Pocketful of Pearls (14 page)

“Bad enough I got it. It looks all right on boys, but it’s a horror to a girl in high school. I had it done five years ago.
I wasn’t going to inflict it on Jim for the rest of his life.”

“Done?” Jim?

“Yes. Had a plastic surgeon in Seattle take a scalpel to it. Now I have a nice ordinary one, too. Jim says it always gives
him a jolt in the mornings. Keeps things interesting.”

Jim was her second husband. Dinah’s step-uncle. Another name that was never mentioned.

“Aunt Evelyn—”

“I know. You probably didn’t break Silence to call down here to talk about my nose. What’s up? Tamara get there okay? She
didn’t run my car into the side of the barn, did she?”

“Yes. I mean, yes, she got here. She didn’t run the car into the barn.”

“Oh, good. She’s a levelheaded kid, but you never know. She said the only thing she ever drove was the truck and her boyfriend’s
Honda. It had a stick shift.”

“Aunt Evelyn, did she say anything about what she planned to do when she got here?”

“Have a visit, I think. Maybe try to see her mother. Why? Not that I’m not glad to hear from you, but calls from Hamilton
Falls tend to mean either death or disaster, if you know what I mean.”

Dinah took a deep breath. “I guess this falls into the second category, then. Tamara’s left the baby here.”

“What, and gone to find that kid she was seeing? Oh, to be seventeen again, thinking that everybody’s going to pick up the
slack for you. Well, here’s what you do. If the baby’s sleeping, let her. If she wakes up, feed her. That ought to hold you
till Tammy gets back. And you can tell her from me that she’d better not pull a stunt like this again or that’ll be the end
of the free babysitting.”

“I don’t think she’s coming back.” Dinah saw the bedroom in her mind’s eye, empty of everything but the envelope, the baby’s
bag, and the car seat. Now that she thought about it, Tamara had never even brought in any luggage. Had probably never intended
to.

“What do you mean, not coming back? She went out there to see you guys. Otherwise, why risk the grief she’d get?”

“She left an envelope with a letter in it.” Dinah read it in a steady voice, though her hand was still shaking. When she finished,
silence hissed down the line.

“Ye gods and little fishes.” Evelyn sounded winded. “The kid’s gone off her rocker.”

“When she gets back to your place, you have to talk her out of it.”

“You’re not kidding. How long ago did she leave?”

“I was gone for about two hours. She said she was going to take a nap. She’d just fed the baby and probably waited long enough
for her to fall asleep and for us to drive out of sight before she took off.”

“Will you be okay babysitting until we hear from her? My word, this just beats all. After this, I’m not letting Tammy out
of my sight. I take back what I said about her being levelheaded.”

“We’ll be okay, Aunt Evelyn. Let me know as soon as you see her.”

“No problem. You did the right thing to call.”

When Dinah hung up, some of the panic lodged under her ribs had dissipated. It felt strange to have someone come down firmly
on her side for once, someone who pitched in to help without throwing blame and “should-haves” along with it.

A furious howl penetrated the floorboards, and she realized she’d been hearing a noise behind her conversation without registering
what it was. Tamsen had awakened alone in a strange place, and her fire-engine noise had turned into screams that even Dinah
could recognize meant panic.

She dropped the phone and Tamara’s letter and ran for the stairs.

Matthew must have heard them, too, all the way out in the barn, because when she got to the bedroom she found him hovering
helplessly over the baby, whom he’d managed to extract from the car seat and lay on her back on the bed. Part of Tamsen’s
panic probably stemmed from the sight of a strange male looming over her.

Dinah was a stranger, too, as far as that went. The baby’s screams were deafening as Dinah checked her over.

“She’s wet,” she shouted. “Hand me a diaper, will you?”

“Where is your sister?” Matthew scrabbled through the baby bag and finally found a stack of diapers. He handed her one, and
she changed the baby with hands that hadn’t forgotten how.

But the screaming didn’t stop.

“Is she hungry?” He stared at the writhing, roaring infant with such terror that Dinah would have been tempted to laugh if
she hadn’t felt the same way.

“She could be. Is there milk or formula in there?”

He produced a bottle half full of milky liquid with an air of a man triumphing at the eleventh hour. “Here. This should do
it.”

Dinah picked her up, sat on the bed, and stuck the nipple in Tamsen’s mouth. Tamsen hiccuped and gasped around it, then after
a minute settled down to suck.

“Thank God.” Matthew pulled the wooden chair away from the student desk and sat as if his knees had given out. “Where is your
sister?” he asked again.

“She’s gone.”

“Well, yes. I hope she doesn’t plan to stay away long.”

“Permanently, as far as I can tell.” Dinah filled him in on the details, and when he didn’t believe her, he went and got the
letter himself.

“This is preposterous.” He appeared in the bedroom door and held it out. “It can’t be legal. It looks like a printout from
one of those ‘be your own attorney’ computer programs.”

“I don’t know if it is or not. All I know is Tamara came out here on purpose to leave the baby.”

“Surely part of it was seeing you.”

She didn’t reply. Had Tamara faked her happiness at the two of them being together again? She’d faked a lot of other things.

“So now what do we do?”

“We?”

“Yes, we.” Matthew gave her a penetrating look. “Unless you’d rather I take myself back out to the barn and we divide our
duties along traditional lines.”

“What, women inside and men outside?”

“It may have worked in the old days but I can’t see much in it now.”

“True enough. But Tamsen is my responsibility.”

