard all my life is true, she killed her own baby and tried to steal someone else’s.”

      Chapter Four

      Dana’s face went pale with shock at Nix’s words. She stared at him, first in stunned silence, then in a slowly simmering anger that chased the pallor from her face, replacing it with splotches of high color in her cheeks.

      “That’s ludicrous.”

      He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t actually vouch for any of the details. All he knew was what the older people in his small community had whispered for years, quietly enough that they could pretend discretion while knowing full well that their children were listening and absorbing the cautionary tale of the teenage girl who got herself pregnant, got away with murder and eventually got herself run out of town for her sins.

      “My mother was a wonderful, kind, smart and decent woman.”

      “I’m sure she was,” Nix agreed, though not with enough conviction to drive the fury from Dana’s flashing eyes.

      “You couldn’t possibly know anything about her. She left here before you were born.”

      “Yeah, about a year before I was born,” he agreed.

      She looked away from him, as if she couldn’t stand looking at him any longer. He took that as his cue to leave, backing toward the door.

      “Wait,” she snapped.

      He faltered to a stop.

      She looked at him again, her expression more composed, though distress roiled behind her eyes. “Please sit.” She waved her hand toward the armchair by the window, next to a table holding a reading lamp and a small stack of books.

      He sat in the chief’s chair and took a bracing breath before he looked at Dana again, steeling himself against her anger and pain. But she seemed to have herself completely under control now, her expression back to cool neutral, her eyes mirrors reflecting her surroundings without revealing anything that lay beneath.

      “Where did you hear that story about my mother?” she asked.

      She wasn’t going to let it go, he saw. Not that he should have expected her to. After all, she hadn’t chosen a career in law enforcement because she was incurious or prone to dodging conflict.

      “It’s one of those stories you grow up hearing,” he answered carefully.

      “Like monsters in the closet and bogeymen under the bed?” she asked, only a hint of sarcasm breaking the calm surface of her composure.

      “Yes,” he admitted. “Like that.”

      “So, tell me. What was the story? How did she kill her child?”

      “Her baby,” he corrected. He thought he saw a quick flinch, a slight tightening in the corners of her eyes. “She was unmarried. Pregnant. Went into labor and someone took her to the hospital in Maryville for delivery. Everything went okay and the baby was born.” He faltered to a stop, knowing the worst part of the story, the part that made any normal person recoil, was yet to come.

      “Did she kill the baby at the hospital or at home?” Dana asked, her tone businesslike, as if she were interviewing a witness to a crime.

      “At the hospital. The nurse had brought him for feeding and left him there with her. As the story goes, she claims she fell asleep and someone switched out her live baby for an already dead one. But nobody saw anything.”

      “Nobody saw anyone carrying a dead baby into the room or carrying a live one out, you mean.”

      “Right.” Nix shook his head. “Dana, I don’t know that any of this is true. It’s just a story.”

      “Maybe.” She shrugged. “Maybe not. What happened when the unmarried girl discovered the baby in the bassinet was dead?”

      “She started screaming.” He swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat as he watched Dana’s face grow even stonier. “She kept screaming at the nurses that it wasn’t her baby, but of course, it had to be. Nobody had gone into her room.”

      “That anyone witnessed.”

      He’d let his gaze drift away from her face but snapped it back at her words. “That anyone witnessed.”

      “What’s the next part of this cautionary tale?” Her voice held a minute trace of sarcasm, so tiny he wasn’t sure whether it was really there or he was just reading that tone into her words.

      “The hospital called in a psychiatrist to calm her down. She finally settled down and started to cooperate with the hospital staff, who were trying to make arrangements for the baby’s burial. The nurse who saw her just before all hell broke loose supposedly swore she seemed to be sad but acting normally enough for a girl who’d just lost her newborn baby.”

      Dana was silent and very still for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was faint and strained. “And then?”

      “The nurses supposedly heard screams coming from a room down the hall on the same floor. A woman screaming that someone had stolen her baby. The story goes, they locked down the hospital and finally found the unmarried girl and the missing baby in the hospital basement. She was trying to take him out a service exit.”

      “Who were the baby’s parents?”

      “You mean the baby that lived?”

      She nodded.

      “I don’t know,” he admitted. “That was never part of the story I heard.”

      “They only identified the girl?”

      He nodded. “Crazy Tallie Cumberland, mad as a hare and wicked as the rest of her family. Killed her own baby and tried to steal another. Better take care and not let a Cumberland look you in the eye, or you’ll turn out crazy and wicked, too.”

      “Lovely.”

      “I’m sorry. I guess it’s not so entertaining a legend when you’re on the Cumberland end of things.”

      “It’s also completely impossible,” Dana said in a low, flat tone. “My mother couldn’t have killed her own child under any circumstances. She was perfectly sane, perfectly rational and as loving and protective a mother as a child could have hoped for.”

      “I’m sure you’re right,” Nix said.

      “No, you’re not.” She pulled the collar of her robe more tightly around herself. “You never knew her.”

      “No, I didn’t.” Nix stood. “It’s late. We’re tired. Let’s just get some sleep tonight while we can. Morning will make everything look better.”

      At