Читать книгу Dr. Mommy - Elizabeth Bevarly - Страница 8

Dick Clark had just announced that there was less than five minutes left to this New Year’s Rockin’ Eve when Dr. Claire Wainwright heard the chime of her front doorbell erupt downstairs. Ignoring the interruption—doubtless it was just some New Year’s reveler playing a joke, because heaven knew she wasn’t expecting anyone—she noted that Dick, as always, looked suave and cheerful and eternally young. And she tried not to dwell on the fact that she herself felt…well, not. Not suave. Not cheerful. Not eternally young.

Au contraire, Claire.

When the doorbell chimed again, she exhaled an errant sigh and waited to see if maybe, possibly, perchance, hopefully, she had only imagined the doleful, lonely sounds of that single, solitary dingdong. Because—speaking of doleful and lonely—she had just settled into bed with a flute of flat-going champagne, had just opened the latest issue of JAMA to an article about C-sections and had just gotten as comfortable as she was likely to be in this lifetime. And—speaking of single and solitary—she was home alone. On New Year’s Eve. Again.

Of course—speaking of dingdong—she could have accepted that one offer of a New Year’s Eve date that she had received, but noooo…

Claire still wasn’t sure what had possessed her to turn down Evan Duran’s invitation to spend the evening with him at his cottage in Cape May. It would have been a lovely, lovely event, she told herself now. Snowy moonlight on the ocean, a fire crackling merrily in the hearth, lobster and pâté and champagne every bit as good as what she’d bought for her own solitary celebration.

Of course, the evening would have inevitably stretched into the night, she thought further. And, of course, Evan would have been there, too. Which, now that she thought about it, was doubtless why she had declined his offer.

Nevertheless, he was a handsome, intelligent, decent guy, she reminded herself, a man who had a lot of ambition and drive. He was exactly the kind of man who should interest her, the kind of man with whom she should spend the rest of her life. She didn’t know why she found him so unappealing. There was just nothing there—no spark, no heat, no magic.

The doorbell chimed a third time from way downstairs, and Claire told herself it would be pointless to try to ignore it any longer. Still, she was more than a little puzzled by who might be summoning her at such an hour on such a night. Shoving back the plush, pale blue comforter, she ran one hand through her straight, black, shoulder-length hair, smoothed the other over her amethyst-colored silk pajamas, then tucked her feet into the slippers by her bed. She wasn’t working, obviously, but that didn’t mean she was free to do as she pleased with her time off. An OB-GYN’s work was never done, Claire knew, and babies didn’t exactly come on schedule.

But she wasn’t accustomed to having her patients show up at her house in Haddonfield, either. If an expectant mom found herself on the brink of delivery, she usually went to Seton General Hospital in neighboring Cherry Hill. If Claire wasn’t on call—and tonight, she wasn’t—then one of the other four doctors with whom she was in practice delivered the baby. All of her patients knew that. And it was a system that worked well.

Except when people rang her doorbell at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Unable to fully shake her wariness, she thrust her arms through the sleeves of the tailored silk robe that matched her tailored silk pajamas, then made her way down the long hallway and curving staircase of the roomy, exuberant Tudor she had bought nearly a year ago. Still not quite over the fear of the dark she’d had when she was a child, Claire kept night-lights placed strategically throughout the house, so she found her way now with little trouble. But the fine antique furnishings that were so posh and elegant in daylight seemed looming and a bit overwhelming in the dark. With a nervous gesture, she cinched the belt of her robe a bit tighter.

The doorbell chimed again as her foot hit the thick Persian rug at the bottom of the stairs, in the expansive foyer. Through the stained-glass panes of the front door across from her, Claire made out the silhouette of someone who appeared to be about the same stature and height as she—five-foot-five. In low heels. On a good day.

In the living room to the left of the front door, beyond the beveled bay windows overlooking her front lawn, she noted that the snow that had begun earlier as a soft, powdery cascade had ripened into a full-blown storm. Fat wet flakes blew in fierce sideways slants, buffeting the house with a rattling wind that virtually shook the place. Claire shuddered, even though it was plenty warm inside, and she wondered again what would bring someone to her front door on such a night.

She turned in that direction again, then hesitated when she realized the silhouette had disappeared. Funny, that. Or perhaps not. Maybe whoever had rung the bell had been a bit tipsy, and had finally discovered they had the wrong house. Maybe they had left in embarrassment before being discovered.

Or maybe they hadn’t.

