Something was off. They were wearing the careful expressions grown children wear when they’re about to say something you won’t like.
Eventually, Caleb set his fork down.
“Mom, we’ve spent months trying to figure out how to tell you this.”
My hand stopped in mid-air.
“What’s going on?”
“Wait,” Noah said before slipping out of the room into the hallway.
Caleb was staring at his hands.
Then Noah came back carrying the basket.
My son lowered it carefully between the water pitcher and the salt shaker as if it were an ordinary object, and my whole body went cold.
I recognized it before he even let go.
It was the same basket they had been lying in the day they appeared on my porch.
My throat tightened.
The memory came back so vividly that I could almost feel the chill of that particular morning against my skin.
I had been standing on a stool at the counter, buttering toast, when a sharp rapping at the front door pulled me out of my thoughts.
I remember wiping my hands on a dish towel, expecting a delivery driver or maybe Raymond dropping off the book he’d promised.
But when I opened the door, the porch was empty.
Then I heard a faint sound. A baby crying.
