Caution! Cute Baby Alert! novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Row Nine
On Polly's sixth birthday a girl climbs onto Della's baby's grave and calls her Mommy, and pulls out a bracelet with Della's own name.
Every July eighteenth, I brought one lemon cupcake to a grave that had nobody in it I could ever hold.
The stone was small and gray, with a lamb carved on top.
It said BABY GIRL FOLEY, and under that, one date.
I had stopped crying at it around year three.
Now I just sat on the grass in my work shoes and told her about my week.
"The oven at Dee's broke again," I said. "I burned my wrist on the rack."
A wind moved the flags along Row Nine.
"You'd be six today," I said. "I think you'd hate lemon, honestly. I think you'd want chocolate."
I set the cupcake on the lamb's back and pulled a candle from my jacket.
Then somebody behind me said, "Hi."
I turned around so fast I knocked the candle into the grass.
A little girl stood three feet away in a navy school blazer and white socks.
She had light brown curls, a gap in her front teeth, and a cupcake-sized frown.
"You're sitting on my grave," she said.
"Your grave," I said.
"That's what Grandma's folder says."
She walked right past me and climbed onto the stone, lamb and all, and sat down with her legs crossed.
Then she looked up at me with grey eyes, and I forgot how to breathe.
"Mommy," she said. "I found you."
I stood up.
My knees did it without asking me.
"Sweetheart," I said, very gently, "where is your mother?"
"Right here."
"No. I mean the one who dropped you off."
"Nobody dropped me."
"Nate drove me."
"I told him I needed to see a grave and he said it was a strange request, but he's a very good driver."
She patted the grass beside her.
"Sit. It's my birthday and you're supposed to sing."
My hands were shaking, so I shoved them in my jacket pockets.
She was lost, that was all.
A lost kid with a loose idea in her head.
And I was a stranger in a cemetery, which was exactly how a news story starts.
"I'm going to walk you back to Nate," I said. "Okay? Right now."
"Okay," she said, and slid off the stone like she'd been waiting for the offer.
She put her hand in mine.
It was small and warm and sticky with something orange.
I held on harder than I meant to.
We went up the gravel path together, past the maples, to the lot where a black sedan sat with its engine running.
A man stood beside the back door with his arms folded.
He wore a gray chauffeur's jacket and a flat cap pulled low.
He was tall, dark haired and clean shaven.
And he held himself like somebody who gave orders for a living and was bad at pretending otherwise.
"Miss," he said to the girl. "You were told to stay in the car."
"I did a quick errand."
"The cemetery is not an errand."
"It is if the lady's there."
His eyes came up to mine.
They were grey, exactly the grey of the girl's.
Something went through me, quick and cold, and I put it down to nerves.
"She was on a grave," I said. "Alone. I'm not accusing anybody. I just think someone should be watching her."
"I was watching her," he said. "From the car. Through the window."
"That is not watching."
"No," he said, after a second. "It isn't. You're right."
He sounded annoyed that I was right.
"Thank you for bringing her back, ma'am. I'm only the driver."
"He is not," the girl said. "He's lonely. Nate, this is my mommy. She makes cupcakes. You should marry her."
The driver closed his eyes.
I laughed once, in spite of myself, a bad cracked laugh.
"Honey," I said, and crouched in front of her. "I'm not your mommy. I'm Della. I'm very sorry. I think you're mixed up."
"I'm not mixed up."
She dug in the pocket of her blazer.
"I'm six. I can read some. Grandma keeps a folder in her desk with a lock, but I know where the key is."
She held out a flat strip of plastic.
It was a hospital bracelet, small enough to fit a doll, gone soft and yellow at the edges.
I took it because my hand did.
The name on it was typed in black.
BABY GIRL FOLEY.
Under it, in the same faded ink, was the date of her birth, the same date as the one on the stone.
And below that, in the box where a mother's name goes, was mine.
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