*
We sat around the living room at the station. Taylor brought a bag of tortilla chips with him, but none of us had touched them. We were all too tense to eat.
“What would the mother want now?” I wondered out loud.
“Billy said he called her,” Derek explained. “She’s probably upset that after surrendering Anthony, he wasn’t put into the Social Services system. I’d be upset if I was in her shoes.”
“Maybe it’s something else,” Jordan suggested.
“Maybe she wants to keep the baby after all,” Taylor said. He was pacing back and forth with Anthony in his arms. “She surrenders the baby. Two weeks go by. Now she feels guilty and wants a do-over.”
“She’s not getting a do-over,” Derek growled. “I can accept someone surrendering a baby because they can’t take care of them. But waffling back and forth? Absolutely not. She made her choice.”
“Uh, guys?” I said. “She left her phone number. Why don’t we just ask?”
The three of them looked at me like the idea had never occurred to them.
Derek pulled out his phone and thumbed in the number from the note. But before hittingdial, he paused. “What should I say?”
“Just ask her what she wants to discuss,” Taylor said. “Keep it vague. Let her do the talking.”
Derek nodded, then hit dial. He put it on speakerphone, so we all heard the rings. The silence between them was so absolute that you could hear a pin drop.
There was a click, and then the voicemail message played. “Hiya! This is Mels. You know what to do.”
The beep sounded, and Derek ended the call. Then he dialed the number again. This time, it went to voicemail after one ring. He didn’t leave a message.
“She’s ignoring us,” he grumbled. “It’s probably a stalling tactic. To make us sweat.”
I rolled my eyes. “She sounds young. She probably just prefers texting. Give me that.”
I snatched the phone and composed a message, reading it out loud as I typed. “This is Captain Derek Dahlkemper of the Riverville Fire Station. I received a note on my door. I understand you want to talk? I’ve tried to call you twice.” I nodded. “There. Sent.”
Derek took the phone back. “I don’t know. If she wouldn’t answer a phone call, I don’t expect her to answer a text, no matter how young she—oh! She’s replying!”
We all huddled around Derek’s phone. The three little dots appeared to indicate that the other person was typing a response. The dots disappeared, reappeared, then disappeared again.
“What’s taking so long?” Derek wondered out loud.
Finally the message appeared.
Melanie: Meet me at Tony’s Pizza tomorrow at 5:00.
Taylor gasped. “He wants to meet at your family’s restaurant? That’s a crazy coincidence!
Derek clenched his jaw. “It’s not a coincidence. That means she knows Clara is involved. Billy must have told her.”
I winced. I had been involved in the whole thing, but up to this point I wasn’t directly implicated. Having the baby’s mother mention my family restaurant by name suddenly made the entire ordeal a lot more real.
I wonder if she could sue, I thought. Then I shook off the notion. Right now, the only thing that mattered was Baby Anthony. Once he was taken care of, everything else could come later.
Derek started typing a response.
Derek: Can we meet at the station? We’re on-call for the next four days.
Melanie: It has to be at Tony’s. 5:00.
“Well, it looks like we don’t have a choice,” Derek said. He rose and nodded once. “We’re meeting Anthony’s mother tomorrow.”