Enchanting Baby

But he didn’t have time to lay low now. Ashleigh Logan already had a two-day head start on him.

When Greg’s efforts to contact Ashleigh at the TV station and then at her home failed, he’d tried her sister’s house, but the woman had acted spooked when she answered the door.

“Ms. Miller?” he inquired while she peered at him with the privacy chain still fastened. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for your sister. Ashleigh Logan?”

The one eye he could see grew wide with surprise…or was it fear? “Wait here” was all the sister said. Then she slammed the door.

The next thing he knew, a black-and-white patrol car came zipping up to the curb. In short order, the officer made him produce identification and vacate the premises.

That’s when Greg had decided that somehow, this Ashleigh Logan woman had figured out what he was after and had bugged out on him. So he’d hired himself a detective.

In Greg’s opinion the private investigator in Denver had taken too long to figure out where Ashleigh Logan had vanished to. But what did Greg know? Even in his days as a deputy sheriff, he’d never done anything this crazy. No, he corrected himself. Chasing down the woman carrying his baby wasn’t crazy. It was vital. All-important.

But two precious days had ticked by before they traced Ashleigh Logan here, to Enchantment, New Mexico.

Enchantment. So named, Greg supposed, because it lay nestled in the heart of the Enchanted Circle north of Taos. He had to admit it was a pretty little town, with its clear mountain air, expansive blue skies, gurgling silver streams. Wide meadows flanked the curved road into town, where the highway narrowed and became the main drag of Enchantment, Paseo de Sierra. Avenue of the Mountains. The name made sense since the street pointed straight toward the Sangre de Cristo range, centering on Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico.

Centuries ago, the Spaniards had apparently thought Sangre de Cristo—blood of Christ—was an apt name for this rugged mountain range. Legend said they had come from the west and saw the range painted red by the setting sun. Coming from the east, the peaks actually looked hazy, purple, backlit by an apricot sun dipping below a bank of atomicorange clouds. It was aspen-turning time—late September—and the thick stands of shimmering golden trees added to the feeling of rarefied light. If he hadn’t been sick as a dog, he might have appreciated the stunning beauty.

In the village core he passed charming gift shops and rustic ski-rental establishments, plus a small adobe post office, a civic complex and library building, an American Legion hall, the office of the Arroyo County Bulletin—the town newspaper, he presumed—and an interesting-looking bed-and-breakfast. He’d come back there later, get a room and crash.

“After I find Ashleigh Logan,” he muttered to himself, and took another swig of water.

Finding her might prove harder than he thought. The town looked bigger than he’d imagined. From the base in the valley, new construction sprawled far up onto the mountainsides. Southwest-style log cabins, Alpine A-frames and classic chalets shared the foothills and mountainsides with cozy hotels and weathered homesteads. Subsistence farms dotted the lower surrounding countryside, while farther up, the vast windows of the lofty retreats of the wealthy glittered in the setting sun.

The main street led straight to an old Spanish-style square where there were more shops, restaurants and art galleries. Like the name implied, it was all very…enchanting.

But the place wasn’t totally charming. On the southern edge of town, Greg saw evidence of poverty—dusty, dented pickups, ramshackle trailer houses.

Why had Ashleigh Logan run away to this remote place?

If it was because she already knew the truth, Ms. Logan was certainly going to a hell of a lot of trouble to evade the father of her child. But he would find her and he would demand his rights. He would not allow anything to separate him from the only child he would ever have.

As close as he could tell, Ashleigh’s decision to come to this particular town was connected to a birthing center run by a bunch of midwives. The place was called—he glanced at the notes the private detective had given him—The Birth Place. It had better not be some hippie-dippy asylum where they used herbal remedies and scented oils instead of real medicine. Not if his baby was going to be born there.

He checked the map he’d printed off the Internet and turned the Navigator onto the narrow Desert Valley Road, where yellowing cottonwood trees on either side created a fluttering golden canopy overhead. He found the clinic at the end of the road.

