I’m lucky. I’m so lucky.
She had Laura. She had Laura, and she would do what she must to keep her. Anything at all.
Precipice, Colorado
THE TURNING SEASONS sprayed the mountainsides red, orange and yellow. The leaves flashed gold on red and black rocks, contrasting with the dark pitch of evergreens. Driving home at six-thirty that night, Isaac told the kids, “That whole ridge used to be green.”
It was Wednesday; another babysitter was gone from his life—late getting back from a mountain bike ride. The children had been at the clinic since four-thirty. Keeping tabs on three children, ages five through thirteen, and seeing patients, and dealing with his staff... He felt the stress, readjustment to the cold and the mountains and the U.S.
Danielle cried out in Kinyarwanda, begging his help against David, who was dismembering one of her Barbie dolls.
Isaac took a breath. “English, Danielle.”
She burst into tears, and both her brothers began to soothe her—in the language she’d chosen. Oliver turned around in the passenger seat to speak to her. The doll was reassembled.
“Dad,” said David, behind him. “I have the coolest idea for tonight.”
For D&D, Dungeons & Dragons. Isaac’s brother and mother had brought the game to Rwanda years ago, along with a television and VCR that had later become bargaining chips, buying lives. In Colorado, David had discovered D&D accessories—books, boxes of dice with any number of sides—eight, ten, twelve, twenty, one hundred. David was a wizard at probability. He had written his first seventh-grade essay on chance, and his teacher had sent it to a national contest.
Isaac would have to play Dungeons & Dragons tonight. He’d enjoy it, but his life was full of have-tos, and each day he tried to unload more of them, usually at the clinic. The nurses were always dropping hints—like today. Dr. McCrea, we’re two hours behind schedule! Then he’d heard her tell the receptionist, Guess we’re on African time again.
He’d called an office meeting on the spot and encouraged everyone to air their feelings. They had. In a nice way.
In a nice way, he’d explained that his office wasn’t an emergency room. What most of his patients needed was someone to talk to. He liked to find out what was bothering them and try to get across how they could become well.
Everyone in his office needed to relax about the clock. Precipice had one physician for every five hundred residents; Rwanda, one for every forty thousand. He worked well at great speed, but here, why race the clock?
No one had relaxed. He’d heard about the crying babies and the elderly people on oxygen, and...
There were more have-tos at the clinic. Perhaps he should record his own perceptions of time, as David had recorded his vision of chance.
Looking west at the ski lifts, hanging motionless above the rocks and grass and trees, he weighed the price of season passes against discount ski cards. Oliver and David wanted snowboards. When Isaac had left Colorado, snowboards hadn’t existed. Fourteen years he’d been away.
The face of Precipice Peak bordered one side of the town. Rust-red mountains rose on the other at a gentler angle. He headed that way, east toward Tomboy, and at the top of the road, when he turned left, Danielle exclaimed, “La sage femme! Et une dame et un bébé.”
French now.
Isaac said, “The midwife. And a lady and a baby.”
“Say it, Danielle,” suggested twelve-year-old David. “The midwife. And a lady and a baby.”
“Yes,” Oliver encouraged. “Practice!”
Another have-to. Isaac had to tell the midwife, Francesca Walcott, when the new owners were taking occupancy of her rented Victorian. Two years ago, when Isaac was still in Rwanda, his mother had dispersed most of her assets between him and Dan, his brother. A year later, Dan had negotiated the purchase of the Victorian and Isaac’s own place—as well as empty acres and abandoned buildings sprawled over one side of Tomboy—as a package deal, acting for Isaac. Now Isaac was turning over the Victorian at a profit.
He had to.
PRECIPICE HAD ONCE been a mining town. Since then, log homes and glassy condominiums had sprung up around the turn-of-the-century painted ladies. Yet Tara still saw alpine meadows beneath the grim-faced peaks. The wildflowers were gone, the heavy snows late this year. Aspens dropped golden leaves on her mother’s twenty-year-old Jeep Eagle in the gravel drive.
The sign in front of the Victorian read, Mountain Midwifery. Francesca Walcott, CNM. The name Ivy Walcott, CNM, had been painted over; Tara’s adopted sister had moved back to West Virginia, reunited with her husband and daughter.
Tara had considered turning to Ivy rather than face their mother with Laura. Too late now.
Before she could unfasten her seat belt, Francesca stepped outside and hurried down the walk toward the Safari station wagon, picking her way on stones set in the mud and gravel between naked flower beds. Her gray-tinged auburn curls cascaded over her shoulders. To Tara, Francesca always looked like the Icenian queen Boadicea, who had avenged the rape of her two daughters by waging war against the Romans.
Francesca suited the role.
Tara cranked down her window and smelled snow, unfallen.
Her mother saw Laura.
When Tara released the buckle on the infant car seat and lifted her, Laura didn’t wake, just curled her knees up to her chest. You are so sweet. I love you. I love you.
As Tara unfolded herself from the car with Laura, a blue Toyota Land Cruiser beat its way up the road, rocking over the bumps. The road led up to Tomboy, a ghost town recently turned real-estate speculation-ground. Though several properties were listed, her mother said only one resident had settled on the high alpine tundra, buying up half of what was there. So this must be Francesca’s troublesome landlord. But first Tara saw the children, with luminous skin shades darker than the Rio Grande and wavy, shiny, black hair. A boy, a little girl, another boy.
Finally, she caught an impression of black hair, granite cheekbones and fair skin behind the steering wheel. No one had ever mentioned his looks—only that he was an obstetrician and difficult. Now, there was a real-estate sign in the yard. Was he selling the Victorian?
Where will Mom go?
Where will Laura and I go?
Evicting Francesca so that he could rent out her house to skiers. So why was there a real estate sign on the front lawn?
Francesca plastered on a grin and waved.
The driver nodded, and Tara noted the careless scrape of his eyes, eyes some murky shade of dark gray or green. The children were speaking to each other, ignoring everything else.
“Friends?”
“Shut up and smile.” The hiss of a sigh escaped Francesca’s lips, saying plainer than words, What have you done now, Tara? Whose baby is that?
The Land Cruiser halted in the rocks and mud alongside the road, beneath evergreens. As the dust settled, a car door slammed, and the driver strode toward them.
“Great,” muttered Francesca.
“What?”
“Please, Tara. Let me do the talking. This is my landlord.” She added, “And Dan McCrea’s brother.”
Dan McCrea. The other creep in her life who’d been christened Daniel. Why did she