Three Knocks in the Colorado Storm. By Sunrise, Jack Turner Would Learn Who Had Really Been Saved.
The woman standing on Jack Turner’s porch looked like someone the storm had tried to kill and failed.
Rain streamed from the brim of her battered brown bonnet. Her dark wool coat clung heavily to her narrow shoulders, and loose strands of chestnut hair were plastered against a face so pale that for one terrible second Jack wondered whether he was looking at a ghost.
Then she raised her eyes.
Gray-green.
Almost the same strange color Mary’s eyes had been.
Jack forgot the question already forming in his throat.
The woman was young—perhaps twenty-five—and trembling violently, though Jack could not tell whether it came from the cold or fear.
“I saw your note,” she said.
Thunder rolled across the Colorado mountains.
Jack tightened his arm around Lily.
“What note?”
Her gaze fell immediately to the tiny bundle against his chest.
The expression that crossed her face was so raw that Jack instinctively stepped backward.
“The one outside.”
She swallowed.
“You said your baby needs milk.”
Jack stared at her.
For nearly two months, he had begged God, neighbors, strangers, and a doctor for help.
Now help was standing barefoot on his porch.
Barefoot.
He looked down.
Her boots were missing.
Mud streaked her ankles beneath the hem of her soaked dress.
“Where did you come from?”
“Please.”
Her voice broke.
“That matters later.”
She looked at Lily again.
“Is she breathing?”
Jack’s heart lurched.
“Barely.”
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“Then let me inside.”
Something in the woman’s tone changed.
The fear disappeared.
What replaced it was certainty.
Jack moved before his suspicion could stop him.
The stranger entered.
He slammed the door against the storm.
She stripped off the wet coat with shaking fingers.
Underneath she wore a plain faded green dress several sizes too large for her thin frame. Her cheeks were hollow. There were bruises around one wrist.
Jack noticed all of it.
But what he noticed most was the way she held out her arms.
Not toward him.
Toward Lily.
“My name is Clara Vale,” she whispered. “And I can feed your daughter.”
For several seconds, Jack could not breathe.
“You mean—”
“Yes.”
Her voice became softer.
“My baby died seventeen days ago.”
The words seemed to extinguish something behind her eyes.
“My milk hasn’t stopped.”
Jack closed his eyes.
Relief came so violently that his knees nearly buckled.
He had imagined salvation many times.
It had never looked like a freezing woman with bruised wrists standing in Mary’s kitchen.
He carried Lily toward her.
Then stopped.
Every instinct in him screamed to protect the child.
“Where’s your husband?”
Clara’s jaw tightened.
“I don’t have one.”
“Family?”
“No.”
“How did you get here?”
“A wagon left me three miles east.”
“In this storm?”
“The driver wouldn’t come farther.”
Jack looked again at her bare feet.
“And your boots?”
“One came off crossing the creek. I threw away the other because I could move faster without it.”
“You walked three miles barefoot?”
She looked directly at him.
“Your note said your baby was dying.”
The answer silenced him.
Jack slowly placed Lily into her arms.
The instant Clara held the infant, her face changed.
She made a tiny sound.
Not quite a sob.
Not quite a gasp.
Her entire body went still.
“Dear God,” she whispered.
Jack’s suspicion returned.
“What?”
Clara stared at Lily’s face as though the child had spoken.