Tucked in among sheltering pines, the place was a sleepy-looking two-story adobe building with softly rounded walls and deep-set mullioned windows, trimmed in that ubiquitous New Mexico turquoise. The little sign out front, modest enough, had the words The Birth Place stenciled in the same shade of turquoise against a snow-white background. A silhouette of a Madonna and babe, the clinic’s logo, he supposed, completed the sign.

His tires crunched over the rock-and-sand semi-circular drive as he bumped to a halt. His was the only vehicle in sight. He chugged down the last of his water, eased out and slammed the door.

The place felt as quiet as an abandoned homestead. He hoped he hadn’t arrived too late. No clinic hours were posted—he glanced at the sun disappearing over the mountain—but it had to be near closing time.

Greg stepped inside a rough-hewn cedar door, and was appalled by what he saw. His child was going to be born here?

The place was a cacophony of clutter, noise and activity. Behind a high reception counter, phones jangled, a copier hummed and zipped, and a teakettle whistled from somewhere beyond an open door. Muted voices came and went as doors opened and closed down a long narrow hallway. Despite the late afternoon hour, a couple of patients, grossly pregnant, still sat waiting in the small reception area. Their conversation was subdued, but their two small children were having a noisy fight over a toy in a corner play area, and lively female laughter rang out from the room behind the reception desk.

He cleared his throat and stepped up to the counter while every woman in the place, pregnant ones included, fell silent and gave him her rapt attention. Greg imagined his appearance was a little rough. He’d been traveling hell-bent all day in his worn ranching clothes. He was unshaven, unkempt, and probably looked a little gaunt and pasty to boot.

The middle-aged woman behind the desk frowned at him while she pressed her ear to a phone, holding up one finger that told him to wait.

“Sounds like her water broke,” she was saying into the phone.

Greg felt like an eavesdropper and stepped back, focusing his gaze away from the desk. The place reminded him more of someone’s home than an organized office. Lush potted plants rimmed the periphery of Mexican-tile floors that gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the multipaned windows. The whitewashed walls were covered with a jumble of Southwest art, photographs, homemade educational posters…even a few animal skins. A giant bulletin board held hundreds of overlapping baby pictures, as thick as leaves on a tree. In one corner, a rounded adobe fireplace still held the ashes from a recent fire. It was all very cozy, but for his baby, Greg had envisioned something stainless steel and sterile, a real clinic, for crying out loud.

“Trish!” a younger woman called as she sailed out of a back hallway. “I’m headed up to the Coleman cabin.”

Was this a nurse? Greg wondered. He had been told the clinic made house calls or home visits or whatever they called them. She was tallish and slender, wearing brown overalls and clogs, with a long graying braid hanging down her back. She stepped up to the high counter and set down a box containing some kind of equipment. As she donned a jacket she continued, “Would you sign me out?”

Trish made a not-now-I’m-busy face and continued to listen intently to the phone.

“I’ll sign you out, Katherine,” a pleasant voice called out from the open doorway behind the reception desk. A short round Hispanic woman in a denim jumper poked her head around the doorjamb, briefly eyed Greg, and then said to the woman in overalls, “You be careful out on that Switchback Road, sweetie!”

She disappeared back into the room, and then something, the ominous-sounding name of Switchback Road, his newfound suspicious state of mind—something—made Greg lean back slightly so that he could see through the open door. The chubby lady was using a marker to write on a dry-erase board next to floor-to-ceiling shelves housing a rainbow of patient charts. A wildly painted cabinet—pinks, oranges, blues in an artsy design that mimicked the patterns of a Navajo blanket—snagged Greg’s gaze for one instant before his eyes snapped back to the board and what the Hispanic woman was writing there, or rather, what she was writing next to…the name Logan.

His heart kicked against his ribs and his mouth went dry. Well, drier.

“May I help you?” The woman in the overalls stepped toward him as she studied his expression.

