Alone in the Wild(22)

“Didn’t look like you were sleeping when I got here.”

“Actually, we were just about to.”

“And now you can. She’ll drift off, for a while at least. Either you take her or no one in town gets to sleep tonight. My neighbors were already trooping over, accusing me of beating the poor thing. She’s in a strange place, and she’s scared, and the people she knows best are you two.”

“Fine, but come by at nine and pick her up.”

“Take her with you.”

“Uh, no. We’re heading into the winter forest in search of her family.”

“Exactly why she should go along. As for the ‘winter forest,’ she was born there. You guys brought her back, bundled up and happy. She’s a month old. That’s all she wants. Food. Warmth. Security. Pack her into Eric’s parka again and off you go.”

“We’re taking the snowmobiles.”

“Even better. You know how to get a kid to sleep down south? Take her for a car ride. The vibration and the steady noise are kiddie Ambien.”

When I open my mouth to protest, she says, “I’m not trying to get out of looking after your kid, Casey. I have my monthly janitorial shift tomorrow. I would gladly—ecstatically—give that up to babysit. But she’s already separated from her family, and you guys rescued her, and her tiny brain may not know much, but it knows she’s safe with you. If you do find her parents, what are you going to do? Say ‘Wait right here and we’ll bring her tomorrow’? Her parents must be going nuts. They’ll follow you back. Depending on who they are, that might not be safe for Rockton.”

I look at Dalton. She’s right, in all of it.

“Fine,” Dalton says. “Just stay and help us set her up for bed. Tell us what we need to do. Feeding schedule, whatever.”

She agrees, and we set up a fur-lined box for the baby in our bedroom as Storm snuffles her.

“The pup has to stay downstairs,” Jen says. “As friendly as she is, this is a very tiny kiddo.”

“I know,” I say. “‘Oh, look, they’re cuddling’ can become ‘Why is the baby turning blue?’ in a heartbeat.”

Jen snorts a laugh. “Exactly. Also, you need a temporary name for her.”

“We—”

She lifts a hand. “I’ve done that for you, too. It’s Abby.”

My gaze shunts to Dalton, who has gone still, and anger surges in me.

“That’s not—” I begin, but Jen’s already leaving.

When she’s gone, I turn to Dalton. “We don’t need to call her that. We don’t need to call her anything.”

He tucks the baby in, quiet as the front door closes behind Jen. Then he says, his voice low, “No, Abby is fine,” and he pulls a thin blanket up and touches the baby’s face before going to settle Storm downstairs.



* * *



The baby wakes twice for feeding and once for a soiled diaper and once just because, apparently, she’s had enough sleep. By five we give up and start breakfast.

Dalton has not yet referred to her as “Abby,” and I won’t until he does. While Sebastian is young at nineteen, he isn’t the youngest person to come to Rockton. That would be Abbygail. An eighteen-year-old street kid with a history of drug use and sex-trade work, she’d escaped to Rockton and turned her life around, only to be brutally murdered in the case that brought me here. By the time I arrived, she was missing, presumed dead. Everyone still held out hope until that was shattered with the discovery that her death had been even worse than “lost in the woods, succumbed to the environment.” It was the human environment here that killed her.

In suggesting we call the baby Abby, I fear Jen wasn’t honoring the memory of the much-loved girl. At worst, it was incredibly cruel, even for Jen, and I’d hope she would never stoop that low.

To Dalton, the death of Abbygail is his greatest failure as a sheriff. She went from hating the sight of him to idolizing him, first as a mentor and then as more. That last part was the problem. When she kissed him after her twenty-first birthday party, he rejected her, horrified. She fled Rockton and died in the forest. Or so it seemed. But her killers had exploited her crush and sent her a note, apparently from Dalton, telling her to meet him in the forest to talk. She went, and she never came back.

Jen had been the one to tell me about the kiss. She made it sound as if Dalton took advantage of Abbygail’s hero worship. When I learned the truth, I’d confronted her, and she’d shrugged it off, as if she’d known all along and just been stirring up trouble.

So what was Jen’s intention calling the baby Abby? Acknowledging that he’d done all he could for the young woman and that her loss haunted him still? Or rubbing his face in his failure? I hope it’s the former, but all that matters now is Dalton’s reaction, and the fact that he’s even considering it gives me hope. It tells me maybe he’s ready to honor Abbygail’s memory instead of running from it.

Before we leave, we stop at Phil’s. He’s spoken to the council. They have nothing to say about the baby. They don’t recognize the description of the dead woman, though I’m not sure how hard they’d try. On that count, all they’re saying is that, while I am free to investigate her death as a way to reunite the child with her family, please remember that I am Rockton law enforcement, and the key word in that phrase is “Rockton.” The death of a settler, while tragic, falls outside my purview.