That afternoon she called a classic-car dealer in Wichita, Kansas, and told him about her car. He sounded interested. And honest, if one could determine such a thing over the telephone. Then she ran a few errands while she still had the car. At a secondhand store, she bought a baby bed, a floor lamp, and a radio. Then she went to a discount store where she selected more clothing for Billy, bedding for his bed, a huge package of diapers, a large bag of dog food, a rawhide bone, and a Frisbee. Last she stocked up on staples at a supermarket.
The landlady’s door opened as Jamie started up the stairs with the last of her purchases. “How’s that baby doing,” Mrs. Duffy asked as she stepped out into the hall.
“Just fine,” Jamie said. “He and I are learning more about each other every day.”
Mrs. Duffy reached out and stroked Billy’s head. “Such a pretty little boy,” she said. “You be sure and enjoy him while he’s little. Children grow up so fast.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jamie said and headed up the stairs.
After she put away the groceries, Jamie put the baby in the sling and the leash on Ralph, and they went out for an evening walk. It was almost balmy, and she realized that spring was in the air, that the trees and shrubs were starting to bud.
Her long cold winter was over.
Early the next morning, she gave Ralph the rawhide bone in hopes it would help him pass a long, lonely day shut up in the apartment and headed for Wichita.
She avoided I-35 and took Highway 74 north until it ended at the town of Deer Creek, then she crossed under the interstate and took Highway 77 and then Highway 15 into Wichita.
She arrived at the classic-car lot before the appointed hour. She watched while a tall, lanky young man named Underwood walked around the car then lifted the hood. Then she and Billy waited inside the cluttered office while Mr. Underwood drove the car.
When he returned he asked what she wanted for the car. When Jamie told him, he looked as though she were demented.
“You told me on the phone that you are an honest man and would do right by me,” Jamie told him. “I’m a single mother with a new baby and need the money from this car just to get by.”
“I could take it on consignment,” he suggested.
Jamie shook her head. She needed to sever all ties with this car. Today. Its very uniqueness made her feel as though she were driving around in a vehicle with a target painted on its side.
Mr. Underwood made an offer considerably lower than her asking price. Jamie made him a counteroffer, and they shook hands.
“I’ll need the money in cash,” Jamie told him.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Domestic trouble?” he asked.
She nodded.
He looked down at the car title. “I see the original owner of the car was a Gladys Simpson.”
“She’s my grandmother. You’ll see on the back of the title where she signed the car over to me before she died. I have her death certificate-and her driver’s license if you want to verify her signature.”
She watched while he looked at the certificate and the license and made copies of both. Then he picked up her Texas driver’s license again and stared at the image. “You have any other identification?”
Jamie produced her Social Security card, her birth certificate, and her University of Texas student ID. She wondered how many months or years would have to go by before she once again could identify herself as “Jamie Amelia Long.”
Mr. Underwood gave her a ride to the bus station in downtown Wichita. “Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Florida,” she said firmly. “I am sick and tired of being cold. And I have an aunt there who is going to look after my baby while I finish college. That’s what the money from the car is for. I’m going to use it for tuition and books.”
Her story amazed her. Should she be worried that she was getting so proficient at lying?
She purchased a ticket to Oklahoma City.
As the bus rolled down I-35 toward Oklahoma City, she tried to think if there was anything else she should do. Any mistakes she might have made.
Every mile she put between herself and her car, she felt safer. Soon she would have a new birth certificate with a different name, which would also make her feel safer, but not safe.
Would Amanda Hartmann find another baby to pass off as her own? Would Amanda ever tell her brother that he didn’t need to look for Sonny’s baby anymore?
No, Jamie decided. Amanda would never give up.
It was dark before a taxi delivered Jamie and her baby to the apartment house. Poor Ralph was so overjoyed to see her that he went absolutely crazy, leaping so high in the air that he did a complete backward somersault. “Wow!” Jamie said, putting down the infant carrier and kneeling to hug her dog. “We’re going to have to give that Frisbee a try.”
After she had seen to her dog and her baby, she carried a sandwich and a glass of milk to the coffee table. She planned to finally read the material on infant care that Mae had given her. But she ate her sandwich and then just sat there, allowing herself for the first time to address the horror that she had gone through. The bone-grinding pain, the blood, her ignorance of what was happening, the fear that she and her baby would die alone on an old mattress in the middle of a blizzard. And even after Billy had been born, how much determination it had taken for her to pack up the car and start out again with her body weak and torn and exhausted and hurting and bleeding, bleeding, bleeding. She was still bleeding. She hoped Mae’s little booklets would tell her that all that bleeding was normal. If not, she would have to find someone to make it stop.
But for now she just wanted to sit here. She would read about motherhood tomorrow.
She thought of how not long ago her most immediate goal had been to return to college. Maybe she would still do that someday, but right now she had to plan her life around two things-caring for her child and keeping her little family safe.
She wondered if she would ever feel completely safe again.
Chapter Twenty-seven
JAMIE STRETCHED IN her bed and took note of the sun streaming through the window. The weather report on the radio had promised a beautiful spring day. And she had the whole day ahead of her to do as she pleased. For the time being, her travels were over. Now she began a waiting game-waiting until she could establish her new identity, buy a car, look for a job, open a bank account, and begin her life anew as Janet Marie Wisdom.
And more immediately, Jamie was waiting for tomorrow evening, when she would once again talk to Joe’s mother.
But today, she had no agenda. She stretched, luxuriating in the thought that she could simply enjoy her baby, her dog, their new home, and the gift of a beautiful day.
Ralph was looking at her from the foot of the bed. “Good morning,” she told him and he wiggled his way to her side, pushing his head under her hand. “Let’s see, what shall we do today?” she pondered as she scratched his ears. “I want to give Billy a by-the-book bath, and we need to do some laundry. And this afternoon we can walk over to that little park and see if you can catch a Frisbee.”
She read about bathing babies. Only sponge baths were allowed until Billy’s cord stem fell off.
She put him on a folded towel beside the kitchen sink and talked to him while she washed his little body, and he looked up at his mommy with a somewhat puzzled but quite intelligent expression on his face. Everything about him was perfect-his little nose, his mouth, his fingers and toes. The slope of his little shoulders made her weak with love. She’d realized that having a baby was a life-changing event but hadn’t had a clue as to how complete that change would be.