The Baby Shift- Mississippi Read online

  It was easy to pretend, just for a moment, that she was again the young, carefree girl who had once called this house her home. She did just that and had even begun to hum to herself as the stew simmered on the stove and she worked to clean the small mess she’d made assembling the meal.

  Alice felt a flash of alarm when the front door opened before she remembered that the likelihood of an invader in this small community was highly unlikely. With a bemused smile, she went into the living room to see who had come through the front door.

  “Knock, knock!” Chris called with a smile. He juggled several paper grocery bags as he closed the door behind him with one foot. “I know you’re back now, but I’ve been making sure Donald has some groceries around the house.”

  “That’s great, Chris. Thank you. Let me take a few of those.”

  Her father had somehow slept through their exchange, though he had shifted into a more comfortable position on the couch before returning to a deeper sleep. They quickly carried the groceries into the kitchen before continuing their conversation.

  “It really is great that you’ve been looking after him like this. I thought, after the way that you’d talked about him when I saw you earlier…”

  “I didn’t do it for him, Alice.”

  Chris took a few steps forward, closing the distance between them. His clear blue eyes were locked on hers when the front door opened and closed yet again.

  “Well. Don’t you two look cozy.” A clear accusation filled Derrick’s voice, though Alice couldn’t figure out for the life of her why he would care how close to her Chris stood. His expression was thunderous as he took in the scene. “Cooking your man some dinner, then?”

  “Actually, no,” Alice replied, struggling to keep her voice level. “Chris just dropped off some groceries for Dad. Not that it’s any of your damn business. What you’re doing here is probably the better question.”

  His facial expression said that he didn’t buy the grocery excuse for a minute, but Alice just didn’t care. Bigger things going on in her life than his opinion of a situation he had obviously misunderstood…hadn’t he? Chris had been standing so close…

  “I guess your dad didn’t tell you…he hired me to do some repairs around here for him.”

  It should have occurred to her that the tools outside belonged to someone. But it had been a long day, and she was travel weary. Logical thought would just have to wait until tomorrow.

  “Oh. Of course. Were you here to do work tonight, then?”

  “No. I just stopped by to see if any of you needed anything. I’m sure Don hasn’t exactly had a chance to prepare for company, so…”

  “He didn’t even know company was coming,” she admitted with a wry smile.

  “In any event, they’re taken care of.” Chris’s face fairly simmered with anger, and Alice realized with dismay that she would be trapped between this animosity, whatever its cause, for the foreseeable future.

  Patrick chose that moment to start fussing, and Alice was ashamed to realize she was happy to hear her young son crying. The two men seemed to be too busy glaring daggers at each other to notice.

  “Excuse me, guys. It sounds like Patrick is up from his nap. Please feel free to let yourselves out if I take too long getting him up and changed.” And she planned to do just that.

  Several minutes of hushed, angry conversation later, the front door finally opened and closed. Alice spent the time playing with her precious son and wondering what on earth could be causing the animosity between the two men.

  Chapter 5

  The days and weeks quickly fell into a predictable pattern. Alice would get her father breakfast and, they would watch Patrick play in the living room, or sometimes in the backyard. Derrick always showed up to work at some point during the day, and she would drink a cup of coffee with him while they made small talk. Alice was ashamed to admit that this was the highlight of her isolated existence.

  The fact that most of the shifters wanted nothing to do with her father made a social life almost impossible when he needed such constant care. A few times a week Chris would stop by with more groceries, no matter how often she told him it wasn’t necessary. Even something as simple as a trip to the store for groceries would have provided a bit of a break…

  Unfortunately, her presence didn’t seem to be helping her father to recover at all. In fact, he seemed to be getting worse. The sores on his arms were spreading, and his skin had taken on a feverish hue. He often seemed to be in pain, though he brushed it off when she asked him about it.

  They’d entered an uneasy truce. A thousand things hovered in the air between them unsaid, leaving the air stagnant, filled with hurt and denial. But at least he was no longer disowning her, wasn’t correcting her when she called him her father. Toxic, dejecting…but not without hope.

  For some reason, though, one hot morning in mid-July, Donald Hampton woke up filled with all the vitality he’d had in his youth. Unfortunately, he was also full of spit and vinegar…another thing that she remembered all too well from her own youth.

  “Dad, we cannot go into Hattiesburg. You haven’t left the house in weeks, and a trip with that much walking just isn’t smart! What if we just go to the store here, instead? If they don’t have everything you need, I can drive into Hattiesburg another day, or Chris can.”

  “Last I checked I’m a grown man and this is still a free country. I don’t need to be coddled by the likes of you! If you won’t drive me, I’ll damn well drive myself.”

  He headed toward the back door and snagged the keys to his beat-up old Chevy truck from their hook by the door. Alice should have hidden the cursed things weeks ago, and she would do just that tonight. Surely he wouldn’t drive himself into town…would he? Even in his weakened state, she was no match for him, with his shifter strength and far larger build. There was no way she could physically stop him if his mind were made up.

