"Eh!" said a little voice behind me.

I shrieked.

"It's the baby," Martin said, after a fraught moment. "In the crib. By the bed."

"Eh!" said Hayden. I rolled over, to see two tiny hands waving in the air. "Oh, no no no," I moaned, all thoughts of sex flying out of my head like rats leaving a sinking ship. "I don't know what to do. You had a baby, you have to help."

"Cindy took care of Barrett when he was a baby."

Why was I not surprised?

"I was always... too scared to do things for him. He was so little. He was three weeks premature. And by the time he was large enough, when I was sure I couldn't hurt him by accident, Cindy and I had gotten into the habit of her taking care of him, bathing and feeding and diapering." Absurdly, it was not Martin's ignorance of baby care that made tears spring to my eyes as I dragged myself from the bed. It was the thought of Martin and Cindy's shared experiences: the birth of Barrett, the concern about his health and fears for his survival after the premature birth, his slow growth and improvement with Martin and Cindy watching as parents. All this he'd had with her, and would never have with me.

I hadn't ever been jealous of Cindy before, and I'd certainly picked a bad time to start.

Already feeling tired, I hoisted Hayden from his portable crib—surely he'd gained weight during the night?—and laid him on the bed beside Martin while I found my bathrobe. When I turned back, Martin was propped up on one elbow, looking down at the baby, his finger extended for Hayden to grasp. The baby was regarding Martin solemnly. I stood for a long moment looking, feeling my heart break along several different fault lines.

I turned away to pull my mass of wavy hair back into a ponytail and secure it. Hayden had showed a tendency to grab and pull the night before, and I hadn't enjoyed the experience. I tied the sash of the black velour robe and cautiously bent down to lift the infant from the bed.

"How old do you reckon he is?" I asked, startled to think I didn't even know this child's age.

"I have no idea." Martin stared at the baby, running some comparisons in his head. "He seems a little smaller than Bubba and Lizanne's kid." He did to me, too. "Maybe—a month?" I hazarded.

He shrugged his bare shoulders.

"People will ask," I said, and to my own ears I already sounded tired. "People always do."

"Oh, God." Martin rolled onto his back, pressing his hands against his face as if to guard it from the world.

"You'd better call Cindy," I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. "Regina halfway implied they were close. Maybe she can tell us some more about this baby. Maybe she knows how to contact Barby."

I went down the stairs carefully, holding up the nightgown and bathrobe with one hand while pressing Hayden to me with my free arm. I was relieved when I reached the bottom safely, and felt foolishly optimistic at this good omen. There was a discreet tap at the kitchen door. Now, this knock was unmistakable.

My mother.

I canceled the security and opened the door.

My mother, Aida Brattle Teagarden Queensland, is fifty-seven and stunning. She is Lauren Bacall on a good day. She is sharp, smart, and by her own efforts she's amassed a small fortune. I love her. She loves me. We live on different planets.

"Have they found the girl?" Mother stepped inside. "The girl" would be Regina. "No. Not that we know of. I just got up," I explained unnecessarily.

"Martin still in bed?" She glanced up at the clock. It was already nine-thirty. "We had a late night," I reminded her. I'd called Mother as soon as I could after the police arrived so she wouldn't hear our news from someone else. Mother held out her arms and made a peremptory gesture. I gave her the baby. Mother had three step-grandchildren now, and to my amazement she was very fond of them.

Mother looked down at the boy, who looked back, for a wonder in silence. "Maybe two, three weeks old," she said briefly, and put him in his infant seat, still in the middle of the table. "Got formula?" "Regina mixed some up before she ..." I trailed off into confusion. Before she murdered her husband and ran? Before she was abducted by aliens? "You need a nurse for that baby," my mother observed. Her voice was absolutely matter-of-fact; she judged me totally incompetent at child care, which wounded me somehow. But then, why should she have any faith in my ability to take care of a baby? I never had before.

It was funny what hurt, and what bounced off. This really hurt. "You'd better call your friends and see if you can find a temporary baby-sitter," Mother suggested.

I stared at her. She wasn't offering to do it for me, or rather to have her office manager do it? It dawned on me that all was not well with Mother. I'd been so absorbed in my own problems that I hadn't even looked at her with much attention.

"What's wrong?" I asked. I hated the quaver in my voice. "John had a mild—well, maybe a heart attack—last night, about two hours after you called," she said.

"Oh, no," I said, my eyes filling with tears immediately. I was fond of John Queensland, having been his friend before he dated and married my mother. I took a deep breath. Mother wasn't crying, so I couldn't cry. "How is he doing?" "I've moved him to Atlanta. They're doing tests right now," she said, and I could read the exhaustion in her face, and the fear. "I'm so sorry," I said quietly. "What can I do to help you?" "You have your hands full," she said, looking out the kitchen window. It was another windy, overcast day; a leaf from the gum tree whirled past. "It's just a lot of hospital sitting, and you can't help me sit." I thought of Martin, the baby, the missing woman, the dead man.

My mother finally needed me and I couldn't help. "Are Avery and John David there?" I asked. These were John's two sons, both in their thirties and married.

"John David flies in this morning. Melinda's going to meet him at the airport and get him to the hospital. That's something she can do with the kids in the car," she said. Mother smiled briefly, and I saw with a kind of unworthy pang that she had become very fond of Melinda, Avery's wife. "What's the prognosis?" I asked, dreading the answer. Behind her back I noticed Martin standing in the doorway. I didn't know how long he'd been there. "We don't know yet," Mother said quietly. "He's been conscious, off and on. He's in some pain."

"Don't worry about us, Aida," my husband said. He moved until he was by Mother's side, and he gripped her shoulder. Her hand came up briefly to cover his, and then they both retreated back into more comfortable personas. "We'll be fine, we just have to get this straightened out."

"Roe," Mother said, as she picked up her purse and went to the door. "This is just an awful lot of trouble at one time."

I realized she was half apologizing for focusing on her husband, or at least extending her regrets that my trouble was not her only concern. "We'll all get through it," I said briskly, trying not to cry. "I'll be checking with you later. Tell John I'm thinking of him." She nodded. She'd scrawled John's hospital room phone number on a sheet of paper, and she handed it to me. I stuck it on the refrigerator with one of the magnets Martin loathed.

After Mother left I sank down into a chair and put my head in my hands. If the baby started crying, I just couldn't bear it.

The baby started crying.

I forced myself up and to the refrigerator, thinking (as I pulled a bottle from the shelf and popped it into the microwave) that I was almost willing to forgive Regina for everything if she would just return and leave again with the baby. Martin had made coffee. I noticed he was dressed in khakis and a sweater, about as casual as Martin gets in day wear. He was staring out the window sipping from a mug, looking like a Lands' End ad. I was still in my velour robe, my hair was trailing down my back in a cascade of waves and tangles, and I was in a very tense mood. Hayden, still dressed in the same red sleeper and a diaper that was undoubtedly dirty, was yelling.