A Bride Before Dawn

Eventually, Digger grew bored with being ignored and sauntered back outside where the guys on the grounds’ crew were moving two airplanes around on the tarmac. Noah’s mind wandered to the last time he’d seen Lacey, a year ago.

He’d been home to attend the air show in Battle Creek. That same weekend Lacey had been summoned from Chicago to her father’s bedside after he’d suffered a massive heart attack. Noah had gone to the burial a few days later to pay his respects. Late that night, she’d answered his knock on her door and, like so many times before, they’d wound up in her bed. She’d been spitting mad in the morning, more angry with herself than at him, but mad was mad, and she’d told him the previous night had been a mistake she had no intention of repeating. She’d lit out of Orchard Hill again with little more than her camera the same day.

Now, if Digger was right, she was back in town.

Thoughts of her stayed with Noah as he finished the paperwork and pocketed the check Em Bender handed him. For a second or two he considered knocking on Lacey’s door and inviting her out to celebrate with him. Then he remembered the way she’d stuck her hands on her hips and lifted her chin in defiance that morning after her father’s funeral.

As tempting as seeing her again was, Noah had his pride. He didn’t go where he wasn’t wanted. So instead, he pointed his truck toward the family orchard that, to this day, felt like home.

The Great Lakes were said to be the breath of Michigan. As Noah crested the hill and saw row upon row of neatly pruned apple trees with their crooked branches, gnarled bark and sturdy trunks, he was reminded of all the generations of orchard growers who’d believed their trees were its soul.

He parked his dusty blue Chevy in his old spot between Marsh’s shiny SUV and Reed’s Mustang, and entered the large white house through the back door, the way he always did. Other than the take-out menus scattered across the countertops, the kitchen was tidy. He could hear the weather report droning from the den—Marsh’s domain. Reed was most likely in his home office off the living room.

Since the den was closer, Noah stopped there first. Marsh glanced at him and held up a hand, in case Noah hadn’t learned to keep quiet when the weather report was on.

Six-and-a-half years older than Noah, Marsh had been fresh out of college when their parents were killed so tragically. It couldn’t have been easy taking on the family business and a little sister who desperately needed her mother, and two younger brothers, one of whom was hell-bent on ruining his own life. Despite everything Noah had put him through, Marsh looked closer to thirty than thirty-six.

When the weatherman finally broke for a commercial, Noah pushed away from the doorway where he’d been leaning and said, “What’s a guy got to do to get a hello around here?”

Marsh made no apologies as he muted the TV and got to his feet. He was on his way across the room to clasp Noah in a bear hug when a strange noise stopped him in his tracks.

Noah heard it, too. What the hell was it?

He spun out of the den, Marsh right behind him, and almost collided with Reed. “Do you hear that?” Reed asked.

As tall as the other two, but blond, Reed was always the first to ask questions and the first to reach his own conclusions. He’d been at Notre Dame when their parents died. He’d come home to Orchard Hill, too, as soon as he’d finished college. Noah owed him as much as he owed Marsh.

“It sounds like it’s coming from right outside the front door,” Reed said.

Marsh cranked the lock and threw open the door. He barreled through first, the other two on his heels. All three stopped short and stared down at the baby screaming at the top of his lungs on the porch.

A baby. Was on their porch.

Dressed all in blue, he had wisps of dark hair and an angry red face. He was strapped into some sort of seat with a handle, and was wailing shrilly. He kicked his feet. On one he wore a tiny blue sock. The other foot was bare. The strangest thing about him, though, was that he was alone.

Marsh, Reed and Noah had been told they were three fine specimens of the male species. Two dark-haired and one fair, all were throwbacks to past generations of rugged Sullivan men. The infant continued to cry pitifully, obviously unimpressed.

Noah was a magician in the cockpit of an airplane. Marsh had an almost ethereal affinity for his apple trees. Reed was a wizard with business plans and checks and balances. Yet all three of them were struck dumb while the baby cried in earnest.

He was getting worked up, his little fisted hands flailing, his legs jerking, his mouth wide open. In his vehemence, he punched himself in the nose.

Just like that he quieted.

But not for long. Skewing his little face, he gave the twilight hell.

Reed was the first to recover enough to bend down and pick the baby up, seat and all. The crying abated with the jiggling motion. Suddenly, the June evening was eerily still. In the ensuing silence, all three brothers shared a look of absolute bewilderment.

“Where’d he come from?” Marsh asked quietly, as if afraid any loud noises or sudden moves might set off another round of crying.

Remembering the woman he’d seen from the air, Noah looked out across the big lawn, past the parking area that would be teeming with cars in the fall but was empty now. He peered at the stand of pine trees and a huge willow near the lane where the property dropped away. Nothing moved as far as the eye could see.

Every day about this time the orchard became more shadow than light. The apple trees were lush and green, the two-track path through the orchard neatly mowed. The shed where the parking signs were stored, along with the four-wheelers, wagons and tractors they used for hayrides every autumn, was closed up tight. Noah could see the padlock on the door from here. Everything looked exactly as it always had.

“I don’t see anybody, do you?” 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.