Part 7
Later, Margaret sat alone outside Ava’s room and ate peanut butter crackers from a vending machine because a nurse told her she looked like she might faint and Margaret did not want to become additional paperwork. The crackers stuck to her teeth. She drank bad coffee and burned her tongue. A woman across the hall argued on the phone about whether urgent care counted as an emergency for insurance purposes. Somewhere a toddler sang half the alphabet and gave up at Q.
At ten-thirty, Raymond returned.
“Ava will not be released to Drew or Claire tonight,” he said.
Margaret gripped the coffee cup too hard. The lid popped loose and splashed coffee on her robe.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Are you willing to be considered as an emergency kinship placement?”
“Yes.”
He watched her carefully. “That is not a small yes.”
“I know.”
“You’d need a home safety assessment. Background check. Follow-up visits. The department would need to verify legal relationships and immediate safety.”
“I live in the same house.”
“That may be a problem.”
“It is definitely a problem.”
He almost smiled. “Do you have somewhere else you could stay tonight?”
Margaret had friends. People from the library board. Louisa, who would complain loudly while making up the guest room. A cousin in Ohio, less useful. A neighbor, if desperation became social.
“Yes,” she said. “My friend Louisa.”
“Would she allow an emergency visit tonight?”
Margaret looked at the wall clock. “She’ll insult me for calling after ten and then change the sheets.”
Raymond nodded. “Call her.”
“My phone is at the house.”
He handed her his.
Margaret stared at it. The phone was warm from his hand. A stranger’s phone. A lifeline. She dialed from memory, grateful suddenly for every old habit young people mocked.
Louisa answered on the sixth ring with, “Somebody better be dead or rich.”
“It’s me,” Margaret said.
There was one second of silence. Louisa’s voice changed. “What happened?”
Margaret told her only the necessary part: baby, hospital, need a place. Louisa did not interrupt, which frightened Margaret more than if she had.
Then Louisa said, “I’ll put the kettle on.”
“I may be bringing a newborn.”
“I heard that part, genius.”
“And child services.”
“I’ll put pants on.”
Margaret handed the phone back and laughed once, softly. Raymond pretended not to notice.
Ava was released into temporary protective custody at 1:18 a.m., and into Margaret’s arms at 1:31, after signatures that made Margaret feel both chosen and accused. Claire had gone quiet by then. Drew had tried twice to speak with Margaret and been stopped first by Officer Patel, then by Raymond. The second time, he said, “Mom, please,” and Margaret looked away because if she looked at him too long she might become his mother instead of Ava’s protector.
That was the first night.
The next morning, Margaret woke in Louisa’s guest room to Ava making a sound like a squeaky cabinet hinge. For one floating instant she did not know where she was. The wallpaper had tiny blue flowers. The air smelled of lavender detergent and old radiator heat. Her knee had swollen into a shape with its own political opinions. On the nightstand sat a bottle of formula, a legal packet, her emergency device, and three lemon cookies Louisa had left “in case trauma makes you peckish.”
Ava lay in a borrowed bassinet, wriggling under a blanket printed with ducks. Louisa had produced it from her attic after midnight, saying, “My sister left this here in 1998, so check for spiders and emotional baggage.”
Margaret lifted the baby before the cry sharpened. “Good morning, Miss Ava June Whoever-You-Are.”
The name Whoever-You-Are hurt.
She fed Ava in the rocking chair by the window while dawn turned Louisa’s backyard the color of wet newspaper. Across the fence, someone’s automatic sprinkler clicked on despite the frost. Rich people, Margaret thought unfairly, then remembered Louisa lived in the same neighborhood and had simply inherited better plumbing.
Ava drank greedily, making small desperate sounds. Margaret had forgotten the astonishing force with which a newborn pursued milk, the total moral clarity of hunger. She watched the tiny jaw work and felt something dangerous unfurl in her chest. Love, yes, but love sharpened by fear could become possessive if a person did not watch it. She had made that mistake with Drew. She had mistaken rescue for parenting long after he had grown.
Louisa appeared in the doorway wearing a plaid robe and reading glasses on her head. “You look terrible.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t justified.”
Margaret adjusted the bottle angle. “Do you have coffee?”
“I have coffee, formula, diapers, and the judgment of several neighbors who saw official vehicles outside my house at two in the morning.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t start. I’ve been waiting years for something to scandalize them. I hoped it would involve a younger man and a hot tub, but we work with what we’re given.”
Margaret smiled despite herself. Ava’s eyelids fluttered.
Louisa came closer and looked at the baby. Her face softened in a way she would deny if accused. “Well. She’s not subtle.”
“No.”
“She yours?”
Margaret looked down. “Temporarily.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I don’t know what she is.”
Louisa sat on the bed. The mattress sighed. “Start with alive. Move outward.”
It was the first useful theology Margaret had heard in years.
By noon, the story had begun to develop versions.
May you like
Drew called Louisa’s phone because Margaret still did not have hers. Louisa let it ring, then read the voicemail transcript with theatrical disgust. He wanted to talk. He wanted to explain. He wanted Margaret not to make decisions while emotional. He wanted, Margaret noticed, quite a lot from the woman he had locked in an attic.
Claire did not call. Her sister did, leaving a message that accused Margaret of exploiting a medical crisis and trying to steal a child because she had “unresolved daughter issues.” Louisa deleted that one before Margaret finished listening.
