Caution! Cute Baby Alert! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Driver

Della rides to the Pendelton estate in the front seat with a silent driver; Constance writes her a check with a name Della never gave.

The driver took the bracelet out of my fingers, turned it over, and gave it back.

He did it too fast for a man who had never seen it before.

"Where did she get this?" I asked.

"I have no idea."

"Then somebody does."

"Miss, I think you should go home."

"A child walked up to a stranger's grave with my name on a hospital band," I said. "I'm not going home."

The girl's name was Polly, she told me, and she said it in the voice of a small judge.

"Nate, she isn't a stranger. She's mine."

"We're going to discuss the word mine in the car," he said.

I looked at the black sedan, the tinted glass and the girl's expensive shoes.

I looked at the cap.

"Where does she live?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm going with you."

"No."

"Then I'm calling the police and telling them a six-year-old gave me a hospital bracelet with my name on it," I said.

"And that her driver tried to take it back."

He stared at me for three full seconds.

Then he opened the front passenger door.

"Front seat," he said. "She's not allowed to sit up there until she's twelve."

I got in.

Polly climbed into the back and buckled herself with great ceremony.

For ten minutes nobody spoke.

The city thinned out into lake roads, tall hedges, and houses set far back from the water.

Polly leaned between the seats.

"Do you like pancakes?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Nate likes pancakes. He makes them badly. He's single."

"Polly."

"He has a whole house and nobody to share it with. That is a fact, Nate, you told me."

"I said it to the window."

"She's a baker, Nate. She could fix your pancakes."

"How do you know I'm a baker?"

"You have flour in your hair," Polly said, with enormous patience.

I did.

It was always in my hair.

The driver kept his eyes on the road, but I saw the corner of his mouth move.

It was gone before I could decide if it was a smile.

"This is not a date," I told him.

"I did not think it was."

"Good."

"Good," he said.

Polly made a very satisfied noise and sat back.

The gates came up slowly, black iron with an M worked into the bars.

The house beyond them was pale stone, with a wide lawn running down to the water.

A fountain in front of it had been left running for a decade.

I had cleaned houses like this one for a catering company, years ago, when I was a student.

I had never been invited through the front.

The driver stopped the car at the steps.

A woman was already coming down them.

She was in her sixties, with a silver bob, pearls and a navy suit that looked like it had been poured onto her.

She was smiling.

"Polly, darling. There you are."

She opened the back door and kissed the child's curls.

"We've been so worried. Did you have a lovely drive?"

"I found my mommy, Grandma," Polly said.

The smile did not move.

That was how I knew.

A real grandmother would have said what? or oh, sweetie, or called somebody.

This one went on smiling a moment longer than she should have.

Then she straightened and looked at me for the first time.

Her eyes went from my work shoes to my flour hair to my cheap denim jacket, and they stopped there.

"And who," she said, "is this?"

"Della Foley," I said. "Your granddaughter brought me a hospital bracelet."

"How kind of you to bring her home."

"I didn't bring her. He did."

I pointed at the driver.

He had gotten out and was standing beside the car with his cap low.

Her gaze slid over him.

"Thank you, that will be all," she said to him. "Take the car around."

He didn't move.

"Now, please."

He took off his cap, put it back on, and went.

I watched him go, puzzled, because for a second he had looked like a man who wanted to say something.

"Miss Foley," the woman said.

"I'm Constance Pendelton."

"Polly is a very imaginative child."

"She goes through folders and she confuses things."

"Her mother passed away when she was born, and it has left her with fancies."

"Her mother passed away," I repeated.

"Yes. A tragedy. We don't speak of it."

"The bracelet says Foley."

"Many people are named Foley."

"It says Della."

"Then it's a coincidence, dear, and I'm sorry for any alarm."

Polly was looking up at both of us with her mouth in a stubborn line.

Constance Pendelton took a leather checkbook from her jacket pocket.

She uncapped a pen and wrote something against the stair rail, quickly, without looking at me.

She tore out the page and held it out.

"For your trouble," she said.

I took the check, because she was holding it.

It was for ten thousand dollars.

The payee line was written in a neat, perfect hand.

DELLA ELIZABETH FOLEY.

I had told her my first name and my last.

I had never once said my middle one.

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