Just to be certain, Claire continued on to the front door and peeked through one of the uncolored panes on the side. But through the flawed, crackled glass, she saw only a swirl of white snow dancing haphazardly in the pale yellow glow of her porch light. She was about to turn away when her gaze lit on a figure at the foot of her driveway.

There was indeed someone out there, someone whose attention was focused fully on Claire as she peeked outside. Someone who, she noted further, had left tracks in the nearly six inches of snow that had accumulated on the walk between the driveway and her front door since she’d paid her neighbor’s teenager to shovel it earlier that afternoon.

A ripple of apprehension shimmied up Claire’s spine at the sight of the other person, and she immediately swept her hand over the panel of switches on the wall to her right. Instantly the front yard was flooded with light—from the lamp by the driveway, the lights over the garage and a row of lanterns lining the landscaped walk and drive.

In that brief moment, Claire saw that the person outside appeared to be a young woman wearing a black jacket and black beret, with long blond hair cascading over her shoulders. But as soon as the exterior lights flashed on, the young woman turned and fled across the street, stumbling only once in the heavy snow. There she slowed, evidently feeling safer under cover of darkness. But she turned to walk slowly backward and continued to gaze at Claire’s house, as if she were hesitant to leave.

Very odd, Claire thought. And not a little troubling.

She was trying to decide whether or not the episode warranted calling the police—oh, surely not—when she realized there was something else outside, too. A large, oval, handled basket sat atop the snow at the foot of the creek-stone steps leading to the front door, its contents already dusted liberally with snow. Contents that appeared to be…laundry?

Why would someone leave a basket of laundry on her doorstep on New Year’s Eve? Claire wondered. That made no sense at all. She had lived in South Jersey since her freshman year of high school, and although there were certainly some interesting traditions indigenous to this part of the country, leaving laundry on someone’s doorstep to celebrate the new year wasn’t one of them.

Come to think of it, that wasn’t a tradition in any of the dozens of cultures Claire had called home at one time or another, growing up as she had, the daughter of doctors who were serving as Peace Corps volunteers.

She was still wracking her brain for some explanation when, to her surprise and horror, the bundle of fabric inside the basket moved, and a tiny, mittened fist poked itself free of the blanket surrounding it. Claire realized then that the basket contained, not laundry, but a baby.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…

With two swift gestures, she freed the chain and dead bolt on the front door, then tugged it open wide and stepped outside, frantically searching the opposite side of the street for the young woman who had stood on her driveway only a moment before. Sure enough, the black-clad figure was there, halfway down the block now, staring back at the house. But when she saw Claire come outside, saw her descend the stairs toward the basket, the woman turned and fled with all her might, as if the hounds of hell were following her.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…

This couldn’t be happening, Claire thought. Surely she was dreaming. Surely this was some kind of joke. Some really sick, twisted kind of joke, but a joke nonetheless. Surely her colleagues at the hospital—the ones who knew how she felt about children—would jump out of the shrubbery anytime now, and they’d all have a good, if sick and twisted, laugh at her expense.

Surely.

Then Claire heard a small, soft sound, like the coo of a dove, and gazed down at the basket again. This time, when the fabric moved, she saw a pair of pale blue eyes peeking out from beneath the cuff of a pink knit cap. For a few seconds, she only gazed at those eyes and shook her head in disbelief. Then a particularly fat, particularly wet snowflake smacked her in the eye. She realized then that her toes were freezing in their scant satin slippers, and that her warm silk pajamas had turned icy as they clung to her skin.

And she realized that this wasn’t a joke, sick and twisted or otherwise. So she bent down and looped her arm through the two handles on the basket and gingerly lifted it. Then, stepping carefully over the piles of snow on her front steps, she carried the baby back into the house, closing and bolting the door behind her.

Don’t panic, she instructed herself as, heart racing, limbs trembling, she leaned back against the front door and wondered what to do—besides panic.

Think, Claire. Think. Breathe, relax and think.

But the muddled thoughts tumbling through her brain scattered hastily when the baby in the basket began to make noise again. Nothing alarming, just some quiet little murmurs of…of…of baby noise, sounds that gave her the impression that the child was, for the moment, content. That, however, could change anytime, she told herself. So she’d better figure out what on earth she was going to do.

