It Takes A Family

"Okay, sweetheart, we made it. We're here," Karis Pratt said. There was no response from the back seat and Karis glanced over her shoulder at the fifteen-month-old baby girl buckled into a child carrier behind her and to her right. It was late for Amy to be awake and Karis wouldn't have been surprised to find her niece asleep. But instead Amy was peering out the side window, her two middle fingers in her mouth, kicking her feet up and down the way she did when she was tired. There was absolutely nothing about the scene that should have brought tears to Karis's eyes, but there they were anyway. Hot and stinging. She blinked hard and swallowed to keep them from falling. "You don't know how much I don't want to do this," she told her niece. "How much I don't want to do either of the things I've come here for. If there was anything else Icoulddo--" Karis's voice cracked and she paused to clear her throat, to fight for some control. When she had a semblance of it, she sighed and said, "But there isn't. And there's nothing else I haven't already done, or we wouldn't be here." Here, in the middle of a snowstorm that had made visibility so slight they'd been driving for the past two hours at a snail's crawl to the place Karis's sister had called a "one-horse town, hick hole-in-the-wall." Northbridge, Montana. It was after nine o'clock on the last Friday of October and Karis hadn't intended to arrive so late. If she was going to show up on someone's doorstep, she thought it should probably have happened earlier in the day or evening. But she couldn't turn back time and she also couldn't risk keeping Amy with her overnight. Not when she was going to have to sleep in the car. So she resigned herself to get started on what she was dreading and unbuckled her own seat belt. "It'll be all right," she said, unsure whether the reassurance was for herself or her niece. "This is for the best." Karis got out of the compact sedan and peered through the snow at the red brick house she was parked in front of. It was a moderatesized two-and-a-half-story structure with a covered front porch and big black numbers running vertically alongside the door, letting her know she had the right address. The address she'd used to answer the sole letter her sister had sent when Lea had lived here. Karis was glad to see the buttery glow of light in the curtained front window. Hopefully that meant the man her sister had been married to for barely ten months was inside and she wouldn't be taking Amy into this cold for no reason. She pulled her own coat close around her, smoothed her chin-length auburn hair behind her ears and went around the car. Amy raised big, trusting blue eyes to Karis the moment the door opened and Karis felt her heart clench. How am I going to do this...' But just then a frigid gust of wind hit her from behind and once more the thought of spending the night in the car was all the motivation she needed. She ducked inside, pulled up the hood on Amy's coat to cover her short reddish-brown curls and to keep her tiny ears warm. Then she unfastened the seat from its moorings, and took out baby and carrier. Karis didn't hesitate to rush for the house then. To climb the four steps to the porch. To ring the bell. While she waited, she bent over and kissed Amy's forehead and again said, "It'll be okay. Everything will be okay." The door opened a moment later and Karis straightened, peering through the screen at the man who stood there. Tall, broad shouldered, imposing--that was about all she could make out with the light coming from behind him. "I'm looking for Luke Walker," she said. "That's me," he answered with curiosity in his tone. "I know you don't know me..." How could he when they'd never met? But she was loath to tell him who she was. For Karis this entire trip and the two ugly errands she had to do were jusPade, Victoria is the author of 'It Takes A Family', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373280315 and ISBN 0373280319.