The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,203
one-way lease at an exorbitant rate, provided she deposited the equivalent of ten days’ rental and returned the car to his brother-in-law’s lot in East Austin. The three-year-old Lexus had no navigation system, but he told her all she had to do was get on Highway 290 and follow it to Austin.
Three hours later, as she was approaching the capital, she stopped at a service station to buy an Austin map. It turned out that the address Landis had given her wasn’t in Austin proper but in Lakeway, a municipality twenty miles west.
It was almost noon when Amaia pulled up before an impressive two-story house on a residential street just three blocks from the town center. She got out, surveyed the carefully landscaped yard, and noticed oil stains on the concrete driveway in front of the vast garage. It was obvious that someone regularly left an automobile parked outside, but the car wasn’t there now. She stepped into the yard to take a closer look.
A woman pushing a baby carriage passed along the sidewalk and went up to the house next door. Amaia was glad she’d made herself more or less presentable in the gas station bathroom and put her blond hair up in a ponytail. Her blouse was relatively presentable, much more so than her stiff, stained trousers. She hoped the Lexus she’d rented in Houston would help vouch for her.
“They’re not home!”
“Oh, hello—I was coming to visit Mrs. Davis. I promised Natalie I’d come by before she had her baby. I just drove a whole bunch of miles to see her, because I wanted to surprise her with a present.”
That was the technique—provide details only a close friend would know and information that would explain her obvious fatigue.
The neighbor swallowed it. She picked up her baby, left the stroller by her front porch, and smiled as she walked to the fence between the two properties. Amaia was grateful the woman couldn’t come any closer, considering that her trousers still smelled of muck.
“Oh, so I get to share the good news! Natalie’s still in the hospital. She had a cesarean the day before yesterday!”
Amaia smiled automatically and realized the operation must have taken place just shortly after her conversation with the doctor. “Oh, heavens! But I thought she was supposed to go in this afternoon to be induced!”
“Well, that’s how it goes; Mother Nature has her own way of doing things. The first birth is usually the hardest, and later ones go a lot quicker. My Jeremy got here a week early, didn’t you, darling?” She kissed her baby.
“All right, then! Would you happen to know where Thomas and Michelle are?” she tried. “I think Mr. Davis is on a trip.” She was sure that a sharp-eyed neighbor would know if he’d returned.
“Yes, that’s how it is, that job of his. The children are with Catherine, Natalie’s mother. She came to stay and help out with the new little one. I saw them leaving for the hospital this morning.”
“Do you happen to know if the baby’s a boy or a girl?” Amaia headed for her Lexus. “I’d like to buy the right color balloons at least.”
“A boy, but you know, it really didn’t matter to them. It was more important for the baby to get here safe and sound. After all, they already have the other lovely two.”
“She’s at Seton Medical Center, isn’t she?”
“That’s right.”
Before turning the key in the ignition, Amaia lowered the car window. “Please, if Robert turns up, don’t say anything; I want to surprise them all at the hospital!”
The neighbor nodded, smiled, and gave her a little wave.
It took Amaia almost half an hour to get to the hospital. She hadn’t taken into account the possibility of an earlier birth, and she was praying there was no way Lenx could have found out. She went to the front desk. “I’m here to see Mrs. Natalie Davis. She was scheduled to give birth today, but it seems things went quicker than expected. By almost forty-eight hours!”
The receptionist’s fingers clattered across the keyboard. “Mrs. Davis and the baby have already been discharged.”
“But that can’t be! I came here straight from their house, where I heard her mother and the children left this morning to visit her here.”
“Hold on just a minute.” She telephoned the maternity ward for a quick consultation, nodded, hung up, and confirmed the news. “You’re right, her family did visit this morning. They left together about an hour ago.”