Police, she thought. Yeah, that’s it. She should call the police. They’d know how to treat a situation like this. Certainly better than she would. Although she was an OB-GYN, she wasn’t too familiar with babies. Not once they’d entered the world, anyway. That, of course, was where the pediatricians stepped in. And thank God for that. Claire was fascinated by the generation and growth of life inside the womb. But once those little nippers came out, well… She was grateful to be able to wash her hands of them. Literally.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like children. They were just a completely alien life force, as far as she was concerned. She’d been an only child of two only children, so she hadn’t been exposed to any babies growing up. And because she and her parents had moved around a lot, to cultures that changed as quickly as their residences did, Claire had never really learned to relate to other children for any length of time. She’d been shy and anxious when she’d come to new communities, and as a result, she’d remained fairly solitary. She’d just never much abided children. Not even when she was a child herself.

And now here she was, face-to-face with a baby—a baby!—and she had no idea what to do. Okay, of course, she knew the basics, that they needed to be fed and diapered and kept warm. Which, now that she thought about it, might be a good reason to panic, because she had neither baby food nor diapers in her house. Then again, the basket on her arm was a bit larger and heavier than seemed necessary for one baby. Could be that whomever had abandoned the little tyke had at least properly provided for it.

For the time being, anyway, she added to herself, swallowing the panic that began to rise yet again.

She forced herself to move to the overstuffed couch on the other side of the living room, then switched on the standing Tiffany lamp beside it and settled the basket carefully down between two big tapestry pillows. Nudging aside the bulk of blankets in which the baby had been swaddled—okay, so the keeping warm part would be no problem—Claire found, in addition to the pudgy infant, about three dozen diapers, a can of powdered formula, four small bottles, an assortment of baby food in jars and five changes of clothes, all pink.

Congratulations, Claire. It’s a girl.

“Oh, boy,” she muttered to no one in particular.

Until now she had been trying to avoid actually looking at the baby, but when the infant began to chatter incoherently again, Claire had no choice but to turn her attention to the little cherub. She had no idea how old the tiny thing was, but the baby was smiling and attentive and making a lot of noise, so she must be several months old, anyway. As Claire watched, the infant’s mouth formed a near-perfect O, and she released a long, lusty coo. Then she laughed, as if she’d just made a wonderful joke, and for a moment—just a moment—Claire felt sort of, kind of…warm inside, and she smiled back.

Then she remembered she had no idea how to care for this child and that ripple of panic began to surge up inside her again.

“Police,” she whispered aloud, as if needing an audible reminder. Surely the police could send someone over right away, someone who knew what to do with abandoned babies, someone who could see to this particular baby’s needs better than Claire could herself. Because although there were a lot of things in her life about which she felt uncertain, of one thing she was absolutely sure. She was in no way cut out to be a mother. Nuh-uh. No way. No how.

As if she needed to be reassured of that fact—which, of course, she didn’t—when she reached in to lift the baby out of the basket, it immediately began to howl. Loudly. Lustily. Lengthily.

Okay, Claire. You can panic now.

Oh, boy, she thought. It was going to be a long night.

Nick Campisano was just leaving his favorite liquor store with a six-pack of his favorite brew when his pager went off.

Great, he thought. He should have realized there was no way he’d be allowed to enjoy what was left of New Year’s Eve. Hey, he hadn’t been allowed to enjoy Christmas Eve, had he? Or Christmas, either. Or Thanksgiving, for that matter. Or even Halloween, dammit. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been allowed to have an entire holiday off at all. So why should tonight be any different?

Because he needed a break, dammit—that was why. He needed a little time to step back and reevaluate, and try to remember why he’d become a cop in the first place. Something about wanting to make a difference, he recalled from some vague, dark, corner of his mind. Something about wanting to be a role model for kids who didn’t have any in their lives. Something about wanting to help people—help kids—get themselves straight and stay that way.

Yeah, right, he thought now. As a narcotics detective, all he seemed to succeed in doing lately was watch the problem get worse. Too many kids—good kids, at that—were taking drugs, selling drugs, dying from drugs. Oh, yeah. Nick had made a really big difference for them.

And tonight—like every other night—he needed some time to unwind and relax, some time to think about life. Some time to help him remember what living his life was all about. Yeah, life, he echoed derisively to himself. He was gonna have to see about getting himself one of those real soon. All work and no play was making Nick a very cranky boy.

He sighed with resignation when he noted the number on his pager, then made his way slowly back to his big—and very dated—Jeep Wagoneer, where he’d left his cell phone for the few minutes he’d be inside Cavanaugh’s Liquors. Sure enough, the word Called appeared in the readout. Clearing it, Nick punched in the number he’d been instructed to return—the number of his workplace—and after hearing a feminine voice greet him blandly at the other end of the line, he snarled, “Campisano. Whaddaya want?”

