Chapter 25 #2
Shaking my head at the audacity, I slipped my key into the cabin’s lock but then realized it was already unlocked.
I could barely remember the last time I’d been inside.
Had I forgotten to engage the deadbolt before I left?
But the knob lock was open too. The crews were arriving, truck after truck, so if danger lurked, I wasn’t worried.
Clay was a holler away, and it couldn’t be the bear, could it?
Not with all the people and noise going on around the build site.
Opening the door, I did a quick scan of the living room and kitchen and shivered.
Had I turned off the heat? I thought I’d left it at sixty-eight.
That was the temperature I kept my apartment at, but as I rubbed my hands up and down my arms to eke out a little warmth from the friction, it felt more like thirty-eight.
Nothing seemed out of place though. No hungry grizzlies waiting to pounce on me, so I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, listening for movement, but I heard none and walked to the bedroom. The bathroom and closet were both empty, doors open, lights off.
When I got back out to the living room, I noticed a basket on the floor under the south window, tucked just behind the arm of the loveseat.
Odd. I hadn’t noticed it when I came in, but to be fair, I was looking for bears, not baskets.
Outside the cabin, someone dropped something, and I heard their exclamation a little too clearly. When I followed the noise, I found that the kitchen slider had been left open a crack, but not by me. I’d never even used the back door.
I went back to the basket. Was there a bomb in there?
A small plastic tarp with frayed and loose edges looked like it had been cut and ripped off a bigger tarp, and it covered the basket’s handle and its contents, but the light-wood-colored bottom and weaved-wicker part of the basket was easy to see.
I took one more look around, but other than the open back door, found nothing out of place, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw and heard the tarp move. Something underneath squeaked and cooed.
What the fuck?
Dropping to my knees, I pulled the cover away, and staring out at me from a cocoon of baby blankets with red cartoon tractors on them, two big, round, clear blue eyes blinked.
The baby cooed again and reached out with his chunky little arm. His cheeks looked flushed, and when I touched his face with the backs of two fingers, his skin was still warm, but the cabin was freezing. Whoever had left him hadn’t been gone long.
“Oh my God. Who are you? Where’d you come from?”
My head swiveled back and forth, searching again for the baby’s parents, but I already knew they were gone. They’d escaped out the back, but I had no clue when. Too bad we hadn’t installed security cameras. Dammit! We should have.
“Are you okay? You poor thing.”
I lifted the baby and cradled him in my arms, and he began to cry.
He couldn’t have weighed much more than my cordless drill.
I held him to my chest, trying not to crush him, but I was freaking out.
What in the actual fuck? Who would leave a defenseless baby in the middle of a construction project alone?
It didn’t take long for Clay to come barging in. “Miss Bea? You okay in here? I thought I heard a?—”
“A baby,” I said, finishing Clay’s sentence as his boots squeaked and he stopped in the doorway.
A baby with blue eyes that looked extremely familiar.
I’d just looked into another pair not twenty minutes ago, right before I left Bax’s house and he kissed me goodbye.
I’d seen another pair the other night when Abey told a terrible joke and we’d belly laughed together around Bax’s kitchen table.
And I looked in yet another pair every day at work back in Sheridan.
Brand, Abey, and Bax all had the same crystal-blue eyes.
That was why the guy with long hair looked so familiar. He had to be Dixon Lee, the only living member of the Lee family I hadn’t yet met. And this bundle was the thing he’d been carrying the day he showed up.
Clay nodded to the tractor blankets. “Where’d he come from?”
“I have no idea. He was here when I came in.”
“Someone just left you a baby?”
“Not me. Why would they leave him for me? I-I don’t understand. You didn’t see anybody in here when you pulled in?”
“No,” Clay said. “Not a soul. Maybe they were waitin’ for you?”
“Um. Okay. Can you take over here? I need to?—”
What? What exactly was I supposed to do with a baby?
“Sure thing,” Clay said. “Not to worry. You better call the sheriff.”
Oh. Good idea. I released the breath I’d been holding when he said it and finally realized that Abey would know what to do.
I set the baby back in his basket and covered his arms and legs with one of his blankets.
He’d stopped crying, but he whimpered and puckered his lips.
Was he cold? Scared? I had no idea. I tucked Athena’s green throw around him too, to keep the morning chill off his skin, and Clay held the door open for me as I lugged the bundle to my truck.
The crew had all stopped what they were doing to stare at me, and just as I set the basket on my passenger seat, a car started up down the lane. I recognized the sound of the faulty muffler and turned my head to see the sedan from a couple weeks ago peeling away.
“Get the license number!” I yelled to Clay, turning and pointing to the dust cloud the car made behind it as it raced away, and the baby wailed. Bax had told me that no one had seen Dixon in a long time. They had no clue where he’d been living. What if they couldn’t find him now?
“Too late,” Clay called loudly over the crying, “but I’ll ask around. Maybe one of the crew noticed somethin’.”
“Shit.” I shut the passenger door and rushed to mine. “Oh man. I gotta go.”
Clay stepped away, and I started my truck as fast as I could and threw it into Reverse, but then I remembered there was a baby in a goddamned basket, sitting unsecured on my seat. I didn’t have a car seat or a carrier or whatever the hell they were called.
I put my truck into Drive and steered with one hand while I held the basket handle with the other, trying to avoid potholes and checking every other second to make sure the baby hadn’t decided to jump out.
He didn’t seem like he’d be able to command his little body that effectively quite yet, but I had no idea how old he was or what babies did.
The only baby I’d ever been around was Mrs. Ortiz’s granddaughter when I was nine years old, and then I’d held a couple of my dad’s employee’s kids years ago at the company Christmas party.
I was so not equipped for this; my little freak out about being a mother figure to Athena was so spot on, it made me sick to my stomach.
Bax’s kitchen door banged against the wall when I pushed it open with my hip.
He stood in front of the sink, leaning on one crutch and slowly swiping the scratchy side of a sponge around the pan in the sink he’d used to make eggs. He was humming. Seriously out of tune humming.
“Bax.”
On my way in the door, I noticed the extra cabin key wasn’t hanging from the hook like it had been every other time I went in or out of the house.
It was possible someone had knocked it behind the garbage can below, but with the basket in my hand and the memory of the car kicking dirt behind it as it drove away, I had my doubts.
“Did you forget you wanted to kiss me again?” Bax asked with a goofy smile on his lips, still facing the window over the sink looking out at a view of the barn.
“Where’s Athena? Has she left for school yet?”
He turned when he heard the breathless sound of my voice. My heart was still pounding.
“Yeah, Abey picked her—” Bax stopped mid-sentence, confused at my question, but then he zeroed in on the delivery in my hand. The dish sponge splattered on the floor, and the whites of Bax’s eyes showed as he looked at the baby, like the kid really was a bomb.
I set the basket on his kitchen table, and he swung his wet hand toward it, pointing at the baby with a shaking finger. “What is that ?”