She’ll cry now, he thought. Create a hullabaloo. Then the Sisters’ll come down the steps and call me a wicked man for snatching an infant away. What the fuck am I doing?

But the child was silent.

Dave ran back up the steps and pushed open the door. ‘All done for today,’ he shouted down the hall. ‘See you tomorrow, Sisters!’

‘Sure thing, Dave!’ drifted back down the hall.

Dave gathered his tools together with shaking hands and returned to his truck. He got in, glanced at the baby, who was watching him calmly. Still feeling like a criminal, he gunned the engine and roared off home.

42

42

‘My God! What have you done?’ was the first thing Jo said to him when he came in with the baby in his arms.

Josephine stood in the kitchen of their shabby downtown rented apartment, stirring tomato sauce for pasta with a wooden spoon. Or she had been. Now she grew still and stared at this apparition. Her husband, big craggy Dave Vance in his dusty wood-smelling work shirt and jeans, was standing in the kitchen doorway holding a baby in a pink blanket.

A baby.

She dried her hands on her apron and hurried forward. It was a tiny girl, blonde fluffy hair on her head, sweet pink cheeks, heart-meltingly calm blue eyes that looked up at her.

‘Whose is she?’ asked Jo, thinking that Dave had gone mad and that this was her fault, giving him so much grief about wanting a child. Now he’d stolen one and got himself in all kinds of trouble, just to please her.

‘Nobody’s,’ said Dave. ‘She’d been left on the doorstep at the convent. I was fixing the door and I just walked outside and there she was. So I picked her up and brought her home.’

Jo gave him that don’t fuck with me look he knew so well. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No. I’m telling you the truth, Jo. God’s honour.’

Jo was leaning forward, craning in to look closer at the child. She raised a hand, touched the baby’s chin, and it caught hold of her finger and held on. ‘Oh, she’s so beautiful.’

‘What’s that?’ Dave was frowning.

‘What?’ Jo was smiling at the baby.

‘That scrap of paper in there. Here, you take her.’

Gently he handed the baby over to his wife. Then he took out the note that was tucked just inside the blanket, and while Jo stood there in raptures, staring at the baby, he read it aloud.