Smooth Talking Stranger Read Online Free Page A

basic urge to protect her offspring—had made it difficult for Tara and me to have relationships with people.
    “I’m sorry, Mom,” I managed to say, my voice thick with regret. But I was fairly certain my mother didn’t understand what I was sorry for.
    A high, mewling cry came from the bedroom. The sound chilled me. He needed something.
    “Time for his formula,” my mother said, going to the refrigerator. “I’ll heat it up. Go get him, Ella.”
    Another cry, this one sharper. It made my back teeth hurt like I’d just bitten into tin foil. I sped to the bedroom and saw a small form on the bed, wriggling like a baby seal. My heart went so fast that I couldn’t feel any spaces between the beats.
    I leaned over, reaching tentatively, uncertain how to pick him up. I wasn’t good with children. I had never wanted to hold my friends’ babies—they had never appealed to me. I slid my hands beneath the small flopping body. And the head. I knew you were supposed to support the head and neck. Somehow I gathered him up against me, his weight somehow fragile and solid at the same time, and the crying paused, and the infant looked up at me in a squinty Clint-Eastwood sort of way, and the crying started again. He was so unprotected. Helpless. I had only one coherent thought as I went to the kitchen, and it was that no one in my family, including me, should be trusted with one of these.
    I sat and clumsily readjusted Luke in my arms, and Mom brought a bottle to me. Cautiously I put the silicone nipple—which wasn’t shaped anything like a normal human one—against the tiny mouth. He latched on and went quiet, intent on feeding. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I let it out with a sigh of relief.
    “You can stay here tonight,” Mom said. “But you have to leave tomorrow and take him with you. I am much, much too busy to deal with this.”
    I clenched my teeth to hold back a burst of protests—this wasn’t fair . . . none of it was my fault. . . I was busy, too . . . I had my own life to get back to. But what kept me silent, aside from the knowledge that my mother didn’t care, was the fact that the person who was really getting the raw deal was the one who couldn’t speak up for himself. Luke was a hot potato, doomed to be tossed back and forth until someone was forced to keep him.
    And then it occurred to me: what if the father was a cokehead or a criminal? How many guys had Tara slept with, and was I going to have to track them all down and have them tested? What if some of them refused? Was I going to have to hire a lawyer?
    Oh, this was going to be fun.

    Mom showed me how to burp him and to change the diaper. Her competence surprised me, especially since she had never been a baby person, and it had undoubtedly been a long time since she had last done such a thing. I tried to picture her as a young mother, patiently attending to the never-ending tasks of caring for a baby. I couldn’t imagine she had enjoyed any of it. My mother, with only a baby for company, a needy, noisy, inarticulate creature . . . no, it was impossible to envision.
    I brought in my bags from the car, changed into my pajamas, and took the baby into the guest bedroom.
    “Where is he going to sleep?” I asked, wondering what you did when there was no crib available.
    “Put him next to you on the bed,” Mom suggested.
    “But I might roll over onto him, or accidentally push him over the side.”
    “Then make a pallet on the floor.”
    “But—”
    “I’m going to bed,” my mother said, striding from the room. “I am worn out. I’ve had to look after that baby all day.”
    While Luke waited in his plastic carrier, I made a pallet for both of us on the floor. I rolled up a quilt to make a bolster between us. Alter laying Luke on his back on one side of the pallet, I sat on the other side and flipped open my cell phone to call my cousin Liza.
    “Are you with Tara?” Liza demanded as soon as I said hello.
    “I was