Moonlight Road

  “She’s a ghoul?” Aiden asked.

  “She’s too gutsy for her own good, not afraid of anything. She’s braver than I’ve ever been. What the hell, it got her through some wicked stuff. I admire her. But I don’t want her all zooped up on Annalee’s craziness right now. Right now I want her growing my nephew to a healthy size and having a safe delivery.”

  He considered this. “Makes perfect sense, the way you say it.”

  “Because she’s gutsy and I’m sensible.” She turned toward him. “I love you. I’m in it with you. Trust me. Let me be in it with you.”

  He put his hand around the back of her neck, threading his fingers into her hair. “Of course I trust you. I just don’t want you driven totally crazy right along with me.”

  “Too late. The woman’s got me so nuts, she better be careful around me.”

  Five days after Aiden had been arrested, the phone rang at Erin’s cabin. She answered and Annalee said, “Put Aiden on.”

  “Well, good morning, Annalee,” Erin said. “Everything all right?”

  “Put Aiden on. Quickly.”

  Aiden was sitting at the table with his laptop open, a cup of coffee beside him. When Erin extended the phone toward him, she said, “Guess who’s turned up again?”

  He took the phone at once. “This better be good,” he said. He listened for a long time, then he finally said. “Of course, you realize that extortion is against the law.” Again, he listened for a long time. “Would you like the phone number for my attorney so you can make that offer to him?” Again he listened. “Fine. I’ll pass the offer along to my attorney…and, Annalee? You might want to get a really, really good one yourself.” Then he disconnected.

  Erin just stood, a frozen look on her face, waiting.

  “Here’s her offer. If I give her a hundred-thousand-dollar cash settlement off the books, she’ll sign everything right away. Otherwise she plans to take me to court and sue me for desertion, abuse, battery, mental cruelty, imprisonment…” He laughed suddenly, sardonically. “Imprisonment? God, I couldn’t get away from her fast enough!”

  Erin took a step toward him. “Aiden, she can’t prove any of those things!”

  “But there was a report. Of course she can’t prove anything—but what she can do, as she so cleverly pointed out to me, is circulate rumors, even using the press. She can make enough of a stink that no practice with one working brain among them would ever give me a chance as a woman’s doctor. When I pointed out that blackmail was against the law, she said she hoped I had some recording device working. Then she said to make a decision within the week or she’d be beat-up again. And the police were probably tired of my lawyer girlfriend lying for me.”

  “Aiden! She can’t get away with this!”

  “But she can,” he said. “I mean, she’ll never prove anything—but can she make it real tough for me to carry on without a long history of innuendo and gossip that alleges I’m abusive toward women? Ruin my career? I think even if she goes to jail, she could still manage to create a lot of damaging suspicion about my character.” He laughed suddenly. “Doesn’t this all sound familiar? Except the price—the price has gone way up.”

  Mel was just hanging out in the reception area, a stack of lab results in one pile and charts in the other. Cameron was at the desk, working on the computer. They were in the process of trying to go paperless, filing all their patient charts on the hard drive. Mel had found them a perfect customized program, but it still required a lot of charting, filing, sifting, sorting and inputting.

  “The second we have an extra dime, we’re getting at least a part-time secretary. I spend half my life on paperwork.”

  Cameron just grunted his reply. He was drowning in it as much she was.

  Business was definitely picking up. They were now up to two appointment days a week, and with more people in the area getting insurance, they were both making a living, if a modest one.

  The door opened and Darla Prentiss popped her head in. “Mel, hi! Got a minute for me?”

  “Absolutely! How are you?”

  “Fantastic.”

  Darla waved out the door and Mel heard the engine of a truck as it was turned off, the slamming of a door. Then Phil Prentiss was beside his wife. He pulled his ball cap off his head as he entered. His jeans, plaid shirt and boots were well-worn and a little dirty—he’d been working. Darla was dressed up, however—she wore her best creased pants and starched white blouse. She was clutching a large manila envelope protectively against her chest. “Mel,” Phil said with a smile and nod. “Doc,” he said to Cameron.

