In a Heartbeat. Carla Cassidy

usually filled with work,” she said pointedly, hoping to hurry him out. He obviously didn’t get the hint. She sighed in frustration as he reached for another donut, apparently in no rush to go.

      Caleb got the hint that she was ready for him to leave, but he studiously pretended to be obtuse. He wasn’t prepared to go back to his empty, silent house yet.

      Besides, at that moment Hannah launched into a tale about the garden she was attempting to grow in the backyard, a childish litany much like the ones Katie had often entertained him with.

      As he gazed at the little girl, whose face was so animated as she told him about the carrots and radishes she’d planted, his head filled with a vision of his Katie.

      Physically the two girls couldn’t have been more different, Hannah with dark hair and eyes and Katie, a blond fairy princess with bright blue eyes. Still, Caleb saw in Hannah the same enthusiasm, the same joyous embracing of life that Katie had possessed.

      Had Hannah always exhibited such effervescence or had this particular quality suddenly appeared after Katie’s heart had been gently placed in Hannah’s chest? He needed to know this…and so much more. Time, he reminded himself. Time would answer all his questions.

      “So, exactly what sort of work do you do?” he asked Erica after he and Hannah had exhausted the gardening topic.

      “Bookkeeping here at home. I work for a couple of doctors and a dentist. I take care of their accounts receivable and issue monthly statements for them.”

      “Sounds like the best of both worlds,” Caleb said. “You have a nice business, but get to do it here from your home and care take for your daughter.”

      She nodded. “Child care is so expensive, I wanted something that would keep me home full-time. I also edit a couple of newsletters.”

      “Really? What kind of newsletters?” He leaned forward, surprised to discover himself drawn to this woman, who radiated a cool composure and an aura of intense reserve.

      She looked quite pretty despite her tousled hair and face devoid of makeup. She wasn’t the type of striking beauty who would make men turn and stare, but she had a quiet loveliness that was very attractive.

      “Different kinds,” she hedged, as if unwilling to talk about herself or her work.

      “Ah, that clarifies it,” he said with a smile.

      She blushed, the pink of her cheeks appearing to deepen the blue hue of her eyes. “There’s one for mothers who work at home, another for men who drive classic cars…it’s freelance work that earns me a little extra money.”

      “Sounds fascinating,” he replied, and meant it. She was obviously a resourceful woman who was trying to make the best of her situation.

      “Mr. Man?” Hannah slid off her chair and sidled up next to him. “Are you gonna build a tree house in that tree?”

      “I was just thinking about that this morning,” he replied. Hannah gazed at him eagerly, her big brown eyes filled with hope. “And I think that tree would look mighty magnificent holding a special house, complete with windows.”

      “And pink curtains?” Hannah asked, breathless with the kind of excitement only a child could maintain.

      “Hannah,” Erica said in protest.

      “And pink curtains,” he agreed, laughing as she suddenly threw her arms around his neck.

      The unexpected gesture surprised him and the warmth of the hug, coupled with the sweet smell of childhood, overwhelmed him.

      A shaft of pain, a breathless ache of loss engulfed him, inundating him with wave after wave of immutable sadness.

      “Hannah, run along and let Mr. McMann finish his coffee,” Erica instructed her daughter.

      Hannah let go of Caleb and Caleb shot up from his chair, needing to flee, to escape and be by himself. “I’d better let you get to work,” he said, almost panicked with the need to remove himself before he broke down.

      In three long strides he was at the back door. “I’ll see you both later,” he said.

      “Wait…your donuts…” Erica called after him, her face registering her surprise at his abrupt departure.

      “Keep them,” he replied, then with a quick wave he walked out of the house.

      As he hurried toward his place, even the unusually warm morning sun couldn’t banish the utter bleak coldness that clutched his heart…a coldness that was as familiar as his own face in the mirror.

      He felt the icy fingers of despair, the chill wind of anguish, the frigid indictment of guilt. From the moment his aunt Fanny had sent that damned doll, he’d been thrown into an arctic landscape that offered no relief.

      “A big mistake.” That’s what his sister had told him when he’d told her of his intention to find the child who had received Katie’s heart.

      Once his decision had been made, it had been remarkably easy to find the information he needed. Although there were strict codes of confidentiality concerning transplant donors and recipients, Caleb remembered overhearing a nurse in the hospital telling somebody that Katie’s heart was being sent to St. Louis.

      An afternoon in the library reading St. Louis newspapers for the appropriate date had given Caleb his answers. On the day Katie had died, one Hannah Marie Clemmons in St. Louis had received a heart transplant. The article was a human-interest piece, indicating that a fund had been started for the little girl to help defray her medical bills.

      At first, Caleb had hired a private investigator, hoping that the information the investigation yielded would be enough to satisfy his curiosity about the little girl.

      The investigator had told him she lived alone with her mother and that they were struggling financially, but he’d been unable to garner the kind of information Caleb really needed. So Caleb had decided to come to St. Louis.

      Now he was unsure if he’d made the right choice in coming here, in contacting them. He’d had no second doubts when he’d contacted a real-estate agent, no reservations when he’d bought the house next door to theirs. But Hannah’s hug, so achingly sweet, had evoked doubts about everything.

      His sister had told him over and over again to get on with his life, that his need to find Hannah was unhealthy. “Move on, Caleb,” Sarah had told him. “Keep your memories close to your heart, but allow yourself to move past them.”

      Everyone had advice for the grieving father, but nobody understood the force that had driven him to be here now. Even he didn’t understand it. All he knew was that he had a driving need to know Hannah, to discover what, if anything, the heart retained.

      Poets wrote sonnets about hearts; every emotion ever felt was expressed through the heart. How certain could scientists be that some essence of a person, even after his or her death, didn’t remain and continue to live as long as the heart was alive?

      If anyone could read these kinds of thoughts in his mind, he’d be whisked away to the nearest psychiatric facility, he mused ruefully.

      He vaulted the chain-link fence, then sank down beneath the tree he planned to build a tree house.

      Someplace in his head, he’d known that meeting Hannah would be an incredible mix of pleasure and pain. What he hadn’t anticipated was the attractiveness of Hannah’s mother.

      A bit prickly, yes. Skittish, indeed, and yet he found himself drawn to her. He sensed sadness in her…a sadness that had its roots in something other than her daughter’s health…. a sadness that somehow called to the same emotion inside him.

      What had happened to Hannah’s father? Was Erica Clemmons a divorced woman or a widow? As the single parent of a terminally ill child, she must have gone through hell in the past several years.

      He stood and walked around to the front of his house. The work crew should be arriving