Hush Little Baby (20 page)

Shea came over to sit with him and he told her nothing. He would someday, but he was wrung out with all the things he had done wrong.

Kit’s father called from his plane. He didn’t have enough details to be able to call his daughter stupid; he didn’t know about that yet; so he mainly called Dusty stupid. Just before he hung up, he said to Kit, “No matter what, don’t let anybody pretend Dusty has come to her senses. She doesn’t have any.”

The police had gone back to the coffee shop where they’d deposited Dusty after her most recent set of lies. So probably the most important parent at the police station that night was Dusty herself.

The only known parent of Sam the Baby.

But when Dusty tried to pick Sam up, Muffin reacted like Jaws the dog. “Don’t you let her touch Sam!” said Muffin loudly to the assortment of police and parents. “She is a bad, mean woman.”

“I am not! I’m never mean!” Dusty was hurt. “I’ve made mistakes. But I’ve learned. And I’m going to give this a try.”

“You’re saying that only because there are witnesses,” said Kit. “You want to look good. Well, you can’t. There’s no way you can look good again. You were selling your son, the price was right. And you knew all along, you knew for months, what kind of people Burt and Cinda are. You helped them with their ATM nonsense. So don’t tell me you’ll
try
to be a parent. Muffin’s right. You shouldn’t even touch Sam.”

“I’m going to work on it,” said Dusty, lifting her chin to look brave.

“He’s not an it,” said Kit. “He’s a little guy who needs all the attention all the time.”

Dusty got belligerent. She glared at her former stepdaughter. “It isn’t your decision, Kit Innes.”

“It isn’t yours, either,” said a policewoman. “The baby will be taken care of by social services while we sort things out. You have not yet been charged, Mrs. Innes, but Cinda has stated that you were the one who drove from ATM to ATM using the fake cards to get cash.”

“I was not!” cried Dusty. “They’re lying! They’re just trying to spread the blame!” Dusty was shocked to be led where Cinda had been taken before her: deep inside the police station. As if she had done something wrong. “I wasn’t meant for this,” she said in a high strangled voice. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!” She looked back at Kit, as if expecting Kit to prevent this.

The door closed after Dusty.

Burt was still on the road somewhere, still hoping to get away, still hoping to prove himself smarter than the cops.

The social worker arrived with a car carrier; the right kind; the big fat plastic white kind, in which babies lay safely. Aunt Karen had dressed Sam in a sweet little terrycloth suit, with embroidered balloons and a matching blanket.

What if I never know what happens to Sam? thought Kit, and her heart lurched.

What if Sam the Baby had been in her life only twelve hours, and would never be in her life again?

“We can’t keep him?” whispered Muffin.

“No,” said the social worker gently. “You were a very brave, very fine friend for Sam. You were the best he could ever have. But somebody else is going to decide who Sam’s mommy and daddy should be.”

“I don’t want you to take him away,” wailed Muffin. “How do we know you’re choosing the right people to take care of him?”

We don’t know,
thought Kit. Her hair prickled. Her eyes filled.
And we won’t know.

Sam slept without knowing anything of his world. He just slept. He was entirely sleep. And he was going out into the world by himself, just another child in the terrifying lottery of parents.

I won the parent lottery, thought Kit. Rowen and Muffin did, too. Shea did.

Kit loved all three of them fiercely. She loved Muffin for her bravery, her refusal to give up, her brains. She loved Rowen for running, for trying, for succeeding. She loved Shea for being jealous of their adventure, when it had not been an adventure; it had been a hell.

She wanted good parents and good friends for Sam the Baby.

Oh, Sam! she thought. Please, Lord, watch over Sam. He needs You.

She kissed Sam good-bye. She pressed her cheek on his soft perfect face. Sam didn’t know. He wouldn’t recognize her if he saw her again. “Be careful for him,” Kit said to the social worker. “Find somebody to love him.”

“I promise,” she said, and then Sam was gone from their lives, and the parents and the children who were left clung to one another.

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life. 

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.