His father eyed Fran who was holding Demi against her shoulder. The baby looked around chewing on her teething ring. “Tell us what you thought when you found her. We want details,” he beseeched her.
Fran broke into a tender smile. Once more she repeated her amazing tale. “The hotel is situated on a corner of the street. My first thought was that her mother or father had been walking her in a stroller on the other side of the hotel when those gale-force winds drove Kellie and me to run inside for shelter.
“It seemed more than possible she’d been blown into the garden at the rear of the building. But if that were true, then where were her parents? I was in shock to think she’d been exposed to the elements all night. Honestly, she looked like she’d been dropped from the sky.”
Nik’s sisters-in-law made moaning sounds to think such a thing had happened.
Kellie sat forward. “I came around back and saw Fran holding a limp baby who was wearing only a torn shirt. I thought I was hallucinating.”
“You weren’t the only one,” Fran added. “When neither the police or the hospital staff had heard of anyone looking for their baby, I began to think that’s exactly what had happened, that she’d been carried by the wind and deposited in a cushion of bushes.”
“But twelve miles—” Nik’s mother cried out and put her hands to her mouth. “God wanted her to live.” His father nodded his silver head and wept.
“Nik?” Fran eyed him from her place on the swing. “Has your family seen the pictures you took with your camera?”
He’d been planning to show them later. “Let’s do it right now,” he said, but he had difficulty talking because of the lump in his throat. After pulling out his phone, he clicked on to the picture gallery and handed it to his parents. “Slide your thumb across to see all of them. I took a few pictures in the hospital, too.” He’d made certain he’d gotten some shots of Fran.
For the next little while his family and the Petralias took turns viewing them. Nik’s sixand seven-year-old nephews were eager to look at them, too. The younger threeand four-year-olds had no idea what was going on and played with their toys. In the quiet, Fran’s eyes met his. They were both remembering that surreal moment when she’d showed him the now-famous spot.
While everyone was talking, he walked over to her. “Do you think she’s ready for something besides a bottle?”
“I hope so. She needs the nourishment.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. I’ll tell cook to get out a jar of her favorite fruit and meat.”
Fran hugged the baby. “You’d like some food, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?”
Whether she wanted it or not, she needed it. Having made up his mind, Nik left the patio and headed for the kitchen. In a minute he returned with the food and the high chair that had been in use for several years.
He put it in front of Fran, then plucked the baby from her arms and set her inside it. The cook had given him a bib that he tied around her neck. Both Fran and Demi looked up at him in surprise.
Nik shot them an amused glance. “We’ll both feed her,” he explained and sat down on the swing next to her. “You take the turkey.” He handed her the jar and a spoon. “I’ll give her some plums.”
“Coward,” she whispered. Her chuckle filled him with warmth.
To his relief the baby began to eat, which meant her initial trauma had passed and she was relaxed enough to want her semi-solid food again. Once she’d been put in a private room at the hospital, the nurse hadn’t been able to get her to eat anything. Fran had to see the transformation and think twice about turning him down when he asked her again.
“Well, look at you,” she said to Demi with a big smile. “I didn’t know you were such a good eater.”
Demi beamed back at both of them. Nik had never actually fed Demi before. Aided and abetted by Fran, he found himself having more fun than he could remember. Some turkey clung to the baby’s upper lip, making her look adorable. Both he and Fran chuckled in delight to see her behaving normally.
Soon she finished her food while the family looked on in varying degrees of interest and curiosity. They weren’t used to seeing Nik feed her. But most of all, they were shocked at the way Demi responded to Fran. The hurt in his parents’ eyes had intensified. It didn’t surprise him when Nik’s father eventually got up from his chair and walked over to give his granddaughter a kiss on the cheek.
“One would never know what you lived through, Demi,” he spoke in Greek. “Come to your grandpa.” He wiped her mouth with the bib, then untied it and picked her up to take her over to Nik’s mother.
Demi adored her grandfather, but the further he took her from Fran, the more she squirmed and kept turning her head to find her. Nik’s mother got to her feet and held out her hands to Demi, but the baby started to cry.
“What’s wrong, darling?” his mother talked to her in their native tongue, attempting to cuddle her. “Tell me what’s the matter.”
Nik knew the answer to that. She wanted Fran. It really was astonishing to see that even with the entire family surrounding her, Demi wanted a stranger if she couldn’t have her own mother and father. He eyed Fran covertly, daring her to close her mind and heart to what was going on here.
His stomach muscles tightened as he watched the looks of surprise and confusion from everyone, but especially at the pain on his parents’ faces when Demi started crying in earnest.
They’d lost Melina, but it had never occurred to anyone that Demi wouldn’t soak up the love they were ready to heap on her. Nik believed it was a passing phenomenon. It had to be. But right now something needed to be done to calm the baby down.
“You know what I think?” he said in English. “Demi’s barely out of the hospital and needs to go to bed.” So did his parents who needed to rest to get through this ordeal.
“Of course,” his mother concurred.
“Fran and I will take her and put her down, then we’ll be back.”
He clutched the baby to him and started for the villa. Fran got up from the swing and followed him to the apartment. Earlier he’d asked the housekeeper to get it prepared. With the help of the staff, they’d moved the crib and other things from the nursery in Melina’s apartment to the spare room. For now it would serve as a nursery while Fran took care of Demi.
Together they got the baby ready for her afternoon nap with a fresh diaper and a white sleeper with feet.
“You look so cute in this,” Fran said, kissing her cheeks several times. Once again Nik marveled how natural she was with Demi, almost as if the baby were hers. Neither of them were bilingual, but it didn’t matter. They spoke a special language of love that managed to transcend. Watching Demi, you’d think Fran was her mother. How could that be? Unless…
Was it possible that the baby’s head had suffered an injury when she hit the earth and she’d developed amnesia?
Were there cases of such a thing happening to an infant? Amnesia might explain her connection to Fran. She’d been the first person Demi saw when she’d awakened in the hospital.
But if that were true, then why did she respond to the family, to Nik? Though it was half-hearted, she did recognize everyone. He was baffled and anxious to talk to a doctor first thing in the morning.
Nik drew a bottle of premixed formula from the bag. When Fran put the baby in the crib, he handed Demi her bottle. Speaking Greek to her, he told her he loved her and wanted her to go to sleep.
Before she started drinking, the baby made sounds and stared up at the two of them with those dark brown eyes that could have been Melina’s.
“Come