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“What about the Winslow girl?” the nurse asked.
Rebecca froze.
“She’s resting comfortably,” the doctor answered, handing the chart to the nurse. “She’ll be transplanted at 7:00 a.m. by Dr. Walsh.”
Rebecca slowed her steps, straining to hear anything, a sliver of hope that they believed the transplant would be a success.
“I hope it works.” The nurse placed the chart on the Formica counter. “She’s such a—”
A high-pitched beep sounded. The nurse looked over the counter and pushed a button. “Sandy Reed again.”
The doctor chuckled, then strode away while the nurse took off in the opposite direction.
The chart lay on the stark counter.
Rebecca bit her lip and hurried forward. The nurses’ station was deserted. She looked over her shoulder, up and down the corridor, then scanned the chart. The name typed on the bottom of the form entitled Doctor’s Orders was Mary Fitzmyer.
With another surreptitious glance around the vicinity, she made certain all was clear. A few televisions droned in the background along with the bleeps and chirps from various monitors and medical equipment. Standing on tiptoe, she peered over the counter. Medical charts lined the desk area. Valuable minutes would be wasted if she had to search each chart to see which room was Melanie’s.
Another look around the area and she darted around the counter. M. Winslow. The name and room number was posted to a board with little red lights that flashed when someone required the nursing staff’s attention.
Room 529.
She didn’t believe it possible, but her heartbeat thudded painfully in her chest. This was it.
Wiping her damp palms on her robe a second time, she rechecked the area, then hurried from around the counter.
She checked the sign. Rooms 519 to 529. Melanie would be at the end of the corridor.
She’d come this far, she couldn’t back out now. Nervously she headed toward the end of the corridor, staying close to the pale-mauve walls for support. Stopping outside the slightly opened door to room 529, she listened, barely able to hear a thing beyond the blood pounding in her ears.
Absolute quiet. No television, radio or even the sounds of a magazine or book pages being turned. With one last glance down the corridor, she quietly pushed the door open. By the soft light from the hallway spilling into the room, she spotted the bed. Curled on her side sleeping peacefully, was a tiny girl with hair as dark as Rebecca’s own and a pert nose remarkably reminiscent of Rebecca’s mother.
Her breath stopped, and she fought an unexpected rush of tears. This was her child, her daughter. Carefully she stepped more fully into the room and approached the bed. Melanie Winslow looked so small and fragile, Rebecca’s heart broke as if it was nothing more than delicate crystal smashed cruelly against the pavement. She deeply resented that she’d had to give this beautiful child away, but her father hadn’t given her a choice.
Dwelling on the past solved nothing. She had to look to the future, grateful to have the one month Sam had granted her.
The girl stirred. Rebecca held her breath as realization flooded her. God, what had she done? If Melanie awakened and found her here, how would she explain her presence later? She’d promised Sam she wouldn’t do this—and look at her, sneaking around the hospital in the middle of the night.
Melanie snuggled further beneath the blankets, and Rebecca expelled the breath she’d been holding. As carefully and as quietly as possible she backed out of the room and pulled the door near closed.
By the time she reached her room, her limbs trembled uncontrollably. Personal risks were something she rarely employed. Gambling was not on her list of habits, but she’d certainly done more than her fair share in the past forty-eight hours. She knew getting to know Melanie was risky—she could lose, and the cost was astronomical. She’d suffered heartache once. Did she really think she could bear to suffer it again?
Chapter Three
The textbooks lied. There was no other explanation for the horrible throbbing pain in her hips. Rebecca winced when Sam swerved to avoid another pothole in the road. She didn’t think the bruises would ever fade, considering the coat hanger they’d used to extract bone marrow the previous day.
The radio played softly, a country-western station no less, and she wondered if they played other types of music out here in the middle of nowhere. She doubted Sam even owned anything remotely close to classical music, unless one considered Hank Williams classical, she thought crankily.
Occasional farmhouses and huge red or white barns dotted the sprawling countryside as they headed north toward the Canadian border. A few corrals with a horse or two grazing idly, and even small paddocks with cattle, now and then broke up the vast landscape, but mainly her view consisted of field upon field of wheat and other types of soon-to-be grains she didn’t recognize.
As they passed a field of sunflowers, Rebecca marveled at the huge, bright-yellow flowers, all facing in the same easterly direction, like smart little soldiers waiting in ranks for the order to march forward into battle. She thought of asking Winslow how they did that, but he’d been silent and sullen since they’d left the hospital so she kept her questions to herself.