Greg nodded at the stethoscope around her neck. “Are you a nurse?” he asked as a stalling tactic, trying to decide if he should merely follow this woman when she left. The idea of sneaking around following people made him feel like a jackass, but on the other hand this nurse might lead him straight to Ashleigh Logan. How likely was it that the name Logan on that board was just a coincidence?

“No.” She smiled kindly. “I’m one of the midwives. Katherine Collins.”

Greg nodded and smiled, reluctant to reveal his own name. He looked around the waiting room as if searching. “I was looking for a friend who was supposed to be here, but I guess she’s already gone.”

“We have a couple of patients in the exam rooms.” The midwife’s voice was gentle and pleasant. “If you’ll tell me her name—and who you are—I’ll see if she’s in the back.”

“Uh…her name…” Involuntarily Greg’s eyes darted to the big board in the room beyond.

Immediately the midwife stiffened. Her eyes cut to the dry-erase board, her cheeks pinkened, then she stammered, “Would you, uh, would you wait here, please? I’ll get someone to help you.” She shoved the box on the counter toward the Trish woman with a meaningful look, then shot off down the long hallway.

Greg, meanwhile, quickly glanced in the box. Sure enough, the tab on the chart inside read Logan, Ashleigh M. The equipment, surrounded by a nest of webbed belting, looked like some kind of fax machine. It occurred to him that the thing could be a uterine monitor.

With her eyes making a wary sweep of him, Trish hung up the phone and snatched the box away. The two women in the back room had sidled out to stand near the receptionist. All three cast one another covert glances. Someone, he saw, had erased the Logan name from the board in the back.

The phone jangled again and the receptionist answered it, turning her face away from Greg. She mumbled into the handset while the rest of the room grew quiet and the other women kept their gazes fixed on Greg. Greg eased away from the counter as the place grew oddly still.

The midwife reappeared, walking fast, followed by a tall, distinguished-looking woman. The midwife slipped behind the counter with the other women, but the tall older lady walked right up to Greg. She was in her seventies, perhaps, but her movements were brisk and her posture was ramrod straight.

“I’m Lydia Kane,” she announced, “the director of The Birth Place.” She was almost as tall as Greg, who stood at just over six feet. Her steel-gray hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense bun that accentuated her angular, rawboned features. Her outfit—a simple white linen shirt rolled up at the sleeves and a pair of well-worn khakis—would have seemed austere except for a large pendant that hung from her neck on a long silver chain. Greg collected western art and artifacts, and that thing looked like a nineteenth-century heirloom, or a convincing copy. The oval stone at the center resembled genuine rose onyx, but Greg knew it couldn’t possibly be. All of the rose onyx in existence was embedded in the walls of the Colorado State Capitol Building in Denver. But the swirling patterns of cream and maroon forming the silhouette of a Madonna and infant, similar to the logo he’d seen out front, certainly resembled the rare material.

She covered the pendant with her fingertips when she noticed him frowning at it. “How, exactly, may I help you?” Her tone was wary, cool.

For a moment Greg considered making an excuse to leave, waiting down the road, then following the midwife Katherine up to this Coleman cabin. But Katherine, huddled behind the desk with the others, apparently wasn’t going anywhere now. In fact, all of the women kept staring at him as if he was Jack the Ripper. Something warned him that all was not kosher at The Birth Place, and that maybe he’d better play it straight. “I hope it’s not any trouble, Ms. Kane, but I’m looking for a woman who might be a patient at this clinic,” he said.

“We don’t give out information about our patients, Mr….” Lydia Kane waited for him to fill in the blank.

Greg didn’t oblige. As a major land developer in Denver his name was fairly well known, but surely no one as far south as New Mexico would recognize it. Even so, having his identity linked to the highly visible TV personality Ashleigh Logan didn’t seem wise. He wasn’t ready for anyone to be privy to the reason he was in Enchantment. He hadn’t even decided what he was going to do when he found Ashleigh Logan, except that he was determined to somehow be a part of his child’s life. Greg was terrible at lying, and long ago he’d learned that it was better to simply be judicious with the truth. Nobody said you had to slap all your cards on the table at once.