Page 7 of Promise

After a slew of rough races in the early months of this season, there’s a lot on the line for me today.

My pulse accelerates. My heart rate spikes.

In the crowd, hats come off, and fans rise. The national anthem plays.

A command follows. “Drivers, start your engine.”

Thirty-plus cars ignite at once, a wave of mechanical thunder that sweeps across the speedway. The roar is primal.

A pace car sets us rolling forward until that sacred green flag waves and we’re off.

Go time.

Then, in a matter of mere seconds, everything happens in slow motion.

I crash.

3

[Trinity]

“Congratulations.” The brunette-haired child services agent offers me a shaky smile before her gaze dips to the baby in my arms. The poor thing has tired herself out from crying so much.

I glance at my mother. With short, white hair in a wavy bob, she looks like a model in an older woman’s magazine. In her early seventies, Mary Haven is one of my best friends, and the first person I called after discovering a baby on my back stoop.

I am still in shock.

Seconds after discovering the baby, a robust, ebony-skinned woman, wearing a sharp-looking, black pantsuit, came around the back corner of my house.

“Oh good, you are home.” She appeared out of breath, ample chest heaving, but her smile was kind, her eyes sympathetic.

Had she buzzed the front door, and I hadn’t heard it?

“I hate to drop and dash like this, but if I can get back on the road, I can make it home by midnight.” She shrugged a diaper bag off her shoulder and held it out to me, then pulled a large manila envelope from the outer pocket of the bag.

“Everything is explained in here.”

I’m not certain I blinked, staring at the outstretched rectangular envelope in one of her hands and the strap of a pink bag in the other.

“She’s all yours.”

Without thinking, I took the bag and the offered envelope, watching blindly as the woman bent at the waist, set her hands on her knees, and cooed at the baby.

“Be a good girl.” Her voice softened. “Make your momma proud.”

With that said, she stood to her full height again, reminding me of a bear. A great brown one you want to cuddle despite knowing she’s dangerous.

Seconds later, she was gone, and I was holding a screaming baby in an attempt to soothe her.

I still didn’t understand what was happening.

My first call should have been to the sheriff. I glance at Stone Sylver seated across from me in one of the two chairs opposite the couch next. The tall, broad, mustached-in-the-modern-way man is an old family friend. Heck, he was practically family. His younger sister is going to marry my older brother one day. Plus, Stone grew up side-by-side with Cortland. The two were inseparable for most of my childhood years.

Stone offers me a kind but cautious twist of his lips. From the law’s standpoint, he doesn’t like this situation. A baby dropped off on a doorstep in the early light of a spring evening. The ring camera on my front porch didn’t detect the make or model of a vehicle outside my house. As the baby was dropped off on the back stoop, and I don’t have a camera facing the backyard, she must have parked down the block and slipped onto my property from the side. The outer limits of my camera’s projection only caught a bulky shadow along the edge of my driveway before she was out of range.

In the envelope provided was a birth certificate, naming the baby: Baby Girl Olsen. Along with the certificate was a letter explaining how I’d apparently helped care for the baby in the NICU.

The mother had no immediate family.