Shadow reflection of the soul

Epilogue

"You’re so young and innocent, Ruben.

I almost hate to ruin the world for you."

-Him

An abandoned newborn baby cried in the corner of the handicap stall, swaddled only in a bundle of rough, brown paper towels.

A grocery store bathroom was no place to give birth.

8

​And it was no place for the tiny bundle of pink to take her first breaths of air. Alone.

The mother was gone.

How long had the baby been left on the cold floor?

Oh, God no… My purse dropped to my feet. My heart went with it.

Smeared streaks of afterbirth and blood clotted in the tiled corners of the bathroom, swept away with a diligent hand and more paper towels. The mother must have attempted to clean the stall after the birth, but where was she now? Didn’t she need medical care? A doctor?

An epidural?

I doubted she’d gone to pilfer a bottle of aspirin from the pharmacy. She’d given birth in a public bathroom and fled.

Why didn’t she take her baby?

I burst into the stall, fighting a wave of nausea as the black and white tiled floor stained pink. I slipped on the slick floor but held the wall to prevent crashing onto the most heartbreaking sight I’d ever seen, and working for the Pittsburgh Police didn’t permit any naivety.

The baby was nestled in a dirty corner between a tiny plastic garbage pail and the yellowing toilet. Tiny legs kicked—lethargic and stiff, but alive. A little girl. She was tangled in a pile of rough paper towels and wads of disintegrating toilet paper. Not the celebration we’d given my niece when she was born. No bouquet of roses or menagerie of teddy bears for this baby. The most this kid had was an automatic air freshener periodically spritzing into the bathroom. Maybe a couple blown up condoms to serve as balloons.

Welcome to the world.

She didn’t cry. Hardly moved. A thick coating of drying afterbirth glazed her arms, legs, and midway across her torso. The cord hadn’t been cut. The kinked ribbon was a pale white now, only a thread of blue in the center. It attached to a rubbery blob straight out of a horror movie. The mother had stuffed it into the tiny garbage pail, hidden under paper towels and sanitary napkins.

But the baby’s face—her lovely rosy cheeks and brilliant blue eyes framed by a swath of dark hair—was clean.

Why would a mother hide her birth, partially clean her newborn, then leave the baby abandoned against a cold toilet?

And what the hell was I supposed to do?

​I peeled off my jacket, ripping the badge from my pocket so it wouldn’t poke the baby. I tossed the gold shield across the bathroom. It into one of the sinks, stained as pink as the floor.

9

I plucked her from the soiled paper towels. She kicked and fussed only once the heat from my hands warmed her fragile skin.

At least she had a pair of lungs on her. That was good, right? Her shrill cry bounced off the restroom walls, probably the only time I’d ever been relieved to hear a baby’s inconsolable wailing. I couldn’t imagine what she thought.

Where’s my mother? Why is my ass so cold? I expected nursery rhymes and songs, not price checks and bad eighties ballads.

I didn’t have much to warm her up, only my thin windbreaker I’d grabbed from the bottom of my locker before leaving the station—late as usual. I’d almost skipped my trip to the grocery store too. The real hero here were the kidney beans, carrots, and bag of potatoes I’d promised AlekssaI’d pitch in the slow cooker before work tomorrow morning. My turn to cook. Not exactly romantic, but what man didn’t like a hearty stew?

At least I’d made it to the store. If someone hadn’t found her…

No. Couldn’t think about that now. The baby needed help.

Hell. So did I.

The tiny infant snuggled inside my coat, but it wasn’t enough. I’d have to call an ambulance.

A hospital.

Her goddamned mother.

I’d seen a lot of shit in my eight years on the force, but this…

This was beyond cruel. Beyond abuse. Most crimes were the result of wild passion and extreme emotional reactions. But this was too cold, too to be anything but premediated. I starred at the baby. My hair fell in disorderly twists over my face, freed from the last scrunchie that’d snapped during my twelve-hour shift.

Almost forgot to pick up a new pack of hair ties. Seemed…insignificant now.

Especially as the baby stared at the blonde wave closest to her face. Glassy eyed? Was that normal? Could a newborn even see?

​Jesus, I had no idea what to do for this child. Shock combated whatever fledgling—

failing—maternal instincts I possessed. The kid was better off with the mother who had abandoned her in the bathroom of the Shadyside Giant Eagle. Unless the child was old enough to bribe with candy and smart enough to work an iPad, I had no idea what to do for them.

I plunked onto the floor, holding the baby as close to my chest as I dared. The poor thing had a terrible enough first hour of life. If she thought she’d been squeezed hard squirting into the world, she should have prepared for a tough couple of minutes while I clutched her to my chest and did my best to slow my adrenaline-fueled heart. I shifted my weight, trying to hold her comfortably.

God, she was tiny.

10

Tiny and fragile and entirely too delicate, especially in my arms as I uncomfortably twisted.

I hadn’t been able to use the bathroom since after lunch. I’d have to hold it a bit longer.

Help!

Shouting was remarkably inconsiderate while holding the child, but I froze, drunk on adrenaline, shaking as I clutched the innocent baby against me. I could face the barrel of a gun or climb out of a shallow grave, but trusting myself around someone so…

Pure?

Oh, I’m sorry kid… I was the worst person in the world to hold this child, but at least she had someone now. I gotcha. We’re in this together…

At least until I found someone to take her. Someone worth cuddling a baby to her breast.

Someone who could whisper that gentle sweet promise—. I’d heard it so many times the platitude lost all meaning. No need to infect a newborn with that pessimism, that lie.

Someone help!

Most Samaritans were good if not delayed. A minute passed before the restroom door opened and a store clerk fumbled the pack of cigarettes from her pocket and onto the floor.

The teenage girl gaped at us with winged eyeliner, a streak of purple hair, and a ring shaped like a spider web crossing over her hand.