“How much farther is it to Shelbourne?” she asked twenty minutes later, more out of boredom than anything else. She shifted in her seat and stifled a groan when her sweats rubbed uncomfortably against her bruised hipbone.
“Another forty minutes or so.” Sam kept his eyes trained on the flat roadway. Other than the rich tenor on the radio singing about putting the past behind him, the cab was silent again.
“Did you make reservations for me?” she asked, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. Not only was Sam’s less-than-friendly attitude beginning to wear on her nerves, she wanted nothing more than to lie down.
“Reservations?”
She sighed. “Yeah. You know, like in a hotel? A place where I can rest my head at night? Or did you plan on stuffing me in a hay-filled stall with all the other barnyard animals?”
He tossed an exasperated glance her way. “The closest motel is fifty miles away from the farm. You’ll be staying at the house with us.”
She sat up and winced. “What?”
“Sorry, Ms. Martinson, but Shelbourne isn’t exactly a mecca filled with fine restaurants and five-star hotels.”
Rebecca turned to the window, worrying her lower lip. She’d imagined spending her time in a nice little hotel room, going with Sam to visit Melanie and waiting for word that the transplant was indeed the success the preliminary reports were showing. Once the doctors released Melanie to home care, she’d envisioned spending a few days a week at the house playing the role of visitor—not taking up residence with Witty Winslow.
Thirty minutes later they turned from the highway onto a secondary road. They passed the tall cylinders of a grain elevator and finally a silver tower with the word Shelbourne painted in black, block-style letters.
She shielded her eyes from the bright North Dakota sunshine and struggled to sit straighter to get a look at the town where her daughter lived. Sam slowed the truck to the twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit posted for the city limits.
City? she wondered silently. City wasn’t exactly the word she would use to describe the three-block section of Shelbourne. There was a hardware store, a post office, a grocery with big red letters that said just that and a drugstore, all in one block. The next block boasted a beauty shop she was certain Ron, her stylist, would flay her alive if she dared to visit. On the other side of the street stood a floral shop, an auto parts store and a barbershop, complete with an old-fashioned red-and-white pole. There were a couple of taverns, a place called the Shelbourne Diner and at the end of the street a mechanic’s shop that doubled as a gas station. Before she could blink, they’d crossed over a set of railroad tracks and then more wide-open nothingness. Just more fields of summer crops.
“That’s it?” she asked, and turned to look behind her. There hadn’t been a police station, city hall, not even a library or a church. “Where’s the police station?”
“We don’t have one,” he answered, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
“You guys dish out justice Western style, or what?”
He chuckled and the sound swept over her, stirring her senses. “No. We have a county sheriff in a nearby town. There’s a courthouse, too, a couple of lawyers, a medical clinic. Pretty much everything we need is here in Shelbourne or Johnstone. For anything else I travel to Minot once a month.”
“I see.” Really she didn’t. Where were the convenience stores? Or a movie theater, or video store? God, where did Melanie go if she got a craving for a hot-fudge sundae? Canada?
She turned her gaze back to Sam. “You said it was a small town, but cripes, I didn’t realize you meant it.”
“Feeling a little out of your element, Ms. Martinson?” There was no animosity in his voice, just mild amusement which made her smile.
“Actually…yes,” she admitted, curious to know what Melanie did for recreation in a town the size of Shelbourne.
Sam didn’t reply, but turned the truck onto a gravel road. Instinctively she clutched the dashboard in an effort to keep the jarring to a minimum. As if he sensed her discomfort, he thankfully slowed the truck and she relaxed. She hoped he had a comfortable bed for her. Her hips were killing her, and she was exhausted. The doctor had warned her to take it easy for a week. Considering what she’d just seen of the town, she didn’t think that was going to be a problem, because Sam had been right. Shelbourne was not exactly a mecca.
WHEN SAM HAD SAID he was a simple farmer, Rebecca envisioned a little red barn in need of repair on the edge of a wheat field. She imagined cows and pigs, chickens pecking the ground, maybe even a small corral for a horse or two along with a big lazy bloodhound snoozing in the shade.
The dusty driveway she’d pictured was in reality a smooth concrete drive bordered by majestic evergreens. Replacing the little red barn of her imagination stood a monstrosity of red, neatly trimmed in white, along with three other long, low, rounded buildings of equal size. There were other outbuildings, as well, each painted white with a red W above the doors. She counted close to two dozen huge, galvanized-steel cylinders along a treeline and varying types of heavy machinery she couldn’t begin to name.
