Текст книги "Unwind"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

The customer finally leaves, and Sonia joins them in the back room. "So, you're Unwinds and you want my help, is that it?"

"Maybe just some food," says Connor, "a place to rest for a few hours. Then we'll be on our way."

"We don't want to be any trouble," says Risa.

The old woman laughs at that. "Yes, you do! You want to be trouble to everyone you meet." She points her cane at Risa. "That's what you are now. TROUBLE in caps-lock." Then she puts her cane down, and softens a bit. "That's not your fault, though. You didn't ask to be born, and you didn't ask to be unwound, either." She looks back and forth between the two of them, then says to Risa just as bald-faced as can be: "If you really want to stay alive, honey, have him get you pregnant again. They won't unwind an expectant mother, so that will buy you nine whole months."

Risa drops her jaw, speechless, and Connor feels a flush come to his face. "She . . . she wasn't pregnant the first time. It's not her baby. Or mine."

Sonia considers this and takes a closer look at the baby. "Not yours, hmm? Well, that explains why you're not breastfeeding." She laughs suddenly and sharply. It makes Connor and the baby jump.

Risa isn't startled, just annoyed. She gets the baby's attention again with another spoonful of milk and her index finger. "Are you going to help us or not?"

Sonia lifts her cane and raps it against Connor's arm, then points to a huge trunk covered with travel stickers. "Think you're boeuf enough to bring that over here?"

Connor gets up, wondering what could possibly be of use to them in the trunk. He grabs on to it and struggles to push it across the faded Persian rug.

"Not much of a boeuf, are ya?"

"I never said I was."

He inches the trunk across the floor until it's right in front of her. Instead of opening it, she sits on top of it and begins to massage her ankles.

"So what's in it?" Connor asks.

"Correspondence," she says. "But it's not what's in it that matters. It's what's underneath." Then with her cane she pushes away the rug where the trunk had been to reveal a trapdoor with a brass pull-ring.

"Go on," says Sonia, pointing again with her cane. Connor sighs and grabs the ring, pulling open the trapdoor to reveal steep stone steps leading down into darkness. Risa puts down her bowl and, holding the baby over her shoulder in burping position, approaches the trapdoor, kneeling beside Connor.

"This is an old building," Sonia tells them. "Way back in the early twentieth century, during the first Prohibition, they hid hooch down there."

"Hooch?" asks Connor.

"Alcohol! I swear, this whole generation's the same. Caps-lock IGNORANT!"

The steps down are steep and uneven. At first Connor thinks Sonia will send them down alone, but she insists on leading the way. She takes her time, and seems more surefooted on the steps than she does on level ground. Connor tries to hold her arm to give her support, but she shakes him off, and throws him a nasty gaze. "If I want your help, I'll ask. Do I look feeble to you?"

"Actually, yes."

"Looks are deceiving," she says. "After all, when I saw you, I thought you looked reasonably intelligent."

"Very funny."

At the bottom, Sonia reaches toward the wall and throws a light switch.

Risa gasps, and Connor follows her gaze until he sees them. Three figures. A girl and two boys.

"Your little family has just grown," Sonia tells them.

The kids don't move. They appear to be close to Connor's and Risa's age. Fellow Unwinds, for sure. They look wary and exhausted. Connor wonders if he looks as bad.

"For God's sake, stop staring," she says to them. "You look like a pack of rats."

Sonia shuffles around the dusty cellar, pointing things out to Risa and Connor. "There arc canned goods on these shelves, and a can opener around somewhere. Eat whatever you want, but don't leave anything over or you really will see rats. Bathroom's back there. Keep it clean. I'll go out in a bit and get some formula and a baby bottle." She glances at Connor. "Oh, and there's a first-aid kit around here somewhere for the bite on your arm, whatever that's all about."

Connor suppresses a grin. Sonia doesn't miss a thing.

"How much longer?" asks the oldest of the three cellar-rats, a muscular guy who looks at Connor with intense distrust, as if Connor might challenge his role as alpha male or something.

"What do you care?" says Sonia. "You got a pressing appointment?"

The kid doesn't respond; he just glares at Sonia and crosses his arms, displaying a shark tattooed on his forearm. Ooh, thinks Connor with a smirk. Intimidating. Now I'm really scared.

Sonia sighs. "Four more days until I'm rid of you for good."

"What happens in four days?" Risa asks.

