Would Amanda Hartmann find another baby to pass off as her own? Would Amanda ever tell her brother that he didn’t need to look for Sonny’s baby anymore?

No, Jamie decided. Amanda would never give up.

It was dark before a taxi delivered Jamie and her baby to the apartment house. Poor Ralph was so overjoyed to see her that he went absolutely crazy, leaping so high in the air that he did a complete backward somersault. “Wow!” Jamie said, putting down the infant carrier and kneeling to hug her dog. “We’re going to have to give that Frisbee a try.”

After she had seen to her dog and her baby, she carried a sandwich and a glass of milk to the coffee table. She planned to finally read the material on infant care that Mae had given her. But she ate her sandwich and then just sat there, allowing herself for the first time to address the horror that she had gone through. The bone-grinding pain, the blood, her ignorance of what was happening, the fear that she and her baby would die alone on an old mattress in the middle of a blizzard. And even after Billy had been born, how much determination it had taken for her to pack up the car and start out again with her body weak and torn and exhausted and hurting and bleeding, bleeding, bleeding. She was still bleeding. She hoped Mae’s little booklets would tell her that all that bleeding was normal. If not, she would have to find someone to make it stop.

But for now she just wanted to sit here. She would read about motherhood tomorrow.

She thought of how not long ago her most immediate goal had been to return to college. Maybe she would still do that someday, but right now she had to plan her life around two things-caring for her child and keeping her little family safe.

She wondered if she would ever feel completely safe again.

Chapter Twenty-seven

JAMIE STRETCHED IN her bed and took note of the sun streaming through the window. The weather report on the radio had promised a beautiful spring day. And she had the whole day ahead of her to do as she pleased. For the time being, her travels were over. Now she began a waiting game-waiting until she could establish her new identity, buy a car, look for a job, open a bank account, and begin her life anew as Janet Marie Wisdom.

And more immediately, Jamie was waiting for tomorrow evening, when she would once again talk to Joe’s mother.

But today, she had no agenda. She stretched, luxuriating in the thought that she could simply enjoy her baby, her dog, their new home, and the gift of a beautiful day.

Ralph was looking at her from the foot of the bed. “Good morning,” she told him and he wiggled his way to her side, pushing his head under her hand. “Let’s see, what shall we do today?” she pondered as she scratched his ears. “I want to give Billy a by-the-book bath, and we need to do some laundry. And this afternoon we can walk over to that little park and see if you can catch a Frisbee.”

She read about bathing babies. Only sponge baths were allowed until Billy’s cord stem fell off.

She put him on a folded towel beside the kitchen sink and talked to him while she washed his little body, and he looked up at his mommy with a somewhat puzzled but quite intelligent expression on his face. Everything about him was perfect-his little nose, his mouth, his fingers and toes. The slope of his little shoulders made her weak with love. She’d realized that having a baby was a life-changing event but hadn’t had a clue as to how complete that change would be.

“I will be the very best mother I can be,” she promised her child and herself.

That afternoon, except for some elderly men playing dominoes on the concrete picnic tables, they had the park to themselves. She spread a blanket under a tree, placed Billy on it, and picked up the Frisbee.

Keeping her baby in view, she tossed the Frisbee over and over again, and Ralph would race after it and wait for it to land, then dutifully pick it up and come trotting back to Jamie. She hadn’t a clue as to how to make him understand what she wanted him to do until one of the domino players yelled at her, “Roll it to him a few times so he can learn to catch it while it’s still in motion.”

Jamie did as the man suggested, and Ralph would chase after the rolling disk and grab it. After they had that routine down pat, she sailed the Frisbee along a horizontal plane just a few feet above the ground, and lo and behold he made a leaping jump and grabbed it. Jamie was thrilled. “Good boy,” she called and watched with pride as he trotted back with the disk in his mouth and his crooked tail wagging. She knelt and gave him a hug. “You’re the best!” she said enthusiastically.

Then they got serious. The domino players applauded time and again as Ralph leapt high in the air, his body twisting and turning as though he had been catching Frisbees all his life. Finally Jamie grew weary of the game. She picked up Billy and walked toward the picnic tables with Ralph leaping happily at her side.

“Thanks for the advice,” she told the man who had yelled the instructions. He wasn’t as old as the other domino players, she realized. In fact, he wasn’t old at all.

“Glad to be of service,” the man said. His suit jacket was folded on the bench beside him, his necktie on top of it. He had rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. The other men were more casually dressed. He was the only one who looked as though he had just been to a barbershop.

“He caught on fast,” the man said as he reached out and petted Ralph. “Cute little mutt. Have you had him long?”

Jamie shook her head. “He followed me home a few days ago,” she lied.

“Smart dog,” the man said, picking up a domino and fiddling with it.

His nails were carefully trimmed. His shoes were polished to a high gloss.

“You live around here?” the man asked.

“No, I’m visiting my aunt,” Jamie said, trying to keep her voice calm and friendly. “Well, thanks again,” she said, backing away.

The man stood. “Well, Grandpa,” he said to the man across the table from him, “are you ready to go? Grandma probably has that cake baked by now.”

The elderly man nodded and, using the table for leverage, struggled to his feet.

Jamie watched as the two men walked across the street and entered a two-story house that, like the others in the neighborhood, had seen better days. In the driveway, a shiny black SUV was parked behind an elderly tan sedan.

Jamie went weak in the knees. She drew in several breaths to calm herself then carried her baby back across the park with her dog at her side.

She put Billy in his sling and snapped Ralph’s leash back on his collar then gathered up the blanket. “That man could have been one of them,” Jamie told Ralph. “They know I have a dog. Montgomery would have told them what you look like. They are looking for a tall girl with a baby and a scruffy grayish-brown dog with long legs.”

She left Ralph in the apartment, then with Billy still in the sling walked to the neighborhood drugstore, where she bought inexpensive electric hair clippers.

Back at the apartment, she put several sheets of newspaper on the floor and trimmed off most of Ralph’s hair. He didn’t much approve of the procedure but tolerated it. “It’s your summer cut,” Jamie told him. “You’ll be much cooler.”

Then she sat back on her haunches and regarded her handiwork. Ralph was now a nonscruffy grayish-brown dog with long legs.

Mrs. Duffy did a double take when she saw him. “Is that the same dog?” she asked.

Thursday afternoon, Jamie-with Billy in the sling-walked to the downtown bus terminal and caught a bus to Norman, which was two towns south of Oklahoma City. Once she had arrived at the Norman terminal, she went to a secluded corner and nursed Billy. At six o’clock, she placed her phone call and closed her eyes and silently implored, Please let there be good news.