His tears have soaked into the pages, warping little craters in the paper but not smudging the ink. He folds the pages and slips them into the envelope, then seals and addresses it. He takes a few more minutes to make sure the storm won’t come back. Then he rings the little bell.
Sonia steps in moments later. She must have been waiting all this time just on the other side of that curtain. Connor knows she must have heard him bawling, but she doesn’t say a thing. She looks at his letter, hefts it in her hand to feel its weight, and raises her eyebrows, impressed. “Had a lot to say, did you?”
Connor only shrugs. She puts the envelope facedown on the table again.
“Now I want you to put a date on the back. Write down the date of your eighteenth birthday.”
Connor doesn’t question her anymore. He does as she asks. When he’s done, she takes the envelope from him. “I’m going to hold this letter for you,” she tells him. “If you survive to eighteen, you must promise that you’ll come back here to get it. Will you make me that promise?”
Connor nods. “I promise.”
She shakes the letter at him to help make her point. “I will keep this until a year after your eighteenth birthday. If you don’t come back, I’ll assume you didn’t make it. That you were unwound. In that case I’ll send the letter myself.”
Then she hands the letter back to him, stands, and goes over to the old trunk that had covered the trapdoor. She opens the latch and, although it must be heavy, heaves open the lid to reveal envelopes—hundreds of them, filling the trunk almost up to the top.
“Leave it here,” she says. “It will be safe. If I die before you come back, Hannah has promised to take care of the trunk.”
Connor thinks of all the kids Sonia must have helped to have this many letters in her trunk, and he feels another wave of emotion taking hold of his gut.
It doesn’t quite bring him to tears, but it makes him feel all soft inside. Soft enough to say, “You’ve done something wonderful here.”
Sonia waves her hand, swatting the thought away. “You think this makes me a saint? Let me tell you, I’ve had a considerably long life, and I’ve done some pretty awful things, too.”
“Well, I don’t care. No matter how many times you smack me with that cane, I think you’re decent.”
“Maybe, maybe not. One thing you learn when you’ve lived as long as I have—people aren’t all good, and people aren’t all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I’m pleased to be in the light.”
On his way downstairs, she makes sure to smack him on the butt with her cane hard enough to sting, but it only makes him laugh.
He doesn’t tell Risa what’s in store for her. Somehow telling her would be stealing something from her. Let this be between her, Sonia, the pen, and the page, as it had been for him.
She leaves the baby with him as she goes up to face the old woman. It’s asleep, and right now, in this place and at this moment, there’s something so comforting about holding it in his arms, he’s thankful he saved it. And he thinks that if his soul had a form, this is what it would be. A baby sleeping in his arms.
20. Risa
The next time Sonia opens the trapdoor, Risa knows things are changing again. The time has come to leave the safety of Sonia’s basement.
Risa’s the first in line when Sonia calls them to come up. Roland would have been, but Connor threw an arm out like a turnstile to let Risa get to the stairs first.
With the sleeping baby crooked in her right arm, and her left hand on the rusty steel banister, Risa climbs the jagged stone steps. Risa assumes she’ll be climbing into daylight, but it’s night. The lights are out in the shop—just a few night-lights are on, carefully positioned so the kids can avoid the minefield of random antiques around them.
Sonia leads them to a back door that opens into an alley. There’s a truck waiting for them there. It’s a small delivery truck. On its side is a picture of an ice cream cone.
Sonia hadn’t lied. It is the ice cream man.
The driver stands beside the open back door of the truck. He’s a scruffy guy who looks like he’d more likely be delivering illegal drugs than kids. Roland, Hayden, and Mai head for the truck, but Sonia stops Risa and Connor.
“Not yet, you two.”
Then Risa notices a figure standing in the shadows. Risa’s neck hairs begin to bristle defensively, but when the figure steps forward, she realizes who it is. It’s Hannah, the teacher who saved them at the high school.
“Honey, the baby can’t go where you’re going,” Hannah says.
Reflexively, Risa holds the baby closer to her. She doesn’t even know why.
All she’s wanted to do since getting stuck with the thing is to get rid of it.
“It’s all right,” says Hannah. “I’ve talked it over with my husband. We’ll just say we were storked. It will be fine.”
Risa looks in Hannah’s eyes. She can’t see all that well in the dim light, but she knows the woman means what she says.
Connor, however, steps between them. “Do you want this baby?”
“She’s willing to take it,” says Risa. “That’s enough.”
“But does she want it?”
“Did you want it?”
That seems to give Connor pause for thought. Risa knows he didn’t want it, but he had been willing to take it when the alternative was a miserable life with a miserable family. Just as Hannah is willing to save it from an uncertain future right now. Finally Connor says, “It’s not an it. It’s a she.” Then he heads off toward the truck.
“We’ll give her a good home,” Hannah says. She takes a step closer, and Risa transfers the baby to her.
The moment the baby is out of her arms Risa feels a tremendous sense of relief, but also an indefinable sense of emptiness. It’s a feeling not quite intense enough to leave her in tears, but strong enough to leave her with a phantom sort of aching, the type of thing an amputee must feel after losing a limb. That is, before a new one is grafted on.
“You take care, now,” says Sonia, giving Risa an awkward hug. “It’s a long journey, but I know you can make it.”
“Journey to where?”
Sonia doesn’t answer.
“Hey,” says the driver, “I don’t got all night.”
Risa says good-bye to Sonia, nods to Hannah, and turns to join Connor, who’s waiting for her at the back of the truck. As Risa leaves, the baby starts to cry, but she doesn’t look back.
She’s surprised to find about a dozen other kids in the truck, all distrustful and scared. Roland’s still the biggest, and he solidifies his position by making another kid move, even though there’s plenty of other places to sit.
The delivery truck is a hard, cold, metal box. It once had a refrigeration unit to keep the ice cream cold, but that’s gone along with the ice cream. Still, it’s freezing in there, and it smells of spoiled dairy. The driver closes and locks the back doors, sealing out the sound of the baby, who Risa can still hear crying. Even after the door is closed, she thinks she can still hear it, although it’s probably just her imagination.
The ice cream truck bounces along the uneven streets. The way the truck sways, their backs are constantly smacked against the wall behind them.
Risa closes her eyes. It makes her furious that she actually misses the baby.
It was thrust upon her at the worst possible moment in her life—why should she have any regret about being rid of it? She thinks about the days before the Heartland War, when unwanted babies could just be unwanted pregnancies, quickly made to go away. Did the women who made that other choice feel the way she felt now? Relieved and freed from an unwelcome and often unfair responsibility . . . yet vaguely regretful?