by Vicki Grant
“And? What’d she say?”
He leaned back, his elbows on the step behind him, legs out straight like hockey sticks. Deck shoes. No socks.
“I thought you were tired,” he said.
“Not that tired.”
“Okay. Well. That area back there?” He leaned around the lilac bush and pointed to the woods beyond the colony. “I mean, way back. Good ten-, fifteen-minute walk. There’s a clearing. Kids have had their parties there forever. Dad said they even did in his day. Anyway, that night a bunch of kids go up as per usual. Somewhere toward midnight, this couple goes off on their own and they hear a noise. At first they think it’s an animal. Maybe it’s been hurt or something, so they go to look and find this, like, minuscule baby just lying on the ground.”
“That’s pretty much what Glennie told me.”
“Yeah. But here’s where it gets different. Story they tell now is that the baby vanished before their very eyes, right? Ripley’s Believe It or Not! stuff. That’s not what Sandra said. She said the kids left the baby to get help. She was the first person they found, so the three of them raced back. By the time they got there, the baby was gone. Someone had taken it.”
“Taken it?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Beats me.”
“Where was the mother?”
He shrugged. “No sign of anyone. No one’s ever figured out how it got there.”
“What happened to the baby?”
“Ditto. No clue. Mention it now and everyone acts like it’s a myth or something. As if you’re asking what happened to Snow White or the tooth fairy.”
We sat on the steps, quiet for a while. Me thinking—more like believing in that you-just-know kind of way—that this was my story. That there might actually be a rational explanation after all. I didn’t know what the explanation was yet, of course, or how I was going to go about finding it.
And then suddenly, I just did.
“You should do a story on it,” I said. “For the paper.”
Eddie turned and looked at me. “I was thinking the exact same thing.”
“Eerie, isn’t it?” Our little joke, but he didn’t laugh.
“It is.” He was sitting up now, kind of twitchy through the shoulders, eyes sparkly. “Make a great article. Everyone around here has heard the rumors. Maybe it’s time the real story came out.”
“Where are you going to get that?”
He rolled out his bottom lip and thought. “So this happened in 1948…”
“In ’47. At least, according to Glennie.”
“Right—’47. The Gleaner may have done something on it then, though not if it just looked like a bunch of kids making up stories. Still, there might be some clues there. I’ll check the office, see if they have issues going back that far. There’s also the resort’s reading room.”
“What is that anyway? Mrs. Smees wanted me to go there the other day.”
“It’s like a library. Books, magazines, that type of thing, but they also keep photos and newspaper clippings about anything connected to the Arms.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. Weddings, funerals, obits, not to mention endless stories about dock boys getting accepted at Yale or Mrs. So-and-So the Third hosting her much-anticipated annual garden party. Could be something there.”
He put his hands behind his neck, looked at the sky, then shook his head. “You know what though? I doubt it. A missing baby? Not the type of story the Arms likes to remember. They’d be more likely to cover it up. Not sure where else to look.”
“What about your babysitter? She still around?”
He gawked at me. I thought I’d said something wrong.
“Sandra. Of course. I even ran into her last week. She asked if I’d pop by her cottage. She’s got some sort of rodent problem. Want to come—or you too tired?”
He laughed when I said no girl could resist a boy with a rodent problem.
Thirteen
I CHANGED OUT of my uniform and tried to make myself adorable or at least presentable while Eddie waited outside. Next payday, I was splurging on some barrettes.
A bunch of kids were hanging around outside the Meat Department when we left. A dark-haired guy sitting on the roof of a truck, pants rolled up to the knees, bare feet bouncing off the window, went, “Hey, Nicholson! What’re you doing here? Someone’s toilet clogged?”
“Not unless you’ve been at it again, Finlay.” Eddie smiled like it was a big joke but whispered, “Jerk” as soon as he’d turned his back.
Glennie clearly had no idea what I was like if she thought that guy was my type. “No kidding,” I said.