“Woooo, those are just the words a woman wants to hear in the middle of the night from a big, strong man like you,” the sultry voice at the other end of the line said, punctuating the observation with a wry chuckle.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Nick said—even if it was without a trace of apology. Suzanne Skolnik was, after all, his boss, but she wasn’t so far removed that he couldn’t voice his irritation at being summoned during his off-hours. “Whaddaya want?”

“Where are you?” she asked without preamble.

“Halfway home. Soon I’ll be all the way home,” he added pointedly. “Why?”

But instead of answering his question, she said, “Define ‘halfway home.”’

Nick growled under his breath. This didn’t sound good. “Cavanaugh’s Liquors on Route 30,” he told her. Then he asked again, “Why?”

“So you’re skirting the wilds of Haddonfield, right?”

Nick growled again. “Yeah. Why?”

“And you got four-wheel drive in that big bucket of yours, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

But he still didn’t get a response to the one question he really wanted answered. Not a response that he liked anyway. Because his superior asked another question of her own. “You know a lot about kids, don’t you, Nick?”

As questions went, it wasn’t that unusual a one for a man in his line of work to hear. “I know enough,” he said. “Why?”

“Don’t you got, like, a lot of nieces and nephews?”

“Eighteen, last count,” he replied. “Why?”

“That’s right,” Lieutenant Skolnik said thoughtfully. “Your sister Angie just dropped two last month, didn’t she?”

Nick was fast losing patience with this interrogation. Not just because he seldom indulged in chitchat with his boss, but because he was cold, and he was tired, and the snow was coming down harder and at least two of the six bottles of Sam Adams in the seat next to him were calling his name.

“Uh, no offense, Lieutenant,” he said slowly, “but, um…I’d appreciate it if you could tell me just where the hell this line of questioning is going.”

“I need you to answer a call for me in Haddonfield,” she said finally.

“Oh, come on,” he pleaded, even though he knew it was pointless to try. “I just pulled a double shift, and I haven’t had a day off in two weeks. I’m supposed to have three days off solid. You promised, and I earned it.”

“I know, Nick, and I’m really sorry,” she said, her voice conveying her genuine apology. “But you’re the only one who can take care of this.”

He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. Then aloud he said, “Define ‘this.”’

“We got a report of an abandoned baby in Haddonfield,” she told him. “And we got nobody in the area who can respond right now. Since you just left here twenty minutes ago, and since I know your proclivities regarding Cavanaugh’s,” she added parenthetically, “I figured I could catch you in the area.”

Before he could object further, she gave him the exact address, and Nick whistled low. “That’s a pretty primo rent district. Who’d be abandoning a baby there?”

Wryly his lieutenant replied, “Gee, just a shot in the dark here, but…maybe somebody who can’t take care of it and wants it to have a better life?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Even if it means breaking the law to get it?”

“Yeah, well, believe it or not, Nick, there are some people out there who hold the laws of our great state in contempt. I know that comes as a shock to a guy like you, but…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “So, why do I get the assignment? I kinda had other plans.”

Not that those plans consisted of anything major, he conceded to himself. Just a little sleeping and eating and watching what was left of Saturday Night Dead with Stellaaaa—not necessarily in that order. But there was no reason his lieutenant had to know that.

“You get the job,” she told him, “because, like I said, between the New Year’s revelers and the snow, we can’t get anybody else out there tonight. And nobody at Social Services is answering the phone right now. Dispatch says the woman who made the report sounds pretty frantic. Says she can’t take care of the baby. So somebody’s gotta go get that kid. You’re a couple miles away. You got four-wheel drive. You can swing by there and take care of it and, even with the paperwork, be home by morning. Then, I promise you, you can have four days. Solid.”

Being home by morning, Nick thought, was highly debatable. Not only was morning barely seven hours away, but the way the snow was coming down, it wouldn’t be long before even four-wheel drive would be totally ineffective. Still, it would be nice to get an extra day off out of this. And he was only a couple of miles away. And he did kind of have a soft spot for kids.

Dammit.

“All right, all right,” he relented, however reluctantly. “I’ll take care of it as fast as I can. But those four days you promised? I better get every last one of ’em. Without being bothered once.”

“You got my word, Nick,” Lieutenant Skolnick promised. “Scout’s honor.”

