Payne’s hand trembled around the phone receiver as the hoarse voice faded into nothingness. It was the second time the person had called in two days, the fourth call this week. Could it be possible? Could her son really have survived?
“Who is this?” she finally croaked. “Why are you doing this to me?”
The harsh click of the phone cut her off, jarring her senses into a thousand frayed nerve endings. Just like the other times. Tears spilled out of her swollen eyes as grief consumed her. Her baby would have been six weeks old today. If he had lived.
She’d been so distraught in the hospital the doctor had prescribed sedatives, but by the end of the first week, she’d weaned herself from the drugs and the memories had surfaced. Blurred memories which raised questions in her mind. Someone had tried to kill her in the hospital. At the time she hadn’t cared. She’d been in too much pain to fight.
Later, when she’d told the hospital staff, they claimed she’d been hallucinating. She’d pleaded with the local sheriff to listen, but he’d insisted nothing ever went wrong at Maple Hollow’s birthing clinic. That she should try to move on with her life. And she’d tried.
Then the phone calls had started, making her wonder if her baby was alive. He was out there somewhere crying for her. Needing her.
Or maybe she was going crazy. Maybe someone was feeding off her grief, and she kept hanging on to their twisted words out of a misguided need for hope. But who would do such a horrid thing?
“Lindsey?” Her neighbor JoAnn stood in her den, her face pinched with worry. “I knocked but you didn’t answer, so I got worried and used my key. Are you all right?”
Lindsey nodded, grateful for the numbness settling over her. “I’m fine, thanks for thinking of me.”
JoAnn placed a basket of muffins on the sofa table behind her and moved into the doorway toward Lindsey. “Did you receive another phone call?”
JoAnn’s intuition startled her. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Linds,” JoAnn’s voice broke. “I don’t know who would be so cruel. Maybe you should change your number.”
Lindsey knotted her hands in her lap. “No, if the caller knows something about my baby, I want to talk to them. I just wish whoever it is would stay on the line long enough for the police to trace them.”
The compassion in JoAnn’s expression almost triggered another onslaught of tears. “Why don’t you visit the class today for bike day? We’re taking the kids on a picnic.”
Lindsey remembered the excitement over bike day from her own special needs class the previous school year. She’d taken a year’s leave of absence to stay home with her baby. Now, she wondered if she should return sooner. “It sounds like fun. Maybe I will come by later.”
“I’ll see you there then.” JoAnn turned to leave, pausing in the shadowed hallway. “And Lindsey, try to eat something. You’re getting way too thin.”
Especially for someone who’d recently had a baby.
The unspoken words hung in the air between them. She and JoAnn had joked about the extra pounds Lindsey had gained during her pregnancy. She’d worried she wouldn’t be able to shed them. So far, losing weight hadn’t been a problem.
When JoAnn left, Lindsey headed to the shower, by-stepping the white wicker bassinet she’d purchased for her infant’s arrival home. The pale yellow blanket still lay folded at the foot of the mattress, the Winnie-the-Pooh mobile dangling above the eyelet headboard. She should move the bassinet to the nursery with the other baby furniture but couldn’t bring herself to part with it yet. She’d planned to keep her son in her room at night so he’d be close by when he woke. Now, the empty cradle reminded her of her the aching void in her life.
She should at least move the bassinet to the den so it wouldn’t be the first thing she saw every morning. Inhaling a calming breath, she hauled it to the front room, then hurried to shower. Visiting the school would do her good. The kids needed her. And she desperately needed to fill her time with something besides her own troubled thoughts.
The hot water felt heavenly on her skin as she washed the last strains of fatigue and tears from her face. After toweling off, she pulled on her robe and poured herself a cup of coffee, her gaze resting on the mail that had arrived the day before. The stack she’d been too apathetic to open. The sympathy cards she could no longer bear to read.
A pale blue envelope drew her eye, her stomach clenching at the distinct size and shape. Had someone sent her a congratulations card? Someone who didn’t know about her loss…?
Her vision blurred as she ripped open the envelope and stared at the blue teddy-bear shape. Her baby’s autopsy report had been placed inside. Blood type: O positive. It couldn’t be—she had type A; Gavin, B.
The card fluttered to the floor as Lindsey doubled over. Could the hospital have made a mistake? If even the remotest possibility existed that her son was still alive, she had to find him. An image of Gavin’s handsome, dark features flashed into her mind, the anguish of his parting words even more visceral since she’d lost their son. No, she couldn’t turn to Gavin.
She’d go to the sheriff, beg him one more time to take her seriously and investigate her son’s death.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Sheriff Forbes greeted her with a nod, the wrinkles around his eyes more prominent beneath the glare of the overhead light. His thick gray hair stood in tufts on his head, his bushy eyebrows due for a trim. He needed to retire, to be fishing with his grandchildren somewhere, not running the town. “How’re you doing this morning, Ms. Payne?”
“I’m okay, but I need to talk to you.”
The sheriff gestured toward his office, grabbing a cup of coffee off the scarred linoleum counter as he passed. He offered Lindsey some, but she declined, knowing the caffeine would only add to her shakiness.
“What can I do for you this morning?” Forbes lowered his wiry frame into the vinyl chair behind his cluttered desk, folding one leg to rest across his knee.
Lindsey lay the card on the jumbled mess. “I received another call this morning.”
His eyebrow shot up with concern. “Did you recognize the voice? Was it a man’s or a woman’s?”
“I couldn’t tell, it was too muffled. Then I received this autopsy report in the mail.”
The sheriff wrapped a handkerchief around his fingers, opened the envelope and scanned the contents. “I’ll have it checked out, but I doubt we can trace it. The card is generic, no return address. Probably won’t be any prints either.”
“Even if you can’t trace the card, the autopsy proves my baby is alive,” Lindsey argued.
The sheriff’s gray eyes filled with pity. “It doesn’t prove anything, except that someone’s playing a sick joke on you, Ms. Payne. For all we know this report isn’t even legitimate. Someone could have stolen the autopsy report or doctored it to make you think this baby wasn’t yours.”
“But why would someone go to such lengths? And doesn’t that report make you wonder if something is wrong?”
“It makes me want to find