Instead of going down to the lake through the resort, we took the path behind the guest cabins and came out on the same property as the night before. It looked different in daylight. Last time, I’d only noticed the little cottage by the water. Now I saw there was a big house up on the hill too.
“Since we’re at the Adairs’, mind if I take a quick measurement?” Eddie said. “Ward wants me to fix a screen for him.”
I didn’t mind anything he did.
We went around to the back of the big house. Eddie felt above the window until he found the key and opened the door.
“C’mon in.”
To the Adairs’? No way. These were the people who owned the resort.
“C’mon. Nothing to worry about. They’re not here. And they wouldn’t care anyway. C’mon.”
I followed him through the kitchen to the—I don’t know—conservatory? Big old wingback chairs with chintz slipcovers gone chalky at the arms. Striped curtains faded to beige and beiger. Lots of books and photos and prehistoric plants. The type of room where you’d kill Colonel Mustard with a candlestick.
“You know what I don’t get?” I said.
“Hold this.” Eddie took a piece of paper and a pencil out of his pocket and handed them to me. “What?”
“Why it’s taken seventeen years for someone to look into this.”
He stretched up to measure the window. “Forty-eight inches. Write that down, would you?”
“I mean, a little baby. In the forest. Animals. Bugs. Something terrible could have happened to her.”
“Her?”
“What?”
“You said her. You know something I don’t?”
Goose bumps bubbling up like hives. “No. I mean him, her, it…I don’t know.” A laugh so phony Eddie actually turned and squinted at me. “It just doesn’t seem right.”
He took one last measurement and put his tape away. “Maybe people knew the mother and were protecting her. Or maybe someone told them to keep their mouths shut.”
“Like who?”
He leaned against the wall, opened his hand as if he’d just tossed a ball up into the air. “The baby’s father? The mother’s father maybe?”
“The jilted husband?”
“An affair? Oooh. That’ll get the Gleaner flying off the stands.” He stepped back and smoothed the curtains. “Might even have been someone from the Arms. An employee messing around with a guest. Lots of people wouldn’t have wanted a scandal like that getting out.”
But someone had left that coat and spoon at the Home. There’d been someone who didn’t want it hidden entirely. That’s what Mrs. Hazelton had said.
And that’s what I almost said myself. I took a breath, opened my mouth, then froze.
“Ye-es?” Eddie leaned forward like, This is going to be good.
I had no way of knowing for sure if I was the baby. Eddie didn’t know I was an orphan. And anyway, who knew what the guy had been thinking, leaving that stuff at the Home?
“Nothing,” I said. “Just thought I was going to sneeze.”
No fancy cruiser that day. This time it was an old tin boat—Eddie’s own—with a little motor on the back and water sloshing in the bottom.
Sandra’s cottage was on a tiny island called Laffalot, or at least that’s what was written in drippy blue house
paint on the diving rock out front. Eddie had barely gotten the boat tied up when a little girl in a baggy pink bathing suit threw herself into his arms.
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for bed?”
“Mum said we could have a swim first.”
“Where is she?”
“On the patio. But she’s not going to be very happy you’re here.”
“What’d I do this time?”
“You’ll see.” She wriggled out of his arms, took his hand and pulled him toward the cottage.
Sandra was sitting in the shade, smoking a cigarette and flipping through a dog-eared copy of Lady’s Circle. She had a towel around her shoulders and blue goop in her hair.
She covered her face and shrieked when she saw us. “Jody! Mummy said no visitors!”
Eddie cracked up. “And here I always took you for a natural blond, Sandra.”
She swatted him a little harder than was absolutely necessary. “I don’t care about you, but your friend here didn’t need to know all my intimate secrets.”
“Relax. Dot’s like a Russian spy. Wouldn’t talk under torture.”
Sandra settled back in her lawn chair and found her cigarette. “So. You here about our plague of rodents?”
“Thursday. I promise. I’ll do it when you take the kids to swimming. Today I want to talk to you about a professional matter.”
