it, Rory and Craig and me, so I told them, sure. They paid for me to go to the midwife, one in the next county so no one from Corinth would see me, and they asked me not to go to town, because they didn't want anyone telling the baby where he'd come from until they decided it was time. That seemed right to me, too, so I just hung out at the farm. It was boring, let me tell you!"
"I'm sure," I murmured, feeling the hair on either side of my face grow damp as the tears flowed. The basement was lined with shelves and crowded with odds and ends. I saw that Regina had made a sort of nest for herself in one corner. There was an ancient easy chair, a lamp, and a board across two cement blocks that served as a table beside the chair. It was piled high with magazines. A mattress topped with a sleeping bag was pushed against the wall. There was a cubicle that I suspected hid a toilet and maybe a shower, close to the base of the stairs. "Have you tried to escape yet?" I asked, interrupting Regina's account of the onset of her labor. She sounded exactly like she was the only woman in the world who'd ever had a baby.
Regina gaped at me. "Are you kidding?" she asked incredulously. "As soon as Craig and Rory show up with the baby, Margaret'll let me go. I'm just, like, a hostage! If I tried to escape, they might hurt me!" Ah-oh. She didn't know. If I could have felt worse, I would have. "What do you think happened in Lawrenceton?"
"See, I had the baby," Regina said, and I sighed. She was not going to edit her adventures. "And when I saw him, I just thought I couldn't give him up. And Craig got put in jail, so he couldn't make me. I told Margaret and Luke I had to breastfeed for the first few days, that the midwife had told me so, but really I'd had the shot to dry my boobs up. I just said that so I could take him home with me. But I knew the Granberrys were dying for me to give him up; they'd been pestering me from the hour I had him."
"So you ran?"
"Yeah, man, I just took off. I didn't think that Craig and Rory would figure out where I'd gone. And I never thought they'd get out so quick. I mean, I missed them, Craig especially. But I couldn't make up my mind. And I had really thought the Granberrys would be great for the baby, but then I began thinking Margaret was a little weird, and she could make Luke do anything. So maybe she wouldn't be a good mother. And," Regina's voice lost its bounce, "I really loved the baby. I kind of wanted to keep him, even if we really needed the money. So one day when I knew the Granberrys had gone into the city for some art thing, I lit out."
"The Granberrys had already paid you some?"
"Oh, yeah, they gave us half the cash when he was born. They were gonna give us the other half when we turned him over. I hid the money, except for some I took out for the trip."
She'd hidden it in the crib mattress. Where Rory had found it.
"What about the legal part of it?"
"Margaret said she and Luke'd move as soon as the baby was old enough. She figured wherever she lived, no one would ask questions. She read a couple of books on how to get a birth certificate for him. You know you can get books that tell you how to do that? She was gonna change his name to Lucas. I just called him Hayden for my great-uncle on my father's side. He was my favorite when I was a little girl."
I thought about all this. Finally, I told Regina I was thirsty, and she jumped up to bring me some water in a plastic cup. There was a sink on the wall, stained and ugly and old, but functional. Regina slid a hand under my head so I could raise it enough to sip from the cup.
"What's wrong with my head?" I asked, staving off the inevitable. Besides, I did want to know.
"I guess Luke hit you with the stock of his rifle. Margaret says you jumped him!
That was kind of crazy, Aunt Roe."
"Yes," I agreed.
"Anyway,