Part 3
“That’s okay. I have your registered address on Maple Thorn Road in Westbridge. Is that where you are?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any immediate danger in the room? Fire, smoke, weapons?”
“No weapons. No fire. It’s cold.” Margaret looked up at the locked door. “Her parents are outside.”
The word parents felt wrong and right and poisonous.
“Can they unlock the door?”
“They locked it.”
Tanya’s voice stayed steady. “Did they intentionally lock you and the baby inside?”
Margaret opened her mouth, then looked at the closed door again. Beyond it, no footsteps returned. No apology came. No young woman fell apart and said she had not meant it.
“Yes,” Margaret said.
The baby moved her head blindly against Margaret’s chest, rooting. Margaret’s eyes stung. “She’s hungry.”
“Do you have formula, breast milk, anything for feeding?”
“No. Downstairs. Everything is downstairs.”
“Keep her warm against your body. Wrap her as much as you can without covering her face. Help is being dispatched.”
“How long?”
“They’re being notified now.”
Margaret almost asked Tanya to hurry, as if the woman were strolling toward the house with a casserole instead of sending sirens. Instead she pulled her robe around the baby and bent herself into a shelter. The attic floor chilled her bones through the thin cotton of her nightgown. She had dressed that morning with the private laziness of a woman who no longer expected the day to require shoes before noon.
“Tanya,” she said. “I don’t know what they’re going to tell you.”
“Just focus on the baby and your breathing.”
“No, listen to me. They’ll say I’m confused.”
“Are you confused, Margaret?”
The question was plain. Not insulting. It landed cleanly.
“I’m scared,” Margaret said. “That’s different.”
“Yes, it is.”
Downstairs, something heavy scraped. Margaret froze.
“Tanya,” she whispered, though she had been told not to whisper. “Someone’s moving.”
The device speaker popped softly. “Can you tell where?”
“Below. Maybe hallway. Maybe kitchen.”
“Emergency services are en route. Do not confront anyone.”
Margaret almost laughed again. She was locked in an attic with a baby and one functioning knee. Confrontation had become theoretical.
The baby quieted in hiccups. Margaret tucked two fingers inside the blanket near the child’s chest, feeling for breath. Fast. Too fast? Newborns breathed fast. Drew had breathed like that at three weeks, alarming her every night until her mother told her to stop hovering unless she intended to raise a man who apologized to air. Her mother had been wrong about many things and right about some. Drew had grown into a man who apologized to air and still did not open doors.
A knock came at the attic door.
Margaret stopped breathing.
“Mom?” Drew said.
His voice came muffled through the wood. Not loud. Not angry. Almost normal.
Margaret looked at the device. Tanya must have heard, because she said quietly, “Margaret, who is that?”
“My son.”
“Do not hang up.”
“I won’t.”
“Mom,” Drew said again. “Open— I mean, move away from the door.”
Margaret stared. “You open it.”
“I can’t with you near it.”
“You locked it from your side.”
Silence.
Claire said something behind him. Margaret caught only the hiss of it.
“Mom, listen,” Drew said. “We need to talk before you do anything stupid.”
The old habit rose in Margaret automatically, humiliating in its strength. Drew upset. Drew cornered. Drew needing his mother to soften the air so he could enter it. She had done this when he was nine and broke Mr. Panetti’s garage window, when he was sixteen and failed chemistry because he had stopped turning in homework, when he was twenty-eight and called from a casino parking lot in Delaware saying everything was fine but could she lend him enough to make rent. She had translated his panic into manageable errands. She had been proud of her steadiness. She had not always noticed what it cost other people.
“The stupid thing is leaving a baby on an attic floor,” Margaret said.
Claire’s voice snapped through the door. “You don’t know what she did.”
The baby jerked at the shouting. Margaret lowered her voice. “Claire, you are upsetting her.”
“She should be upset,” Claire said.
“Who?”
No answer.
Margaret’s thumb slid over the device, holding it close. “Tanya, are you still there?”
“Yes, Margaret. Stay calm. Officers and paramedics have been dispatched.”
Drew heard the voice. The silence outside changed.
“Mom,” he said. “Who are you talking to?”
“Help.”
Claire swore. It was a small, ugly word, made uglier by how young she sounded when she said it.
Drew knocked once with the flat of his hand. “Cancel it.”
“No.”
“You don’t understand what this will do.”
Margaret bent over the baby. “It may keep her alive.”
“Mom.”
“No.”
The word came out smaller than she expected, but it held. She felt it in her ribs. Not bravery exactly. More like the last unbroken chair in a ruined kitchen.
Footsteps retreated again. This time fast.
Tanya said, “You did well.”
“I don’t feel well.”
“You don’t have to.”
The baby’s face had gone blotchy. Margaret worried about the color, then worried about not knowing enough to interpret the color, then worried that worry itself was useless heat leaving her body. She loosened the blanket near the tiny mouth. The child’s lips were not blue. That became the whole world for a moment.
“What is her name?” Tanya asked.
Margaret looked down.
May you like
Three weeks ago, Claire had posted the announcement on a private family thread Margaret was not supposed to mention because Drew had forgotten to show it to her himself. A photograph of a wrinkled pink face under a striped hospital cap. Welcome to the world, Ava June. Seven pounds, two ounces. Perfectly loved. Margaret had stared at the words for so long her tea went cold, then commented with too many heart emojis because she could not decide which one expressed an apology for being sixty-nine and still wanting to be included.
“Ava,” she said. “Her name is Ava.”