He shook his head. “She is her mother’s responsibility. The only responsibility we have is to see that she gets safely back
to her.”

But when Aunt Evelyn called that evening just after supper—a supper that Matthew had thrown together while Dinah was trying
to bathe the baby in the kitchen sink—they found it wasn’t going to be as easy as that.

“I got an e-mail from Tamara.” Aunt Evelyn didn’t bother with preliminaries. “TamaraT at Hotmail dot com, so we can’t trace
it. She says she left my car at the Amtrak station here in Spokane with the keys on top of the left front tire. She sends
her love.”

“But where did she go?” Dinah gripped the receiver with hands that had gone stiff and cold.

“No indication. Seattle, probably. Or Boise. Or Topeka, Kansas, for all I know.”

“Aunt Evelyn, we have to do something.”

“Your uncle and I will report her to the police as a runaway. I think it’s better if we stay here, in case she decides to
contact us again. Or come home, even. Meantime, I hope you’ve got lots of formula and diapers on hand.”

She didn’t, Dinah thought as she hung up the phone. But she wasn’t going to need them.

She found Matthew at the sink, drying Tamsen off, much to the baby’s disgust. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going into town.”

“What for?”

“We’re going to introduce Tamsen to her father.”

THE WOMAN WHO
opened the door to the modest split-level home broke into a smile when she saw Dinah. The smile wavered a bit when she saw
Matthew standing behind her, and her eyes grew speculative.

“Dinah!” Her voice was welcoming, and she held the door open so that they could come in. Then she saw the baby carrier, and
her smile dropped away in astonishment. “What brings you out on a cold night like this? And who have you got there?”

The door opened straight into a living room littered with toys, books, and pint-sized items of clothing. Without being invited,
Dinah sat down on the couch. For lack of anything better to do, Matthew sat beside her. He wondered how the odd tableau looked
to this woman. “Found Family,” they could call it. Like the found poetry he’d once assigned his students, they were patched-together
and accidental. But there might be some beauty they could find between the lines.

Linda Bell, Dinah had told him on the way over, had five kids of her own, ran a day care center out of her home, was the worst
gossip in Hamilton Falls—and was Tamsen’s grandmother. She just didn’t know it yet.

“Linda, we need your help.” Dinah pulled away the pink blanket that was draped over the baby, and Linda knelt to look.

“Isn’t she darling,” the woman cooed. “Are you babysitting? I’m so glad you came to me. I know how hard it must be, losing
your dad and worrying about your mom, and now you’re looking after a little one. Well, I’ll help in any way I can. What’s
her name?”

“Tamsen. She’s Tamara’s daughter.”

Linda drew back from the baby so suddenly Matthew thought she’d tip over and land on her backside on the carpet. “What?”

“Tamara’s daughter. I’m looking after her for a little while, but I need to—”

“Why have you brought her here? My goodness, Dinah, I thought you were more sensitive than that. People already think she’s—that
Tamara and Danny—well, we don’t want to give them anything more to talk about, do we?”

Matthew stared at the woman. So much for beauty. She stood as far from the baby as she could get, her hands pressed against
her black skirts as if the child were about to climb out of the carrier and throw up on her.

“Linda, I need to speak with Danny.”

“Why?”

Dinah swallowed. “He and Tamara were seeing each other. It’s time he took responsibility for his actions.”

“What actions?” Linda’s voice was dangerously quiet.

“Please don’t be angry with me. I know he said Tamsen wasn’t his when Tamara was first—” She swallowed again. “—Silenced,
but that was a very natural reaction. He needs to come forward now.”

“Why?”

“Because—because Tamara has gone away, and a child needs at least one of its parents.”

“Gone away? Where? When?”

“I don’t know. This afternoon. She left the baby with me and drove away and no one’s seen her since.”

Matthew heard the pain in her voice at having to make such a confession about her only sister to such an unsympathetic audience.

“Left the baby. With you,” Linda repeated, as if this confirmed the opinion she’d had of Tamara all along.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t say. But Danny should prepare himself for long-term.”

“Danny doesn’t need to prepare himself for anything but coming back to the Elect,” Linda snapped.

Dinah stared at her. “But—”

“I suppose you’ve had so much to deal with you haven’t had a chance to think about what’s happening in other people’s lives.”

Matthew winced at the needle sharpness in the woman’s tone. The effusive helpfulness had disappeared like steam on a hot day.

Linda Bell crossed to the window, giving the baby carrier a wide berth. “Danny left two months ago, after he heard that she—”
She gestured at Tamsen, who, thankfully, was sleeping. “—was born.”

“Left?” Dinah sounded bewildered. Matthew felt rather bewildered himself. There was too much going on here for him to assimilate
all at once.

“Yes, left. He left his home, his family, and his church, all because of your sister trying to pin this on him. Thanks to
her, he’s lost his salvation. The good Lord only knows who that child’s father actually is. But it isn’t Danny.”

Dinah’s eyes never left Linda’s face as she picked up the carrier. Matthew got to his feet as well. He’d be glad to see the
door close on this angry woman.

“Where is he?” Dinah asked. Her hand, gripping the handle of the carrier, looked drained of blood. The only reason she hadn’t
dropped it was because the bones of her fingers were locked around it.

“I doubt he’s run off to join her, if that’s what you were hoping,” Linda said. “He’s living with a worldly school friend
at the other end of town. The Barings. But I wouldn’t recommend presenting him with Tamara’s child.” She leveled a look of
extreme dislike at the carrier. “From what I gather, he never wants to see any of the Traynells again.”