The Light at the End of the Tunnel Read Online Free

he’s….”
    “He’s what…?”
    “He’s evil , Evan. I don’t think I want
him anymore.”
    Evan’s mind flew to the birth of their first
child. He had been there for everything. He had seen what his
darling wife, Leslie, had not seen, and he had never told
her what he, the nurse, and the doctor, saw. And he still wouldn’t
tell her that her first child was born with his twin’s umbilical
cord in his mouth. He could not tell her, and barely
believed it himself, and he would never forget the looks on the
faces of the doctor and nurse, professional people who likely had
already seen everything…but, evidently, had not, “What do you want
to do, Leslie?”
    “Let’s take him to the hospital and leave him
on their doorstep, just like they do it in Nebraska—they still do
that, don’t they?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe they do…” Evan didn’t
know what to say. He could barely believe that his beautiful wife
had just said what she said, but far in the back of his mind he
agreed.
    “What about DNA? Maybe all they have to do is
check his DNA with their records and trace him back to us—I don’t
want him, Evan! And I don’t want to go to jail for abandoning
him.”
    “DNA, they probably can do that. They
probably take fingerprints and everything these days.”
    “Then we’ll take him to another
hospital—another state, Evan, all the way to Nebraska if we have
to! Surely the millions of babies born aren’t in a federal data
base…yet…are they?”
    “I don’t know—“
    “You keep saying you don’t know!” she
screamed, “What do you know?”
    “I’m sorry, honey. Look, I’ll go get the
formula and a couple extra bottles, and we’ll figure out what to
do, okay…?”
    “Evan, I just haven’t told you, but almost
from the moment we brought him home he has creeped me out—“ she
tightened her hands, closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, gave a
quiet, throat-rattling, scream, “When he was three weeks old he was
screwing up his face, like he wanted to smile, like babies do. I
was almost to call you to come and see his first smile—but it
wasn’t a smile, Evan! It was a smirk! I wanted to scream right
then! I want him gone!”
    “All right…all right, I’ll get the stuff we
need, and we’ll figure out what to do.”
    “I will try to feed him again, with a bottle,
and that’s all I’ll do for him, but only if you’re there with
me.”
     
    ****
     
    An hour later Evan arrived with a warm bottle
of formula. He handed the bottle to Leslie, who was seated in a
rocking chair, then he went to the baby, picked him up from the
crib, then walked to Leslie and handed him to her. Leslie at first
just stared, then smiled a bit, then reached and took him into her
arms, and placed the bottle to the baby’s lips.
    Les Paul grabbed it with his lips and began
sucking furiously. Leslie’s eyes enlarged as she watched, “Look at
him, Evan. No two-month-old that I’ve ever seen has fed like this,
and with my sisters I’ve helped with five babies.”
    Evan watched too, but said nothing.
    “Look at him! He’s even trying to hold the
bottle!”
    Evan kept watching, and remembering the grip
and hold that child had on his miscarried twin’s umbilical cord,
and suddenly, quite unplanned, the barely-believable thought
entered his head, was the twin miscarried…or murdered? He thought
so hard that he quit watching this child feed and momentarily
looked at the ceiling—
    “Look at his face! Evan!”
    Evan jerked back to his wife, “What,
Leslie?”
    “He was smirking at me! He had a smirk on his
face! My god, didn’t you see him?”
    “I’m sorry, Leslie, my mind wandered.”
    “Right.” Leslie removed the bottle from that
ferociously sucking mouth. Les Paul immediately began screaming and
reaching for the bottle, “My god, he smirked at me at the only time
you wouldn’t see him!” Leslie held him slightly away from herself
and handed the bottle to her husband, “Quick! Warm him some