The Strange Case of Baby H (9 page)

“Russian Hill homes are gone, as well,” pronounced Mr. Grissinger with some relish. “Seems the rich burn just as easily as the poor in the end. Pots of money won't save you from this fire, no sir!”

“Gentlemen,” said Mother from the doorway, “we're all very glad indeed that you're home safe and sound. Now, please come to the dining room for your lunch. I'm afraid it's just potatoes, but there's a bit of leftover soup, too. Clara, I'll need your help. And you, young man—Edward, is it? Come along, lad.”

“It's Edgar, ma'am. Just show me what to do.”

As he and Clara stepped out the back door into the yard, Edgar whispered, “There—don't you sense it? We're being watched! I believe it
is
Uncle James. He's happy I'm here with you now …”

Clara glanced back over her shoulder. She, too, had the sensation of being under scrutiny.

“It's just a feeling I keep getting,” continued Edgar in a whisper. “I felt it most strongly back in the parlor when I was standing by the windows—didn't you?”

Clara wiggled her shoulders uncomfortably as if to shake a ghost off her back. She stood at the makeshift stove and ladled buttered potatoes from the cooking pot into bowls for Edgar to carry inside to the lodgers. Back and forth he went, two bowls at a time, until all were served. Clara filled the pitcher with water from the rain barrel and walked up the ramp behind him into the house.

“Let me get you a chair,” said Mother when Edgar stepped into the dining room.

“I'll fetch it,” said Hiram Stokes, and he hurried to bring one from the kitchen table. Edgar raised his eyebrows at Clara and looked pointedly to the empty place, Gideon's place, at the far end of the table. Clara shook her head.

Shrugging, Edgar sat in the chair Mr. Stokes brought. Then Mr. Stokes walked to the head of the table and handed Mother a sheet of paper. “Here, ma'am. This was lying on the floor inside the back door. I guess someone must have just dropped it off—though I looked outside and saw no one in the yard.”

Clara looked up sharply from her potatoes.

Mother, bouncing Baby H on her knee, scanned the paper. Her face paled. “Oh dear,” she said. “Clara, it seems you've had a hand in this!”

“What is it?” Clara reached across the table for the page. The handwriting was elegant, the message succinct. Alarm bells sounded in her head as she read.

Kind Friend,

We read the notice you posted in the park and are so glad you have our daughter safe and sound. Please bring her to us at the Japanese Tea Garden at four o'clock today. We will be waiting. You will be amply rewarded for your care of our dear baby girl.

Signed—                    
Mr. and Mrs. Forrest

“Forrests again,” Mother said softly, rubbing her cheek against Baby H's fuzzy head. “Your poster must be right, Clara, after all.” She sighed heavily. “So, these Forrests will meet us in the park at the Japanese Tea Garden today at four. So soon—” She dipped her head to the baby. “Oh, little one, I do hate to give you up.”

“But, of course, we must,” said Father from his end of the table. “May I see the note, Clara?” Silently she passed it to him, her mind in a whirl. “One would think,” added Father, “they could have knocked on the door and spoken to us instead of leaving a note!”

“That
is
rather odd,” agreed Miss Chandler.

The lodgers buzzed with interest as the note was passed around the table. “I daresay,” said Miss Amelia Wheeler, “that this note was brought by messenger.”

“Perhaps the parents have been injured,” added her sister, Ottilie.

“That would explain it,” nodded Mrs. Hansen. “The poor people. At least we have all
our
children here with us. It would be dreadful to become separated!”

Mother had been sitting silently, her face buried in the baby's neck. Now she raised her face, and Clara saw the tracks of tears on Mother's cheeks. “I know how dreadful it is to lose a child,” she said softly. “Of course we will return this precious lamb at four o'clock, just as they've asked us to.”

Father cleared his throat. “I will accompany you to the park, Alice.”

Clara stared from one parent to the other, then pushed back her chair. “Hold it!” she exclaimed. “Wait—you mustn't take her to the park!”

“Now, Clara,” said Father, “I admit, I was hesitant to turn her over to that strange young woman, but this note puts the situation in rather a different light. The least we can do is see who comes to meet us at the tea garden.”

“It won't be the parents!” cried Clara. The alarm bells in her head were very loud now, and she felt a rising sense of danger that had nothing to do with the fires still raging in her city.

“What do you mean?” demanded Mother. “How can you know that?”

And Edgar added mildly, “I don't see what you're so upset about, Clara. After all, you posted that note just so the parents
would
find their baby! Now they have, so what's wrong?”

Clara stood trembling behind her chair. She gripped the back of it, hard. “What's wrong is that the note came here, right to our door. To our back door, Edgar, just after we felt someone was watching us out in the yard—”

“Uncle James,” he murmured.

“I'm sorry, but I don't think so. I think someone was out there watching us. Then, when we came in, that person crept up the ramp and slid this note under the door.” She took a deep breath to calm herself.

“All right, maybe so,” Edgar said. “Maybe the messenger saw us going inside, so he slipped it under the door instead—”

“No,” said Clara. “No. Because you're forgetting something, Edgar. When I wrote the note and posted it on the message board in the park, I deliberately did
not
write our address. Remember?”

Slowly, Edgar nodded.

The room was quiet. “So how,” Clara asked softly, “did they know where to find the baby?”

C
HAPTER
9

N
OBODY'S
B
ABY

I think we should go to the park at four o'clock,” Clara announced into the uproar around the table. “Leaving the baby at home.” She glanced at Father. “Under guard.”

“And we'll see who shows up at the tea garden!” Edgar chimed in. “We'll talk to them and demand proof—”

“Perhaps a photograph of the baby and her parents together,” Miss Ottilie Wheeler added. “Ooh, this is very exciting!”