"The ice cream man comes." And with that, Sonia climbs up the stairs faster than Connor thought she'd be able to. The trapdoor bangs closed.

"Dear, sweet Dragon Lady won't tell us what happens next," says the second boy, a lanky blond kid with a faint smirk that seems permanently fixed on his face. He has braces on teeth that don't appear to need them. Although his eyes tell of sleepless nights, his hair is perfect. Connor can tell that this kid, despite the rags he's wearing, comes from money.

"We get sent to harvest camp and they cut us apart, that's what happens next," says the girl. She's Asian, and looks almost as tough as the kid with the tattoo, with hair dyed a deep shade of pink and a spiked leather choker on her neck.

Shark Boy looks at her sharply. "Will you shut up with your end-of-the-world crap?" Connor notices that the kid has four parallel scratch marks on one side of his face, consistent with fingernails. The girl has a black eye.

"It's not the end of the world," she grumbles. "Just the end of us."

"You're beautiful when you're nihilistic," says the smirker.

"Shut up."

"You're only saving that because you don't know what nihilistic means."

Risa gives Connor a look, and he knows what she's thinking. We have to suffer through four days with this crew? Still, she's the first to hold out her hand to them and introduce herself. Reluctantly, Connor does the same.

Turns out, each of these kids, just like every Unwind, has a story that ranks a ten on the Kleenex scale.

The smirker is Hayden. As Connor predicted, he comes from a ridiculously wealthy family. When his parents got a divorce, there was a brutal custody battle over him. Two years and six court dates later, it still wasn't resolved. In the end the only thing his mother and father could agree on was that each would rather see Hayden unwound than allow the other parent to have custody.

"If you could harness the energy of my parents' spite," Hayden tells them, "you could power a small city for several years."

The girl is Mai. Her parents kept trying for a boy, until they finally got one—but not before having four girls first. Mai was the fourth. "It's nothing new," Mai tells them. "Back in China, in the days when they only allowed one kid per family, people were killing off their baby girls left and right."

The big kid is Roland. He had dreams of being a military boeuf but apparently had too much testosterone, or steroids, or a combination of both, leaving him a little too scary even for the military. Like Connor, Roland got into fights at school– although Connor suspected Roland's fights were much, much worse. That's not what did him in, though. Roland had beaten up his stepfather for beating his mom. The mother took her husband's side, and the stepfather got off with a warning. Roland, on the other hand, was sent to be unwound.

"That's so unfair," Risa tells him.

"Like what happened to you is any fairer?" says Connor.

Roland fixes his gaze on Connor. It's emotional stone. "You keep talking to her in that tone of voice, maybe she'll find herself a new boyfriend."

Connor smiles with mocking warmth at him, and glances at the tattoo on his wrist. "I like your dolphin."

Roland is not amused. "It's a tiger shark, idiot."

Connor makes a mental note never to turn his back on Roland.

* * *

Sharks, Connor once read, have a deadly form of claustrophobia. It's not so much a fear of enclosed spaces as it is an inability to exist in them. No one knows why. Some say it's the metal in aquariums that throws their equilibrium off. But whatever it is, big sharks don't last long in captivity.

After a day in Sonia's basement, Connor knows how they feel. Risa has the baby to keep her occupied. It requires a huge amount of attention, and although she gripes about the responsibility, Connor can tell she's thankful simply to have something to help pass the hours. There's a back room to the basement, and Roland insists that Risa have it for herself and the baby. He acts like he's doing it to be kind, but it's obvious that he's doing it because he can't stand the baby's crying.

Mai reads. There's a whole collection of dusty old books in the corner, and Mai always has one in her hand. Roland, having surrendered the back room to Risa, pulls out a shelving unit and sets up his own private residence behind it. He occupies the space like he's had experience with being in a cell. When he's not sitting in his little cell, he's reorganizing the food in the basement into rations. "I take care of the food," he announces. "Now that there's five of us, I'll redivide the rations, and decide who gets what and when."

"I can decide what I want and when for myself," Connor tells him.

"Not gonna work that way," Roland says. "I had things under control before you got here. It's gonna stay that way." Then he hands Connor a can of Spam. Connor looks at it in disgust. "You want better," Roland says, "then you get with the program."

Connor tries to weigh the wisdom of getting into a fight over this—but wisdom rarely arrives when Connor is ticked off. It's Hayden who defuses the situation before it can escalate. Hayden grabs the can from Connor and pulls open the top.