  Cameron got up to shake the man’s hand. “You two are looking good,” he observed.

  “You, too, Doc. Mel—may we talk to you a minute? A special request?” Phil asked.

  “Right this way,” Mel said, heading toward their office. “You know I’d do anything for you two.”

  Phil laughed; Darla joined him in laughter. “That’s exactly what we’re hoping.”

  When Phil and Darla were seated in front of her desk and Mel behind it, she couldn’t help but grin at their youthful, secretive amusement with each other. She folded her hands on top of her desk. “Gonna let me in on the joke?” she asked.

  Darla passed the envelope to her. “We’re moving on, Mel. This is our adoption packet. We’re still hoping God blesses us with a child, but I guess it’s not going to be one we make on our own.”

  Almost in shock, Mel took the envelope. She was speechless.

  “We got talking,” Phil said. “It’s pretty obvious there’s another plan for us. There must be a need for a couple just like us to help out or we wouldn’t find ourselves in this position. Truth is, if we’d had children we probably wouldn’t consider adopting.”

  “You’re going to stop trying?” Mel asked cautiously.

  Darla nodded. “We’re all done. If there’s money to be spent now, we thought it might be better spent on a lawyer.” She turned and smiled at her husband. “And on setting up a college fund. I imagine there are children out there who need us.” She laughed a little. “There are probably kids looking for a place to grow up with fresh whole milk, garden vegetables and maybe a hayloft to jump out of.”

  “But what if you get pregnant again?” Mel asked.

  “We’ve decided to go ahead and turn that off,” Phil said, shaking his head. “First off, it isn’t real likely. That doesn’t appear to be a special talent of ours. And second, the kind of pregnancies we have are just too traumatic. We don’t want to complicate a newly formed family life like that.”

  “I hate to sound like I’m just a crybaby—there isn’t much in my life to complain about. But we don’t want to try to get over another miscarriage. Besides, Phil and I always had faith that the right thing for us would present itself.”

  “You were never a crybaby,” Mel said softly. “You always had the best attitudes of any couple I’ve ever known.”

  “We’ve been blessed in so many other ways,” Phil said. “I mean, the farm is solid, the land is good to us, we found each other at an early age. I can’t speak for Darla, but there hasn’t been a day in my life that I didn’t wake up and thank God for this woman. She’s the best wife a man could ever have….”

  Darla got a little bit of a girlish flush on her cheeks. “You know why he says that, don’t you? If he’s real sweet and romantic, sometimes I make two desserts.”

  He laughed low in his throat. “That’s not all she does for me if I’m sweet and romantic—but you don’t want to hear about that!”

  “Phil!” she scolded. Then she looked back to Mel, serious. “Mel, could you look through that envelope, please? Tell us if we’ve included the kinds of things a person who has to place a child would want to know? And if anything is missing, we’ll add it.”

  “Sure,” Mel said, almost numb. “Sure, let’s see.” She opened the envelope and pulled out some paperwork. There were several identical, copied résumés. “How did you know what to include?”

&
nbsp; “We looked it all up online. Eventually I’m going to create a page for us so we can put this stuff up, too. So the next time someone is looking…” She shrugged. “We’ll be there, ready to be found.”

  Mel scanned. It was all there. Personal information from ages to religious preferences to health reports. There was a description of their home life—large dairy farm, remodeled five-bedroom home, above-average income, savings and investments, clean legal history, long residency in the community, tons of community service. As Mel had known since the first time she met them—they were ideal. They’d spent a fortune trying to have a baby of their own.

  “Are you at peace with this decision?” Mel asked, feeling a growing ache in the place where she’d once had a womb.

  “We are, Mel. We have a real good life, a happy marriage. We’ve been trying too hard to make things happen our way when maybe that’s just not the plan. And you know what else? If we’re not meant to adopt, either, then a child won’t come our way—we did the paperwork, but we’re putting this in God’s hands. If he sees fit to assist us in this, he’ll send us the child we’re meant to raise.”

