laughed and she liked the sound of it. Along with the fact that he’d caught the joke.
He hadn’t been kidding about already having sandwiches made. There was a covered plate of them in the refrigerator. He brought that and a bowl of potato salad along with two glasses of water to the kitchen table where they shared the light repast while Aiden filled her in on the quirks of the plumbing system and the party-line inconveniences she would encounter if she used any telephone in Boonesbury.
They’d finished eating and Aiden was on his way back to the fridge with the remaining sandwiches when there was a firm knock on the front door.
By then it was after ten o’clock and a drop-in visitor struck Emmy as strange.
But Aiden took it in stride and said over his shoulder, “Get that, will you?”
She’d already figured out that he was a very laid-back guy and that there weren’t going to be any formalities even for the director of the Bernsdorf Foundation. So, in an attempt to adjust to the casual attitudes, she went to the door and opened it.
There was no one at eye level, but down below, on the porch floor, there was a baby carrier and a duffle bag.
Thinking that this couldn’t possibly be what it looked like, Emmy stepped out into the cold to investigate.
But it was exactly what it looked like.
Amidst a nest of blankets and a hooded snowsuit there was a baby bundled into the car seat. A baby with two great big brown eyes staring up at her from over the pacifier that was keeping it quiet.
“I think you better come see this,” she called to Aiden as she glanced all around and found no signs of anyone else.
But about the time Aiden came out onto the porch there was the sound of a vehicle racing away in the distance.
“What’s going on?” Aiden asked.
“Good question. All I know is when I opened the door this was what I found—a duffle bag and a baby in a car seat. And I just heard a car or truck drive off.”
“Oh-oh,” Aiden said. But he didn’t sound as unnerved as Emmy felt.
He went down off the porch, searching both sides of the cabin. But after only a minute or so he rejoined her, shrugging those mountain-man shoulders of his as he did.
“There’s nobody out there anymore. But we’d better get this little guy—or girl—in out of the cold.”
He picked up the carrier and the duffle bag and took them inside.
Emmy followed him all the way to the kitchen table, where he deposited everything, unbundled the baby and lifted it out.
“Hello, there.” He greeted the child in a soothing voice he probably used with his youngest patients.
Then, to Emmy, he said, “Check the bag, see if there’s a note or something that tells us who this is.”
Emmy did as she was told, wondering if her predecessor had ever had a trip quite like this one was already turning out to be.
Along with baby clothes, diapers and food, she did find a note, albeit not much of one. Written on it was only one word: Mickey.
“Mickey, huh? Well, let’s check you out a little, shall we, Mickey?” Aiden said when Emmy let him know what she’d found.
She watched as he took the baby to the sofa and laid it down there to unfasten the snowsuit. Then he removed the pajamas that were underneath it, and then the diaper.
“Looks like Mickey is a boy,” Aiden announced unnecessarily, replacing the diaper in a hurry and with more expertise than Emmy would have had. “Don’t let him roll off the sofa,” he instructed, going for his medical bag where he’d left it on a table near the front door.
Bringing it back with him, he went on to examine the child who was still watching everything with wide eyes and sucking on the pacifier, only protesting when Aiden used the stethoscope to listen to his heart and lungs.
“I’d say Mickey, here, is about seven months old, well fed and taken care of and as healthy as they come,” was the final diagnosis.
“And why was he left on the porch? Or do you often have people drop off their children late at night for a checkup?”
“No, this is a first.”
“You don’t know the child or who he belongs to or where he came from?” Emmy asked with undisguised disbelief.
“I know as much as you do,” Aiden said patiently.
Emmy stared at him, wondering how he could possibly be so calm about this.
Then something clicked in her brain and she began to replay all that had happened since she’d landed in Alaska. The need to take the small plane into the middle of nowhere. To stay in a strange, distractingly attractive man’s cabin away from everything and everyone, in a room without central heat. And now a baby left on the doorstep?
This had to be some kind of practical joke Howard was playing on her.
Or maybe it was a test to see how she handled whatever curves came her way and to find out if she really was better suited to the job than Evelyn had been.
“This is all a setup, right?” she heard herself say. “Howard just wants to see how I deal with the unexpected, if I can keep my eye on the ball and not get overly involved in matters that don’t concern me. I know he thought Evelyn didn’t make it as director because she was so freaked out by the things that happened on these trips. He thought that she took everything too seriously and too personally, that she got too involved in things that didn’t have anything to do with the grants, that she lost sight of what she was in these communities to do, of what was and what wasn’t her business and let the wrong things influence her recommendations. So he decided to put me through trial by fire, didn’t he?”
Aiden settled Mickey on his knee and looked at Emmy as if she’d lost her mind. “The only thing Howard set up was the opportunity for Boonesbury to be considered for the grant.”
“Come on. Making me fly in the same kind of plane Evelyn nearly crashed in? Making me stay here? A baby left on the porch the minute I arrive? Howard arranged it all.”
“I’m sorry, Emmy, but he didn’t. This is just the way things are.”
It was not a good sign that even in the middle of this the sound of him saying her name made her melt a little inside, and she wondered if she was just on some kind of overload. She had been up since four o’clock that morning, after all, and it had hardly been a relaxing day.
But still she didn’t give up the notion that Howard had planned what had happened since she’d landed in Alaska to test her. And she knew that even if he had, his cohort here wasn’t likely to confess from the get-go.
“Okay, fine. This is just the way things are,” Emmy repeated with a note of facetiousness. “So what does that mean? That while I’m here and you’re giving me the tour of Boonesbury’s medical needs we’re going to deal with an abandoned baby, too?”
“Well,