"You snooze, you lose," he says, and begins eating the Spam casually with his fingers. "Never had Spam till I came here—now I love it." Then he grins. "God help me, I'm turning into trailer trash."

Roland glares at Connor and Connor glares back. Then he says what he always says at moments like this.

"Nice socks."

Although Roland doesn't look down right away, it derails him just enough for him to back off. He doesn't check to see if his socks match until he thinks Connor isn't looking. And the moment he does, Connor snickers. Small victories are better than none.

Hayden is a bit of a riddle. Connor's not sure whether he's actually amused by everything that goes on around him or if it's all just an act—a way of defending himself against a situation too painful to allow himself to feel. Usually Connor disliked rich, affected kids like Hayden, but there's something about Hayden that simply makes it impossible not to like him.

Connor sits next to Hayden, who glances to make sure that Roland has gone behind his shelving unit.

"I like the 'nice socks' maneuver," says Hayden. "Mind if I use that sometime?"

"Be my guest."

Hayden pulls off a piece of Spam and offers it to Connor. Although it's the last thing Connor wants right now, he takes it, because he knows it's not about the meat—just as he knows Hayden didn't take it because he wanted it.

The chunk of processed ham passes from Hayden to Connor, and something between them relaxes. An understanding is reached. I'm on your side, that piece of Spam says. I've got your back.

"Did you mean to have the baby?" Hayden asks.

Connor considers how he might answer. He figures the truth is the best way to begin even a tentative friendship. "It's not mine."

Hayden nods. "It's cool that you're hanging with her even though the kid's not yours."

"It's not hers, either."

Hayden smirks. He doesn't ask how the baby came into their possession, because apparently the version he's come up with in his mind is far more entertaining than anything Connor can offer. "Don't tell Roland," he says. "The only reason he's being so nice to the two of you is because he believes in the sanctity of the nuclear family." Connor can't tell whether Hayden's being serious or sarcastic. He suspects he'll never figure that out.

Hayden chows down the last of the Spam, looks into the empty can, and sighs. "My life as a Morlock," he says.

"Am I supposed to know what that is?"

"Light-sensitive underground frogmen, often portrayed in bad green-rubber costumes. Sadly, this is what we've become. Except for the green-rubber costume part."

Connor glances at the food shelves. When he listens closely, he can hear the tinny beat of music coming from the antique MPS player Roland must have stolen from upstairs when he first arrived.

"How long have you known Roland?"

"Three days longer than you," Hayden says. "Word to the unwise—which I suspect you are—Roland is fine as long as he thinks he's in charge. As long as you let him think that, we're all one big, happy family."

"What if I don't want him to think that?"

Hayden tosses his can of Spam into the trash a few feet away. "The thing about Morlocks is that they're known to be cannibals."

* * *

Connor can't sleep that first night. Between the discomfort of the basement and his distrust of Roland, all he can do is doze for moments at a time. He wont sleep in the side room with Risa because the space is small, and he and Risa would have to sleep right up against each other. He tells himself the real reason is that he's afraid of rolling over on the baby during the night. Mai and Hayden are also awake. It looks like Mai's trying to sleep, but her eyes are open and her mind is somewhere else.

Hayden has lit a candle he found in the debris, making the basement smell like cinnamon over mildew. Hayden passes his hand back and forth over the flame. He doesn't move slowly enough to burn himself, but he does move slowly enough to feel the heat. Hayden notices Connor watching him. "It's funny how a flame can only burn your hand if you move too slow," Hayden says. "You can tease it all you want and it never gets you, if you're quick enough."

"Are you a pyro?" Connor asks.

"You're confusing boredom with obsession."

Connor can sense, however, that there's more to it.

"I've been thinking about kids that get unwound," says Hayden.

''Why would you want to do that?" asks Connor.

"Because," says Mai from across the room, "he's a freak."

"I'm not the one wearing a dog collar."

Mai flips Hayden the finger, which he ignores. "I've been thinking about how harvest camps are like black holes. Nobody knows what goes on inside."

"Everybody knows what goes on," says Connor.

"No," says Hayden. "Everybody knows the result, but nobody knows how unwinding works. I want to know how it happens. Does it happen right away, or do they keep you waiting? Do they treat you kindly, or coldly?"

