Christmas morning in the duplex looked nothing like a greeting card. May sat in her high chair in footed pajamas. A little horse but grinning. Hadley stood at the stove flipping pancakes she had meant to shape like snowmen. They came out looking more like potatoes.
Merry Christmas, sweet pea, she said. Mama’s an artist.
May slapped the tray in approval. There was one present under the little tabletop tree, a board book about farm animals bought for a dollar at the thrift store on Broadway. Hadley had wrapped it in the Sunday comics. May ate a corner of the paper and declared the morning a success.
Hadley kept the baby monitor on the counter anyway. She listened to every breath. She had called Gil Varner back at 7:20. No answer. An hour later, a text. Come by the shop Friday. We’ll talk.
Friday. Two days of not knowing. While May napped, Hadley sat on the kitchen floor with her back against the cabinets, and the old memory came the way it always did, uninvited.
She was seven. Her mother worked nights at the hosiery mill in Mville. One night, there was no one to watch her, so her mother tucked her in, kissed her forehead, and locked the door behind her. Hadley woke at dawn to a stranger in the kitchen, a woman in a brown coat holding a folder. A neighbor had seen the light on and no car in the driveway. Hadley spent the next four months in a stranger’s house with a stranger’s rules. When she finally came home, her mother hugged her too hard and never quite looked at her the same way again.
Hadley had made herself a promise that year. My child will never wake up alone. So, she had brought May to work and somebody had seen.
On December 26th, the building was closed. Jude Tolbert was at his desk by 8. Anyway, at 10:00, Lorna Teague called. Lorna had been his assistant for 9 years and had never once wasted a sentence.