  She quickly snagged her purse, grabbed Patrick and his shoes—she could put them on before she got him out of his car seat later—and hurried after her father.

  “Wait! I’ll drive you, but this is still a terrible idea!”

  A few hours later Alice had to admit that she might have been wrong. They’d made a few stops since arriving in Hattiesburg, and Alice couldn’t believe the reason he’d wanted to make the trip. Her father was buying everything they would need to decorate a bedroom for Patrick. Whatever his complicated feelings toward her, he’d obviously grown to love her son and accept him.

  “What do you think, Patrick? Firetrucks, dinosaurs? Maybe you’d like—”

  Her father stopped speaking midsentence, and he collapsed. Alice knelt by him.

  “Daddy? Can you hear me?” Her voice was high pitched and frantic…and it did nothing to revive her father. Tears started to fill her eyes, turning the brightly lit store aisles around her into a blur.

  Someone came who appeared to have some medical training and checked her father’s pulse, shined the flashlight from his phone into her dad’s eyes. Somehow time stood still, even though she knew her father would never want to be taken to a human hospital, that she should be getting him out of here before her small village’s secret was exposed to the world.

  But she stood frozen while paramedics arrived and checked him out, uttered reassurances that she didn’t even hear, and ushered her into the back of the ambulance with him. She followed on wooden legs into the emergency room, holding onto Patrick for dear life. It was her son’s voice that finally broke through to her.

  “Grandpa Donald’s sick?” her son asked in a quiet voice.

  Her father had tried to get Patrick to just call him grandpa, but somehow the name from that first introduction had stuck. Her mother had always said it was up to the first grandbaby what the grandparents would be called…what had Patrick asked her?

  “Yes, sweetie. He’s sick. But don’t worry. The doctors here will…”

  Run tests. Figure out what he was. Expose their village to the world, when
it had worked so hard to stay hidden when other weres had announced themselves to the world. Shit.

  She hurried down a hallway until she found a place she felt like she had some semblance of privacy, then pulled out her phone and dialed Chris. He would help, right? It wasn’t like she had a long list of numbers to call. Her time spent taking care of her father had made it very difficult to renew old acquaintances. It rang a few times, then went to voicemail. She was in the middle of leaving a frantic message when she heard a familiar voice behind her.

  “Alice?”

  She turned and saw Derrick striding up the hall towards her. Tears started to fall down her face as she realized that she wouldn’t have to find a way to deal with this alone.

  “Oh, Derrick…thank God. You have to help me get Daddy out of here. They’re running tests, and—”

  “Where is he? Of course, I’ll help. You should have called!”

  “I was going to dial you next,” she replied as they hurried down the hall together. “He’s in the Emergency Room. We haven’t been here that long, so hopefully, they haven’t had a chance to draw his blood or anything.”

  Derrick whipped out his cell phone and called someone, asked them to meet him in the ER. “My cousin is here from Florida to speak at a conference. He’s a doctor, so he should be able to help us do this without raising too many red flags.”

  They went to wait at her father’s bedside for Derrick’s cousin. Alice couldn’t hold back her tears and was shocked when Derrick pulled her into a quick embrace. She looked up at him, tried not to feel desire at the sensation of his arms around hers. Their eyes met.

  “Derrick, I…”

  Her father chose that moment to wake up.

  “Alice, you have to get me out of here. I…Derrick’s here too? Derrick, you know I can’t stay here.”

  He started struggling to get up, but Derrick’s voice halted his efforts.

  “You aren’t staying here, Don. We’re just waiting for a way to exit without causing a scene—” he paused as he looked up at someone entering the room, “and here’s our way. Don, meet my cousin Dalton. He’ll have you out of here in no time.”

  The two men conferred in hushed whispers again by the door, and then Dalton strode away. His voice drifted back down the hall a moment later.

  “Ma’am, I’m Dr. O’Malley. I’m taking Mr. Hampton to the ER at Baptist West. His primary care manager works at Baptist West and is far more familiar with his case.”

  The nurse’s voice came back to them muffled, but Dalton’s response was easily heard. “You can mark him down as leaving AMA, but just make sure there’s a note in there saying that he traveled to Baptist West with a licensed physician, at his doctor’s request.”

  He stuck his head around the corner. “Come one, let’s get out of here.” In a lower voice, he added, “And you will definitely let me examine you the first chance I get. I don’t even understand how this situation occurred in the first place.”

  They were almost out the ER doors when Chris’s car skidded to a stop in front of the entrance. His eyes looked wild, almost manic, as he jumped out of the car and hurried in their direction. He met Alice’s gaze first.

  “Ally! Have they done any tests yet? I came as soon as I—”

  His eyes took in the entire scene before his warm blue eyes turned ice cold. “Ah. I see. If you weren’t alone, you didn’t need my help in the first place. Why call me here?”

  Alice frowned for a moment, unsure what he even meant when Derrick spoke up. “She didn’t call me, Chris. Dalton and I were already here, and it’s a good thing that we were. Either way though, I’d say she’s entitled to call whoever she’d like.”

