The Mountain Midwife (13 page)

“I’m glad to hear that.” Ashley hoped Mary Kate was right.

Before she could say more, the door opened and Hunter entered.

Mary Kate’s eyes widened and she whispered, “Is that him?”

“Yes. It’s business.”

Mary Kate sighed and led Ashley to a table far from the draft of the doorway. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Sweet tea. Mr. McDermott?” Ashley addressed Hunter, who had reached the table.

“Do you have unsweetened tea?”

Mary Kate rolled her eyes. “Yes sir, we got unsweet tea for you city folk.” She set a menu before him and headed for the kitchen.

“One of your patients?” Hunter asked.

“I couldn’t tell you if she was.”

“No, I suppose you couldn’t.” He opened the menu. “What’s good here?”

“Everything, if you don’t care about calories.”

“I just had a two-hour run, half of it uphill. I think I won’t worry about them tonight.” He ducked behind the menu.

Mary Kate returned with their iced tea. They placed their orders, both choosing the pot roast, though they hadn’t discussed it, and Mary Kate returned to the kitchen.

The teens on the far side of the room laughed too loudly. The older couple in another corner spoke too softly, though nonstop judging from their perpetually moving lips, but silence reigned over Ashley and Hunter’s table. The ripping open of her straw paper sounded like she had shredded a week’s worth of newspapers, the ice tinkling against the glass like breaking plate glass. She didn’t know this man, yet she now knew more about his birth than she knew about her own. She found him uncomfortably attractive, and the video suggested he was a kind person, yet the story he had told her to persuade her to look for his birth records didn’t match the facts.

And now she needed to tell him.

Across the table, he set his straw aside without opening it, squeezed the lemon wedge into the brown liquid of the tea, and raised the glass to his lips without drinking, then set it down with a decisive
thunk
. “So what is it you found out?”

“No beating around the bush?” Ashley took too big a drink of her tea. “No polite small talk?”

“Would you prefer to discuss the weather first? Or what about the latest baseball scores?”

“Baseball season is over.”

He laughed. “So it is. That tells you how much I pay attention to sports.”

Some of the tension left the table.

“I don’t either, but my brothers are both huge baseball fans.”

“You have brothers?”

“Two older ones. They are both doctors, one in DC and one in Atlanta. You?”

“One of each. Both much older, married with children, and lawyers in DC.”

“Just like your parents, and you chose to be an engineer.”

“I won’t ask how you know about my parents. The news, right?”

“I saw your mother one morning.”

Hunter pushed his glass aside. “I guess she’s legally my mother.”

“Yes, your mother.” Despite the sugar in her tea, the liquid tasted bitter on her tongue and she, too, shoved her glass aside so she could lean across the table, lower her voice, and still be heard. “Mr. McDermott, Hunter.” She swallowed. “I found my grandmother’s records for your birthday, for a baby boy named Zachariah, at any rate. Is that you?”

“That was the name on my original birth certificate. Zachariah
Hunter Brooks, I presume. I had the Zachariah changed legally fourteen years ago.”

“I wondered. I figured.” Ashley began to shred the napkin wrapped around silverware in the center of the table. “The
Z
on your business card.”

“So what did you find—that you can tell me, that is?”

“That there’s no way the woman who left a message on your voice mail is your mother.”

“What?” Hunter closed his hand over Ashley’s shredding the napkin and his eyes locked with hers. “What are you saying?”

“As you already know, there’s nothing about your father in the birth records, and . . . and your mother died an hour after you were born.”

C
HAPTER
10

H
UNTER GRIPPED
A
SHLEY
’
S
clasped hands like a lifeline keeping him from sliding off a boat into a raging sea. The diner dipped and whirled around him, odors of fried chicken and spicy gravy too strong in his nostrils, his mouth dry, his heart a thudding lump somewhere south of his stomach.

“I don’t understand.” His voice croaked like a smoker’s. “My mom, Virginia McDermott, said—”

What had she said? Nothing about his biological mother, just about being appalled how Sheila Brooks had chosen to use a midwife at home instead of a clean hospital with modern equipment.

“If she had, she’d still be alive.”

He didn’t realize he had spoken aloud until Ashley gave him a quizzical glance. “If who had done what?”

“I’m sorry.” He released her hands and leaned back in the booth, reaching for his tea. “If she had gone to a hospital instead of using a midwife, she probably wouldn’t have died.”

“You think?” Ashley’s brown eyes grew cold. She gripped the edge of the table with white-knuckled fingers. “My grandmother delivered over four thousand babies in her lifetime and only lost one mother.”

“Mine, apparently.” He could be cool as well.

“Apparently. According to Gramma’s records and what an autopsy and other records show, your mother would have died had she gone to the finest hospital in the best city. She hemorrhaged. Sometimes it can’t be stopped.”

“Transfusions.”

“If her blood type can be found in enough quantity.”

“Type O negative.”

He felt like a heel for having said Sheila Brooks would have lived had she not used a midwife.

Ashley nodded. “Yours?”

“Yes. It’s one reason why my family worries about my job. I go to a lot of remote places, and if there’s an accident, I could be in trouble.”

“I’m so sorry.” The warmth returned to her eyes and voice. “About your mother. She was so young and—”

The pregnant server pushed the swinging door from the kitchen open with her hip. Steam rose from the beef, vegetables, and mashed potatoes on two platter-shaped plates. Neither Hunter nor Ashley spoke, save to thank their waitress, until she set their plates on the table, asked if they needed anything else, and returned to the back of the restaurant.

Hunter picked up his fork, though he doubted he would be able to eat. His thoughts swirled too fast for him to think of cutting and chewing food.

Across from him, Ashley spread her napkin on her lap, picked
up her own fork, and tucked into the fare without hesitation. She had had time to absorb the news of his mother. He hadn’t. He had barely begun to believe that Virginia McDermott wasn’t his mother.