She turned up her chin and aimed a tight rod of smoke at the wind chimes dangling from the eaves. “Oooh, my. A professional matter. And to think I used to wipe your little bottom. Do tell.”
“I’m writing a story for the Gleaner on Bye-Bye Baby.”
“Talking to the wrong person, I’m afraid. I haven’t been to the party in years.”
“No. The real Bye-Bye Baby. What actually happened.”
Her face changed. Went longer, thinner, kind of blank. A mug shot. She leaned back in her chair, arm bent up at the elbow, thumb flicking at her cigarette filter.
“Why open that can of worms twenty years after the fact?”
“Seventeen. And why are you calling it a can of worms?” If Sandra was hoping to turn Eddie off the story, she’d said the wrong thing.
“Jody,” she said, “go find your sister. You can play for fifteen minutes. Then it’s lights-out.”
She waited until the little girl had crawled all over Eddie, found his Life Savers and skipped off before she said anything else. “I doubt I’ll be much help.”
“You know more than most people. You were there.”
“Yes. But that was a long time ago, and I was”—she ran her tongue under her upper lip—“indisposed. I also don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“Like who?”
“Don’t know. But someone out there’d be none too pleased to see this story rearing its ugly head again.”
He smiled at her.
“Don’t waste your time, Eddie. I don’t fall for that type of thing from you anymore—Jody! Quit hogging the Slinky! It’s Wendy’s turn.”
“A little baby, left in the woods. Must be hard for a mother to hear something like that,” Eddie said.
Sandra wasn’t stupid. She stared at Eddie until she’d made it very clear she knew exactly what he was up to, then tapped the ashes off her cigarette and almost nodded. “May as well sit down then. Grab a chair for your friend there.”
“You’re the best.”
“Don’t use my name. I don’t want this coming back to bite me. Last thing I need, stuck here all summer, is to get cut off anyone’s guest list.”
Eddie solemnly swore not to use her name, then fished out a scrap of paper and a pencil. “So shoot. What happened?”
She didn’t answer right away. She sipped her drink. Wiped a little of the hair goop off her leg. Sighed. “Okay. It was a Tuesday, which was unusual because we never went to the clearing on Tuesdays—we went to the dance at the Boat Club. But this week some idiot had pulled a fire alarm, and the manager kicked us all out. Not much else to do around here ten o’clock on a weeknight, so some of us went to the clearing.”
“How many of you?”
“I’d say ten, twelve girls and maybe a few more boys than that. We all worked at the Arms. The girls were cottagers or university students, but some of the boys were townies. We all hung out together, especially when nobody else was watching.”
Eddie smiled at that. “And, of course, nobody was watching at the clearing.”
“Exactly. Anyway, someone had gotten their hands on some gin, and things were getting pretty wild. I seem to remember there was a fight. Usually was—or at least a bit of pushing around. Never amounted to much. Just a chance for the boys to flex their biceps for the girls. A few kids had gotten sick and left. Couples had started pairing off. I had this thing for a townie named Dougie Pratt, but he’d disappeared with Cecily Ingram—who, up to that point, I’d figured for my best friend—so I was sitting by the campfire, plotting revenge.”
“Not like you,” Eddie said.
“You’d be surprised. Anyway, around midnight I heard Cecily come out of the woods crying, and let me tell you, I couldn’t have been more delighted. I figured Dougie had resisted her advances. That’s the only reason I went over—to gloat—but I couldn’t make out a word she was saying. It took me a while to realize she wasn’t wailing about Dougie. She was wailing about some baby they’d found. Sounded like the booze talking, but next thing Dougie staggered out of the woods too. He was nodding at everything Cecily said, eyes all bulged out, and I started to think there was something to this. So I said, Where? Where’s the baby? But then they suddenly didn’t want to tell me. Started jabbering about how they were going to get in trouble or what if their boss found out or their parents. You’d think they’d had the baby, not found it.”
