Fear told her to send him away. Two kids, a woman alone, nightfalling, and a stranger at the gate. I don't know you," she said flatly. "No, ma'am. You're right not to trust me."
He didn't take a single step closer. "It's just that my daughter's hungry, and I don't know what else to do." Right then, Jesse started squirming on her hip, rooting against her, whimpering the way he did when he wanted to nurse. Isaac saw it and understood. His face went red.
He dropped his eyes, and for a second it looked like he was going to turn around and disappear back into the rain. "You're still nursing," he said, barely above a whisper. "I don't have any money to offer you. I don't have anything. I'm only asking for tonight, just until the bridge opens."
Maggie looked at Sam, then at the stranger, then at the bundle against his chest, that blanket rising and falling so slowly. The smart thing was to say no. She knew that. But that baby hadn't done a thing wrong. And Maggie knew what a hungry baby sounded like, and this one had gone quiet in a way that frightened her.
"You're not coming in my house," she said at last. "You wait on the porch." Isaac nodded right away, as if that was already more than he had hoped for. Maggie handed Jesse to Sam to hold for a moment, walked out onto the porch with her heart pounding, and held out her arms. "Give her here."
He hesitated. Then he laid his daughter in the arms of a woman he had known for less than 5 minutes. And when Maggie felt that small, warm weight against her, she realized the blanket was far too cold, and the baby barely had the strength to cry. The little girl latched on with a hunger that would break anyone's heart. Maggie sat on the porch bench, sheltered from the rain under the eaves, while Isaac stood a few steps off.
"How long since she's really eaten?" Maggie asked. "Since yesterday morning. I tried some formula in town before the bridge went, but she threw it all back up. Sam peeked out from the doorway at the strange man.
Is he sleeping here, mama? He's sleeping in the shed just for tonight. Isaac heard and nodded without a word of complaint. Maggie made conversation more to calm her nerves than to be polite. You don't have anybody, family, somebody who could come get you.
It came out in pieces. His mother had raised him on her own and had passed a few years back. He'd never known his father, no brothers, no sisters. His wife, Rose, was from Kentucky. Her parents were getting on in years, and her sister lived out in Ohio with three little ones of her own.
"They all know what happened," he said. "They just can't get here right now. We only moved to this area a few months ago. I took a carpentry job on a farm up the valley. That's why hardly anybody knows us.
This wasn't a man with nobody in the world, Maggie thought. It was a man who had landed in the wrong place on the worst possible night. You can sleep in the shed, she said again. Tomorrow when the bridge opens, you go on. Thank you, Miss Maggie.