Chapter 13: Welfare Check

"Which family member?" I said.

"Ma'am, I can't tell you that."

Kinley was screaming behind me in the dark living room.

The older officer looked past my shoulder toward the sound.

"Then come in," I said. "Both of you. Look at everything."

They looked at each other.

I stepped back and held the door open, and the cold came in with them.

I picked Kinley up out of her bassinet.

She was red in the face and furious, her fists going.

The second I had her on my shoulder, she hiccuped and went quiet.

The younger officer lowered his chin.

"How old?" he said.

"Eight weeks. Nine pounds one ounce as of this morning. The printout's on the fridge."

He went and read it.

Then he opened the fridge, because that was his job.

Crew Twelve's lasagna, a quart of Morgan's soup, formula, milk, eggs, a pan of stuffed cabbage.

"Somebody feeds you," he said.

"Everybody feeds me. It's a whole thing."

The older officer put his hand flat on the radiator by the window.

He took it off fast.

"Heat works."

"Since January. A lineman fixed it."

"The caller said there was no heat," he said. "She said you were drinking and the baby was alone."

I didn't say anything.

I just turned so he could see my daughter's face, pink and sleepy, with one fist hooked in the collar of my mother's robe.

He looked at her for a long time.

Then he looked at the bassinet, and the wipes, and the bottle warmer my dispatch manager's wife had given me.

The orange hat was hanging on the bedpost.

He shut his notebook.

"I'm writing it the way I see it," he said. "Warm house. Fed baby. Sober mother. No concerns."

"Write the time too."

"Ma'am?"

"Eleven forty. Write that you pounded. She was asleep."

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