“We’ll contact BC Ferries. They’ll get someone out there to direct traffic around it. Betsy?”
“I’m here. I’ll wait.” She paused. “I . . . know about the dismembered feet,” she said quietly, her attention returning to the little lilac high-top. “But this one . . . it’s not an adult shoe.” She reached down and gathered her children closer. “It’s a child’s. A size eight or nine.”
“Does it show the size?” said the operator.
“No. But it’s about the same as my daughter’s shoes.”
Betsy hung up, shivered, rain soft against her cheeks. She sat down on a rock and clutched her kids tight to her body. Too tight. So tight—because suddenly everything that was precious was right here in her arms. She stared at the kid’s shoe lying in the silt. “I . . . I love you, sweethearts.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Tears glittered in Ty’s big brown eyes. “I—I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”
She sniffed and rubbed her nose. “Not your fault, Ty. It’s not your fault—it’s going to be okay.”
“Whose shoe is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s the rest of her?”
Betsy glanced at the shadows of land barely discernible through the mist across the bay—Point Roberts in the United States. Behind her traffic inched along the causeway that stretched a mile into the ocean to the ferry terminal, which lay just five hundred yards short of the US water border. The ferries crossed through American waters each time they traveled from the mainland to Vancouver Island.
That little foot could have come from anywhere. Off a boat maybe? Washed from land out into the sea during the storm?
“I don’t know,” she said. “They’ll find her.”
“Who will?”
“I don’t know, Ty.”
CHAPTER 1
It all goes back to the beginning . . .
TUESDAY, JANUARY 2
Angie Pallorino snapped several photographs of the shadowed service entrance at the back side of the hospital. Her flash flared white against raindrops that fell soft and insidious. It was already dark in this Pacific Northwest city of Vancouver on the second day of the new year. And cold. The kind of dank cold that burrowed deep into bones and made it feel as though the chill were emanating from within.
She stepped back under the shelter of the eaves and checked her watch. 4:51 p.m. Her appointment was running late. Angie wondered if the woman would even show. Perhaps she should have arranged to meet the retired nurse someplace other than outside this service entrance in an old brick alley across from the stone cathedral. But it was here that it had all begun, and Angie needed to go right back to the beginning to find the answers about who she was, where she’d come from. It had started on a night not unlike this. Black. Wintery. Except on that night thirty-two years ago it had been Christmas Eve and it had just started to snow. Big fat flakes.
Across the alley Saint Peter’s Cathedral loomed—an ominous shadow of gray rock, Gothic spires vanishing into the dense mist. Shivering slightly, she raised her camera and shot a few images of the arched windows and stained-glass panes that glimmered with hesitant light. Her father’s words from a fortnight ago crept into her mind . . .
That Christmas Eve in ’86, while your mother was singing with the choir at Midnight Mass, some kind of violent gang fight erupted downtown. From inside the cathedral we heard gunshots, screaming, and tires screeching. They found you in the cradle . . . long red hair. You had no shoes. It was winter, and you had no shoes—just a little pink dress. Like a party frock but old and torn and covered in blood.
Inhaling deeply, Angie returned her camera to her sling bag and gingerly massaged her left upper arm. It was tender where a bullet had ripped through flesh two weeks ago. Thankfully, the slug had missed bone and critical nerves and tendons, but just the act of raising her arm to shoot photos was making her muscles ache. She heard footsteps on the brick and jerked around.
A woman approached from the direction of Front Street where traffic was busy and lights were bright. Stocky, average height, the female wore a coat to her knees and carried a black umbrella overhead that glistened with rain. Slung across her shoulder was a large black tote. Anticipation balled in Angie’s throat.
“Mrs. Marsden?” she said as the woman neared.
“Jenny—please call me Jenny. I’m so sorry I’m late.” Her voice was low and husky at the edges with kindness—the sort of voice a child might imagine a nurse should have. Jenny joined Angie under the eaves out of the rain, which was beginning to come down harder now, splashing into puddles. “And I apologize for not managing to meet earlier in the day when there was more light—this place looks downright spooky in the darkness.” She laughed softly as she shook out her umbrella. “Retirement is not what I thought it might be. The soup kitchen where I volunteer is running me off my feet, especially at this time of year. When that blush comes off Christmas, there really is less giving, you know? Everyone seems to turn inward in the cold month of January when debt starts to hurt.”
“I appreciate you being able to see me at all, and at such short notice.”
“How could I not? When I got your call about looking into that old cradle child mystery for your friend . . .” The nurse turned to face the bolted garage doors of the service entrance behind them. She shook herself. “It was over three decades ago, and the memories still come over me like it was yesterday—Christmas Eve, the sound of that alarm going off inside the ER alerting us to an abandoned baby in the box, then the gunfire and ringing of the church bells . . .” She tilted her chin toward the doors. “They now use this entrance for hospital waste pickup. But this is where it was, the first angel’s cradle. And right beside it, over there”—she pointed with her umbrella—“was the old ER entrance. Ambulances traveled into this alley until the new, larger entrance and parking bays were constructed down at Front Street.” She paused. “It was the first newborn safe haven in the country. A place where mothers in distress could leave their infants safely. And as long as there was no sign of physical abuse on the baby, police were not contacted. The child went into the system for adoption.” The woman turned and studied Angie in the dim light, as if searching to prove something for herself. “What is your friend’s interest in this particular case?” she said.