The doorbell chimed again as her foot hit the thick Persian rug at the bottom of the stairs, in the expansive foyer. Through the stained-glass panes of the front door across from her, Claire made out the silhouette of someone who appeared to be about the same stature and height as she—five-foot-five. In low heels. On a good day.
In the living room to the left of the front door, beyond the beveled bay windows overlooking her front lawn, she noted that the snow that had begun earlier as a soft, powdery cascade had ripened into a full-blown storm. Fat wet flakes blew in fierce sideways slants, buffeting the house with a rattling wind that virtually shook the place. Claire shuddered, even though it was plenty warm inside, and she wondered again what would bring someone to her front door on such a night.
She turned in that direction again, then hesitated when she realized the silhouette had disappeared. Funny, that. Or perhaps not. Maybe whoever had rung the bell had been a bit tipsy, and had finally discovered they had the wrong house. Maybe they had left in embarrassment before being discovered.
Or maybe they hadn’t.
Just to be certain, Claire continued on to the front door and peeked through one of the uncolored panes on the side. But through the flawed, crackled glass, she saw only a swirl of white snow dancing haphazardly in the pale yellow glow of her porch light. She was about to turn away when her gaze lit on a figure at the foot of her driveway.
There was indeed someone out there, someone whose attention was focused fully on Claire as she peeked outside. Someone who, she noted further, had left tracks in the nearly six inches of snow that had accumulated on the walk between the driveway and her front door since she’d paid her neighbor’s teenager to shovel it earlier that afternoon.
A ripple of apprehension shimmied up Claire’s spine at the sight of the other person, and she immediately swept her hand over the panel of switches on the wall to her right. Instantly the front yard was flooded with light—from the lamp by the driveway, the lights over the garage and a row of lanterns lining the landscaped walk and drive.
In that brief moment, Claire saw that the person outside appeared to be a young woman wearing a black jacket and black beret, with long blond hair cascading over her shoulders. But as soon as the exterior lights flashed on, the young woman turned and fled across the street, stumbling only once in the heavy snow. There she slowed, evidently feeling safer under cover of darkness. But she turned to walk slowly backward and continued to gaze at Claire’s house, as if she were hesitant to leave.
Very odd, Claire thought. And not a little troubling.
She was trying to decide whether or not the episode warranted calling the police—oh, surely not—when she realized there was something else outside, too. A large, oval, handled basket sat atop the snow at the foot of the creek-stone steps leading to the front door, its contents already dusted liberally with snow. Contents that appeared to be…laundry?
Why would someone leave a basket of laundry on her doorstep on New Year’s Eve? Claire wondered. That made no sense at all. She had lived in South Jersey since her freshman year of high school, and although there were certainly some interesting traditions indigenous to this part of the country, leaving laundry on someone’s doorstep to celebrate the new year wasn’t one of them.
Come to think of it, that wasn’t a tradition in any of the dozens of cultures Claire had called home at one time or another, growing up as she had, the daughter of doctors who were serving as Peace Corps volunteers.
She was still wracking her brain for some explanation when, to her surprise and horror, the bundle of fabric inside the basket moved, and a tiny, mittened fist poked itself free of the blanket surrounding it. Claire realized then that the basket contained, not laundry, but a baby.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…
With two swift gestures, she freed the chain and dead bolt on the front door, then tugged it open wide and stepped outside, frantically searching the opposite side of the street for the young woman who had stood on her driveway only a moment before. Sure enough, the black-clad figure was there, halfway down the block now, staring back at the house. But when she saw Claire come outside, saw her descend the stairs toward the basket, the woman turned and fled with all her might, as if the hounds of hell were following her.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…
This couldn’t be happening, Claire thought. Surely she was dreaming. Surely this was some kind of joke. Some really sick, twisted kind of joke, but a joke nonetheless. Surely her colleagues at the hospital—the ones who knew how she felt about children—would jump out of the shrubbery anytime now, and they’d all have a good, if sick and twisted, laugh at her expense.
Surely.
Then Claire heard a small, soft sound, like the coo of a dove, and gazed down at the basket again. This time, when the fabric moved, she saw a pair of pale blue eyes peeking out from beneath the cuff of a pink knit cap. For a few seconds, she only gazed at those eyes and shook her head in disbelief. Then a particularly fat, particularly wet snowflake smacked her in the eye. She realized then that her toes were freezing in their scant satin slippers, and that her warm silk pajamas had turned icy as they clung to her skin.
And she realized that this wasn’t a joke, sick and twisted or otherwise. So she bent down and looped her arm through the two handles on the basket and gingerly lifted it. Then, stepping carefully over the piles of snow on her front steps, she carried the baby back into the house, closing and bolting the door behind her.
Don’t panic, she instructed herself as, heart racing, limbs trembling, she leaned back against the front door and wondered what to do—besides panic.
Think, Claire. Think. Breathe, relax and think.
But the muddled thoughts tumbling through her brain scattered hastily when the baby in the basket began to make noise again. Nothing alarming, just some quiet little murmurs of…of…of baby noise, sounds that gave her the impression that the child was, for the moment, content. That, however, could change anytime, she told herself. So she’d better figure out what on earth she was going to do.
Police, she thought. Yeah, that’s it. She should call the police. They’d know how to treat a situation like this. Certainly better than she would. Although she was an OB-GYN, she wasn’t too familiar with babies. Not once they’d entered the world, anyway. That, of course, was where the pediatricians stepped in. And thank God for that. Claire was fascinated by the generation and growth of life inside the womb. But once those little nippers came out, well… She was grateful to be able to wash her hands of them. Literally.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like children. They were just a completely alien life force, as far as she was concerned. She’d been an only child of two only children, so she hadn’t been exposed to any babies growing up. And because she and her parents had moved around a lot, to cultures that changed as quickly as their residences did, Claire had never really learned to relate to other children for any length of time. She’d been shy and anxious when she’d come to new communities, and as a result, she’d remained fairly solitary. She’d just never much abided children. Not even when she was a child herself.
And now here she was, face-to-face with a baby—a baby!—and she had no idea what to do. Okay, of course, she knew the basics, that they needed to be fed and diapered and kept warm. Which, now that she thought about it, might be a good reason to panic, because she had neither baby food nor diapers in her house. Then again, the basket on her arm was a bit larger and heavier than seemed necessary for one baby. Could be that whomever had abandoned the little tyke had at least properly provided for it.
For the time being, anyway, she added to herself, swallowing the panic that began to rise yet again.
She forced herself to move to the overstuffed couch on the other side of the living room, then switched on the standing Tiffany lamp beside it and settled the basket carefully down between two big tapestry pillows. Nudging aside the bulk of blankets in which the baby had been swaddled—okay, so the keeping warm part would