heard Martin rumbling around on the ground floor, doing God knows what. I thought of calling to him, but instead I wandered into the second bedroom upstairs, across the little landing.
There was a sleeping bag on the floor, with a pile of clothes beside it. More blue jeans and flannel shirts, and T-shirts, socks, underwear. A pair of heavy boots. There was a door between this bedroom and the next. "Hmmm," I said. "Whose are those, Hayden?" Hayden made one of his favorite "eh!" sounds in response, and waved his hands. Martin was standing beside me suddenly, but I was used to his quiet approaches and wasn't too startled. He had a box under his arm.
"Rory stayed here, I'll bet," he said, and we exchanged looks. Hugh Harbor's remark about not knowing whether Regina would marry Craig or Rory had stuck with both of us. And while she and I were alone, Cindy had hinted pretty heavily that Craig and Rory did everything together. I saw no need to pass that little tidbit along to my husband.
"It probably wouldn't have done any good, but we should have asked him more questions when we had him," I commented, and then bit my lip. I was getting mighty close to losing my new glasses.
"Yes," said Martin heavily. "We should. I'm going to try to track him down tomorrow, if Dylan doesn't bring him out this afternoon." When we moved on to the next room, which also opened onto the common landing as well as connecting with this bedroom, we found it contained a battered, aged crib (cadged from the Salvation Army or some garage sale, I was willing to bet) and an equally dilapidated rocking chair. There were none of the accouterments I'd seen in my friends' nurseries: no bumper pads, no mobile, no changing table, no diaper pail. There was an old plastic garbage can, cracked and dirty, still with rolled-up dirty diapers inside. The sheet in the crib appeared to be a regular twin flat, sloppily folded and tucked to fit the small mattress. "She didn't really plan on keeping a baby here." I turned to face Martin. With reluctance, he met my eyes.
"There aren't any presents," I said mercilessly. "You always get presents when you have a baby. Even kids living on the poverty edge get presents when they have a baby - maybe just a crib sheet or a receiving blanket from the dollar store, but they get something pretty. This, this is nothing. There's no way on earth she planned on keeping this baby. I'll bet she wasn't ever really pregnant."
"What about the things she brought to our house?" "The diaper bag and the portable crib?" I took a deep breath. "The tags were still on. I think on her way to our house, she stopped at the first discount store she came to and charged them or wrote a bad check for them," I said. "Or maybe she took those things from whoever she took this baby from." Martin flinched.
"We have to talk about it, Martin. No one knew she was pregnant. She didn't go the hospital. Rory just says Craig took her to a midwife. Did you notice how reluctant Shondra was to tell us what the midwife's name was? I'll bet if we ask this Bobbye Sunday, she'll tell us that Regina was never a patient. How do we know this baby is even Regina's? What if - well, what if the money in the diaper bag was ransom money?"
"Rory knew the birth weight," Martin said. "You remember, in the restaurant, when the waitress asked?"
I nodded. "I also know Rory's a liar." Hayden raised his head off my shoulder and goggled at the room. I turned my head slightly, and kissed his cheek. His face wobbled around to mine. He banged his skull against my shoulder, and then came up again to look at me. We rubbed noses. His eyelids fluttered, and he laid his head down on my shoulder again.
"I don't know who bore this baby," Martin said, his fingers brushing Hayden's wisp of hair. "But I think Rory was around when it happened." "So, we need to talk to the midwife. And we need to find out if Craig's big brother knew more about it than his wife did." I was swaying gently from side to side, assisting Hayden's slide into sleep. I eased over to the crib, glared down at the sheet, certain it was dirty. In a whisper, I asked