“Isn’t he beautiful?” she kept saying. Her mouth stretched all the way to its corners. Then she would touch the changeling’s soft stomach and coo, “Aren’t you a miracle?”

The changeling had to be put back, after a little while, in the heated crib, because it was not supposed to get too cold, and while it rested there we all sat around Aunt Vera’s low coffee table and ate little slices of tart.

Aunt Vera fell asleep before she was done, her fork slipping down to sit on her knee. My mother, carefully, pulled it out from between her fingers as she cleared the plates.

“Can I hold the baby?” I asked.

“Not right now,” my father said. “He’s sleeping.”

My mother took the plates into the kitchen. Ruth had gotten up and gone to stand over the crib, her face leaning close to the heat lamp so it lit her up as well.

“Careful, sweetheart,” my father said.

“I will be.”

In the kitchen, my mother’s phone rang, and there was the sound of her professional voice, clipped and sweet. In a different voice, she said, “Shit,” and called to my father. “Will you come finish up the dishes?”

My father glanced back at us as he headed through the open door, as if having some idea, but still he went. We heard the door close as my mother let herself out into the backyard.

Ruth moved very quickly, lifting the changeling so steadily and gently that it must not even have known it was being lifted. Under its thin red lids, I could see little eyes moving. I was worried that it would scream. It looked more like a baby now than it had before.

We carried it down the hall, with the blankets wrapped around it, held tightly. We went in our sock feet, without putting our shoes on. We left the door open, so as not to risk the sound of shutting it. When we were outside, and down the block a little, we put the changeling inside Ruth’s backpack, fitting it in there straight up and very snugly. She held it against her chest, wearing the backpack on her front, so that the changeling would not be jostled so much and would stay asleep as long as possible.

The asphalt was hot through my socks, though we were coming close to sunset now. Not talking, solemn and afraid of being overheard, we walked. With every car that passed us, I half turned my body toward Ruth, trying to shield her from sight. Through the open top of her backpack, I could see the thin hair on the changeling’s swollen head. I wondered how it had slept so long. Its hand, clenched up against the inside of Ruth’s backpack, was so small, and each of its fingers so particular it looked like the hand of a real baby.

Our parents would be out looking for us very soon, I knew, and we walked along the edge of the road, and ducked behind houses when the backyards weren’t fenced. We did not walk quickly. We did not want the changeling to wake up.