"Well," Mai sneers, "maybe if you're lucky, you'll get to find out firsthand."

"You know what," says Connor. "You think too much."

"Well, somebody has to make up for the collective lack of brainpower down here."

Now Connor finally begins to get it. Even though Hayden has put the candle down, all this talk of unwinding is just like passing his hand across the flame. He likes to linger at the edge of dangerous places. Dangerous thoughts. Connor thinks about his own favorite edge, behind the freeway road sign. In a way, they're both alike.

"Fine," Connor tells him. "Think about stuff until your head explodes. But the only thing I want to think about is surviving to eighteen."

"I find your shallowness both refreshing and disappointing at the same time. Do you think that means I need therapy?"

"No, I think your parents deciding to unwind you just to spite each other means you need therapy."

"Good point. You have a lot of insight for a Morlock." Then Hayden gets quiet for a moment. The smirk on his face fades. "If I actually get unwound, I think it will bring my parents back together."

Connor doesn't have the heart to burst his fantasy, but Mai does. "Naah. If you get unwound, they'll just blame each other for it, and hate each other even more."

"Maybe," says Hayden. "Or maybe they'll finally see the light, and it will be Humphrey Dunfee all over again."

"Who?" says Mai.

They both turn toward her. Hayden cracks a wide smile. "You mean you've never heard of Humphrey Dunfee?"

Mai looks around suspiciously. "Should I have?"

The smile never leaves Hayden's face. "Mai, I'm truly amazed that you don't know this. It's your kind of story." He reaches for the candle and pushes it out so that it sits between the three of them. "It's not a campfire," he says, "but it will have to do." Hayden looks into the flame for a moment, then slowly, eerily turns his eyes toward Mai.

"Years ago there was this kid. His name wasn't really Humphrey—it was probably Hal or Harry or something like that—but Humphrey kind of fits, considering. Anyway, one day his parents sign the order to have him unwound."

"Why?" asks Mai.

"Why do any parents sign the order? They just did, and the Juvey-cops came for him bright and early one morning. They snatch him, ship him off, and it's over for him.—He's unwound without a hitch."

"So that's it?" asks Mai.

"No . . . because there is a hitch," says Connor, picking up where Hayden left off. "See, the Dunfees, they're not what you would call stable people. They were a little bit nuts to begin with, but after their kid is unwound, they lose it completely."

Now Mai's tough-girl exterior is all but gone. She truly is like a little kid listening wide-eyed to a campfire story. "What did they do?"

"They decided they didn't want Humphrey unwound after all," says Hayden.

"Wait a second," says Mai. "You said they already unwound him."

Hayden's eyes look maniacal in the candlelight. "They did."

Mai shudders.

"Here's the thing," says Hayden. "Like I said, everything about harvest camp is secret—even the records of who receives what, once the unwinding is done."

"Yeah, so?"

"So the Dunfees found the records. The father, I think, worked for the government, so he was able to hack into the parts department."

"The what?"

Hayden sighs. "The National Unwind Database."

"Oh."

"And he gets a printout of every single person who received a piece of Humphrey. Then the Dunfees go traveling around the world to find them . . . so they can kill them, take back the parts, and bit by bit make Humphrey whole. . . ."

"No way."

"That's why people call him Humphrey," Connor adds. "'Cause 'all the king's horses and all the king's men . . . couldn't put Humphrey together again."'

The thought hangs heavy in the air, until Hayden, leaning forward over the candle, suddenly throws his hands out toward Mai and shouts, "Boo!"

They all flinch in spite of themselves—Mai most of all.

Connor has to laugh. "Did you see that? She practically jumped out of her skin!"

"Better not do that, Mai," says Hayden. "Jump out of your skin, and they'll give it to someone else before you can get it back."

"You can both just take a flying leap." Mai tries to punch Hayden, but he easily evades her. That's when Roland appears from behind his bookshelves.

"What's going on here?"

"Nothing," says Hayden. "Just telling ghost stories."

Roland looks at the three of them, clearly irritated, and distrustful of any situation not involving him. "Yeah, well, get to bed. It's late."

Roland lumbers back to his corner, but Connor's sure he's monitoring the conversation now, probably paranoid that they're plotting against him.

"That Humphrey Dunfee thing," says Mai. "It's just a story, right?"

