Meredith doesn’t look thrilled to see me. Or maybe she does and she just has a hard time showing it through the exhaustion painted on her face.
“Where have you been?”
She stands with her arms crossed, her chin tilted down. Her baby sits at her feet, crying its lungs out. Past them, farther in the house, the sound of cartoons is even louder than it was this morning.
“I’m sorry. Took longer than planned.”
“You think? You said it would only be a few hours. It’s nearly two o’clock. I can barely deal with two kids at the same time by myself, but three?”
I don’t say anything, letting her vent.
Meredith juts her jaw and blows away a loose strand of hair from in front of her face.
“My mom called and said she was going to come over, and I had to make up some excuse to keep her away. I told her I needed some stuff and that she needed to go to Walmart, and, like, I do need that stuff, but I still felt like I was lying to her, which is weird because I lie to my mom all the time, but this time it just felt, like, really wrong.”
“Were you able to give Star a bath?”
Meredith glances down at the crying baby on the floor, and when she looks up at me again, something has changed in her eyes. They’ve hardened a bit, and her voice ticks down an octave.
“I want to know where you found her.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. Or else I’ll call the police.”
Blood starts thrumming in my ears, drowning out the crying baby.
“Go ahead. When they get here I’ll make sure to mention there’s a chance you’ve got marijuana hidden somewhere inside. Probably not enough to get a conviction, but it’s not going to look very good for a single mother of two, will it?”
The threat is a mistake, of course, but I can’t help myself. I’m not operating on much sleep, and somehow Meredith’s irritation is contagious. The angrier she gets, the angrier I get. Which isn’t helping matters, I know.
Meredith’s eyes grow even harder, like stone, and she opens her mouth to speak, but I shake my head and hold out my hand to silence her.
“Seven hundred dollars. That’s all I have left. Give me Star, and I’ll give you the cash, and we’ll both forget this ever happened. Deal?”
Meredith doesn’t answer at first. Her burning glare is so intense I wish I’d applied sunscreen lotion this morning. But then she sighs, blows away another loose strand of hair from in front of her face, scoops up her crying baby, and motions me inside.
“Follow me.”
I step inside and let the screen door smack shut behind me as Meredith leads me deeper into the house. Her older boy sits on the living room floor, his skinny knees pulled up to his chest, his back against the sofa, watching the TV with a wide-eyed fascination that makes me surprised he doesn’t have drool falling down his chin.
Meredith says, “This way.”
She directs me into the next room, where a bottom-of-the-line crib sits in the corner.
Star lies there, clothed now, asleep.
Meredith leans down to place her own child inside the crib and picks up Star, a simple swap.
She holds the baby even more tenderly than she’d held her own, smiling down at Star as she whispers.
“She’s a good baby. Quiet. Didn’t give me no problems.”
“You bathed her?”
“Yes. And fed her. She was a dream. Her mom must be a happy camper.”
She pauses, and I see the gears starting to shift again in her head, the questions that are starting to form.
I slip the bills from my pocket—the wad of twenties, as well as the five crisp one-hundred dollar bills from Juana’s wallet—and place them on the table beside the crib.
“Here’s the rest of the money. The three hundred from earlier this morning, plus seven hundred here, that’s one thousand dollars.”
I watch her, waiting to see if she’ll ask any of those questions, but she eyes the money with an intense greed.
Nodding absently, still watching the money, Meredith hands me the baby.
Five minutes later I’m three blocks away, walking with the grocery bag again, Star nestled inside.
Leila Simmons is parked next to the town’s only bank. By now the bank is closed, the parking lot empty except for our two cars. The flagpole is bare, but its snap hook smacks against the metal pole in the breeze, an insistent and random ding … ding … ding.
Leila steps out of the car when she spots me heading her way. She stands there with the door open, and I can feel her need to rush forward. But she holds back, scanning the block as if people are watching, which so far I don’t think anybody is. It’s Saturday, after all, and most people are inside or have driven to a town that has far more to offer than Alden.
Leila Simmons doesn’t ask where I’ve kept Star this entire time. She doesn’t ask who’s been watching her, who’s been taking care of her, or why I’m currently transporting her in a grocery bag. She simply takes the bag from me when I offer it to her, and she immediately turns and opens the back door. A child seat is already prepped there. Leila carefully extracts Star from the bag, secures her in the child seat, and gently shuts the door.
Turning to me, there isn’t happiness on her face so much as relief.
“Thank you.”
“The money from the wallet—”
“Keep it. I don’t know where it came from. Consider it a reward for keeping the baby safe.”
I don’t want to get into how I gave the money to Meredith, so I nod.
Leila watches me for another moment, and then she climbs into the car. She waves just once before she pulls out onto the road and heads north toward the highway.
I stand there in the parking lot well after I’ve lost sight of her car. Still thinking about Star. Hoping that wherever she ends up, she’ll be safe.