The floor was littered with trash and animal droppings and the stereo rattled empties on the countertop. There was a Maine coon cat curled atop Gentry’s keg and it startled me so bad I gasped when I saw it—a frenzy of orange-white fur, licking at its paws all lazy like. I nodded and the cat trailed me with its yellowy eyes.
The man on the stereo sang something about fur pajamas and I took a short breath and crossed the room. I had a small Maglite on my key chain and I followed its tiny beam to a staircase between the kitchen and the living room. I was glad for the music, otherwise I know Shelton Potter could have heard my heart beat out loud.
Check out Mr. Businessman, said the singer.
The stink got worse when I reached the second story and I buried my nose in the crook of my arm and whispered for Carletta. I scanned the floor with my flashlight.
The hall was narrow and unlit. The wallpaper was patterned with roosters and torn in wide strips and beneath the paper I could see the wood framing and feel the cold whistling through.
There was a door on each side of the hall and when I opened the first the stench was like a wall I walked smack into. I jerked at the shoulders and braced myself in the doorframe but couldn’t keep from retching. It was the foulest odor I have ever encountered and I knew right off to call it death. I retched a second time and then shone my light.
The dog was lying stiff on the carpet in the center of the room and I cried out when I saw its unmoving, marble eyes. I saw the snout receding toward the collapsed jaw, and the fur that lay puddled where the muscles had gone soft. I backed out of the room and had to keep myself from slamming the door in a rage.
You want to bake your own brain with a bunch of damn Drano, then fine, but leave a helpless animal trapped and starving to death while you did it? I was shaking angry and had a thought like I should go downstairs and suffocate that sonofabitch, Shelton, in his sleep. Or shoot him if the shotty was loaded.
It was the kind of thought you have because you know you won’t do anything with it, but it makes you feel better for a second to think that you might. I’m not a killer and even if I was, who was going to take care of Carletta while I rotted in prison for doing the world the good turn of putting out Shelton Potter’s lights?
I returned to my search and whispered for Mama. I asked if she was there. There was no reply from the hall, and as I eased the other door open I held in my heart a desperate and wordless prayer about what I would find there.
The room was lit with a single, exposed bulb that flickered and cast a dusty light from the ceiling. There was a flood of cold through an open window along the side wall, and there was snow piling on the sill and the carpet. A mattress lay cockeyed on the floor and between the mattress and a radiator I saw a bassinet. Inside the bassinet was a baby.
The man on the stereo was back to the part about fur pajamas. I didn’t know if the song was on repeat, or the singer had felt the need to double back and touch on that particular detail again.
Things fall apart, he went on. It’s scientific.
I could see the baby was shrieking, but its cries were buried by the wind. The snow blew in sideways, edged across the floor, and dusted the baby’s cheeks with frost. The baby’s eyes darted in a side-to-side panic as it reached up with trembling hands and searched for something to grasp.
I ran toward it.
Chapter Two
Crisis is a constant when you’re a daughter of Carletta James, which prevented me from outright panic at the sight of an abandoned infant in the farmhouse. This is not to say I was unsurprised by the discovery of the bassinet, or the sight of the baby wailing against the wind. Of course these things surprised me, and filled me with a momentary terror—it’s just that I could not allow my shock to extend beyond a clipped breath or two. While the particulars of a given calamity may be impossible to predict, while I could never say I expected to find a baby in the bedroom, chaos itself was always confirmation of the dread I carried blood-deep and certain in my bones.
On the side of the bassinet BABY JENNA was written in marker and surrounded by flowers that had been carefully woven between the letters.
“Shh,” I whispered, and lifted her out.
Her pajamas were cold and clung sticky and wet at the back. She reeked of shit and the soured tang of spit-up and I felt her little chest heave as she cried. Her cheeks were icy to the touch and I cleared them of snow as I rocked her in my arms. Her chin was collapsed as she sobbed and her eyes scrambled from me to the room and then back. Her hands were curled and she seemed to be both reaching for me and shielding herself against my presence. I kept hushing her. I didn’t know what else to do.