Connor keeps his opinion to himself, but Hayden says, "I knew a kid who used to tell people he had Humphrey's liver. Then one day he disappeared and was never seen again. People said he just got unwound, but then again . . . maybe the Dunfees got him." Then Hayden blows out the candle, leaving them in darkness.

* * *

On Connor and Risa's third day there, Sonia calls each of them upstairs—but one at a time, in the order they'd arrived.

"First the thieving ox," she says, pointing down the stairs at Roland. Apparently she knows about the stolen MP3 player.

"What do you suppose the Dragon Lady wants?" Hayden asks, after the trapdoor is closed.

"To drink your blood," says Mai. "Beat you with her cane for a while. Stuff like that."

"I wish you'd stop calling her the Dragon Lady," Risa says. "She's saving your ass—the least you could do is show some respect.'' She turns toward Connor. "You wanna take Didi? My arms are getting tired." Connor takes the baby, cradling it a bit more skillfully than he had before. Mai looks at him with mild interest. He wonders if Hayden told her that they're not really the baby's parents.

Roland comes back from his appointment with Sonia half an hour later, and says nothing about it. Neither does Mai when she comes back. Hayden takes the longest, and when he returns, he's closemouthed too—which is strange for him. It's unsettling.

Connor goes next. It's night outside when he goes upstairs. He has no idea what time of night. Sonia sits with him in her little back room, putting him in an uncomfortable chair that wobbles whenever he moves.

"You'll be leaving here tomorrow," she tells him.

"Going where?"

She ignores the question and reaches into the drawer of an old rolltop desk. "I'm hoping you're at least semiliterate."

"Why? What do you want me to read?"

"You don't have to read anything." Then she pulls out several sheets of blank paper. "I want you to write."

"What, my last will and testament? Is that it?"

"A will implies you have something to pass on—which you don't. What I want you to do is write a letter." She hands him the paper, a pen, and an envelope. "Write a letter to someone you love. Make it as long as you want, or as short as you want; I don't care. But fill it with everything you wished you could say, but never had the chance. Do you understand?"

"What if I don't love anybody?"

She purses her lips and shakes her head slowly. "You Unwinds are all the same. You think that because no one loves you, then you can't love anyone. All right, then, if there's no one you love, then pick someone who needs to hear what you have to say. Say everything that's in your heart—don't hold back. And when you're done, put it in the envelope and seal it. I'm not going to read it, so don't worry about that."

"What's the point? Are you going to mail it?"

"Just do it and stop asking questions." Then she takes a little ceramic dinner bell, and places it on the rolltop desk, next to the pen and paper. "Take all the time you need, and when you're done, ring the bell."

Then she leaves him alone.

It's an odd request, and Connor actually finds himself a bit frightened by it. There are places inside he simply doesn't want to go. He thinks he might write to Ariana. That would be easiest. He had cared about her. She was closer to him than any other girl had ever been. Every girl except Risa—but then, Risa doesn't really count. What he and Risa have isn't a relationship; it's just two people clinging to the same ledge hoping not to fall. After about three lines of his letter, Connor crumples the page. Writing to Ariana feels pointless. No matter how much he's resisted, he knows who he needs to address this letter to.

He presses his pen to a fresh page and writes, Dear Mom and Dad. . . .

It's five minutes before he can come up with another line, but once he does, the words start flowing—and in strange directions, too. At first it's angry, as he knew it would be. How could you? Why did you? What kind of people could do this to their kid? Yet by the third page it mellows. It becomes about all the good things that happened in their lives together. At first he does it to hurt them, and to remind them exactly what they've thrown away when they signed the order to unwind him. But then it becomes all about remembering—or more to the point, getting them to remember, so that when he's gone . . . if he's gone, there will be a record of all the things he felt were worth keeping alive. When he started, he knew how the letter would end. I hate you for what you've done. And I'll never forgive you. But when he finally reaches the tenth page, he finds himself writing, J love you. Your one-time son, Connor.

Even before he signs his name, he feels the tears welling up inside. They don't seem to come from his eyes but from deep in his gut. It's a heaving so powerful it hurts his stomach and his lungs. His eyes flood, and the pain inside is so great, he's certain it will kill him right here, right now. But he doesn't die, and in time the storm inside him passes, leaving him weak in every joint and muscle of his body. He feels like he needs Sonia's cane just to walk again.

His tears have soaked into the pages, warping little craters in the paper but not smudging the ink. He folds the pages and slips them into the envelope, then seals and addresses it. He takes a few more minutes to make sure the storm won't come back. Then he rings the little bell.

