Jared waited, listening to the voice calling out from the back. Did the woman ever take a breath?
Warren J. stomped a brogan against the plank floor, causing the whole store to shake. “Not just a customer, honey. A man who says Alisha had her baby last night.”
That brought a rustling movement from the back. Letty Martha appeared in the doorway, wearing a bright pink nylon windsuit over a thick white turtleneck sweater. Even thicker white-and-purple bunny-rabbit-decorated socks folded like a ruffle against her battered athletic shoes. Pushing at the tufts of gray hair surrounding her jovial face, she gave her husband a direct head-to-toe look. “Did you say Alisha had her baby?”
“That’s what I said,” Warren J. replied, clearly agitated as he turned back to Jared. “And this here man, what did you say your name was now, son?”
“Jared Murdock,” Jared said, mustering a reassuring smile toward Letty Martha.
“This Jared says he helped deliver the baby,” Warren J. said, his watery eyes suspicious and full of utter disbelief.
“I don’t believe it,” Letty said, echoing the look in her husband’s eyes, her hand flying to her mouth. “Surely you’re joking us, mister. A baby born on Easter morning?”
“I’m not joking,” Jared said, hands on his hips. “Alisha wanted me to stop by and tell you first, but I need to find Dr. Sloane.” At the panicked look in the couple’s eyes, he held up a hand. “Mother and child are both doing fine as far as I can tell, but we still want the doctor to check them.”
Letty Martha and Warren J. both swung into action, almost colliding with each other in their nervousness and haste.
“I’ll call Doc right now,” Warren J. said as he held out two hands to steady his plump wife.
“And the midwife, too,” Letty Martha said, wagging a veined finger in the air. “Alisha wanted Miss Mozelle there, too, remember.”
“Well, I can only call them one at a time,” Warren J. replied in a curt voice. “I can hardly see without a light.”
Letty found a candle, lit it and held it to the phone so her husband could see. “Now then, do it, do it,” Letty Martha said, waving her hands in the air after her husband stubbornly took the candle from her. Turning back to Jared, she let out a laugh. “You’d think we’d never before had a baby born around here.”
Jared had to smile at that while he remembered his own nervousness from the night before. “I guess anytime a baby is born, things become a bit exciting.”
“You can say that again,” Letty replied, her hand reaching out to pull him down into one of the matching rocking chairs. “Sit down here and tell me everything. How is the darling? How’s the mama? That Alisha, she is such a sweet little thing, isn’t she? And been through so much—”
Letty Martha froze as if someone had put her in a trance, her vivid sky-blue eyes centered on her husband. Jared turned just in time to see the warning in her husband’s eyes, as well as the finger he had pressed to his lips, silently telling Letty Martha to be quiet.
Jared looked from the man with the phone to the woman in the rocking chair opposite him. “What’s wrong?” he asked, wondering if he was going to get a straight answer after all.
“Nothing, nothing,” Letty Martha said, waving her hands again. “I ramble on and on about everything. Warren J. was just reminding me to mind my manners. Now, would you like a good strong cup of coffee and a slice of apple bread?”
Jared could only nod and watch as, before he could decline, she disappeared in a puff of pink, an aura of almond-scented lotion following in her wake.
“Phone’s still not working,” Warren J. said as he ambled back over to the furnace. “You’ll have to walk to the doctor’s clinic. It’s just around the corner, but he might not be there, what with this storm and all. Just about everything in town—and that ain’t much, mind you—is shut down ’cause the power’s out.”
“What about his residence?” Jared asked, trying to be patient.
“It’s back behind the clinic,” Warren J. replied, rocking back and forth on his heels. “A white two-story house.”
“I’ll find him,” Jared said as Letty Martha came back in with his coffee and a large chunk of moist-looking brown bread, centered on a pink-and-purple-checked napkin. Apparently, pink and purple were Letty’s favorite colors.
“Eat, eat,” Letty Martha suggested, a serene smile on her face. “Did you walk all the way up that mountain?” At Jared’s nod, she added, “Take a quick rest, then. That’s a hard trek, even on a good day.”
Jared took a quick bite of the wonderful apple bread, then drank deeply of the fresh coffee. Chewing quickly, he thought he should just hurry to get the doctor. He’d only stopped in here to let them know about Alisha—at her insistence—and to make sure he was headed in the right direction toward the clinic.
But now he really wanted to know why Warren J. Curtis had made his wife hush before she could tell Jared exactly what Alisha had been through. Jared knew she’d been through a lot, losing her husband, moving here, then giving birth to a child alone, but there seemed to be more behind the story. He’d seen the look in Warren J.’s eyes. It had been a definite warning. Jared got the distinct impression that this lovely couple was in on some sort of secret.
Some sort of secret about Alisha Emerson.
While Jared talked to the Curtises, another man stood looking out at the silent town.
He knew a secret.
He stood at the window of the run-down house, staring out at the cold, wet landscape. Without electricity, there was no chance of getting anything done today. The roads were empty and dead silent, the ridges and woods eerie-looking and treacherous with fallen debris and limbs. Besides, he wasn’t in the mood to work anyway. And he sure wasn’t going to church to celebrate Easter with all the fine folks of Dover Mountain.
He hated storms and he didn’t like God very much either.
“Could go on back to bed,” he told himself as he shivered in his undershirt and flannel pajama bottoms. If that aggravating phone company got the lines back up, he could go back to his latest obsession, surfing the Internet, hanging out in chat rooms, finding out secrets people didn’t necessarily want to be found out.
Like Alisha Emerson, for example. Alisha Emerson, the pretty, pregnant woman who’d mysteriously appeared on Dover Mountain in the fall and set up house in an old cabin that she claimed had belonged to her mother’s people.
Well, he’d done some digging around. Thanks to a few blabbermouths around here, and his ability to track people’s background information, he knew a few things about Alisha Emerson. And he intended to find out more. He had a plan. And that plan included wanting more than he was getting, wasting his time and his talent on this trash pile of a mountain. And if what he’d heard—what someone had let slip—was true, Alisha Emerson could help with those plans. He’d already tried to get closer to her. He’d been friendly and sympathetic to her plight, but the woman was stubborn and quiet. She liked to keep to herself, didn’t hold with sharing much personal stuff. That was okay. He’d learned enough when she’d first come here. And he could be patient as far as the rest. He could bide his time.
But first, he had to get all his ducks in a row. He had to be armed with enough information to make it worth his while. Enough information to make Alisha Emerson sweat just a little bit. Once he had her convinced, she’d give in to him. She’d be his then. He’d get back everything he’d lost, and together they could leave this dreadful place.
Speaking of sweating, he was freezing now. That’s how it went, hot and cold. Hot and cold. Shaking one minute and calm and still, burning, the next. He was just