She needs liquid. That’s the main thing. I don’t have any food for her. I tamp down panic at the thought that I have nothing even resembling milk. Water. Focus on getting her water.
I hurry out to grab the canteen. Then I stop. Dalton will have it, because I won’t need it at camp, where I can melt snow.
Melt snow.
I snatch up the pot and stuff it to overflowing with snow and spin to the fire …
The fire is dead.
Of course it is. That’s why I’d left in the first place: to gather kindling, which I abandoned back in the clearing where I found the baby. I’ve been gone long enough that the fire is reduced to ash. It’ll take forever to get it going enough to melt water.
Stay calm. Stay focused. I am surrounded by water in partly frozen form. I can do this.
I empty the pot. Grab a handful of snow. Squeeze it in my fist, and watch the water run into the pot. Grab another … and see black streaks on my hand. It’s probably soot, but it looks like dirt, and that reminds me that my hands are not clean.
Sterilize. That comes from deep memory, a single babysitting class taken with friends, before I realized I was not babysitter material.
Then how are you going to look after an infant?
I can do this. Clean my hands first.
With what? I showered before I came. It’s one weekend with backpacks—we have no room for anything we don’t absolutely need.
And this is an emergency. Am I going to let a baby die of dehydration rather than risk letting her ingest a few specks of dirt?
I wash my hands in the snow as best I can. Then I’m squeezing out water when Storm, sticking close and anxious, gives a happy bark. At a whistle, she takes off, and I nearly collapse with relief.
“Eric!” I shout. “I need help!”
He comes running so fast the poor dogs race to keep up. He bursts into the camp, as if expecting to see me wrestling a newly woken grizzly. He has a rifle over his shoulder, and he’s carrying a brace of spruce grouse, which he throws into the snow as he runs toward me.
“Fire,” I say. “I need the fire going. Now. I have to boil water.”
“You’re hurt? Or Storm?” He wheels to look at the dog bounding up behind him.
“Baby,” I say, barely able to get the word out, my heart thumps so fast. “I found a baby.”
“A baby what?”
The infant lets out a weak cry, and Dalton goes still.
His head turns toward the tent as he asks in a low voice, “What is that?” and I realize he doesn’t recognize the sound. Or if he does, it only sparks a very old memory. His younger brother, Jacob, might very well be the only infant he’s ever seen. Dalton was raised in Rockton, where there are no children.
Before I can answer, he’s crouched and opening the unzipped tent flap.
THREE
Dalton gingerly peels back the tent flap. He peers inside.
Then he jerks back. “It’s a baby.”
“That’s what I said.”
He rises, looking stunned. “Where…?”
“I found her with her mother, under the snow. Both of them—the mother and her child. The mother’s dead, and I don’t know how long the baby was out there, and I’ve warmed her up, but she’s dehydrated, and I let the fire go out, and now I can’t boil water to make it sterile and—”
He cuts off my babble with a kiss, gloved hands on either side of my face. Not what I expect, and it startles me, which I suppose is the point. His lips press against mine, warm, the ice on his beard melting against my chin, and it’s like slapping someone who is hysterical. Well, no, it’s a much nicer way to do it.