Chapter 14: Storm Warning

Claire's POV

The cabin was dark except for one lamp, and I heard Hazel before I got out of the car.

She was screaming the thin, hoarse scream she used when she had been screaming for a long time.

I do not remember crossing the yard.

The door was unlocked.

Kelsey sat on a camp chair in the middle of the one room.

She held my daughter away from her body with both hands.

Hazel's face was purple.

A can of formula with a red lid stood open on the counter, next to a bottle the baby had refused.

"She won't take it," Kelsey said.

"Give her to me."

Kelsey stood and did it.

She did not argue and she did not apologize, and her face stayed smooth, but her fingers were shaking.

I put Hazel against my shoulder.

She was damp and hot all over, and in the middle of a breath she stopped screaming and began to hiccup.

"Where is he?" I said.

"Out. For firewood and a heater," Kelsey said.

She looked at the cold stove.

"He said it would be one night. He said you'd come in tears and he'd be the reasonable one."

"And you stayed."

"I was told to hold her."

"She's fifteen weeks old," Rafe said from the doorway. "You held her three hours without changing her."

Kelsey looked at the floor.

"I didn't know how," she said.

The nanny took Hazel from me and found the diaper bag.

She had a clean diaper on her and a bottle of the right formula warming in her hand before I could ask.

Headlights swung across the window.

Two sets of them, one behind the other, with blue and red lights on the second.

Rafe had called the sheriff from the car on the way up.

Dean came through the door with an armload of split logs and a boxed space heater under his chin.

A deputy came in behind him with a folder.

Dean saw me and the logs slid out of his arms onto the floor.

"Claire," he said. "Good. Thank God. Tell him we worked this out."

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