LITMIR.BIZ

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she poked him and hoarsely whispered, “Mike—wake up. The dogs are barking. I think someone’s here.”

      “Oh, Lord—not again…” He lifted himself on one elbow and squinted at the alarm clock on the nightstand, muttering thickly a moment later, “Tha’ can’t be right…”

      Lucy was already out of bed and struggling into her favorite old bathrobe, the fuzzy yellow one that Mike said made her look like a newly hatched baby chick. A glance out the window told her the storm was continuing unabated, but aside from that, she couldn’t see a thing—no car lights coming up the drive, nothing but darkness and swirling snow.

      But there was definitely someone out there; she could hear a distant thumping noise, now. Someone was pounding on the door. The front door, which only a stranger would use.

      “What in the world?” Muttering breathlessly, she hurried—barefoot and as quietly as possible—out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Mike, grumbling under his breath, was close behind her.

      She ran down the dark hallway, flipping light switches as she went. Through the frosted front door glass and heavy storm door she could make out a faceless, huddled form silhouetted by the outside lamp. It kept shifting from side to side and appeared to be wracked every few seconds by violent shivers.

      It took Lucy only a moment to open both doors—being country-raised, it would never have occurred to her not to—and then for a second or two more she stared open-mouthed at the apparition standing on her front porch. Surely, it could not be an incredibly beautiful young woman with wild and windswept hair—crimson hair that glowed like fire in the porchlight, yet glittered with a crystalline frosting of ice. Her bare hands clutched a coat together under her chin—a cloth coat, some sort of raincoat, it appeared to be, totally unsuited to an Iowa blizzard.

      “I’m so s-s-sorry to b-b-bother you so late,” said the apparition. “My…f-flight was delayed, and I was afraid…they were g-going to c-close the roads, and then it t-took longer than I…th-thought it would to f-find…” All at once the lovely frozen mask of her face seemed to crack, and her eyes took on a look that bordered on panic.

      That was more than enough for Lucy. “Oh, good grief,” she exclaimed, and clutching a handful of snow-dusted coat sleeve, hauled the alien visitor inside. It was on the tip of her tongue to add a roundly scolding, “What in the world were you thinking of?” when she felt Mike come up behind her.

      His polite “Can we help you?” struck Lucy as a silly question; obviously, if anybody’d ever been in need of help, it was this girl.

      But for some reason, maybe the very conventionality of it, the words did seem to revive the young woman’s spirits. Her face once again arranged itself in its perfect mask, and she drew herself up and thrust out her hand in an abrupt way that to Lucy said “Big City” as plain as day.

      “Hello—I’m Devon O’Rourke. I hope I’ve found the right place. I’m looking for Eric Lanagan.”

      Startled, Lucy blurted out before she thought, “Eric! But, he said—” then caught Mike’s eye and the tiny but unmistakable shake of his head and stopped herself in time. She finished it only in her mind: He said the baby’s mother was dead.

      “I’m afraid Eric’s asleep right now,” Mike said smoothly, falling back once more on those polite conventions that sounded so ludicrous to Lucy, given the circumstances. “Would you like some coffee? Is there anyone with you? I don’t see your car.”

      At that the woman seemed to hesitate, glancing uneasily back toward the door as if she feared she might have entered some sort of trap. It was what came of living in the city, Lucy thought. Nobody trusted anybody anymore. Probably, she reflected, with good reason.

      “It’s down there—” the woman gestured vaguely toward the dark windows “—somewhere. I couldn’t get it up the driveway. I think it might be stuck in a ditch.” She gave a shiver, then a resigned sigh. “And no, there isn’t anybody with me.” A look of surprise flitted briefly across her face as she said that, as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d admitted such a dangerous thing.

      Mike chuckled in his reassuring way. “We’re Eric’s parents. You’re safe here. Tell you what—let’s all go in the kitchen while we figure out what to do, shall we? Lucy?”

      “Right,” said Lucy.

      But her mind was racing. Maybe it was because she was already emotionally battered, and on top of that, jittery from getting woken up out of a sound sleep twice in one night, but the woman’s suspicious nature seemed to be rubbing off on her. She had an uneasy feeling about this girl, this Devon O’Rourke. Protective maternal instincts she’d all but forgotten and long presumed dormant were springing to life inside her. Maternal instincts that had somehow expanded to include not only Eric, but a baby girl named Emily.

      Devon was an early riser and lifelong insomniac, so she was neither surprised nor particularly annoyed to find herself awake in total darkness. A myopic squint at the illuminated face of her digital watch told her it was nearly 5:00 a.m., which seemed to her a reasonable enough getting-up hour—though even if it hadn’t, it would never have occurred to her to go on lying in bed, trying to force herself back to sleep. An utter futility, she knew from experience.

      She sat up, groped for the lamp on the nightstand and turned it on. Throwing back the comforter, she swung her feet to the uncarpeted wood floor, shuddering at the unexpected coldness of it. She wasted no time finding and putting on the slippers she’d so generously been given last night, along with the flannel pajamas she was currently wearing and the bathrobe draped across the foot of the bed.

      Strange people, these Iowans, she thought as she pulled the bathrobe around her shoulders, pausing to sniff the worn, slightly stiff and nubbly flannel. Soap, fresh air and sunshine… She could almost see the bathrobe flapping on a clothesline in a stiff spring breeze.

      These Iowans, these Lanagans—Eric Lanagan’s parents. She wasn’t sure what to make of them. She’d never met anyone quite like them before. Most people, she was sure, even out in the country like this, would have been suspicious, even frightened at finding a stranger at their door in the middle of the night. But these people had not only invited her in, they’d insisted on making her fresh hot coffee, giving her dry clothes and a bed for the night. What kind of people would do such a thing, in this day and age?

      Of course, she had mentioned Eric’s name. No doubt they’d taken her for a friend of their son.

      That thought made her squirm with an unfamiliar guilt, which she shrugged away. It was their fault if they’d jumped to the wrong conclusion; they’d no business being so trusting.

      Hugging the bathrobe around her, she paced to the windows, and in doing so discovered two things. One, that the storm responsible for her demoralizing fiasco last night was showing no signs of abating; and two, that she was ravenously hungry. Those facts led her to two more obvious conclusions: One, she wasn’t likely to be leaving here any time in the immediate future; and two, someone was bound to be getting up soon, this being a farm, after all. Didn’t farmers always get up at the crack of dawn? She felt certain no one would object if she made coffee, and maybe some toast.

      She left her room, tiptoeing, and made her way to the stairs. She could see well enough; someone had thoughtfully left a light burning in the downstairs hallway—and somehow she knew this wasn’t usual, that it had been left on this particular night for her, the stranger in the house. She felt again that annoying twinge of guilt.

      Her descent of the stairs wasn’t as quiet as she’d have liked. A couple of the steps creaked—a sound that seemed appallingly loud in the sleeping house. She paused once to listen to see if she’d woken anyone but heard only the howling of the wind.

      Downstairs, she found that the light in the hallway provided plenty of illumination to the kitchen as well, so she set about making coffee in that soft, forgiving twilight. She’d watched Eric’s mother—Lucy, yes, that was her name—make coffee last night, so she knew where everything was; Devon was the sort of person who noticed

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