Sam drove past the barn and outbuildings and waved to a group of at least a dozen men resting on benches beneath the shade of a large maple tree. But the sight that stole her breath was the farmhouse itself, the house she would share with Sam and Melanie for the next four weeks.
She’d prepared herself for the worst, imagining a clapboard shack with peeling paint, a sagging roof and dusty windows. The structure that loomed in front of her could only be referred to as stately. The home was subdued elegance and country comfort, a combination she never would have been able to imagine. A covered porch swept across the front, complete with an old-fashioned wooden railing that made her think of warm summer evenings and sunsets. A bed of spring flowers strained toward the warmth of the sun, creating a picture-postcard effect she found too enchanting for words.
A tall, reed-thin man sauntered from around the side of the house, a cowboy hat shielding his eyes from the sun. His weathered face broke into a grin as he approached them. “Boy am I glad you’re here. We’ve got a small problem, Sam.”
Sam slipped a blue ball cap onto his head and slid from the truck. “What’s up, Jake?”
“It’s that old combine again,” he said. “R.D.’s won’t have the parts in until next week, and I can’t spare a man to run into the city right now.”
“Damn.” Sam braced his hands on his denim-clad hips. “That wheat’s ready to come down. We need every piece of equipment in those fields.”
Jake tilted his hat back, exposing thick salt-and-pepper hair. “I did another grain test this morning, boss. I’ve started the boys out there today in the far northern square.”
“Have you called around to see if anyone can get the parts to us?”
Jake nodded. “Farm Supply in the city, but they can’t deliver until Friday. I’d head off but we’ve already got four truckloads of grain ready to take to the elevator and we’re short a driver.”
Carefully Rebecca opened the door to the cab and stepped onto the driveway. Sam and his foreman could have been speaking a foreign language. She didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, but she could tell from the dark expression on Sam’s face he wasn’t too happy.
She closed the door, and both men turned to look in her direction.
Jake touched the brim of his cowboy hat. “Ma’am.”
“Rebecca Martinson, this is Jake Henshaw. He’s my foreman.”
She walked around the front of the pickup and extended her hand to Jake. “A pleasure, Mr. Henshaw.”
Jake chuckled and shook her hand. “Just Jake, ma’am. You a friend of Sam’s?”
“We’re old friends from college.” The lie easily slid from her lips, from where, she couldn’t be sure. She supposed it was the safest and most logical explanation for her presence at Winslow Farms.
She caught Sam’s dark gaze, but his eyes revealed nothing.
“I’ve got to head back into the city,” Sam told her. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” She’d been worried about what they would find to talk about. His abrupt departure would at least give her a chance to find her bearings. “I’ll just get settled, if you’ll show me where I’ll be staying.”
Sam said a few more words to Jake and sent the older man to call in the order so it would be ready when he arrived.
“This way.” He inclined his head toward the side of the house and pulled her overnight bag from the bed of the truck.
Rebecca followed him up a short set of steps into a utility room the size of a small office. An antique bench butted against the wall next to a rack filled with boots and shoes. Inside of an open closet space, coats and sweaters hung neatly on a bar below a shelf with a variety of hats, gloves and scarves.
When she stepped into the kitchen, she stared in amazement. Most people thought of the kitchen as the heart of a home. To her, it had always been the room where she kept the cereal and microwave dinners. Just about every appliance, small and large, most of which she couldn’t begin to name, adorned the spacious, cream ceramic-tiled counters. A large oval oak table held center stage atop an authentic brick floor. Rich oak cabinets with matching ceramic handles or knobs, along with braided oval rugs, cream lace curtains and baskets filled with dried or silk flowers added a comfortable down-home feel to an otherwise technologically sterile environment.
“Mel’s idea,” he said, nodding to the feminine touches.
He dropped her bag on a thick-legged chair near the table. “Make yourself at home,” he said, removing his cap and running his fingers through his hair. “I had your bags brought upstairs yesterday. Your room is the third door on the left. You’ll find leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry.” He glanced at his watch then slapped his cap back on his head. “I should be back in time for supper.”
Back in time for supper? Oh, sweet heaven. He didn’t expect her to cook, did he? Because she had serious doubts that her one speciality, Rebecca raman, would be well received in the land of meat and potatoes. Before she could ask Sam, he spun on his heel and disappeared through the utility room.