  If God sees fit? Mel thought almost angrily. God hasn’t been much help so far! But she covered her anger and said, “Well, how flexible are you? It doesn’t say here just exactly what kind of child you want. That’s usually part of the packet. Most couples have preconceived ideas—like a male child under six months old, Caucasian, that sort of thing.”

  They looked at each other and laughed again. “That would be us making out exactly what we’d have rather than us being open to what comes our way.”

  “Well, that could be a six-year-old biracial child. Or how about a child with disabilities?” she asked.

  “There again, about the only thing we could be guaranteed with our own baby was its race. You think if our own baby had come with disabilities, we’d turn it back in?” She chuckled and shook her head at the absurdity. “I’ll be honest, Mel—I’ve dreamed of holding a small baby close, of watching our child get teeth, learn to walk and talk, grow tall. But when you get down to it, about the only thing missing from our lives, our almost-perfect lives, is the laughter of children. I guess they come in all ages, shapes, colors and sizes.”

  “Here’s something to kick around—a lot of young women who feel they have to place their child for adoption want to keep some kind of contact. They want to be informed regularly that their baby is doing well. They want pictures and stuff. And even if they relinquish custody for adoption, they might even want to turn up at a Little League game to see their child play ball,” Mel said. She was so hoping to scare them off.

  They exchanged curiously puzzled looks and she thought, Aha! They won’t go for that!

  “Now, doesn’t that just make sense?” Darla said. “I have to admit, if I were forced to have someone else raise a child of mine, it would sure give me comfort to know they were growing up strong and good.”

  “That can be awfully complicated, you know,” Mel said. “Having some biological parent looking things over all the time, maybe considering trying to interfere if she doesn’t like the way things are going….”

  Phil laughed. “Any more complicated than my cranky old dad watching that farm like he didn’t retire twenty years ago? Threatening to take it back from me and my brother every other day?” He laughed and Darla joined him. “Mel, when you own a big herd and try to make your living off Mother Nature, you better be able to take complications in stride. No one more fickle than Mother Nature.” He looked at Darla. “Didn’t we surely learn that when trying to breed up our own family?”

  Mel put the material back in the envelope. “Well, looks like it’s all here to me, unless you change your minds and decide to be more specific about the kind of child you’re looking for. Or—unless you want to try having your own just once more. You carried the last one pretty long—eighteen weeks.”

  Darla shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m just not up to it. I not only feel the loss so much, but I end up feeling like a failure. I know that’s just silly, but…”

  “I know the feeling,” Mel said. “But how about a surrogate? Did you talk about that?”

  “We did. It sounds like a pretty reasonable option for folks like us. But I’m thirty-five and Phil’s thirty-eight. It’s time for us to stop playing the conception lottery. Like I said, that money can start a college fund. You can bet there aren’t any rich babies up for adoption. If we get a baby, it’ll be a little one that no one could do that for. But we can. We’ve always had everything. Everything but children.”

  Phil sat back in his chair. “Gotta get me a kid to pester and hound the way my old man does me. Can’t wait till I get to turn over the farm and then show up every day to tell him what he’s doing wrong,” he joked.

  “Oh, Phil,” Darla lightly scolded. “Your dad tries to help. He means well.”

  “What if a baby…or a young child, for that matter…never materializes for you?” she asked them.

  “Well,” Phil said. “If that happens, I guess we’ll die with a lot of excess love in our hearts.” He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “There are worse things.”

  “Well, good luck with this,” Mel said, handing them the envelope.

  “Would you keep it, Mel? You have all the women patients in Virgin River. We’re giving a packet like that to an agency in Eureka and another one to the biggest OB in the county. But maybe someone around here will turn up, right here where we live. If you come across anyone who needs us, would you mind just telling them? Maybe give out one of our résumés?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Sure, I can do that.”