“So who”—he set his fork on his untouched plate—“has been calling me and claiming to be my mother?”

“I wondered when you’d ask that.” Ashley raised a forkful of tender-looking roast beef to her lips. She chewed with such obvious pleasure and disregard for a dribble of thick gravy on her lower lip, Hunter’s stomach growled in protest of his lack of eating.

He cut off a piece of the beef and made himself eat it. Despite the gravy, the meat tasted like nothing and felt dry. When a try of the mashed potatoes gave the same results, he knew he was at fault, not the food.

He set down his fork. “It’s a hoax. The whole thing is some kind of elaborate hoax. I don’t have a living mother. I don’t have a sister.”

“You think?” She didn’t say it in that sarcastic tone too common in modern speak; she sounded sincerely thoughtful.

“What else can it be? I show up on a lot of newscasts, and this woman calls to claim she’s my mother but can’t possibly be, and—”

“She could still be a relative who knows the truth of your birth.”

Hunter startled. “I hadn’t thought about that. She did call me Zachariah.” His ears grew warm, making him oddly conscious that he hadn’t had a haircut for over a month and must look like an overgrown poodle.

He reached for his tea glass and discovered it was empty beyond a few melting ice cubes, though he didn’t remember draining it.

Out of nowhere, the server appeared with a pitcher and refilled his glass.

“You don’t like the pot roast, sir?” Her blue eyes pinched at the corners. “I can bring you something else.”

“It’s fine.” He didn’t want to be interrupted with such mundane things as whether or not he liked his meal.

“It’s delicious, Mary Kate.” Ashley touched the woman’s arm. “Mr. McDermott just received some distressing news is all. Maybe you all can wrap it up for him with some extra gravy so it doesn’t dry out when he reheats it later.” A small foot planted itself on his toes with just enough pressure to give him a message but not hurt. “You do have a fridge and microwave in your room, don’t you, Mr. McDermott?”

“Hunter, please, and yes, I do. This will be great later.”

It probably would.

The server’s face relaxed into a lovely smile. “I’ll just do that then, but go ahead and see if you want to eat more first.” Pitcher balanced on one hip, she bustled over to another table to refill one glass before whisking back into the kitchen.

“I didn’t mean to upset her.” Hunter made another stab at his meat.

“Mary Kate needs every penny of tip money she can get. If someone doesn’t like his meal, he doesn’t tip.”

“Should she even be working in her condition?”

“No, but it’s not like she has paid sick days or vacation to take under the Family and Medical Leave Act.”

Hunter’s brow arched. “You know about the FMLA?”

“Mr. McDermott, I graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University with a bachelor’s degree in nursing, and I have a master’s degree in nurse-midwifery from Shenandoah University, not because I couldn’t get into Georgetown’s program in nurse-midwifery, but because my family needed me closer to home.
In other words, I am highly educated, trained, and experienced. I also read at least a book a week, some of it nonfiction, and I read newspapers from DC and Atlanta. I am a midwife in the mountains, not a middle school dropout. Now, do you want my help or not, Mr. McDermott, Hunter, or should I call you Zachariah?”

The color was high in her cheeks, and the gold lights flashed in her eyes like Fourth of July sparklers. Tendrils of her glorious hair escaped from its braid seemed to stand on end. And Hunter thought he had never met a more beautiful woman. The bite of beef in his mouth tasted like the most succulent fillet he had ever been served.

He swallowed and held out his hand, palm up. “I seem to have a few misconceptions. Do, please, forgive me for my ignorance—in all the forms that word means.”

“Of course.” She laid her hand in his.

Her fingers were long and slender, her skin impossibly smooth, nails short and clean and without polish. Hunter enclosed those delicate fingers with his for a mere heartbeat—and something inside him squeezed.

Watch out
, he warned himself.
She might not be an uneducated medical charlatan, but she is a lifetime away from you
.

He was merely feeling vulnerable, isolated from the family he had thought his for thirty-two years, and now bereft of a mother he had never known. Ashley Tolliver was tied up in all this, unwittingly, but a part of it now, if he let her be.

“What can you do to help?” he made himself ask instead of accepting her offer straight off.

“Don’t you think you should try to find this woman claiming to be your mother and see what she’s after?” Her plate empty, she reached for a dessert card stuck behind the napkin holder.

“Not if it’s some kind of scam.”

“It’s not like she is going to kidnap you or something.” She tapped the dessert card. “They have great pie here. I can never decide between the Dutch apple and the coconut cream.”

Hunter stared at her. “I thought women didn’t eat things like red meat and potatoes and pie, especially not pie.”

“I lug fifty pounds of equipment up and down these hills, lift women who are nine months pregnant and gained all the weight they should and then some, and walk at least three miles a day in these mountains because I like it. I can afford a slice of pie now and then.” She raised a hand, and the server trotted from the kitchen. “Which is better tonight, Mary Kate?”

“The apple this time of year.” Mary Kate beamed at Hunter. “I see you found your appetite after all. Do you want pie too?”

“Of course he does, and coffee.” Ashley flashed him a sweet smile, and the pressure landed on his toe again.

He didn’t deny her claim until the server returned to the kitchen. “Coffee at seven o’clock at night?”

“Do you want to sit here and talk or not?”

“I guess I do.” Half laughing, he leaned back against the booth’s padding.

They were the only couple left in the restaurant now. Beyond the windows, rain fell in streaks turned red from the diner’s sign out front and silver from the parking lot lights. Headlights flashed by on the highway, but no one turned in. Hunter understood. Ashley was increasing the bill so the server could get a better tip. Not that the bill was all that much. Less than fifteen dollars apiece, he’d bet.