I held the line.
I held it right up until the morning of day seven, when the detectives called and said they had located an infant girl, two weeks old, in the temporary care of a couple in a town ninety minutes north — a couple who had paid Meadowbrook forty thousand dollars and had no idea, no idea at all, that the child they’d been told was “legally surrendered” had a mother across the state screaming her name.
“The couple is cooperating fully,” the detective said. “They’re heartbroken, but they’re cooperating. Mrs. Bennett — there’s going to be a hearing. Emergency custody. Tomorrow morning. Your husband will be served this afternoon. He doesn’t know yet.”
I looked across the kitchen at my son, eating cereal, his pickle jar of savings on the table beside him where he now kept it at all times.
Sixty-one dollars and forty cents.