  And she recalled—it happened just like this so many times that it was almost impossible to think of it as a coincidence. The first time was years ago, in L.A., when a young woman came into the hospital clinic, sobbing, saying she couldn’t bring herself to terminate, but she was in no place to raise a child—the father didn’t want her, wouldn’t help, her parents were furious, et cetera, et cetera. Two hours later a woman in her thirties who had had a hysterectomy brought in an adoption résumé and asked if they knew of anyone looking for adoptive parents…. They came so close together they practically passed each other in the doorway. Mel had put them together and felt such a rush of warmth at having had a hand in making everyone’s life a little richer.

  She didn’t feel that way at the moment. She stood up and put out a hand. “I’ll let you know if I hear of anyone.”

  Darla took her hand first, then Phil did. “Thanks, Mel—you’re just a treasure. We know it’ll probably take a long time. We’re patient. But giving that to you—that’s the closest thing to having an angel in charge we can think of.”

  Hah! Mel thought. If only you knew! “Now, don’t go giving me credit I don’t deserve,” she said, smiling. “I don’t know of anyone at this point.”

  She walked them to the front door, bid them goodbye, then went back to the office. Well, she still had some measure of control here—once Marley and Jake chose her as the adoptive mother, all would be well. It wouldn’t take them long, either. They’d met with Brie right away. Mel would be the prenatal practitioner of choice, and Marley might even be open to her delivering the baby. Worst case, she could direct Marley and Jake to John Stone, who would certainly let her in the room. They would be so relieved to have a close friend of Rick and Liz as the mother of their child.

  She slipped the envelope into the bottom desk drawer. If she held her arms in just a certain way, she could almost feel the weight of the infant’s head in the crook. If she just left that envelope in the drawer for a couple of weeks, a few at the most, her deal with Marley and Jake would be final. She’d even let them name the baby. That would convince them she was perfect!

  It had happened this way so often, that the birth mother and the adoptive mother found each other by the merest chance, just when it needed to happen. Not only had it happened in Mel’s practice, but she’d heard similar stories from so many nurs
es and doctors.

  But it had happened again! The birth parents came to her for help and she was there for them! She was a good choice and totally prepared to raise their child and raise it as well as anyone could! As well as the Prentisses for sure!

  She pulled the envelope out of the drawer and weighed it in her hand. She was so fond of Darla and Phil; they were the most wonderful people. It seemed like the biggest cheat in the universe that they hadn’t been able to have a baby of their own. All they wanted to make their lives complete was a child to shower their wonderful love on.

  She put the envelope back in the drawer. It’s my baby! she thought vehemently. I found it! I found it just when I was needing it!

  She pulled open the drawer and looked at the envelope sitting there. It had grown larger in size. Perfect health, good wholesome family life, lots of love, profound faith, wisdom and laughter and kindness beyond belief. They’d love a baby, but they weren’t going to be narrow-minded—another child could need them. And they had no children.

  I have two children, she thought. Two healthy, happy, smart, beautiful children. Darla has never held a brand-new baby of her own close to her chest….

  But I need one more. I need that one more! I need to feel that joy of motherhood one more time. I need that womanly purpose. And if I can’t watch my own belly grow, I can watch Marley grow with the baby! With my baby!

  She closed the drawer. She slammed it closed. She put her head down on her desk. She felt pain in her throat and temples. Her stomach began to churn. I’m coming down with something, she thought.

  It’s not your baby, a voice said. You want it to be your baby so much that you’ll steal it from two of the most decent, deserving prospective parents on earth. And you will do that because…?

  “Because it’s what I feel I need,” she said aloud. Softly, but still aloud.

  All she needed was a couple of weeks of silence, four at the outside, and it would be done. She would have successfully kept the Prentisses from knowing about the baby and the baby’s birth parents from knowing about the Prentisses. And even if the birth parents found out about the Prentisses, they might still choose Mel and Jack. No harm done.