He told himself not to dwell on the fact that Suzanne Skolnik seemed in no way the Scout type, scribbled down the particulars of the reported abandonment, then ground the Wagoneer to life. Was it his imagination, or had the already fierce snowfall doubled in severity in the few minutes he’d spent on the phone? He shook the thought off. No problem. His Jeep was more than reliable, and he had little trouble maneuvering it over the snow and slush. In no time at all—well, not much time at all—Nick rolled to a halt in the driveway of the house to which he’d been directed.

Nice piece of real estate, he thought. Must have set the owners back a pretty penny, but then, people who lived in neighborhoods like this one usually didn’t have to worry too much about paying the bills. The place was lit up outside like a Christmas tree, and Nick could tell that when it wasn’t snowing like a big dog, it was probably a real showplace, carefully landscaped and tended. A big two-story monstrosity, it had the look of English aristocracy about it, with bay windows leaded in a diamond pattern, and stained glass all around the front door. It was the kind of place that was perfectly suited for big garden parties and intimate tea socials.

In other words, it was about as far removed from Nick’s own personal reality as it could possibly be.

As a South Jersey boy, born and bred, he was blue-collar in the extreme. And damned proud of it, too. His father had been a cop, just like his father’s father had been, and his father’s father’s father before that. All the Campisanos were either in law enforcement or fire fighting, and all the Gianellis, on his mom’s side, worked in the Gianelli bakery. That’s where Nick’s mom had invariably been while he was growing up—when she wasn’t seeing to the needs of her six kids.

Nick chuckled in spite of himself as he gazed at the big house before him. His family sure could have used that much square footage when he was growing up, but chances were the occupants of this house probably didn’t have any kids at all. At most, they probably only claimed one or two. He’d shared a small bedroom with his two brothers the whole time he was growing up, and his three sisters had made do with another. The little brick bungalow in Gloucester City had only had one bathroom for the longest time, until his father and his uncle Leo had installed another one in the basement when the Campisano children started turning into Campisano teenagers.

What a luxury that had been, he recalled now with a fond smile. Two bathrooms. No waiting. Not beyond twenty or thirty minutes, anyway.

Still, Nick wouldn’t change a thing about his upbringing. Even though there had never been a dime to spare, and even though he and his brothers and sisters had all gone to work in one capacity or another when they turned sixteen, he’d never felt as though he lacked anything in life. The Campisanos were a close-knit bunch to this day, and it was no doubt because they’d learned to share and compromise at an early age.

Nick wouldn’t have it any other way. There was nothing in the world, he knew, that was more important than family. Nothing.

He glanced down at the sheet of paper where he’d scrawled the information Lieutenant Skolnik had given him about the abandoned baby. The dispatcher had done her best to record the particulars accurately, but the woman calling in had obviously been more than a little upset, and the baby had evidently been squalling like a demon seed right next to the phone. Dr. Carrie Wayne was what the woman’s name was. Nick just hoped this was the right house. Focusing on the big Tudor again, he decided that whatever kind of doctor she was, she must be damned good at it.

He shoved open the driver’s side door, pushing hard against an especially brutal gust of wind, then he heaved himself out into the storm. The snow easily covered his heavy hiking boots—it must be almost a foot deep by now. He tugged up the zipper on his navy blue, down-filled parka, stuffed his hands into his heavy leather gloves and slung his hood up over his head. No sense courting pneumonia on top of too much work, he thought. Hey, he intended to enjoy those four days off he had coming.

By the time he trudged his way to the front door, he was huffing and puffing with the effort it had taken to cover the short distance, thanks to the wind and snow. And he was thinking that he’d better get this over with quick if he had any hope of finishing by morning. He rapped his fist hard against the wooden part of the front door, then thought better of that and jabbed the doorbell twice. Then he took a step backward to wait. The howling of a baby greeted him from the other side—yep, it was the right house, all right—and then someone pulled the door inward. Nick opened his mouth to say something in greeting.

Opened it to say something in greeting, but not one single word came out.

Because once he saw who stood on the other side of that door, he couldn’t speak at all. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. All he could do was stare at the black-haired, blue-eyed woman standing there, and remember how soft and fragrant was every single curve and valley that lay beneath those shiny purple pajamas she had on.

Not Dr. Carrie Wayne, he thought inanely. Dr. Claire Wainwright. As if he needed anything else to make this night more pointless and irritating than it already promised to be.