Enchanting Baby. Darlene Graham
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