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Le
Still, because he liked to limit his involvement with the always dangerous drug trade, Le
His earlier, very satisfactory career of robbing poor boxes and votive candle offering boxes had ended with his theft at St. Clement’s. The church’s silent alarm and his unwitting kidnapping of Star had made him realize that he was getting too close to the edge. Now even the smaller churches were getting smart enough to put in silent alarms.
That was why it was with confidence in his own ability to survive that he let his contacts know that he was back in the city and once again available. Over a couple of beers on Monday afternoon he had bragged about what he’d been doing since September, helping to run a scam for a fake computer company. What Le
And as he often told himself, “I am her daddy, and it wouldn’t be right to abandon her.”
Unspoken, but perhaps even more pertinent, was Le
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Sondra had promised herself that she wouldn’t go near St. Clement’s again. If Granddad weren’t coming in for the concert, I’d go to the police right now, she thought. I can’t live like this any longer. If someone found the baby in those few minutes, and read the note and decided to keep her, and she’s being raised in New York, then there might be a fake birth certificate. It would have been easy enough for someone to claim the baby was delivered at home. In that hotel, no one knew that I had given birth-I never had a single pain.
All the pain has come afterwards, she reflected as she lay awake Sunday night. As dawn was breaking, she finally drifted off. After having slept for only a few hours, she awoke with a blinding headache.
She got up and listlessly put on her jogging clothes. A run might clear my head, she decided. I’ve got to be able to concentrate on practice today. I’ve done so many things wrong-I don’t want to add ruining the concert for Granddad to the list.
She had promised herself that she would stay in Central Park today, but when she came near the northern end of the park, her feet turned west. Minutes later she was standing across the street from St. Clement’s, remembering once again the moment when she had held her baby for the last time.
It had warmed up a little, and the street was busier, so she knew she couldn’t dawdle for fear of drawing attention to herself. The snow that had been arctic white on Thursday was now almost fully melted, and the remaining dregs covered with soot.
It was very cold that night, she remembered, and the snow on the sides of the Street was icy. That secondhand stroller had a stain on the side. I scrubbed the inside, but it was so terribly shabby that I hated to lay the baby in it even for a minute. Someone at the hotel had thrown out the shopping bag I used as extra protection. I remember it had a Sloan’s logo on it. I bought the bottles and formula at a Duane Reade pharmacy.
Sondra felt a tap on her shoulder. Startled, she turned to see the concerned face of a somewhat plump, redheaded woman of about sixty. “You need help, Sondra,” Alvirah said gently. “And I’m the one to give it to you.”
They took a cab back to Central Park South. Once in the apartment, Alvirah made a pot of tea and popped bread in the toaster.
“I’ll bet you haven’t had a bite to eat today,” she said.
Once again close to tears, Sondra nodded in agreement. She felt a kind of unreality, coupled with a great sense of relief. Now that she was in this strange apartment with this strange woman, she felt comfortable.
She knew she was going to tell Alvirah Meehan about the baby, and she sensed just from Alvirah’s presence that Alvirah would somehow find a way to help her.
Twenty minutes later, Alvirah told her firmly, “Now listen, Sondra, the first thing you’ve got to do is to stop beating up on yourself. That was seven years ago; you were a kid. You didn’t have a mother. You felt responsible to your grandfather. You had your baby all by yourself, but you pla
“Yes,” Sondra said, “but suppose some kids just pushed the stroller away as a joke. Suppose the baby froze to death, and when someone found her, they didn’t want to be blamed… Suppose-”
“Suppose some good people found her and she’s now the light of their lives,” Alvirah said with a conviction she didn’t feel. Good people would have called the police and then tried to adopt her, she thought. They wouldn’t have kept quiet about it all these years.
“I can’t ask more than that,” Sondra said. “I don’t deserve more than that, because I just don’t know..”
“You deserve a lot more than you think you do. Give yourself credit,” Alvirah told her briskly. “Now you’ve jot to get on with your violin practice and give New York music lovers a treat. You leave the detecting to me.” Then, spontaneously, she added, “Sondra, do you know how beautiful you are when you smile? You’ve got to do more of that, hear me?”
Over yet another cup of- tea, bit by bit, she drew Sondra out.
“Can you imagine what it was like for my poor grandfather, living alone, a music critic and violin teacher, to be suddenly stuck with a ten-year-old child to raise?” Sondra asked, a smile playing around her lips. “He had a very nice four-room apartment in a good building on Lake Michigan in Chicago, but still it was tiny, and he couldn’t afford more space.”
“What did he do when you moved in?” Alvirah asked.
“He changed his whole life for me. He turned his study into a bedroom and gave me the big bedroom. Whenever he went out, he hired someone to come in and mind me and cook for me. I might add, Granddad loved to go out to di