wherever he’d been hiking, she tucked the drowsy baby inside and grabbed her coat. “See you later.”
He stood in the entryway, the scent of pine drifting off him in the same way other men smelled of expensive cologne. “Where are you going?”
“Out! I can’t stand being cooped up inside another minute.”
“You can’t—”
“Oh, yes I can!” She spun toward him, one finger pointed toward his head. “And she’d better be alive when I get back!”
Short of tackling her, there was nothing he could do to keep her inside.
* * *
Dirty snow still lay in shady spots and the wind stung her cheeks, but she was outside, and she didn’t care. A crust of ice clung to the banks of Poorhouse Creek, and the filaments of algae growing on the rocks trailed in the fast-moving current like witches’ hair. Another plank in the wooden bridge had come loose. She remembered the way the bridge had swayed the morning North had charged into her life.
Without the perpetual pressure of the sling, her shoulders eased. But as she stepped off the bridge, an unsettling anxiety ruffled the pit of her stomach.
“Being around fragile things isn’t good for me,” he’d said.
But being around fragile things had been Tess’s life. The babies she’d delivered. The frightened new moms she’d cared for. What if Wren woke up and started to cry? Would North pick her up? Would he check on her to make sure she was still breathing? Wren had been glued to Tess’s body from the day she’d been born. And that’s where she belonged. Against Tess’s body.
She turned to rush back to the schoolhouse, only to make herself stop. She was behaving like a frightened new mother. Something she wasn’t.
She took a few deep breaths. Wren would be fine. Ian wasn’t going to let her die. And Wren needed more than one person watching out for her until her father showed up.
What if Wren’s father was an unreliable jerk like Tess’s father had been? Or a drunk? If she thought like this, she’d tumble into a whole new realm of craziness. She forced herself to go on.
The back door stuck, and she shoved her shoulder against it. Inside, the cabin was cold and musty. A place so sad she couldn’t imagine bringing Wren here. She’d have to get new rugs. Buy decent furniture. Except Wren would never come here. By the time the new furnace arrived, the baby would be gone. Tess could leave things exactly as they were. Gloomy and unwelcoming.
The schoolhouse was spoiling her. She wanted something nicer for herself. Clean white walls, a sofa that wasn’t slipcovered in an English hunting print. Before, she hadn’t cared, but now she did.
Trav . . . I’m think I’m finally getting better.
That made her sad in a whole new way.
She tossed out a wilted bag of salad greens and a moldy cucumber. She ate an apple she didn’t remember having bought and filled a shopping bag with more clothes. She glanced at the pile of professional journals that had been forwarded to her post office box in town. Journal of Midwifery, International Journal of Women’s Health. None of them had anything to do with her new life, but she put them in the shopping bag with her clothes.
Her anxiety got the best of her, and she raced back to the schoolhouse.
She found North pacing the floor with Wren in the crook of his arm as if she were a football. But she was alive.
He stalked toward her, speaking in a whispering hiss. “She started to cry,” he said, as if it were Tess’s fault.
“No kidding? That’s odd.” She gritted her teeth. “And it isn’t even three o’clock in the morning.”
He got her point and tucked the baby against his chest, but only until Tess got her coat off, when he passed her back over. “My attorney isn’t getting anywhere locating Wren’s father, so I’m going to fly up to Manhattan tomorrow and do some investigating of my own. I’ll probably be gone a few days. Are you okay with that?”
The way he said it told her he didn’t much care whether she was or not. “You aren’t exactly a big help when you’re here.”
“When I get back, I have to work. I mean it, Tess . . . I can’t be distracted with you and the baby any longer.”
“I’ll discuss it with her.”
His gaze became critical. “Are you losing weight?”
He’d thrown her off balance. “I don’t know. Why?”
“Your face is thinner.” He sounded as if