Page 42 of Good Half Gone

We parked in front of yellow-yellow just as the sun cracked open like an egg, dripping light through the clouds. The front door was propped open by a deck of playing cards. Gran kicked them aside and pushed the door all the way open. It stank worse than usual: bodies, cigarettes, and a mixology of rotting takeout. She stepped inside with me glued to her elbow. I didn’t want to be here; I was afraid of what she’d look like now. It seemed that every year her face became thinner, more grotesque with sickness.

“Virginia?”

I squeezed Gran’s elbow, and then we both gasped—walking out of the bedroom wearing a yellow caftan, healthy, plump, and with her hair in clean waves, came my mother. She was holding something.At first I thought it was a puppy nestled in a blanket. I drew closer to her, despite myself. I wanted to see—had we driven all this way to see my mother’s new dog?

But by the look on Gran’s face, I knew that wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right…and then something cried—a hopeless wail. A pink fist pushed itself out of the blanket and held itself in the air, triumphant. My mother’s arms were scarred but not scabbed, and I stepped closer.

“This is Callum.” It was the first time I’d heard her voice since the night we’d come here trying to find Piper. It was too much—her voice and that flaky new fist retreating into the blanket.

Gran walked right up to her and took the bundle, staring down at it in shock. My mother didn’t try to stop her. She dropped her arms to her sides and looked at me with clear eyes. She had half a smile on her face as she studied my hair, and if Gran weren’t there, she’d have something mean to say about it. She jerked her chin to Gran, who had yet to look up from the infant.

“That’s your nephew, girl,” she said. “Piper’s baby.”

Something cold burst in my chest, flapping and rolling behind my rib cage. I looked from my mother to the baby, my vision blurring. I wanted her to say it again, to make it make sense.Piper’s baby.

My mother looked smug as she watched my face, leaching my reaction. When she’d had enough, she turned her round rump toward the bedroom, disappearing into the dark, and emerging carrying a snatch of paper between her fingers.

“Someone knocked on the door at midnight. Banged on the damn thing like they were trying to knock it down. No one was there when I opened it. I was ready to shoot their ass too.” She nodded at the kitchen counter where a gun lay idly next to a box of tissues and a half-eaten hot dog. “That kid was in a box with the blanket and this—” She held out the paper to me,as Gran was too busy staring at the infant to take it.

I was not comprehending. Everything smelled and looked and felt wrong. Plucking the paper from between her fingers, I read the words.

Iris, daughter of no one, please take care of my son.

His name is Callum.

It was signed:

Twin

I stared at those words, my eyes watering. It was Piper’s handwriting. She was alive. Piper was alive, and she’d not tried to contact us. She’d run away just like the police said—let Gran and me suffer for the last year not knowing.Alive or dead, alive or dead…I made a noise in the back of my throat, dropping my chin to my chest. I refused to look at her—or Gran—or the baby.

I scoured the note again. That was all? NoI love you, orI’m sorry, orI’m safe? Not a single word to explain why? There weren’t enough words to salve the last year of our lives. Gran and I had been through it. And she’d been off getting pregnant and having a baby? Had she left with those guys because she was pregnant? No—the baby Gran was holding was too small. It was new.

“It’s Piper’s handwriting,” I confirmed.

For the first time since being handed the baby, Gran looked up. She nodded at me like it was decided. Then she looked at my mother. “We’ll be taking him with us.”

Virginia opened her arms in a do-what-you-will gesture. “Something else for you to save, Mother?” Her tone was taunting, but Gran didn’t seem to care; she was signaling for me to head to the door.

Once I was outside, Gran followed. We brisked our way down the weed-choked path and to the Prius. Virginia was leaning in the doorframe, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Don’t you want the box he came in?” She cackled so loudly, a light turned on in the house next door.

“I’m going to kill her,” Gran said, handing me the baby and opening the passenger door for me.

“Not today, though. We need to get out of here.”

I don’t know what made me turn around, or where I got the boldness to walk right up to her carrying her supposed grandbaby. I heard Gran call my name from the street, but I ignored her. Her mean little eyes were fixed on my face, daring me to say something she didn’t like. She liked to get in your face and then shove you away like you got in hers. I remembered the feel of her bony hands gripping, shoving, smacking. When she was small and skeletal, she was a bully, and now full and fleshy, she was still a bully. You could change the packaging, rebrand the anger—but the rot was inside where no one could see it…rotting.

“I want the box,” I said. She looked startled at first. Then she smiled her joker’s grin and turned back into yellow-yellow, emerging with a cardboard vegetable crate. I held the baby in the crook of my arm and took it from her.

“You were always more like me than she was,” she said. My stomach roiled. She was looking at my hair again. “People like you and me, kid—we like to hide in plain sight.” I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t want to. I turned my back on her and walked to where Gran was waiting.

She drove until she saw a Walmart. I waited in the car with the baby while Gran went inside. I’d held a baby at church, the youth pastor’s, but never one this little. He made weird noises and once cried out in his sleep like something was hurting him. How many days old was he? If this was really Piper’s baby, why had she left him at our mother’s house?Why had she left him at all?Unlike me, Piper loved kids. She’d volunteer in the church nursery on Sundays just for the chance to hold babies.

“Where’s your mama?” I asked him. He yawned so big I saw each tiny nub on his gums.I was suspicious. Gran had not taken a single moment to question any of it. It’s like she looked down at him and knew. My mother’s history as a compulsive liar was proof enough that something wasn’t right. This baby could be my mother’s, or it could belong to a complete stranger. It could belong to Piper too, I thought.

Babies smelled like their mothers—or maybe they knew their mother’s smell—I couldn’t remember. But either way, if this baby had grown inside of my sister, he would smell like her. And I would know the smell of my sister anywhere. I lifted his head to my nose and breathed him in. Once…twice… I started crying.

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