15. Holly
FIFTEEN
HOLLY
He was so little. So tiny. He also wasn’t very old. The first thing I figured out how to do was feed him, and thankfully in the wretched and dirty bag my mom had dropped on the floor, there’d been a dozen diapers, two empty bottles, and two small cans of formula.
My mind spun as I tried to bounce the baby and then feed him. My ears ached from the piercing scream he refused to let go of.
But finally— finally— I managed to read the can of formula, fill the bottle with water, add the powder, and as soon as the bottle was brought to his lips, the boy quieted.
“Holy crap,” I whispered as he sucked on the bottle. I figured out how to prop him in my lap and dragged the bag over to me, where I pulled out everything inside I could find.
I found another, smaller pile of diapers, two small cloths I figured were for burping but looked like they needed a decent washing, and at the very bottom of the small bag was an envelope.
I tossed the wrinkled envelope onto the coffee table and tried with all my might to figure out what in the world just happened. This had to be a dream. This was a nightmare. I was subconsciously feeling alone, needing someone for company, feeling despair over everything with Graham, and that my subconscious conjured up my mother and some random baby she threw at me before disappearing.
“Except I’m awake,” I muttered and blew out a breath and closed my eyes. When I opened them, it was to the sound of the baby quietly sucking on the bottle, his tiny little face scrunched and pink. Tears were drying on his cheeks from all his crying. I reached out and tenderly brushed my fingertip along his cheek, wiping away wet tears. His eyes opened and closed again, but as he did, a tiny milk-filled sigh escaped the side of his mouth, and I swore he burrowed closer to me.
My chest went burning hot, and my lungs expanded. My heart swelled.
I had no idea who he was, but he was mine .
It took a breath, one tiny moment, and all the plans I’d worked so hard to make for my life irrevocably changed.
My only sole focus was now on this tiny little bundle so carelessly shoved into my arms.
“Crap,” I whispered and reached for the envelope.
The little guy gurgled and tensed, but as I leaned back into the couch, he relaxed.
So he didn’t like being scrunched up.
“Sorry, little guy,” I whispered.
He peered up at me like he’d heard me and returned to sucking on his bottle, dismissing me for substance.
Couldn’t blame the guy. I tended to ignore people when I was eating too.
My hand shook as I pried open the envelope with two fingers, resettling the baby in my arms for something more comfortable for him, and then pulled out a folded, wrinkled sheet of paper. It stuck on the envelope and looked like it’d been balled up before being flattened and folded.
My heart raced, and my fingers trembled as I leaned back on the couch and unfolded the thick page of paper. Something smaller fell out, and I ignored it, my gaze stuck on the printing at the top of the paper.
State of Florida was stamped at the top of a thin, dark blue line.
“Florida,” I whispered, and my chin started wobbling. My mom lived in Florida. Or, at least, she’d been there for a time…since December, according to the date of birth.
“Jonah Hodges.” I trailed my fingertip over the printed name on the official sheet of paper and then peered down at the little boy in my arm. “Hi, Jonah.”
Tears rushed before I could stop them, dropping down my cheeks, off my chin, and onto the paper. December twenty-fifth. A Christmas baby, and my mom had cared for him enough to get his birth certificate before dropping him off here.
Had she wanted him? Had she hated that she was pregnant? She could have left him at the hospital. Given him up. She could have gotten rid of him, but she hadn’t. She’d somehow wanted him enough to have him, to bring him here.
Can’t take care of him. Don’t have time to take care of that.
Had she tried? Had she gotten off drugs? Had she tried to stay clean and then fallen back into it? God, so many questions swirled through my mind, I couldn’t think straight.
There was nothing else in the envelope, nothing else that would help me figure it out. I tossed both the envelope and the certificate to the table, and the smaller folded sheet fell to the floor. Settling the baby—Jonah—on the couch, I reached down and grabbed it.
Holly loved whales and that story.
“Oh, Mom.” I cried harder and cradled Jonah in my arms. He finished his bottle, and I propped him to my shoulder to try to burp him. Thank God when I’d still had friends, some of them had little siblings, and I’d babysat when I was younger, so I wasn’t entirely incompetent.
But I’d never done it on my own…
Now, he was all I had.
Jonah. I had loved whales. All from the story I’d learned in preschool back when my family was relatively normal and we went to church every weekend. That all stopped before Mom took off, but I used to have a book about Jonah and the whale. I’d sing songs about him. There was something so fascinating to me about a boy being swallowed by a whale and spit back out. A story about a boy who’d screwed up, gotten angry with God, and tried to run from him only to be found all over again.
I used to draw pictures of whales, sometimes with a tiny stick figure in the belly of it. They’d be plastered all over our refrigerator. If I searched through the pile of boxes in my closet from all the little-kid things I’d grown out of, there might still be a small orca whale in it.
Jonah . That was the name my mom gave him. She’d thought of me.
