Harriet was rearranging a grouping of red-toned blocks on her design wall for what felt like the thousandth time when she heard a knock on the outside studio door. She got up to answer, but she was only halfway across the room when it opened and Aiden walked in.
"What have you gotten me into?” he demanded. He raked his fingers through his black hair.
Harriet was speechless as he paced across the room and back.
"The police came to the clinic to question me-the police, for crying out loud. I was with my patients, so they told me to come in tomorrow morning. They said if I didn't show up by noon, they'd come get me. What have you done?"
He strode across the room again.
"If you want to talk to me, you better take it down a notch,” Harriet said in a cold voice, her stomach tensing. She turned and went into the kitchen. She was slamming the lid on the teakettle when he followed her and sat on a stool at the bar. He took a couple of deep breaths then spoke in a controlled voice.
"Harriet, could you please tell me what's going on here?"
She told him what had happened in his absence then described Neelie's death as clearly as she could. His jaw tensed, and his lower left eyelid twitched spasmodically, but he didn't say anything until she'd finished.
When Harriet had been quiet for most of a minute, he spoke, the tension still clear in the stiffness of his posture.
"So, none of this seemed the least bit odd to you?” he spat.
"Of course it seemed odd. It seemed crazy, and yes, we assumed it was some sort of scam. But we had to think about the baby."
"The one you just assumed must be mine,” he said. “Because it had blue eyes. Do you have any idea how many black children are born each year with blue eyes? Blue eyes are the result of a genetic mutation that took place ten thousand years ago. Every blue-eyed person relates back to that common ancestor. They crop up everywhere, in every country and every race."
"Thanks for the biology lesson, but that isn't why she was living at your house. She told us the baby was her sister's child. That her sister had died, but before she did, she asked Neelie to bring your child to you."
"And you didn't question it?"
"We tried, but it was her sister's dying request."
"You should have known I wouldn't get a woman pregnant and then just leave."
"I didn't think you would do that. Lauren has been trying to find out about Neelie's sister, but, Aiden, in the meantime, there was a baby involved. Carla said she wasn't being fed properly."
"So, now you're going to blame Carla for this?"
"Unlike you, I'm not blaming anyone for anything. I'm trying to find out who these people are, and I want to find out the truth, whatever that is."
He stood up and began to pace again.
"Could you stop the pacing, please?” The kettle whistled, and she poured water over a teabag in her mug. “Would you like some tea or coffee?"
"Coffee,” he said and sat down.
Harriet got out her single-cup coffee filter unit and set it on the mug Aiden usually used at her house, then scooped ground coffee into the filter section and poured boiling water over the grounds.
"You do realize you've never really told me about your time in Africa. I mean, you've mentioned your research and being in multiple villages, but for all I know, you could have been married and divorced three times while you were there."
"Oh, please,” he said as he accepted the cup she handed him.
"Think about it. You know everything about my dead husband-his lies, his disease, his death. And you certainly know about my parents. Anyone who uses the internet could know about my parents, but I told you how they warehoused me in boarding schools-all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly.
"Yet all I know about you is what happened to your mother, and the immediate aftermath of her death, and that's only because I lived through it. I have no idea if you went to Africa because your girlfriend since high school broke your heart, or if you were a serial dater."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
Harriet reached across the bar and put her hand on his arm.
"I know in my heart you're a good person. You wouldn't knowingly leave a pregnant woman without support."
"That's big of you."
"There is still a lot of room for a baby scenario. You could have agreed with your pregnant-by-someone-else friend to take responsibility for her child if something happened to her, never imagining it would happen this soon."
Aiden's shoulders sagged.
"Didn't think of that, did you?” she said with a self-satisfied smirk.
He sat in silence, sipping his coffee.
"Carla and I figured, with the help of Aunt Beth and the Threads, that the baby was safer where we could keep an eye on her and Neelie, at least until we could figure out what was going on. We were also hoping you'd get back and shed some light on the situation. We had no way of knowing Neelie would die while she was staying at your house."
Aiden wasn't ready to concede he'd overreacted, but Harriet could see that his anger was receding. She took the top off her ceramic cookie jar, pulled out three home-baked chocolate chip cookies and put them on a plate. Aunt Beth nagged her about her weight, but Mavis and Connie restocked her cookie jar on the sly, always with admonishments to not abuse their gift.
