chosen, she reminded herself. Part One of her dream, all but complete. And even though the waiting lists were long, and even though adoption agencies tended to give preference to married couples over single women, she would get her baby someday. She would.
There! There was the house she’d passed.
She flipped on her signal and prayed the place was entirely dark only because it was 2:00 a.m. But there was no car in the driveway, and after at least five minutes’ worth of pounding on the door and jabbing the doorbell repeatedly, she realized no one was home.
Well, all right. She would just bundle the mother and baby into her car, and take them with her until she found a phone. Or maybe she would just drive them the rest of the way to Shadow Falls herself. It couldn’t be more than two hours away.
Returning to her car, she reversed out of the empty driveway and headed back to where she’d left the young woman and her son.
When she got to the spot, however, the primer-colored sedan was gone.
A jolt of alarm shot through her as she drove nearer, wondering if she had the right spot, but she was sure she did. There was her jacket, the one she’d wrapped the baby in, lying in the grass along the roadside, right near where she was sure the other car had been parked. Her headlights picked out the pale green fabric. Carrie pulled over and stopped. Surely that young woman couldn’t intend to drive the rest of the way on her own, could she? She’d just given birth, for heaven’s sake. She needed rest, and the baby needed—
The jacket was moving.
“No,” Carrie whispered. “No. Tell me she didn’t—” She wrenched open her door and hurried out, hopping the slight ditch to where her jacket lay, still wriggling.
Almost afraid to look, she bent and unwrapped the fabric. The tiny newborn lay inside, pink and healthy and squirming.
“Oh, God, she left you. How could she—how could anyone?”
Carrie gathered the baby, jacket and all, into her arms, then felt the rustle of paper as she rose.
A note, written on the back of an old envelope with the address torn off, was stuffed in a pocket of the jacket.
Carrie,
His name is Sam. I hope you’ll let him keep it.
We were supposed to meet so I could give him to you. That’s what I meant by what I said before. You’ve been wanting a baby—and you got one. I’ve been wanting a solution, and you were it for me. This was meant to be. That man I knew was right. I always knew he was special. My Sam is all yours now. And don’t worry. I won’t change my mind about this.
Ever.
The note was unsigned. Carrie folded it and tucked it into her jeans pocket.
Then, snuggling the baby close to her chest, she walked back to her car. She looked up and down the deserted stretch of pavement, but she didn’t see any sign of the girl or her car. No headlights approached, announcing that the new mother had come to her senses.
And then she looked up at the sky, silently asking the stars overhead what she was supposed to do next. As she stood there in the night, a star shot in an arcing path right over her head.
Like an answer. Like a wish.
He cried softly, and Carrie stared down into the open, unfocused blue, blue eyes of a newborn baby boy. She smiled.
“Hi, Sam,” she said softly. “I think maybe…I think maybe I’m going to be your mommy. What do you think about that?” She was almost trying out the notion, testing the words as she said them. But they felt so good, she could barely believe it.
She didn’t know how she would pull this off—find the mother and make it legal, she supposed. Somehow she would find a way. Somehow she could make this work. Somehow…
Somehow, in one night on her way to her new life, her dream had come true. Whoever that man was who’d told the girl that if you wanted something badly enough, it could happen, he must have been wise. A guru or a holy man or something. Because this felt like a gift. Like it really was meant to be.
Bending, she pressed her lips to Sam’s forehead as tears, happy ones this time, rolled down her cheeks. “I’ll find a way to make this work, Sam. I promise. And I will be the best mother you could ever wish for.”
1
Present Day
“Go, Sam! Woohoo!” Carrie pumped her fist in the air when her lanky teenage son nailed the soccer ball with the inside of his size-ten foot, sending it like a bullet past the goalie and into the net. He glanced her way, gave her a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes, then tapped the yellow band on his arm to remind everyone watching who that goal was for.
As she sat down again, Carrie was embarrassed by her outburst. It was inappropriate, given the circumstances.
The game continued, and she looked around at the other spectators. Parents and other locals, mostly, lining the bleachers at the edge of an extensive and well-groomed field behind Shadow Falls Central High. School hadn’t yet started—even though pre-season games and practices had begun for soccer, track and cheerleading.
September in Shadow Falls had a definite scent to it, and a distinct feeling to it, as well. You’d know autumn was coming even if you couldn’t see or hear a thing. The leaves were beginning to turn, though they were nowhere near their peak just yet. The sun was just as bright as it had been all summer long, but not as hot anymore, and the breeze had a brisk snap that was missing in the summer months. Fall was rolling in. You could feel it, taste it in the air.
But there was something besides autumn hanging in the air around Shadow Falls. There was a pall that was hard to miss. A lingering darkness that hadn’t let up for five days. It only grew, in fact. Every day that Kyle Becker didn’t come home, Shadow Falls got a little grimmer, a little grayer.
Even the tourists must know the reason for the town’s unusual melancholy mood by now. It was hard to miss, with the Teen Runaway posters stapled to every telephone pole, fence post and unsuspecting maple tree, and the thrice-daily gathering and dispatching of volunteer search parties in front of the old firehouse, just in case something had happened to him, a possibility no one wanted to contemplate too intently.
Every player on both soccer teams, the Blackberry Chiefs as well as the Shadow Falls Vikings, wore a yellow armband to show unity in hoping the missing sixteen-year-old would come home soon. Five days. Carrie didn’t know what the kid was thinking.
“Nice boot,” someone said nearby.
Carrie looked up to see local cop Bryan Kendall, in uniform, sitting four feet to her right. “It was, wasn’t it?” she said. “How are you, Bryan?”
He shrugged. “Been better.”
“I imagine you’re over your head in wedding plans about now, aren’t you? What have you got, six weeks to go?”
“Just under. But it’s not the wedding plans weighing me down. Though I gotta tell you, I’d just as soon elope and get straight to the honeymoon.”
“I’ll bet.”
“It’s