The realization hit hard and fast, and while I finished burping him and then changed his overly saturated diaper, I also got up and grabbed a pen and notebook from my school bag.
I was going to need things.
Lots of things.
All the baby things.
As the sun was starting to rise, my eyes were dry from lack of sleep. Jonah was sleeping soundly on the couch, bundled in his blanket and between pillows so he couldn’t fall off.
There was no way I could go to class. I didn’t have anywhere to take him, or any way to get him there safely.
Except…
It was early, but Caroline would be up. Probably getting my uncle breakfast and packing his lunch before he headed off to work.
I grabbed my phone and wasn’t surprised when she answered after the first ring.
“What’s wrong? Car won’t work?”
I didn’t blame her for assuming something was wrong. I rarely called her for anything.
My car not working would be a normal day worst-case scenario, but oh, how far off the mark she was.
“I need help. Can you come here?”
* * *
Caroline stood in my living room with her hands on her hips, gaping at the still sleeping baby. Jonah was so bundled up only his face was visible, and he’d wiggled a little so an edge of the blanket now covered his forehead.
“She just dropped him and ran off?”
“Yep.” It was the sixth time she’d asked the question.
“I can’t believe this.” Her voice carried anger, but she said it quietly enough so as not to startle him, but I could feel her rage building. Her head whipped toward me. “Why wouldn’t she tell me? When she called? And why call me at all? Why not ask?—”
Her words broke at the end, and she shook her head. Caroline and my mom had been super close once. That relationship fractured when Mom started showing up high on pain meds and forgetting things and screwing up orders. While she and Caroline always planned on running the restaurant together, I long ago figured out that while the restaurant was Caroline’s passion, it was Mom’s duty. Caroline never fired Mom since she couldn’t actually do it, but their closeness was gone long before Mom was.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, my voice raspy. Caroline and Uncle Paul couldn’t have kids. They quit trying when I was ten, things I learned later when I spent time with Caroline and was older. “She only asked about Dad. Didn’t even act like she cared I was here.”
But she’d named him Jonah. In some way, that warmed me. She’d loved me once, and to this day still remembered something important about me. Maybe in her own way, she still did love me.
It wasn’t enough, it never would be. But it was better than nothing.
“What kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know, Care. The bumper was falling off, and it was rusty. Was definitely older than my Jimmy, though.”
“Did you get a license plate?”
“No.” I shook my head. “It was dark. Why?”
“She’s only been on the road a few hours. We could find her and get to her.”
“Get…what?”
Caroline gazed at Jonah. “She loved him enough to get the birth certificate. That takes time. She loved him enough to bring him here instead of ditching him somewhere. She…Lydia is still there, somewhere. If I can get to her…”
“Caroline.” I went to her and wrapped my hand around her bicep and leaned against her. “I know what you’re saying, but she’s gone. You at least have the county she delivered in. If you want to find her, you can start there.”
“Right now I’m so ticked at her, I want her arrested for child abandonment. I mean, what the hell, Holly? What are you supposed to do with him?”
“I think one parent in prison is enough for me.”
She snorted and smirked at me. “It could also get her free of drugs. Get her some help. You can’t raise him, Holly. You have college and a life to start living.”
“I can’t leave him. Outside of you, he’s now the only family I have.”
Like any little girl growing up alone, I’d always wanted a sibling. I begged for one for years once I realized other kids had brothers and sisters. I didn’t want to be twenty-two with one, but there were worse things.
I’d already survived them.
“I could…” she started, but I shook her head.
“You have the restaurant. And your life. I’ll figure it out.”
She drew her arm from my grasp and wrapped her arms around me. “ We’ll figure it out, Holly. We’ll figure it out together.”
My phone rang, and I went to the kitchen to get it, only to get sidetracked by a loud pounding at the door. The noise was so similar to what I woke up to in the middle of the night, I jumped so high I almost dove right out of my skin.
“Is it her?” Caroline asked.
I hurried to it and glanced out the side window. Probably should have thought to do that last night, too. “No. It’s just Tracey.”
“Just Tracey,” she called from the other side. “Nice. I feel loved. Now let me in. I’ve got breakfast and all the fixings for a broken heart.”
She held up a bag of donuts.
I opened the door. “I could use breakfast, but breakups are the last thing on my mind.”
“Hi, Caroline.” She glanced at me. “What’s bigger than that?” she asked, helping herself inside, dropping the bag on the kitchen table. She dug through the bag, and Jonah chose that time to wake up with a pitiful little squawk I was already starting to get used to.
Tracey froze, her hand deep in the bag of donuts, and her eyes widened. “What was that?”
“Come see.”
I took her hand and pulled her to the couch, where Caroline was starting to bend down to mess with Jonah’s bottle.
“What the heck?” she shrieked. “Holly. There’s a baby. On your couch.”
“Not just any baby,” I told her. “That’s my brother.”