  Chris didn’t answer, but instead turned on his heel and stalked angrily back to his car. An uncomfortable silence settled in his wake.

  “Alice, your boyfriend is…charming,” Dalton said dryly.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Have you told him that?”

  Chapter 6

  The next morning dawned bright and far too early. Her cell phone chirped its ringtone happily, signaling an incoming call. Alice opened it without looking at the display, still more asleep than not.

  “This is Kathy from the EMH Emergency Room. We’re trying to reach Alice Hampton.”

  “This is she,” Alice mumbled blearily, reluctantly rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  “We found something very disturbing in your father’s lab results.”

  Alice felt shock tingle through all her limbs before settling in her stomach. When had they had time to draw his labs?

  “It appears he’s been suffering from arsenic poisoning. It’s probably been caused by environmental exposure, but your father had so much in his blood that he should have died. We need you to bring him back in immediately.”

  “He did. Die I mean.”

  There had to have been a better way to keep them from looking into this any further, but Alice had never been good at thinking under pressure. She felt sick saying the words, even knowing that they weren’t true. How much arsenic, she wondered, would it take to kill a shape-shifter? Dread pooled in her stomach as she realized that there was almost no way this had been an accident.

  Alice got up and pulled on a robe before padding down the stairs and into the kitchen to pour herself some coffee. She half listened and mumbled responses as Kathy offered her sympathy, but quickly tuned in again when the other woman started talking about looking into the cause of her father’s poisoning.

  “—with an amount this high, it really isn’t safe to ignore this without requesting that someone check out the area around his home.”

  “I doubt that’s the source, to be honest. Me and my two-year-old son have lived here with him for my son’s whole life,” another lie, but did the smaller ones really matter after you’d lied about someone’s death?

  * * *

  She headed down the stairs and started prepping the coffee pot as she continued.

  “Surely an infant would have shown symptoms long before a strong, healthy man would. He goes hiking and camping all the time, on the southeast side of DeSoto….or he used to.” She tried to sound tearful. This story would give them a couple hundred acres to cover, and it wasn’t anywhere near the part of DeSoto her village sat next to.

  “Okay, thank you, ma’am. I’m very sorry about your loss.”

  It had worked! “If you don’t mind, I need to let you go. There are so many arrangements to make…”

  Alice hung up and looked over at her father, who was shaking with barely restrained mirth. She grinned at him.

  “You know that it’s pretty hard to fake grief when your dearly departed father is snickering in the corner, right?”

  His silent laughter turned to guffaws. “You managed to do a damned fine job. That was priceless, Ally.”

  The use of the nickname he’d called her in her childhood brought tears to her eyes. “Thanks, Dad.” She wasn’t sure if she was thanking him for the compliment, or for the acceptance she heard, finally, after so many years, in his voice. He seemed to take it as the latter.

  “I made a mistake, sending you away. I seem to be the only one who didn’t realize it.”

  The morning passed peacefully, but by noon her father was again confined to the couch—which he far preferred than being confined to his bedroom—and he seemed to be doing worse than Alice had ever seen him.

  She brought him a lunch of broth and dry toast, but he was too sick to acknowledge her presence, much less to eat. It was too much, to finally have him accept her again only to lose him once more. She moved through the day on autopilot, only allowing her fear and grief to fully surface once Patrick was down for his afternoon nap.

  Chapter 7

  Once Patrick was asleep, and there was no one to put on a brave face for, Alice couldn’t have held the tears back that coursed down her face no matter how hard she tried. She went outside and sat on the steps of the front porch, with the scalding summer sun beating d
own on her, and cried like her heart would break. Hell, her heart was breaking. How had her father been exposed to enough arsenic to kill a shifter? Why wasn’t his body burning the poison out even now? She’d never heard of a shifter having the slightest reaction to it before…

  Did it matter? Her father was dying, and there was nothing she could do to change that. The illness had brought her home, and brought her father back to her, only to rip him away from her once more.

  Alice was so wound up in her grief that she didn’t even notice anyone had approached until she felt a large, muscular arm settling over her shoulders. Instinctively she turned toward the source of comfort, and Chris drew her up against his chest.

  “Alice, honey…what’s wrong? Is Donald okay?”

  Alice could only form one word with the force of her sobbing. “Arsenic.”

  Chris’s arms stiffened around her. “Someone is poisoning him?”

  She didn’t answer, couldn’t, and for a few moments, she cried and let Chris hold her as he rubbed her back with soothing hands. Finally, she calmed enough to speak.

  “The hospital seems to think it was environmental exposure…do you think someone is poisoning him?”

  “Well, I…how else would a shifter as strong as him come in contact with this much arsenic? It seemed like the only logical conclusion. But maybe the hospital is right. Maybe he was exposed to a large amount of it somehow.”

  But Alice no longer thought that this could be an accident. It made horrific sense.

  “No…they don’t know he’s a shifter. You’re right. But who could it be? And why?”

  “Well…maybe it would help if we made a list of people who come in contact with Donald regularly, and people who may be holding a grudge against him…although that last list may be a little long. He was a different man after your mother died and he sent you away.”