A Father's Vow. Tina Leonard

“You’d better be. The harpy’s on her way back inside.”

       Carolyn flipped a page in a file. “There’s no way that’s possible,” she said.

       “Oh, yes, it is. She sees our car hasn’t moved, and she knows exactly what we’re doing. Come on, Carolyn.”

       “No, I mean, how could the good doctor have been on the outskirts of Austin to deliver you, then deliver a baby four hours away at the same time?”

       “I don’t know, damn it! Come on, Carolyn!”

       “Daddy! Don’t say damn it,” Lucy protested, but Ben held his daughter tighter and grabbed Carolyn’s arm with his free hand. She stuffed the file back into the cabinet and closed it just as they heard the wheelchair bumping the porch door.

       “You are the most hardheaded, intractable, tenacious person I know,” he said between gritted teeth as he hauled her toward the car. He opened the driver side door for her, then went around to the passenger side, so he could strap Lucy in the back seat. Glancing over his shoulder, he was relieved to see that the caregiver wasn’t brandishing a broom or some other weapon at them.

       “That’s what you hired me for,” Carolyn snapped. “It was the trait you were specifically looking for.”

       “Buckle up,” he commanded. He slammed the door and hurried to the driver’s side, getting in and cranking the engine. The car pulled away from the curb, and he allowed himself a breath. “I don’t want you bending laws, Carolyn. I’m desperate, yeah, but not enough for you to put yourself at risk.”

       She ignored him, her forehead creased in thought. “Your mother was about twenty years younger than Dr. Benton’s wife,” she mused.

       “So?”

       “For someone whose husband had so many patients, it’s odd that she remembered your mother. And her handwriting was clear in that file. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who allowed herself to make errors. We saw how quickly her memory snapped back into place when the nurse in her was called up. Kind of like a policeman or military personnel, who make it a habit to remember times, places, dates and other pertinent facts.”

       “What are you getting at?” Ben demanded. “That precise Nurse Ratched made an incorrect entry? That she recorded the wrong time on one occasion?”

       “I think she recorded exactly what she wanted to. The question is, why did she misrepresent the facts?”

       “Can you know that she did?”

       “I know a doctor doesn’t deliver two children at the same time in locations that are four hours apart. According to her daily notations for your birth date, that’s exactly what happened.”

       “It could have been a simple error—”

       “I don’t think so. She remembered your mother, she remembered that her status was healthy. I have the strangest feeling that she might have remembered more—she just didn’t feel like revealing it. Or maybe she couldn’t. The memory suppresses difficult things over time.”

       “What difficult thing might she have been suppressing?”

       Carolyn looked at him with clear eyes. “That her husband stole babies and sold them for a profit. And that she was an accessory.”

      * * *

      CAROLYN DROVE Ben back to Finders Keepers to pick up his car and, at his request, followed him out to the farmhouse where he lived on the outskirts of San Antonio so that he could feed Lucy and put her to bed. Then they needed to discuss what they’d learned and decide on the next course of action. At first she was nervous going to his house. She was afraid she’d see traces of Marissa everywhere. Then she was ashamed of herself for being so spiteful. For Lucy’s sake, she should hope that there was much of Marissa’s presence in evidence.

       But to Carolyn’s surprise, the small house was devoid of pictures or anything else that spoke of the beautiful model. Instantly, the word that came to Carolyn’s mind was comfortable. Clean. Home. Ben.

       She lowered her gaze, thinking that her heart had never been in the jeopardy it was in at this very moment. Ben was a protector, and she’d always sensed that with him, she would find warmth. Security.

       To distract herself, she glanced around Ben’s home. Log cabin style, the small house welcomed her. The main room was decorated with a blue-and-red Mexican blanket on one wall and another on the rough floor. A brown leather sofa, well-worn and all the more inviting for it, sat directly across from a long picture window. In front of the sofa rested a scarred pine table. Small pillows and two lamps of an indeterminable metal adorned the room. Carolyn wanted to kick off her shoes, sink into the sofa and wrap herself in Ben.