"Thanks,” he said when she set the plate in front of him.
"Let's go back to the start.” Harriet watched his face for a return of his earlier anger. “Do you know a woman named Nabirye Obote?"
He paused so long before answering she was afraid he wasn't going to, but finally he did.
"Yes, I know a woman named Nabirye Obote. She worked for a national initiative for clean water in Uganda. We crossed paths because I was trying to get the villagers to take better care of their animals, and she was trying to get them to keep their water sources clean. We were organizing the same groups of people, so we decided to work together."
"Was she pregnant that you know of?"
"No!” he all but shouted. “No,” he repeated more quietly. “She was pretty clear about the need to improve things in Uganda and appalled by the infant mortality rate. In Uganda, eighty-five of every one thousand children die before their first birthday, and the average life-expectancy at birth is only fifty-two years.
"Besides, she had been educated in England. I always got the sense she was paying some kind of debt to her home country. She was planning to return to Oxford to pursue graduate studies so she could affect things at a higher level."
"Did you know Neelie Obote?"
"No, I didn't know she had a sister.” He took another sip of his coffee. “You're not getting the right picture here. Nabirye and I worked closely together on our joint sanitation project. We talked a lot when we were working on our presentation, but that was because she spoke English, as well as all three of the major Ugandan languages. I mainly speak Lugandan, which is spoken in the south, but in the north I needed help translating, and Nabirye was there.
"She is very intense about her country and her cause. When we spoke, it was always about water, animals or how to help her people. She could have twelve sisters and that many husbands, too. What we did together was a small part of my work. Most of the time, I wasn't even in her home village."
"So why on earth would she leave her baby to you?"
Aiden ran his hands through his hair and then stared at them in his lap.
"I don't know how many ways I can say this. Nabirye certainly didn't have my baby, and I seriously doubt she had anyone else's baby, either."
"Then why did Neelie say she did? And more important, where did she get the baby?"
"Maybe it's hers."
"Carla doesn't think she takes care of Kissa the way a mother should or would."
"There are lots of bad mothers in this world."
"I suppose,” Harriet said.
They sipped their drinks in silence.
"We should be able to prove Nabirye isn't dead easily enough,” Aiden said.
"That's what Lauren and I were thinking. She couldn't find any death reports for her or birth reports for the baby. But she did come up with an online video clip that shows Nabirye talking about clean water. It looks like it was taken pretty recently. It's on my computer right now if you want to look."
He followed her into her studio. She turned on her computer and pulled up the clip. As soon as it started, he pointed at the screen.
"That's her,” he said. “See, she's alive and not pregnant."
"I'm guessing that if it were simple to call her, you would have already suggested that option."
Aiden put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.
"You're kidding, right?"
"Right,” she said, even though she'd been serious.
"The villages I worked in didn't have consistent electricity, much less telephones or cell towers. Of course, they have those things in the capitol city, but she's not there very often. I can call and leave a message for her at the water project headquarters, but it's anyone's guess when she'll get it. It could be weeks, maybe longer."
"Hopefully, we'll have this figured out long before that, but just to cover all our bases, maybe you should go ahead and make that call."
Aiden looked at the black plastic-encased sports watch on his wrist.
"I've got to give another round of antibiotics to my worst cases at midnight, so I'm going to see if I can grab a couple of hours sleep before I have to go back. If you think of anything else that could help me with the inquisition in the morning, give a call."
Harriet was relieved to see a brief flash of his normal humor.
"I know I have no right to ask,” she said, “but could you please call Carla? She's terrified of losing her job."
"Why on earth does she think that?"
"I have no idea,” Harriet said with as straight a face as she could manage. “You can find her at Connie's,” she said when she could speak without smiling.
She walked him to the door then went back into the kitchen, where Fred immediately began weaving figure-eights around her ankles. She went to the refrigerator and took out his can of cat food, scooping a generous tablespoon into his dish.
"Things are looking up,” she told him. “Aiden may not have forgiven us just yet, but he's starting to thaw."
Fred made satisfied smacking noises as he ate. If he had an opinion as to Aiden's state of mind, he kept it to himself.