Marisa Carroll - Little Girl Lost

Faith didn’t dare look back to see how her daughter was faring in Hugh’s arms for fear of turning an ankle and ending up on her bottom with an armload of indignant sheltie. She shoved open the wrought-iron gate to the yard and went directly to the house. Inside the kitchen she motioned Hugh to follow her down the steep, narrow cellar steps. The big whitewashed room contained her washer and dryer, the hot water heater and a huge old boiler that she was hoping would provide heat for one more winter before it died. Otherwise, the low-ceilinged, stone-floored room was empty except for some of Caitlin’s toys, an old castoff sofa and a small TV and VCR. She often brought Caitlin down here to run around and let off steam on rainy days. Faith hit the light switch inside the door. Thankfully the two overhead lights came on.

She kept a powerful flashlight and some candles and a lighter on a shelf by the stairs for an emergency such as this, but she hoped they didn’t have to use them. She turned on the TV, and muted the sound so that Caitlin wouldn’t become alarmed by storm bulletins. A map of the county filled the screen, and a dark red blotch, the indication of the strongest storm cell, was superimposed over Bartonsville, but it had begun to move off to the east. “I think the worst of the storm’s passed, thank goodness.” She glanced out one of the small windows, placed high in the thick, stone walls of the cellar. The hail had stopped; now it was only raindrops hitting the wavy glass.

She turned back to find that Hugh had set Caitlin on her feet and hunkered down beside her to unwind the bubble wrap cocoon.

As soon as she was free Caitlin bolted for the stairs. “Need Barbie.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Hugh’s long arm shot out and his fingers curled around the child’s wrist. Faith’s heart leapt to her throat. Caitlin was such a tiny thing, her bones so delicate he could easily hurt her and not even realize it. She almost cried out, but she needn’t have worried. His grip on Caitlin’s wrist was so light it scarcely touched her skin.

“I think I see Barbie over there.” He pointed to the seat of the old couch and let Caitlin go skipping off to retrieve the doll.

“She’s smart and fearless, isn’t she?” he said with a note of wonder—and love?—in his voice that sent shivers through Faith.

“She was born in the middle of a terrible ice storm.” Faith hadn’t meant to let that slip. She had perfected her story of Caitlin’s birth, but she never volunteered details. His actions had thrown her off balance, and it was too late to take back the words.

“Tell me about it,” he said, standing up, towering over her it seemed, although there was no more than three or four inches difference in their heights. The tone of his voice didn’t change, nor the look in his eyes, but Faith felt compelled to answer as though bidden by some unspoken command.

Suddenly she was afraid, completely and unreasoningly afraid, and the fear had nothing to do with the storm, but was caused by the man before her. She felt for a moment that he could see right through her and that he knew what she would say next was a lie. Her throat closed and the litany of carefully constructed half truths and fabrications that was her fortress, as well as her prison, wouldn’t come.

FAITH OPENED HER MOUTH but no sound came out. She was suddenly thrust into the midst of her worst nightmare. In it, she was standing in a huge echoing chamber. Stern, shadowy figures sat in judgment of her, demanding to know why she had taken another woman’s baby. No matter how eloquently she tried to explain her actions, her motivations, no matter how she many tears she shed, slowly, inexorably, one of the shadowy figures would pluck Caitlin from her arms and melt away, leaving her alone. She would wake in terror, tears running down her cheeks and only a trip to Caitlin’s room and the warmth of her baby’s skin could dispel the dread.

It was the middle of a late May day, and she was wide-awake. This was not her dream. This was reality, and she had told the story many times before. Today would be no different, unless she allowed it to be. “There was no one to help me when Caitlin was born,” she said as lightly as she could manage. “My husband had died six months earlier. I…I was here alone.”

Raindrops glistened in Hugh’s dark-blond hair, the harsh light catching steaks of lighter gold that she hadn’t noticed before. He didn’t seem menacing anymore, although his dark gaze held hers. “You must have been very frightened.”

“It was terrifying.” The words were heartfelt. She had woven as much of the truth into her story as possible. She had become a very good liar, but she did it only when necessary.

“Did you try to contact the emergency squad? Bartonsville has one, I imagine.”

“There wasn’t time.” She forced herself to keep eye contact. She was back in stride now, back on script. “Contrary to conventional wisdom about first babies, labor went very quickly. The ice storm hit and a broken tree limb brought down the phone line. Thank God, the electricity stayed on.” That was true, too, but it had happened after she made her nightmarish trek across the ice-slick fields to the house, with the tiny infant barely clinging to life in her arms.

Faith couldn’t help herself, her eyes sought her daughter across the room. She was seated in front of the old TV, oblivious to their conversation and the dying storm, engrossed in an episode of Rugrats. “We were cut off from the outside world for the first three days of Caitlin’s life.”

She had made diapers from an old flannel blanket she’d found in a back bedroom. Then she’d taken a plastic sandwich bag and poked a hole in one corner with a pin. She’d dissolved a little sugar in warm water and put the glucose solution in the bag, twisting it into a cone, as though she were a chef preparing to frost a fairy cake. She had coaxed Caitlin’s tiny mouth open with the tip of her little finger and pushed the makeshift nipple inside. Fortunately, Caitlin’s sucking reflex was strong and Faith was patient. Eventually the baby swallowed an ounce of the liquid.

After she’d held the newborn close to her breast and wrapped them both in blankets until the worrisome blue cast to the baby’s skin had been replaced by warm pink. They’d stayed snug and warm in their isolated cocoon as the storm raged, and when they’d emerged a transformation had taken place that was as complete and life-altering as that of a caterpillar changing into a butterfly.

Caitlin had become Faith’s child as surely as if she had given birth to the infant. She had labored to bring her to safety through the storm. She had fed her and bathed her and held her close so that she slept against the beating of Faith’s heart.

She’d loved her.

But she’d known she couldn’t keep her.

The ice melted the fourth morning after the storm, and life began to return to normal, but Faith remained closeted in her big, old house.

She knew Beth and Jamie would lose custody of the infant the moment Faith stepped into the sheriff’s office and told her story. The baby would go into the system, into foster care. If she was lucky it would be to a loving home. But it could be months, even years, until all the technicalities were sorted out. Sometimes bad things happened to children caught up in the system. Faith didn’t want to think of that. So she stayed put, telling herself it was still too dangerous to drive. She would wait for the phone to be repaired and to give Jamie and Beth time to change their minds. For a little longer she could make believe she had what she wanted most—a child of her own.

And then the newspaper had come.

Faith closed her eyes and could see as clearly as if it were still in front of her—the headline about the ice storm. Below it was a sidebar of storm-related deaths in Ohio and surrounding states. In Indiana, the story read, a hundred miles from Bartonsville, there had been a pileup on the interstate during the height of the storm. Eleven cars had been involved, but as of press time there was only one death, a seventeen-year-old male from Massachusetts. His companion, a teenage girl, was not expected to live. The couple was identified as Jamie Sheldon of Boston, and Beth Harden of Houston.