“It could be dangerous,” said Father, looking to Mother. “Though it's not a bad plan in itself.”

Mother shook her head. “Clara is not to go to the park!”

“I'll go,” said Hiram Stokes.

“And I,” said Geoffrey Midgard. “We'll see who shows up and bring them back here if they can prove they are legitimate.”

Clara scowled. She wanted desperately to be at the Japanese Tea Garden at four o'clock. “Please, Mother, let me go with the men.”

“Absolutely not,” said Mother. “It would be madness. We don't know a thing about these people. I want you where I can keep an eye on you today.”

And, true to her word, Mother kept Clara and Edgar busy for the rest of the afternoon. They cleaned the lunch dishes out in the yard, using as little water as possible. They checked through the dwindling supply of foodstuffs and fried up cornmeal fritters to serve for supper with the last of the bean soup. At three-thirty, Hiram Stokes and Geoffrey Midgard set off for Golden Gate Park.

Clara and Edgar stayed behind. They cut up apples, bruised from rolling out of their barrel in the quake, and made a thick applesauce seasoned with cinnamon and a little sugar. It would have been fun for Clara, having someone to share the work with—almost like spending the afternoon with Gideon—if she had not been so upset about what might be happening in the park without her. Mother sat inside with the lady lodgers, passing the baby around and playing with her. Old Mr. Granger obligingly pushed the Hansen and Grissinger tots in the swing hanging from the oak tree. It was a cheerful scene in the backyard despite the smoke pall hanging in the air, but Clara couldn't relax. She felt edgy. Edgar only made matters worse. Sure that his Uncle James's ghost was hovering, he kept turning around suddenly as if to catch it unawares.

Clara set the applesauce to simmer on the makeshift stove. “You're making me jittery,” she complained to Edgar as the two of them began refilling the kerosene lanterns and trimming the wicks.

Mother called to Clara from the back door. “The baby has soiled her diaper and the doll dress, and now she's got nothing clean to wear, poor lamb. Please pop up to the attic for our storage carton of baby garments, while I warm some water. She needs a bath.”

Clara obligingly hurried into the house and up the stairs. The attic was dim and cool. Evidence of the quake was less obvious here. Stacked boxes had tumbled onto the floor, and the heavy steamer trunks had slid from one end of the narrow, low-ceilinged room to the other, but damage was minimal. Clara restacked boxes, reading the labels of their contents as she worked, and soon she had located “Baby Garments.”

She headed for the staircase with the carton. But then she stopped at the little diamond-shaped window that lit the attic with weak afternoon light, and peered out. From here she had nearly a bird's-eye view of the city. She could see the peaks of tents in Golden Gate Park and the plumes of smoke from fires just a few blocks to the east. What was happening in the Japanese Tea Garden right now?

Then she noticed a man and a woman walking slowly down her street. The man, limping heavily, leaned on the woman's arm. The woman wore a red dress!

Clara pressed against the dusty windowpane and strained to see better, but the couple turned the corner.
Goose!
she scolded herself. Lots of people wore red dresses! The man must have been injured in the quake like so many others, and he and his wife were probably heading for the park. Perhaps they had lost their home to the firebreak in the last explosion …

Clara carried the baby clothes downstairs. She glanced into the parlor and saw Father sitting at the broken front window in his chair, staring broodingly out into the street.

“Do you pray, Clara?” Father asked when he saw her. “If you do, then pray for rain. Only thing that can save our city now is rain.”

Clara put one hand on Father's thin shoulder. It seemed to her the fires had been burning forever—for weeks, at least. Yet this was only the third day since the earthquake. So much had happened in a short time. She glanced at the mantle, then remembered that the clock had been smashed in the quake. “Father,” she asked, “what is the time?”

He peered down at the pocket watch clipped to his vest. “Five-fifteen,” he replied heavily.

“And Mr. Midgard and Mr. Stokes?”

“Still not returned,” he said. “I hope there has been no trouble.”

Clara felt heavy with dread.

She carried the box through the dining room, where Mr. Granger now sat at the table with the children and the Wheeler sisters, amazing them with card tricks. She took the box into the kitchen. Mother's eyes filled with tears as she searched through the tiny shirts and dresses. She held up a knitted blue sweater to show the other women at the kitchen table—she had made it herself, Clara knew, for Gideon when he was born—then pressed it to her heart. Clara looked away. Mother's grief was still so raw.

Finally Mother selected a few soft garments. She and Clara carried the baby outside. The air was thick with smoke and wind-borne ash. Mother placed the baby on a folded towel on the grass and stripped off the doll dress and the diaper.

Baby H gurgled and waved her fists. She really was a most engaging baby, Clara thought, and didn't seem to notice that her world was in crisis. Clara smiled down at the child, watching as Mother poured a small dipperful of warm water from the kettle into a bowl. “Here, dear.” Mother held out the washcloth to Clara. “You'll be bathing your own babies someday, so why not learn now?”

Clara dunked the soft cloth into the water and wiped Baby H gently. The baby chuckled when Clara made silly faces. “Well done,” Mother said. “I'll leave you to finish here and get her dressed again.” Then Mother went back into the house.

As Clara leaned over the baby, pinning a clean folded diaper into place, her shoulder blades prickled.
I won't be like Edgar
, she told herself staunchly,
always imagining ghostly presences!
She knew full well that Mother had gone inside; Clara and the baby were alone in the backyard. She would
not
turn around.

She pulled a little dress that had once been her own—green cotton sprigged with white daisies—over the baby's head and struggled to get her arms through the armholes. Dressing a real baby was a lot harder than dressing Delilah! For one thing, Delilah lay nice and still, whereas Baby H was kicking her feet and wriggling as if she meant to jump up and run around … cooing and laughing as if she were greeting her dearest friend …