The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

Smiling, Ulrich looked up from his needle and thread. “Put him to the breast.”

Of course. She was, after all, his mother.

She repositioned him, and of his own accord, he rooted for her nipple and began suckling. The silence was equally exquisite to his wailing. Stroking his tiny head through the cap, Cora tried not to let her weeping disturb him, but she couldn’t hold it back. This was why she’d never given up.

Ulrich tied off the stitches, bandaged the wound, and stepped back to appraise their son.

Reflexively, she tightened her hold.

“Don’t worry. I need a moment to catch my breath.” He dropped onto a stool and watched their baby nurse. “I still have to administer some tests to determine his Apgar score, but he appears to be healthy. A beautiful boy. We did it. And you’ll make a great mother.”

Mother? You’ll never be this boy’s mother, nor any child’s. Otto’s declaration after ripping away Emmett reverberated in her head.

Tears, tainted with deadly germs, slid down her cheeks, and a warning sounded within her: the more she loved this child, the more it would hurt when Ulrich took him.

Cora blinked away the thought and gazed at her cherub’s face. Almost nonexistent, his eyebrows and lashes would surely come later. Tufts of black hair peeked from the edges of the cap. His lips, hugging her skin, looked pinker than a tulip, and his nose: impossibly tiny.

“What’s his name?” Ulrich asked.

Shocked, Cora looked up. Had she misheard?

“I wish I could hold him without my suit.” He folded his arms. “Unfortunately, I have many trials to conduct before that’s possible. It may never be.”

She bit her lip to hold back a smug reply and stroked her babe’s cheek. If he were also an asymptomatic carrier who couldn’t leave North Brother, she wouldn’t want Ulrich to forget the attachment he now felt to the boy. She knew what she had to do: give him a German name.

One that was good and kind. Daily, she’d prayed in the chapel for God to bless this baby with a gentle soul.

She wrapped his fingers around her pinky. “His name is Kristian.”

Fall 2007

The heron nesting season draws to a close

October

ily lowered the piece of sushi to her plate with almost-inhuman restraint. The lingering, sweet taste of yellowtail turned bitter in her mouth. “What do you mean,” she said, punching out each syllable, “you’re going back?”

“I have to.” Finn leaned away from the folding table in their apartment.

A week ago, when he’d returned from his failed attempt to convince Cora to cooperate, he’d been beyond frustrated. Biting her knuckle to stymie a volley of questions, she’d let him rant, then listened without judgment as he voiced a serious of impractical solutions. Not once had he mentioned the possibility of another trip—so soon.

“No, you don’t have to,” she replied.

“That place is like a keg of dynamite,” Finn said too loudly. “Between those bats, their obsession with injecting her with Lyme, and now the fact that she’s got chloroform, it’s not going to end well. For who, I don’t know. Maybe everyone. My brother’s being a total ass, but I still love him.”

Lily pushed her plate away. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt, either, but she’s just too insanely dangerous.”

“Lils, she trusts me. She wouldn’t have shown me her garden if she didn’t.”

A knot formed in Lily’s throat, and she tried not to imagine the two of them on that rooftop. The days that Finn helped Lily at the co-op were her favorite. Somehow, he managed to be entertaining and productive at the same time. She didn’t want to picture him acting that same way with Cora. “Maybe that’s true, but she didn’t strike me particularly sane. There’s got to be another option.”

Finn stared out the window at the adjacent building, barely visible in the waning light. Usually, Lily’s heart skipped at the sight of his profile, with a nose so straight it almost made him pretty. This time she had to clench her teeth to keep from demanding that he concentrate on her instead of a brick wall.

“What do you suggest we do?” he asked.

She rose to pace across their kitchenette. “I care about her, and your family. But”—her voice cracked—“I care about you even more.”

He kneaded the back of his neck, and she knew he was thinking of her unwillingness to marry him. She considered admitting that her misgivings about Rollie had always been a factor, but Finn was a problem solver. Especially right now, she didn’t want him attempting to engineer a workaround to what her instincts were telling her.

To keep him on topic, she spoke first: “Promise me you won’t go before the nesting season ends. We should figure this out together over the winter.”

Finn nodded. “Okay. She’ll be safe from them during the winter anyway.”

Lily studied the potted cacti on the windowsill, the most recent of which she’d added for Susan, whose second bone marrow transplant had failed last spring. Two years earlier, they’d met at a summit for young adults with cancer and became steadfast virtual friends. Hating the unfairness of life, Lily scrunched her eyes shut. Her grief didn’t disappear.

The flowering Echinopsis next to Susan’s represented Elisabeth, who’d lost her seven-year battle with metastasized breast cancer. They’d developed a bond during a kayaking camp for cancer survivors, which Finn had encouraged Lily to attend. Elisabeth and Susan, along with the others represented in her memorial garden, had understood her in a way people who haven’t had cancer could not.

Except for Kristian, who’d accepted her anxieties as rational. But it was looking like she’d lost him as a friend, too. The fact that he viewed Cora akin to a lab rat was appalling.

Over the past two months, he’d repeatedly tried contacting Lily. Each time, she’d silenced her ringer. How could a man who showed endless compassion to his patients and their families treat another human so inhumanely?

Because Cora had killed his grandfather.

But one sin could not justify an endless series of other sins,