his legs jerking, his mouth wide open. In his vehemence, he punched himself in the nose.
Just like that he quieted.
But not for long. Skewing his little face, he gave the twilight hell.
Reed was the first to recover enough to bend down and pick the baby up, seat and all. The crying abated with the jiggling motion. Suddenly, the June evening was eerily still. In the ensuing silence, all three brothers shared a look of absolute bewilderment.
“Where’d he come from?” Marsh asked quietly, as if afraid any loud noises or sudden moves might set off another round of crying.
Remembering the woman he’d seen from the air, Noah looked out across the big lawn, past the parking area that would be teeming with cars in the fall but was empty now. He peered at the stand of pine trees and a huge willow near the lane where the property dropped away. Nothing moved as far as the eye could see.
Every day about this time the orchard became more shadow than light. The apple trees were lush and green, the two-track path through the orchard neatly mowed. The shed where the parking signs were stored, along with the four-wheelers, wagons and tractors they used for hayrides every autumn, was closed up tight. Noah could see the padlock on the door from here. Everything looked exactly as it always had.
“I don’t see anybody, do you?” Marsh asked quietly.
Reed and Noah shook their heads.
“Did either of you hear a car?” Reed asked.
Noah and Marsh hadn’t, and neither had Reed.
“That baby sure didn’t come by way of the stork,” Marsh insisted.
A stray current of air stirred the grass and the new leaves in the nearby trees. The weather vane on the cider house creaked the way it always did when the wind came out of the east. Nothing looked out of place, Noah thought. The only thing out of the ordinary was the sight of the tiny baby held stiffly in Reed’s big hands.
“We’d better get him inside,” Noah said as he reached for two bags that hadn’t been on the porch an hour ago. A sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up and read the handwritten note.
Our precious son, Joseph Daniel Sullivan.
I call him Joey. He’s my life. I beg you,
take good care of him until I can return for him.
He turned the paper over then showed it to his brothers.
“Our precious son?” Reed repeated after reading it for himself.
“Whose precious son?” Marsh implored, for the note wasn’t signed.
The entire situation grew stranger with every passing second. What the hell was going on here? The last one to the door, Noah looked back again, slowly scanning the familiar landscape. Was someone watching? The hair on his arms stood up as if he were crop dusting dangerously close to power lines.
Who left a baby on a doorstep in this day and age? But someone had. If whoever had done it was still out there, he didn’t know where.
He was looking right at her. She was almost sure of it.
Her lips quivered and her throat convulsed as she fought a rising panic. She couldn’t panic. And he couldn’t possibly see her. He was too far away and she was well hidden. She was wearing dark clothing, purposefully blending with the shadows beneath the trees.
A dusty pickup truck had rattled past her hiding place ten minutes ago. The driver hadn’t even slowed down. He hadn’t seen her and neither could the last Sullivan on the porch. Surely he wouldn’t have let the others go inside if he had.
From here she couldn’t even tell which brother was still outside. It was difficult to see anything in this light. A sob lodged sideways in her throat, but she pushed it down. She’d cried enough. Out of options and nearly out of time, she was doing the right thing.
She had to go, and yet she couldn’t seem to move. On the verge of hyperventilating, she wished she’d have thought to bring a paper sack to breathe into so she wouldn’t pass out. She couldn’t pass out. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of oblivion. Instead, she waited, her muscles aching from the strain of holding so still. Her empty arms ached most of all.
When the last of the men who’d gathered on the porch finally went inside, she took several deep calming breaths. She’d done it. She’d waited as long as she could, and she’d done what she had to do.
Their baby was safe. Now she had to leave.
“Take care of him for me for now,” she whispered into the vast void of deepening twilight.
Reminding herself that this arrangement wasn’t permanent, and that she would return for her baby the moment she was able to, she crept out from beneath the weeping-willow tree near the road and started back toward the car parked behind a stand of pine trees half a mile away.
She’d only taken a few steps when Joey’s high-pitched wails carried through the early-evening air. She paused, for she recognized that cry. It had been three hours since his last bottle. She’d tried to feed him an hour ago, but he’d been too sleepy to eat. Evidently, he was ready now. Surely it wouldn’t take his father long to find his bottles and formula and feed him.
Rather than cause her to run to the house and snatch him back into her arms, Joey’s cries filled her with conviction. He had a mind of his own and would put his father through the wringer tonight, but Joey would be all right. He was a survivor, her precious son.
And so was she.
In five minutes’ time, life as Noah, Reed and Marsh Sullivan knew it went from orderly to pandemonium. Joey—the note said his name was Joey—was crying again. Noah and Marsh were trying to figure out how to get him out of the contraption he was buckled into. Reed, who was normally cool, calm and collected, pawed through the contents of the bags until he found feeding supplies.
When the baby was finally freed from the carrier, Noah picked him up—he couldn’t believe how small he was, and hurriedly followed the others to the kitchen where Reed was already scanning the directions on a cardboard canister of powdered formula he’d found in one of the bags. Marsh unscrewed the top of a clear plastic baby bottle and turned on the faucet.
“It says to use warm water.” Reed had to yell in order to be heard over the crying.
Marsh switched the faucet to hot and Reed pried the lid off the canister. “Make sure it’s not too hot,” Reed called when he saw steam rising from the faucet.
Marsh swore.
Noah seconded the sentiment.
The baby wasn’t happy about the situation, either. He continued to wail pathetically, banging his little red face against Noah’s chest.
Marsh adjusted the temperature of the water again. The instant it was warm but not hot, he filled the bottle halfway. Using the small plastic scoop that came with the canister, Reed added the powdered formula. When the top was on, Noah grabbed the bottle and stuck the nipple in Joey’s mouth. The kid didn’t seem to care that Noah didn’t know what he