Sonia steps in moments later. She must have been waiting all this time just on the other side of that curtain. Connor knows she must have heard him bawling, but she doesn't say a thing. She looks at his letter, hefts it in her hand to feel its weight, and raises her eyebrows, impressed. "Had a lot to say, did you?"

Connor only shrugs. She puts the envelope facedown on the table again. "Now I want you to put a date on the back. Write down the date of your eighteenth birthday."

Connor doesn't question her anymore. He does as she asks. When he's done, she takes the envelope from him. "I'm going to hold this letter for you," she tells him. "If you survive to eighteen, you must promise that you'll come back here to get it. Will you make me that promise?"

Connor nods. "I promise."

She shakes the letter at him to help make her point. "I will keep this until a year after your eighteenth birthday. If you don't come back, I'll assume you didn't make it. That you were unwound. In that case I'll send the letter myself."

Then she hands the letter back to him, stands, and goes over to the old trunk that had covered the trapdoor. She opens the latch and, although it must be heavy, heaves open the lid to reveal envelopes—hundreds of them, filling the trunk almost up to the top.

"Leave it here," she says. "It will be safe. If I die before you come back, Hannah has promised to take care of the trunk."

Connor thinks of all the kids Sonia must have helped to have this many letters in her trunk, and he feels another wave of emotion taking hold of his gut. It doesn't quite bring him to tears, but it makes him feel all soft inside. Soft enough to say, "You've done something wonderful here."

Sonia waves her hand, swatting the thought away. "You think this makes me a saint? Let me tell you, I've had a considerably long life, and I've done some pretty awful things, too."

"Well, I don't care. No matter how many times you smack me with that cane, I think you're decent."

"Maybe, maybe not. One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have—people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light."

On his way downstairs, she makes sure to smack him on the butt with her cane hard enough to sting, but it only makes him laugh.

He doesn't tell Risa what's in store for her. Somehow telling her would be stealing something from her. Let this be between her, Sonia, the pen, and the page, as it had been for him.

She leaves the baby with him as she goes up to face the old woman. It's asleep, and right now, in this place and at this moment, there's something so comforting about holding it in his arms, he's thankful he saved it. And he thinks that if his soul had a form, this is what it would be. A baby sleeping in his arms.

_{20 Risa}

The next time Sonia opens the trapdoor, Risa knows things are changing again. The time has come to leave the safety of Sonia's basement.

Risa's the first in line when Sonia calls them to come up. Roland would have been, but Connor threw an arm out like a turnstile to let Risa get to the stairs first.

With the sleeping baby crooked in her right arm, and her left hand on the rusty steel banister, Risa climbs the jagged stone steps. Risa assumes she'll be climbing into daylight, but it's night. The lights are out in the shop—just a few night-lights are on, carefully positioned so the kids can avoid the minefield of random antiques around them.

Sonia leads them to a back door that opens into an alley. There's a truck waiting for them there. It's a small delivery truck. On its side is a picture of an ice cream cone.

Sonia hadn't lied. It is the ice cream man.

The driver stands beside the open back door of the truck. He's a scruffy guy who looks like he'd more likely be delivering illegal drugs than kids. Roland, Hayden, and Mai head for the truck, but Sonia stops Risa and Connor.

"Not yet, you two."

Then Risa notices a figure standing in the shadows. Risa's neck hairs begin to bristle defensively, but when the figure steps forward, she realizes who it is. It's Hannah, the teacher who saved them at the high school.

"Honey, the baby can't go where you're going," Hannah says.

Reflexively, Risa holds the baby closer to her. She doesn't even know why. All she's wanted to do since getting stuck with the thing is to get rid of it.

"It's all right," says Hannah. "I've talked it over with my husband. We'll just say we were storked. It will be fine."

Risa looks in Hannah's eyes. She can't see all that well in the dim light, but she knows the woman means what she says.

Connor, however, steps between them. "Do you want this baby?"

"She's willing to take it," says Risa. "That's enough."

"But does she want it?"

"Did you want it?"

That seems to give Connor pause for thought. Risa knows he didn't want it, but he had been willing to take it when the alternative was a miserable life with a miserable family. Just as Hannah is willing to save it from an uncertain future right now. Finally Connor says, "It's not an it. It's a she." Then he heads off toward the truck.