Page 7 of I Found You
Bassinet
Baby soap
Diaper rash cream
I didn’t want to get too much stuff since she was only going to be staying with me for a few days, but I could always send anything extra with her to her next home.
* **
I wiped my sweaty hands on my dress as a car pulled up outside my two-story farmhouse-style home. A beautiful woman with long, wavy blonde hair pulled into a half-up/half-down ponytail stepped out of the car and circled to the back seat. A minute later, she was walking toward my door with an infant in her arms.
My house was small but cute. I’d bought it a year ago when the market was cooler. It needed some work, but only cosmetic stuff. I had watched some YouTube videos about how to repaint the siding, but I didn’t think I was doing it right so I gave up, for now at least. The peeling paint, loose boards, and rickety windows weren’t doing any harm. It would all get done… someday. The bones were solid, and that was the important part. When I started to earn real income, a home was the first thing I purchased. Growing up with my mother taught me that feeling secure in your home, as well as where your next meal was coming from, was not a certainty for everyone. Teachers were notoriously underpaid, but it was still a lot more than I was making working a minimum-wage retail job while I was going through college. Jackson didn’t want to move with me into the new house, so he kept the apartment we had grown up in. It was low rent, and the landlady was truly an angel for allowing us to transfer the lease to his name without increasing the rent.
I opened the door before she even had a chance to knock. “Hey, Kara. It’s good to see you again. And this must be the little girl.”
“Hi, Maeve. Yes, she’s great. Super easy for an infant.Thanks again for agreeing to foster her while we figure things out on our side.”
“Of course. Come in. Um, does she have a name? What do you call her?” I asked, stepping aside so Kara could pass.
“Protocol is to call her Jane, as in Jane Doe, until we have more information. It’s just so sad that someone literally left her on the side of the road. If she hadn’t been found when she was—” She paused and covered her mouth while she choked back tears. “—I can’t even think about it,” Kara finished, visibly fraught.
Kara passed the baby off to me, and we spent the next thirty minutes going through my house to ensure it was a safe environment for a baby. I knew it would pass inspection, easily. I harbored no illusions that I wasn’t considered a neat freak. My house was immaculate, no dishes in the sink, no laundry to be cleaned or put away. Each room had been deep cleaned within the last three weeks since school had let out for the summer. Floors were kept, not only swept, but steam cleaned daily. It may have been a response to my lack of control as a child, or maybe it was just the way I was, but my space being clean and tidy was important to me.
We walked through some of the basics of childcare—sleep schedule, feeding schedule, diaper change schedule—before Kara left. Apparently, it is best to keep a baby on a schedule as much as possible. I probably should have been taking notes, but with a baby in my arms, I wasn’t able to grab my notebook that I kept on my end table, and Kara rattled everything off so fast I wouldn’t have been able to keep up anyway.
It hit me as soon as Kara’s car pulled away. This was it. I was now responsible for an angelic, yet terrifying, estimated eight-week-old baby girl.
* **
She cried, she ate, she pooped, she slept. She cried, she ate, she pooped, she slept. Over and over again. I had only been with Jane for twenty-four hours, and it already felt like it was a full week. She wouldn’t sleep longer than two to three hours at a time, and it seemed like unless she was sleeping or eating, she was crying. Kara had told me multiple times that she was a good baby, and maybe that was on me for not knowing what the difference between a “good” baby and a “bad” baby was. Last night had been rough though. Although she fell back to sleep after I fed and changed her, I did not. It seemed like I was just nodding off again when she would start up again. I had the bassinet in my bedroom, but all of the baby supplies were in the kitchen. I had to get out of bed, walk downstairs, turn lights on, all things that kept me up and made it more difficult to fall back asleep. On top of that, my anxiety about what I had agreed to was weighing on me.
This morning, I was calling in backup. Or that was my plan at the start of the day. I didn’t have a lot of good friends as I tended to keep to myself. After my mother was arrested for possession of illegal drugs and child neglect, I shifted all of my focus to raising Jackson and going to college at the same time. Friendships fell to the wayside. True colors were shown when the chips were down. I couldn’t go out to parties, or to the movies, or the mall. I stayed home and did homework, either Jackson’s or my own, and cleaned and made dinner. In other words, I was no longer any fun.
I called Abbie first; she’d been determined to be my bestie the other night. No answer. I thought about reaching out toLacy and Jenny, but we weren’t close enough for me to call in a favor like this. I texted Jackson, but he hadn’t responded either.
It was Friday at 11:00 a.m. I could handle this for another few hours. Hopefully, Jackson or Abbie would call me back so I could just get someone to watch the baby while I showered and maybe ate something more substantial than packaged cookies.
4
Wyatt
The smell of motor oil permeated my clothes and seeped into my skin. It was darker inside than it should have been at midday in the middle of July, the overhead lights struggling to illuminate the space. The windows hadn’t been clear enough to actually see through in years. Just the way I liked it.
My garage was my sanctuary. I enjoyed my work, especially the hands-on repairs. The paperwork side of owning a business was a pain in the ass, but it was worth it to answer to no one, take on as much or as little work as I wanted, and choose my own schedule.
