Marsh asked quietly.
Reed and Noah shook their heads.
“Did either of you hear a car?” Reed asked.
Noah and Marsh hadn’t, and neither had Reed.
“That baby sure didn’t come by way of the stork,” Marsh insisted.
A stray current of air stirred the grass and the new leaves in the nearby trees. The weather vane on the cider house creaked the way it always did when the wind came out of the east. Nothing looked out of place, Noah thought. The only thing out of the ordinary was the sight of the tiny baby held stiffly in Reed’s big hands.
“We’d better get him inside,” Noah said as he reached for two bags that hadn’t been on the porch an hour ago. A sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up and read the handwritten note.
Our precious son, Joseph Daniel Sullivan.
I call him Joey. He’s my life. I beg you,
take good care of him until I can return for him.
He turned the paper over then showed it to his brothers.
“Our precious son?” Reed repeated after reading it for himself.
“Whose precious son?” Marsh implored, for the note wasn’t signed.
The entire situation grew stranger with every passing second. What the hell was going on here? The last one to the door, Noah looked back again, slowly scanning the familiar landscape. Was someone watching? The hair on his arms stood up as if he were crop dusting dangerously close to power lines.
Who left a baby on a doorstep in this day and age? But someone had. If whoever had done it was still out there, he didn’t know where.
He was looking right at her. She was almost sure of it.
Her lips quivered and her throat convulsed as she fought a rising panic. She couldn’t panic. And he couldn’t possibly see her. He was too far away and she was well hidden. She was wearing dark clothing, purposefully blending with the shadows beneath the trees.
A dusty pickup truck had rattled past her hiding place ten minutes ago. The driver hadn’t even slowed down. He hadn’t seen her and neither could the last Sullivan on the porch. Surely he wouldn’t have let the others go inside if he had.
From here she couldn’t even tell which brother was still outside. It was difficult to see anything in this light. A sob lodged sideways in her throat, but she pushed it down. She’d cried enough. Out of options and nearly out of time, she was doing the right thing.
She had to go, and yet she couldn’t seem to move. On the verge of hyperventilating, she wished she’d have thought to bring a paper sack to breathe into so she wouldn’t pass out. She couldn’t pass out. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of oblivion. Instead, she waited, her muscles aching from the strain of holding so still. Her empty arms ached most of all.
When the last of the men who’d gathered on the porch finally went inside, she took several deep calming breaths. She’d done it. She’d waited as long as she could, and she’d done what she had to do.
Their baby was safe. Now she had to leave.
“Take care of him for me for now,” she whispered into the vast void of deepening twilight.
Reminding herself that this arrangement wasn’t permanent, and that she would return for her baby the moment she was able to, she crept out from beneath the weeping-willow tree near the road and started back toward the car parked behind a stand of pine trees half a mile away.
She’d only taken a few steps when Joey’s high-pitched wails carried through the early-evening air. She paused, for she recognized that cry. It had been three hours since his last bottle. She’d tried to feed him an hour ago, but he’d been too sleepy to eat. Evidently, he was ready now. Surely it wouldn’t take his father long to find his bottles and formula and feed him.
Rather than cause her to run to the house and snatch him back into her arms, Joey’s cries filled her with conviction. He had a mind of his own and would put his father through the wringer tonight, but Joey would be all right. He was a survivor, her precious son.
And so was she.
In five minutes’ time, life as Noah, Reed and Marsh Sullivan knew it went from orderly to pandemonium. Joey—the note said his name was Joey—was crying again. Noah and Marsh were trying to figure out how to get him out of the contraption he was buckled into. Reed, who was normally cool, calm and collected, pawed through the contents of the bags until he found feeding supplies.
When the baby was finally freed from the carrier, Noah picked him up—he couldn’t believe how small he was, and hurriedly followed the others to the kitchen where Reed was already scanning the directions on a cardboard canister of powdered formula he’d found in one of the bags. Marsh unscrewed the top of a clear plastic baby bottle and turned on the faucet.
“It says to use warm water.” Reed had to yell in order to be heard over the crying.
Marsh switched the faucet to hot and Reed pried the lid off the canister. “Make sure it’s not too hot,” Reed called when he saw steam rising from the faucet.
Marsh swore.
Noah seconded the sentiment.
The baby wasn’t happy about the situation, either. He continued to wail pathetically, banging his little red face against Noah’s chest.
Marsh adjusted the temperature of the water again. The instant it was warm but not hot, he filled the bottle halfway. Using the small plastic scoop that came with the canister, Reed added the powdered formula. When the top was on, Noah grabbed the bottle and stuck the nipple in Joey’s mouth. The kid didn’t seem to care that Noah didn’t know what he was doing. He clamped on and sucked as if he hadn’t eaten all day.
Ah. Blessed silence.
They moved en masse back to the living room. Lowering himself awkwardly to the couch, Noah held the baby stiffly in one arm. All three men stared at Joey, who was making sucking sounds on the bottle. Slowly, they looked at each other, shell-shocked.
Last year had been a stellar season for the orchard. Sales had been good and the profit margin high enough to make up for the apple blight that had swept through their orchards the year before. Their sister had survived the tragic death of her childhood sweetheart and was now happily married to a man who would do anything to make her happy. The newlyweds were expecting their first child and were settling into their home near Traverse City. Noah had the money in his pocket to pay off his loan. Somewhere along the way he’d finally made peace with his anger over losing his parents when he was fifteen. All three of the Sullivan men were free for the first time in their adult lives.
Or so they’d thought.
“It says,” Reed said, his laptop open on the coffee table, “that you’re supposed to burp him after an ounce or two.”
Burp him? Noah thought. What did that mean?
“Try sitting him up,” Reed said.
Noah took the nipple out of the baby’s mouth and awkwardly did as Reed suggested. A huge burp erupted. All three brothers grinned. After all, they were men and some things were just plain funny. Their good humor didn’t last long, though. Dismay, disbelief and the sneaking suspicion that there was a hell of a lot more trouble ahead immediately returned.
Looking around for the baby’s missing sock, Noah laid him back down in the crook of his arm and offered him more formula. As he started to drink again, Joey stared up at him as if to say, “Who in the world are you?”
Noah looked back at him the same way.
Could he really be a Sullivan? His eyes were blue-gray, like Reed’s, but his hair was dark like Marsh’s and Noah’s.
“How old do you think he is?” Noah asked.