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Or were they?
She finished her coffee and stepped into the kitchen while Sam gathered up the dishes. Yan Li looked up from the spoonful of applesauce she was offering to Rosemarie and smiled. Goodness, the girl positively glowed this morning!
Winifred quickly made the fingers of both hands into make-believe legs as she had the previous night and walked them toward each other, close enough to touch. Then she sent Yan Li a questioning look. “Is everything all right with you and Sam?”
Yan Li reached her hand out, mashed Winifred’s fingers together and blushed scarlet. Then she dropped her head.
“Yan Li?”
The girl raised her face and the most wonderful smile spread across her mouth. Winifred caught her breath. Happy? The girl was ecstatic. She bent and quickly kissed the smooth cheek.
Sam, too, was unusually sunny this morning. When he entered the kitchen with the pancake platter, Winifred stopped him and kissed his cheek, too. Then stepped over the kitten and headed for the library.
From the kitchen she heard murmured words in Chinese and a burst of delighted laughter. Oh, my. For some reason, she felt like crying. What on earth was the matter with her?
She read for a while, then heard a funny thumping noise coming toward her. She looked down, and there was Rosemarie scuttling across the floor on her hands and knees with Yan Li in pursuit.
The baby crawled over to Winifred and slapped at her shoes, cooing happily. Yan Li brought the laundry basket and settled the baby into it, close enough for Winifred to jiggle it if she cried.
Which she did the minute Yan Li left the room. Not a big wail, as if she were hungry, just a little whimper of discontent. Another new tooth, maybe.
Winifred smiled at herself. She worried over Rosemarie as if she were her mother, not just her aunt. Another small cry and she scooped her niece into her arms.
She tried humming a song, but it didn’t help. Next she tried singing the words. “Mama’s little baby loves short’nin’...” No use. This little baby didn’t love anything at all this morning.
The whimpers grew louder. In desperation Winifred rose, settled her in the laundry basket and went to the piano. At the very first chord, Rosemarie went quiet, and Winifred glanced over at the basket.
The child’s blue-green eyes were wide open, her head cocked in apparent interest. Winifred’s heart rolled over. “You like music, do you, little one?”
She began to play, first a Brahms waltz, then another, and all the while Rosemarie cooed and gurgled with happiness.
Zane returned from driving Darla home, stepped quietly into the library and stopped short. His baby daughter was staring at Winifred at the piano with such absorption he had to chuckle.
Winifred broke off midphrase. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in.”
“For God’s sake, don’t stop playing. You seem to have discovered a cure for teething babies!” He plucked Rosemarie out of the basket and settled her on his lap in the upholstered wingback chair by the fireplace.
“You don’t mind my playing the piano? I mean playing pieces that Cissy must have played?”
“I don’t, no. You play differently. And I’ve missed the music since Celeste—since she died.” He brought the baby to his shoulder, leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.
Winifred turned back to the keyboard. An hour later when she looked up, Zane was sound asleep with Rosemarie slumbering peacefully against his chest. She left them there and tiptoed into the kitchen to ask Sam to make a fresh pot of coffee and some toast for Zane when he woke up.
Chapter Nine
Winifred sighed and rolled over in her bed when a persistent tap at her bedroom door woke her. The door opened and Zane wheeled in the bassinet with Rosemarie snuggled under the pink flannel coverlet.
“Winifred, I have an emergency. My nurse, Elvira Sorensen, has been shot.”
“Shot!” Winifred sat straight up. “Who shot her?”
Zane blew out a long breath. “Her husband. He’s in the jail now. Marshal Johnson will take him to Boise in the morning.”
“Oh, Zane. Will she live?”
“I don’t know. I’ll try my damnedest.” He bent to kiss the baby and quietly closed the door behind him.
* * *
Zane did not leave the hospital for the next thirty-six hours. Elvira lay in a coma, the bullet lodged so deep in her breast he couldn’t risk probing for it until she was stable. If she made it at all. He sat at her bedside, paced up and down the hall, consulted with his partner, gray-haired Samuel Graham and sweated out the hours.