Sam drove away before she pulled out a chair and sat. Now what? She was miles from home, exhausted, and didn’t have the first clue what to do with herself. Resting her elbow on the heavy table, she plopped her chin in her hand.
What was she doing here?
Maybe she should leave. Victor had been right, she had no business coming to North Dakota. She should ask Sam’s foreman to take her back to the airport and she could jump on the first plane back to California. Open adoptions were becoming more and more common, but she always advised her adoption clients not to maintain contact with the birth mother because ultimately, the child suffered. She knew the arguments by rote, but her heart cried out for this one chance to get to know the daughter she’d lost. The choice of keeping her child had been taken away from her when she’d been a mere child herself. How could she turn away from the opportunity she now held in her hands?
No. She couldn’t think about what might go wrong. Melanie was not going to find out who she really was, and after her month was up, she’d leave.
And do what? she asked herself.
Learn to live her life without her child—all over again.
THREE HOURS LATER Sam still hadn’t returned. Rebecca had showered, changed and explored the large and elegant farmhouse and was bored stiff. Needing something to occupy her time, she found her way to the kitchen. Sam said he’d be home for supper. What time was supper in North Dakota? She’d seen for herself that the sun didn’t set until after nearly eleven o’clock each night. And she’d already learned that lunch was called dinner, which she didn’t think she’d ever get used to hearing. Things were certainly different in the Midwest.
Well, maybe she wasn’t much of a cook, but she did have quite a knack for microwave dinners. Sam said there were leftovers. Maybe she could warm some of those and they’d eat supper together.
With some effort she located the makings of what she deemed a decent meal. Now all she had to do was figure out how to operate the electric stove, since Sam didn’t have a microwave, which she thought odd considering the multitude of gadgets in his kitchen.
Geeze, what did Melanie do for popcorn? she wondered.
Twenty minutes later, and after several false starts, she’d sliced a leftover roast, found a container with what she thought could pass for gravy and set them to simmer. She wrinkled her nose. Warming, the meat had a strange odor.
She peered into the skillet. It looked like roast beef. Checking the container, she found a masking tape label on the lid with a V printed on the top. “Veal?” she murmured, and looked back in the pan. Didn’t look, or smell, like any veal she’d ever seen. With a shrug she padded across the brick floor to the freezer, hoping to find some vegetables. Stacked inside in neat orderly rows were meats, clearly labeled and wrapped in white paper. She found hamburger, T-bones, roasts, pork chops and…
“Venison! Oh my, God. I’m cooking Bambi!”
With a disgusted cry, she slammed the freezer door then hurried across the kitchen as quickly as possible, considering her sore hip. She snapped off the burner and glared at the contents in the skillet. No way was she eating Bambi.
Now what? she thought. She returned to the fridge and found some lettuce and tomatoes. She added a can of tuna she found in the pantry and successfully turned it into a salad. Now her only problem was she couldn’t find a drop of dressing. She vaguely recalled a cooking show she’d seen once when she was stuck in bed with the flu for a week. Maybe she could make her own salad dressing. After locating cooking oil and a bottle of vinegar, she dumped the contents of both bottles into a bowl, stirred them, then set the bowl in the fridge to chill.
Happy with her endeavors, she wandered to the family room and flipped on the television. She found an old movie and settled on the sofa to wait for Sam.
MELANIE SAT against a mound of pillows, a teen magazine propped in her lap when Sam walked through the door. For the first time in weeks a hint of sparkle shone in her eyes.
Overcome by a rush of emotion, he stopped and stared at his daughter. He’d been so afraid he would lose her. First the unknown, and then the dreaded diagnosis that forced him to locate her birth mother. Thanks to Rebecca, Mel now had a chance. For that, he would always be grateful to her.
“Dad!” Mel tossed the magazine aside. “I’m so bored.”
Sam chuckled at her melodramatics and produced the stuffed bear he’d been holding behind his back, before sitting on the edge of the bed. “That’s a good sign.”
Mel gave him one of her breathtaking grins. Shock rippled through him. That smile he’d always loved on his daughter reminded him too much of Rebecca. Mother and daughter shared the same smile, the same hair and eye color, but that’s where the physical similarities ended. He’d always had a mild curiosity about Mel’s parentage. Since meeting Rebecca, that curiosity had mounted, almost to the point of obsession.
Mel wrapped her slender arms around his neck and gave him a fierce hug. “Thanks for the bear, Dad.”
“Anytime.”
Mel settled against the pillows and hugged the pink teddy to her chest. “What are you doing here? I called the house. Where were you?”
