The Baby in My Son’s Boathouse

The first night

Patti stayed with me until the ambulance I nearly called turned out not to be necessary, until Natalie’s hands had stopped shaking enough to hold a cup of tea without spilling it, and until Joy had finally cried herself into a real sleep against her mother’s shoulder instead of the frightened half sleep she had been doing when I found them. Patti did not ask me a single question about what she had walked into. She just made tea, found towels, and treated a fourteen month old girl she had never met like a child who mattered, which, looking back, is exactly the instinct that started this whole rescue in the first place.

I drove Natalie and Joy to my own condo that first night rather than leave them in that loft one more hour. Joy fell asleep in the back seat before we hit the county road, and Natalie sat up front with her hands folded in her lap like she was bracing for me to change my mind at any red light between the lake and town. I did not have the words yet for everything I was feeling, so I did not try to find them. I just drove, and let the radio play low, and let her have the quiet, because some nights a person does not need conversation nearly as much as they need to know somebody is not going to turn the car around.