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I'd never had a basement. Not that many houses in Georgia do. I'd only opened the door to the basement in Martin's old farmhouse, shuddered at the dark cold that rolled up the stairs, and shut the door with alacrity. Now here I was in a basement, a windowless, below-ground prison.
"How long have you been here?"
"Since that night at your place. Well, minus the trip back to Ohio, but I don't remember much of that. Margaret gave me a bunch of sleeping pills." I knew anguish was waiting just around the corner. When Luke Granberry had knocked me out, he'd done me a favor. I tried to stave off the misery for a few minutes. "Tell me what happened," I croaked.
"Oh, well, the Granberrys showed up," Regina said, making a face as if Margaret and Luke were particularly undesirable party crashers. "Why?"
"Well... you know ... to get the baby. But Craig beat them there."
"Why?"
"Well... to get the baby."
I felt a tear roll down my cheek sideways on its way to the floor. Martin, alone with the dying Karl Bagosian, waiting for the ambulance I was supposed to send, the help I was supposed to bring... "Tell me from the begi
"When I got pregnant, it was like, a big disaster. You can imagine!"
No, I couldn't.
"I'd just married Craig. Well, it happened before we got married, if you can count you can figure that out, and you better believe the old ladies around here can count! Especially after my mother had that baby, you know, the big scandal." "Yes."
"But we got married, so hey, everything was cool. But I still didn't tell anybody, because frankly, I was thinking about getting rid of it. I mean, I'm just too young to have a baby. Right?"
"Yes."
"And the idea of Craig as a daddy, well, that just didn't feel right. But I wasn't throwing up or anything, felt great, so I just decided to wait a while and see how I felt. A baby might be kind of neat. They love you, right?" A tear flowed down my other cheek.
"So, anyway, I began showing. Craig and Rory thought that was just amazing. Feeling the baby move. But I still thought about getting rid of it. Then the Granberrys showed up one night and told us they'd been thinking." "And?"
"Well, they said they really really wanted a baby and they couldn't have one, and they had noticed I was go
"I'm sure," I murmured, feeling the hair on either side of my face grow damp as the tears flowed. The basement was lined with shelves and crowded with odds and ends. I saw that Regina had made a sort of nest for herself in one corner. There was an ancient easy chair, a lamp, and a board across two cement blocks that served as a table beside the chair. It was piled high with magazines. A mattress topped with a sleeping bag was pushed against the wall. There was a cubicle that I suspected hid a toilet and maybe a shower, close to the base of the stairs. "Have you tried to escape yet?" I asked, interrupting Regina's account of the onset of her labor. She sounded exactly like she was the only woman in the world who'd ever had a baby.
Regina gaped at me. "Are you kidding?" she asked incredulously. "As soon as Craig and Rory show up with the baby, Margaret'll let me go. I'm just, like, a hostage! If I tried to escape, they might hurt me!" Ah-oh. She didn't know. If I could have felt worse, I would have. "What do you think happened in Lawrenceton?"
"See, I had the baby," Regina said, and I sighed. She was not going to edit her adventures. "And when I saw him, I just thought I couldn't give him up. And Craig got put in jail, so he couldn't make me. I told Margaret and Luke I had to breastfeed for the first few days, that the midwife had told me so, but really I'd had the shot to dry my boobs up. I just said that so I could take him home with me. But I knew the Granberrys were dying for me to give him up; they'd been pestering me from the hour I had him."
"So you ran?"
"Yeah, man, I just took off. I didn't think that Craig and Rory would figure out where I'd gone. And I never thought they'd get out so quick. I mean, I missed them, Craig especially. But I couldn't make up my mind. And I had really thought the Granberrys would be great for the baby, but then I began thinking Margaret was a little weird, and she could make Luke do anything. So maybe she wouldn't be a good mother. And," Regina's voice lost its bounce, "I really loved the baby. I kind of wanted to keep him, even if we really needed the money. So one day when I knew the Granberrys had gone into the city for some art thing, I lit out."
"The Granberrys had already paid you some?"
"Oh, yeah, they gave us half the cash when he was born. They were go
She'd hidden it in the crib mattress. Where Rory had found it.
"What about the legal part of it?"
"Margaret said she and Luke'd move as soon as the baby was old enough. She figured wherever she lived, no one would ask questions. She read a couple of books on how to get a birth certificate for him. You know you can get books that tell you how to do that? She was go
I thought about all this. Finally, I told Regina I was thirsty, and she jumped up to bring me some water in a plastic cup. There was a sink on the wall, stained and ugly and old, but functional. Regina slid a hand under my head so I could raise it enough to sip from the cup.
"What's wrong with my head?" I asked, staving off the inevitable. Besides, I did want to know.
"I guess Luke hit you with the stock of his rifle. Margaret says you jumped him!
That was kind of crazy, Aunt Roe."
"Yes," I agreed.
"Anyway, you have this big bruise and swollen place on your forehead, it goes up into your hair, and a little blood dried on your face. So, have you seen Craig? When's he coming to get me? Did Rory get sick in Lawrenceton? He sure was acting awful fu
"What do you remember about that night?" Hard to believe it had only been five days.
Regina looked down at me doubtfully. She was sitting on the floor beside me now, the cup still in her hand. I became aware I was lying on yet another sleeping bag, and she was crouched on the cold concrete. Her black hair was a mass of tangles and her eyes were puffy.
"After you guys left to go to that di