“Could that be what happened?” Eddie stopped scribbling. “Cecily had the baby and the story was just a cover-up?”
Sandra took another pull on her cigarette. She shook her head, blew smoke out the side of her mouth. “I don’t care how tiny that baby was. There’s no way Cecily was pregnant. I saw her in her underwear on a daily basis. She had a waist about the circumference of a lightbulb. I always figured she’d had a few ribs removed. Wouldn’t put it past her.”
“What were they so afraid of then?” I said.
“For starters, no one was supposed to go up in the woods anyway—and these kids were seventeen and blind drunk on bootlegged liquor. That alone was a hanging offense. Big thing, though, was that Dougie was a townie and Cecily was an Ingram. She was no doubt thinking, ‘Mother will skin me alive if she finds out I’ve been with a Pratt.’ I imagine Dougie was worried too. Back then, there were rules about dating other employees. People might have turned a blind eye if Cecily and Dr. Talbot’s boy got together, but Dougie knew he’d lose his job if Mrs. Ingram found out about the two of them.”
That surprised me. “It was that bad?”
Both Eddie and Sandra laughed.
“But why did anyone even need to know they were together?” Eddie said. “They could have just made up some story.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But we’re back to where we started then, aren’t we? They didn’t want to be sounding the alarm with booze on their breath. They’d get in enough trouble about that as it was.”
Eddie rocked his head like, Well, okay.
“Hey. I’m not saying it was right. That’s just the way things were. Anyway. I convinced them we had to get the baby. Some nights it’s dark as peat up there, but that night we barely needed a flashlight. Not a full moon but almost. They took me to that tree. You must know the one.” She looked at Eddie. “Old maple or something, big vee in the middle.”
He nodded, then turned to me. “It’s kind of a landmark. Just past the clearing. There’s this rock ledge beside it that almost makes a wall, so if you wanted some alone time, that’s where you’d go.”
Sandra waggled an eyebrow. “Unless somebody got there first, of course.”
“Then you’d go to the pit,” Eddie said.
“Good Lord. The pit. I forgot about that. You’re right. There was the tree or the pit.”
“Can get a little crowded back there with all the summer romances.” Eddie looked at me, then looked away, and my face went hot as a slap.
“Yeah. So they took me to the tree—but the baby was gone. Couldn’t have been more than five minutes from the time they told me till the time I got there.” She paused. “Someone had taken it.”
Eddie lifted his chin and scratched his neck. “You see anyone?”
“Nope. Maybe heard a bit of noise from the kids still in the clearing but didn’t see a soul.”
He gave a slow nod, lips scrunched up.
“You don’t believe me?” Sandra said.
He lifted his hands in surrender. “It’s not me. Tell me the sky’s green, Sandra, and I’d believe you—but my editor? A couple of drunk kids claim to see a baby in the woods. It’s gone when they come back, therefore someone stole it? He’s not going to buy that. He’ll say someone just fabricated the whole thing.”
Sandra crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. “There was a baby and someone took it. I know that for sure.”
“Like I say, I believe you. But got any proof?”
“Not anymore I don’t—but I did.” Triumphant.
“Yeah?” Eddie was trying not to smile.
“Listen. Half the reason I wanted them to show me the baby was because I didn’t believe them. So when we got to the spot and there was nothing there, I just shrugged. Cecily was going on and on about how tiny it was, how maybe we just couldn’t see it or were looking in the wrong place. Dougie was saying, No, no, it was wrapped in a man’s shirt and it was right here by the tree, next to the heart-shaped rock…etcetera, etcetera. They were all in a tizzy, so I went through the motions, like I was looking for it too. Down on my hands and knees, patting the ground like I’d lost an earring. Then I hit something wet and sort of jumped back. Dougie went, What? I figured it was just a boggy part or something, but he swung his lighter around to see, and I lifted my hands and realized it wasn’t mud. It was blood. My hands were covered in blood.”