Page 6 of Dangerous

“Similar.” I shrugged. “Katy used to cook all the time with my mom. And when mom died, Katy tried to fill mom’s role, cooking meals for dad, Jason, and I. So, over the years, we’ve evolved into eating meals together either here or at her house with her mom. When things are busy in our lives, Katy or her mom often drop off meals here and when her mom’s working days—or now that Katy’s working after school some nights, when her mom’s working a night shift like tonight—we will eat together. It helps her mom to feel like she’s not abandoning Katy for work.”

“Makes sense. And Principal Kostiuk knows all this?”

“Yeah, Steve’s an old family friend of both our families. We’ve already discussed how to handle marking her English papers next year when there’s no choice but to have me as her teacher since she’s taking AP English.”

Greg relaxed back into the couch as he drank a mouthful of his vodka enhanced lemonade. “Thanks for letting me know. Now I can do more damage control with newer teachers when they make comments behind your back.” His words should have reassured me—and they did—but they also made me a little uncomfortable with my deception. Things weren’t exactly as innocent as I’d made them seem. He tilted his glass towards me. “This lemonade is really good. I think I need the recipe.”

Thankful for the partial change of subject, I grinned. “For that, you’ll have to sweet talk Katy. She guards it like a lioness guarding her cub.”

“Hmmm. I just might have to do that. I’m sure I can get her to share.” He winked, not knowing how good Katy already was at sharing… her heart.

5

Katy/Katherine

My eyes popped open as I sat upright in my bed. My heart pounded, sounding like horse hooves hitting the ground during a race. My fight or flight response was fully engaged, making it hard to untangle my jumbled thoughts between reality and my dream.

A glance at my alarm clock on my bedside table helped to slow my heart down, making it easier to capture my breath. And with increased oxygen reaching my brain, I was able think clearly. Mom. Work. The noise from her leaving for her day shift, including the door closing behind her, was probably what woke me. I collapsed backwards with a groan. It was far too early to be up on a Saturday morning in July.

The previous day, since school had been finished for the past two weeks, I’d worked from noon until we closed the pet store at eight. Geoff had decided to keep it open for an extra hour because the tourists tended to stop in after settling into their rental or RV which happened in the early evening or after they’d spent the day at the beach and eating supper. I didn’t mind thelater hours because it meant I didn’t have to get up early since the store opened at seven am to sell animal feed to farmers. Those early shifts were worked by Sasha, a university student who had been accepted into a vet program, starting in the fall.

I closed my eyes and focused on slowing my breathing, trying to go back to sleep. But after a few minutes, despite the early hour, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to. I rolled out of bed, bringing my heating pad with me, and stumbled down the stairs. Coffee was never a friend, but this morning I didn’t care. If I wanted to get through the day without being a grumpy, hormonal ass, I’d need to throw some into my hot chocolate as I downed a couple of Tylenol for the cramping.

Periods.

I hated them.

Maybe it was time to go on the pill. I never asked before because I didn’t want to deal with the questions, I knew mom would ask. Not that I thought she’d think I was sleeping around, but I was sure she’d start to worry that I was going to take that step. After all, she heard all the stories about what teenagers were doing in their spare time from her hospital colleagues or she saw some of the consequences in her emergency room. If I planned to continue with cheerleading this year, knowing when my period would arrive and hopefully with a lot less pain would be helpful.

Once the water boiled and I made my drink—adding a giant mound of whipped cream to the top just because—I shuffled out to the living room with my newly reheated pad. The couch would be a great place to curl up on while some cooking show played on TV in the background. But as I passed by the front door, I heard a strange, muffled sound. It was almost like the mewing a newborn kitten made. A sound I was extremely familiar with since Geoff brought in an abandoned litter to the store for us to look after during the day since they needed to be bottle fed.

Worried that something was wrong with the possible kitten, I placed my drink and heating pad on the entryway table before opening the door and heading outside in my short pyjamas.

The sound came again, off to my left so I followed it, heading towards Peter’s house. A large basket sat in front of their door, surprising me. Peter, Jason, and Jarrod left yesterday to go away for the long weekend, and they would have told me if they’d been expecting any packages or deliveries.

As I crossed the driveway, the sound grew louder and more distinct, causing me to nearly stumble in my haste to get to the door. My mind raced with the impossibility, but the moment I looked down, I could no longer deny what my ears heard… a baby. And a young one, nearly newborn, at that.

Who would leave a baby here? And why?It’s not like we lived on a busy street or that Peter’s house looked like children lived there. If anything, his address was probably known as a party house so not a place to leave a baby.

As the baby’s cries increased in intensity and sound, I glanced around, looking for any sign of whomever dropped off the baby. But to no surprise, other than the baby basket, nothing appeared out of place, and I couldn’t see a single person out on the street.

Knowing there was nothing else to do, I lifted the basket—I think I’d heard it called a Moses basket before—and carried the baby back to my house.

Once inside, I placed the basket on the floor and dropped to my knees. By this point, the baby was full on crying, and it broke my heart. As I picked the baby up, I noticed a large envelop, but I pushed it to the side for later. Right now, my focus was on finding a bottle or formula, something for the poor baby to eat. And a diaper since the poor thing was soaked through their mint green sleeper.

“Yes!” The baby gave a startled squeak at my exclamation. At the far end of the basket, under the quilt, I found a small diaper bag containing two premade bottles, a couple of diapers, and a couple of clean sleepers.

Bottle in hand, I stood, patting the baby’s back as I had them curled up against my chest and shoulder. I didn’t know how old they were, but I guessed that they were a couple of months old. As I walked into the kitchen to heat the bottle, I spoke out loud to the baby, listing all the things I needed to do and the questions I needed to ask my mom. But all that would have to wait until I settled, fed, and cleaned the baby up.

While the bottle heated, I changed the baby, discovering it was a little boy. I didn’t know much about telling a baby’s age, but the belly button looked normal so despite the small size, I figured that my initial estimate of a couple of months would probably be correct… maybe.

After feeding the baby, he fell asleep. I placed him on a makeshift bed on the floor since the blankets in his basket were a little wet from his overfilled diaper. Since mom left for work maybe a half hour before I found him, I doubted he’d been left outside, alone for too long, but having a leaky diaper after that short amount of time would have meant that he’d been neglected. And that made me mad. How could someone do that to an innocent baby? Something that shouldn’t have surprised me since someone had abandoned him on a front step.

As I pulled apart his basket so I could put all the damp things in the wash, I found the discarded envelop. Peter’s name written on the outside.

My heart pounded and my palms became clammy as I stared at it. Why would someone drop a baby off at his house? There was only one logical answer and that’s what scared me.

But I needed to know.

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