He drove at a very sedate pace back into Brenham, enveloped in a cloud of disappointment. He had expected more from finally seeing Jamie once again. A great deal more.
He pulled into the same motel, wondering if he should find someplace nicer. But Jamie felt pretty limp behind him, and the baby was crying. He helped her off and took her into the room. “I’ll go get you something to eat. What sounds good?”
“Anything. And I need diapers. And I’d really like to see a newspaper.”
“What about some milk for him?” he asked, nodding toward the baby.
She shook her head. “I’m nursing him.”
“So, he’s your baby?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Oh, yes. He’s my baby.”
When he arrived back at the motel, Joe knocked on the door. There was no answer.
He unlocked the door and peeked inside. He could hear the water running in the bathroom. The baby was lying in the middle of one of the double beds. Joe put his purchases on the table, iced the beer, then stood looking down at the baby. He was quite small and had big eyes and was waving his arms about aimlessly. “I’m sure you are a nice enough baby,” Joe said, “but I must admit that I’m not very happy about you.”
Jamie came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her body and another around her head.
“Do you have any extra clothes?” she asked, heading for the table. “And I need to borrow a comb,” she added as she picked up one of the milkshakes, took off the lid and gulped some down. Then she ate a handful of fries and unwrapped a hamburger.
Joe produced a pair of gym shorts, a T-shirt, and a comb. Jamie went back into the bathroom. When she emerged again, her wet hair was combed, and she was wearing his clothes. She picked up the phone and called the office to ask if there were laundry facilities.
When she hung up she covered the now sleeping baby with a corner of the bedspread, picked up the newspaper, and glanced at the headlines on the front page. Apparently she found what she looking for on page two. She read the story and ate the rest of the hamburger. “You have any quarters?” she asked.
While she was in the laundry room, Joe read the article on page two. A baby girl kidnapped from an Oklahoma City apartment house had been left in a hospital waiting room apparently unharmed and was returned to her mother’s arms. A woman named Janet Wisdom had been caring for the baby in her apartment. Wisdom was now missing, along with her own child. There were no signs of violence in the apartment, but there was a dead dog on the bed. Police were searching for Wisdom and her infant son.
When Jamie returned, she glanced at the baby, then sat across the table from Joe and reached for his hand. “Thank you,” she said and burst into tears.
Joe knelt in front of her and took her in his arms. Then he helped her to the empty bed and stretched out beside her, cradling her, stroking her damp hair, her arms, her back. His shoulder grew wet with her tears. At one point he went to the bathroom for the box of tissues. She blew her nose and tried to regain control. But she couldn’t. Not yet. She said something about a dog named Ralph. And being so afraid. So very afraid.
Finally, she was cried out. She blew her nose again then went to splash water on her face. When she returned the baby was starting to thrash about. Jamie picked him up, leaned against the headboard, propped a pillow under her left arm.
Joe carefully looked away as she placed the baby at her breast. He felt jealous of a very small baby.
He wanted to ask who the father was-and if she had loved the man. If she had been married to him. Or maybe he should turn on the television. He couldn’t just sit here not watching her nurse a baby. He offered to get her clothes from the drier.
He took his time, jogging around the block several times before searching for the motel laundry room. When he returned, Jamie was curled on the bed. The baby was asleep in a dresser drawer with a folded blanket for a mattress. Jamie opened her eyes and offered a small smile. “I’m in terrible trouble,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I figured out that much on my own.” He covered her limp body with a blanket then sat beside her and stroked her shoulder.
“They killed my dog so he wouldn’t bark while they stole my baby, but they took the wrong baby. Then they came back to kill me.”
He could hear the utter exhaustion in her voice. “You go ahead and sleep,” he said with more gallantry than he felt. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“This isn’t how I thought it would be when we first saw each other again,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed.
“Have you thought about that-about us seeing each other again?”
“Yeah. What about you?”
“Me, too,” he said. He ran a finger along her jawline, then briefly touched her lower lip. She had a beautiful mouth. As a sixteen-year-old boy he had felt like a dirty old man because he thought that ten-year-old Jamie Long had the most beautiful mouth he had ever seen.
She kissed the tip of his finger, then gave herself over to sleep.
He understood that she was exhausted, but he felt cheated. And a little regretful that he was here at all. Maybe more than a little.
He drank two cans of beer then took a shower and crawled into the empty bed.
Chapter Thirty-two
THE SOUND OF HER baby crying pulled Jamie back to wakefulness. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was, but in the darkness she felt disoriented.
The only light in the room came through a tiny opening between the heavy draperies that covered the room’s one window. Not daylight. She made the opening wider to admit more light and picked up her baby. She made soft shushing sounds as she pulled a diaper from the open package beside the drawer-turned-bed, then groped around for the package of baby wipes. The baby continued to vocalize his hunger as she changed his diaper.
“I’m sorry,” she said into the darkness.
“It’s okay,” Joe said. “Obviously the kid is starving to death.”
Jamie felt herself smiling. “Yes, he does have a good appetite.”
She propped pillows up for an armrest and got the baby situated. Silence immediately descended over the room, the only sounds coming from an occasional vehicle driving by.
“Joe?”
“Yeah.”
“You want to talk now?”
Even in the dim light, she could see him stretching under the covers. And noted the empty beer cans on the bedside table.
She sensed Joe’s disappointment. He had expected something more dramatic and rewarding for his efforts. Deservedly so.
She had known all along that trying to involve him in her troubles had been a selfish act. If her need had been for herself alone, she would not have tried to contact him, and she was not without guilt. At some level, she had always wanted Joe to be the man in her life. But now she had lured him into her fight for survival. He could lose everything. His parents could lose their only child, his grandparents their only grandson. It was more than her not wanting to die. It was because she wanted to be the one who raised this baby. She had acted as a mother, not as a lovesick female.
Poor Joe.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
He said nothing.
She closed her eyes and began.
Her story sounded unbelievable even to her own ears as she explained how she was deeply in debt and had entered into a contract with a televangelist and her young husband and found herself a virtual prisoner at the Hartmann Ranch with the formidable Miss Montgomery as her jailer. How Miss Montgomery and everyone else at the ranch idolized Amanda Hartmann. How she herself had fallen under the woman’s spell.
When she got to the part about the crazy old woman and Amanda’s brain-dead son locked up in a tower, her story sounded even more far-fetched. Joe interrupted her, saying she must be mistaken. He had read about Sonny Hartmann’s death in a London newspaper months before Jamie would have arrived at the ranch.