Gia nodded. “Jack told me about him back when he was looking for her mother. Something about genetics. But-”
Another shriek.
Vicky put her hands over her ears. She looked frightened.
“How long has he been doing that?” Gia said.
“Since I brought him in and he woke up.”
“Is he-?”
A shriek.
“I’ve fed him-or tried to, anyway-and changed him and held him and rocked him and…” Weezy was afraid she’d break down in tears of frustration. “Nothing works. I don’t know what’s wrong. He just stands there and screams.”
“Stands? On the phone you said he was only two weeks old. He can’t-”
Another shriek.
“He is.”
Gia looked dubious as she began moving toward the spare room. “And you said you ‘tried’ to feed him?”
“He sort of wrecks the nipples on the bottles.”
“Wrecks?”
Another shriek.
“I’ll show you in a minute.”
As they stepped inside the room, Weezy found the baby right where she’d left him: Dressed in a diaper, standing in the crib, and holding on to the side rail. He went a little crazy at the sight of Gia and let out a series of back-to-back ear-splitting shrieks that went on and on. Both Weezy and Gia pressed their hands over their ears. And then – the shrieks stopped as if somebody had turned an off switch.
Weezy saw the child’s wide-eyed stare directed past them. She turned to see what he found so interesting.
Vicky had entered the room.
Weezy looked back and forth between them. The baby seemed fascinated… couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Vicky,” she said. “Do me a favor… leave the room for a second, will you, please?”
Looking confused, Vicky glanced at her mother.
Gia nodded. “Go ahead, honey.”
Vicky backed out and turned the corner. As soon as she was out of sight, the shrieks resumed.
“Okay, come back in.”
The baby immediately went silent at her return.
“I think he likes you, Vicky,” Weezy said.
Vicky’s wary look said she wasn’t so crazy about that idea.
As the baby stared at Vicky, and Vicky stared back, Gia stepped up to the crib and gave the child a closer look.
“Back in Iowa,” she said in a low voice, “when I was growing up, the ladies of Ottumwa used to have a name for little guys like this. They called them ‘I’m-sorry’ babies.”
“What do you mean?”
“The mother would be asked, ‘Is this your baby?’ When she said, ‘Yes,’ they’d think, I’m sorry.” She glanced at Weezy. “Tough crowd, that Ottumwa bunch.”
Vicky stayed back, looking unsettled. The baby’s stare seemed to bother her. “He scares me, Mom.”
Gia reached out and stroked his stiff black hair. “He’s just a baby, Vicky. And I think he’s had a bad day. A very bad day. So we have to cut him a little slack, okay?”
“But he looks so-”
“Remember what we talked about? People can’t help the looks they’re born with, so we never make fun of them for that. We never hurt their feelings, right?”
“I guess.” Vicky looked at Weezy. “What’s his name?”
“I… I don’t know.” Gia’s puzzled look spurred her on. “If Dawn ever came up with a name for him, she never told me. To tell the truth, I don’t think she had one.”
Gia frowned. “How could she not have a name for her own baby?”
Weezy hesitated, unsure of how much Gia might want her to say in front of Vicky.
“Well, the circumstances were unique. Dawn couldn’t be sure her baby was even alive, so I got the impression she was afraid to name him until she found him and got him back.”
“And did she?”
Weezy’s throat constricted. “Yes, poor kid. Briefly. Very briefly.”
Gia was studying her. “You and Dawn were close?”
“She… I was all she had.” A sob built. “I-”
She couldn’t speak. Gia stepped close and put her arms around her.
That did it. The dam burst and Weezy lost it. All the grief, the anguish, the sense of loss she’d been holding in since she’d heard, since she’d seen Dawn’s pale, lifeless body, broke loose and flooded from her. She clutched Gia, leaning against her as she sobbed on her shoulder like a child.
It felt so good to let it go. The pressure of it… she’d been afraid she’d explode. She hadn’t dared let go on the ride home-not with a sleeping baby in the backseat and the roads so awful. And once here, when he woke up and the screeching began, and she’d been trying to feed him and wash him and get him settled…
She regained control and eased herself away from Gia.
“I’m sorry. That’s not like me. I just…”
“It’s okay. Really.”
Weezy studied her. From the day they’d met last year, she’d sensed a steely core in Gia. And when the Lady had told her what she and Vicky and Jack had been through-coma, brain injury, miscarriage-she realized Gia had needed that core to survive. But she hadn’t appreciated until now how her steel was cushioned within an envelope of serenity.
“Thanks for understanding. How did you know?”
“I’ve been there.”
She took a deep breath. “I feel so much better. Thank you.”
Gia smiled and nodded as she ran her hand over the top railing of the crib.
“You must have been expecting him.”
“What do you mean?”
“How else would you get a nursery set up so quickly?”
“Actually, they’re Dawn’s things.” Dawn had given her a key, so Weezy had used it to enter her apartment. “I brought them over from across the hall.”
That was when Weezy had come closest to losing it. Dawn had been all set for motherhood: the crib, baby clothes, bottles, formula. She hadn’t been sure her baby was even alive, but she’d been ready to take on the role of mother if she found him.
Gia nodded. “That’s right. She lived across the hall. I remember Jack being very concerned about that.”
“He still is, I’m sure.”
“And you’re not?”
“Well, we’d feared there might be a plan to use Dawn and the baby against us, but we could never figure out what. It all seems moot now. They put a lot of effort into separating Dawn and her child, and hiding the child from her, but now Dawn’s gone”-that tightening in her throat again-“and the baby’s here.”
“Could that have been the plan all along?”
A shocking possibility, but…
“Somehow I doubt it.”
Gilda and Georges dead, and Jack at this very moment lying in wait, ready to blow the One to hell… no way that could have been Rasalom’s plan.
Gia bent for a closer look at the rail. “This is all gnawed. Almost like he’s teething. But that can’t be. He’s too young.”
“That’s what I’d have thought, but he’s doing more than teething.” She glanced around and spotted one of the plastic bottles she’d used to try to get formula into him. She grabbed it and handed it to Gia. “Here.”
Gia stared at the torn end of the nipple and shook her head. “I don’t…”
“He has teeth.”
She stared at Weezy. “What? Teeth… at two weeks?”
“See for yourself.”
Weezy carefully lifted his upper lip-at any other time he might have fought her, but whatever level of concentration he possessed was fully focused on Vicky. Light glinted off four white points poking through the upper gum and four through the bottom.
“My God,” Gia whispered. She glanced at the ruined rubber nipple on the bottle in her hand. “I can’t imagine nursing him.”
“That’s why he’s dressed in just a diaper. His teeth are pointed and sharp. He starts sucking, then chewing, and it spills all over him.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s screeching like that. They must hurt.”
“They don’t seem to be hurting him now.” Weezy watched Vicky crossing the room to look out the window. The baby followed her every move. “But I think they were bleeding earlier today.”
She’d assumed the red on his face and his clawlike fingers was Jell-O or the like, but it had turned out to be blood. She’d learned that when she’d cleaned him up. The only source she could think of were his gums.