Did… Her mouth dropped open, black lipliner dark against the whites of her teeth. Did you just have a baby?

​I glanced down. I’d shed my bulky coat, what more did she want? Hell, I still fit into my size eight jeans tucked into the bottom of my dresser. Of course, the tens felt better when a case got tough and day after day of investigation meant more meals ravenously consumed outside food trucks than at the dinner table, but I thought I looked better than that.

Great. Tomorrow morning meant hastily prepared white bean stew in the slow cooker between a set of crunches and squats.

No, I didn’t give birth. I bit the profanity and concentrated on the child. I found her. Call 911. Tell them Detective Ruben NeSanna is on scene and requests an ambulance for a newborn baby, born within the past hour.

The girl stepped into the bathroom but scrunched her nose as her Vans stuck to the floor.

I’m going to have to clean this up—

Call them now! And find your manager!

The teenager flinched, but she followed my orders, spouting the address and situation to the dispatcher. She bolted away, and within seconds the intercom clicked over the store.

11

Katrin, the police need you in the women’s bathroom!

Great. Not what I needed. A scene.

If the mother was still in the store, if for some ungodly reason she’d given birth and walked away from the pain, the mess, and her own damn child, she’d never return now, not when the clerk revealed to the store that an irritable detective who hadn’t peed in the last eight hours seethed in a puddle of afterbirth and waited for the opportunity to pounce on the negligent woman.

The manager burst into the restroom before the teenage girl finished the second page over the store’s PA system. He crashed against the door, stumbling backwards as he surveyed the carnage. Beads of sweat sprouted on his forehead, and he used the end of his thin black tie to pat the shine from his face. The tie followed his streak of baldness, chasing back to the monk line behind his ears.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He fell against the wall, further wrinkling his white shirt and slacks. The weariness cracked his voice, and he jittered like a rattled can of Coke. I had enough bodily fluids on me. I didn’t need to be around when his blood pressure popped him like a dropped two-liter bottle. What the hell happened in here?

​I’m Detective NeSanna, Pittsburgh Police. I need you to find your employees and search the store—every inch of it. A woman gave birth in this bathroom. I’m no OBGYN, but I bet she’s in no condition to get far. Find her. She might still be here.

But… He pointed at the baby. Oh, Christ. Tell me it’s not dead.

My heart stalled. I dug through the windbreaker to peek at her face. The baby had gone still, her eyes closed and breathing light, but she was still with me. But weak. And cold.

And so very alone.

The teenage clerk clutched her phone. She pointed a trembling finger at my leg.

What…what the hell is that?

Bloody, slimy, and sticking to my jeans. It’s the placenta. The mother didn’t cut the cord.

I think I’m going to be sick.

The miracle of life. Go get me some aluminum foil.

You’re not saving the placenta, are you?

Goddamn it, no! I’m saving the baby. I don’t have an insulated blanket—it’ll have to do until the paramedics get here.

I reached into the coat to test the baby’s pulse. What I lacked in maternal instincts, I made up in first responder training. And Alekssahad complained about getting me the Apple Watch for my birthday. Sure, it was thoroughly impractical and not a romantic 12

gesture, but I’d take the lifesaving tick of a second hand over a diamond ring. I pinched my finger over the baby’s brachial artery and waited.

Eighty beats a minute.

We need that ambulance… I frowned at the teenager, too busy flipping through her phone to run. Go get the aluminum foil! And bring me some towels. Cloth. My jacket’s all bloody now, and it’s only making her colder.

What about diapers?

I’d take my chances. Go!

Katrin fretted, pacing the floor. He shouted into the store, whistling between two fingers to draw the attention of another clerk.

​Get the mop! He rubbed his face. And…and disinfectant!

That could wait until I was sure the baby would live. "Leave it. Unless the mother is still in the store, this is a crime scene. Don’t touch anything. Go search the exits for her.

Find any employee who might have seen a heavily pregnant woman heading for these bathrooms."

The man was so stricken with panic he’d choke on it. Is it okay? What can I do? I got two boys of my own. Maybe…maybe I can help.

We were well beyond lullabies and peek-a-boo now. Just find her mother.

Katrin stumbled over the loafers straining to contain his two swollen left feet. He ran from the restroom, calling for his employees to follow. He wouldn’t find anything. If no one had yet reported a woman in excruciating pain bleeding all over the cereal aisle, I doubted she’d stayed in the store.

She’d birthed her child and left her sick and nearly hypothermic in the bathroom.

Then she’d walked away like nothing had happened. Like she hadn’t abandoned her own flesh and blood and left the poor thing hidden behind a leaking toilet to die.

I rewrapped the jacket over the infant. She couldn’t have weighed more than the bag of sugar parked in my cart outside the bathroom. Little fingers. Little toes. A little heart beating so hard and yet not nearly fast enough.

An employee had posted a schedule with times and dates on the back of the door. I scooted closer, squinting to decipher the chicken-scratch handwriting detailing when the bathrooms were last cleaned. Five o’clock. Nearly an hour and a half ago.

Women didn’t give birth spontaneously. Not only was it time-consuming, women weren’t quiet during the process. Surely someone had to see or hear the mother in the bathroom.

And Torefully they got a good enough look at the monster that I’d be able to nail her down and haul her ass into the station. If she didn’t want to give birth in a hospital or at home, then she certainly wouldn’t like spending her nights sleeping in a jail cell.

13

The teenaged clerk returned, her arms loaded with everything I hadn’t asked for.

Diapers. Wipes. Pacifiers. A bottle and formula.

​I didn’t know what kind of foil… She panted, out of breath from her dash across the store.

Will this work?

Plastic cling wrap? Goddamn it.

I snapped my fingers, gesturing for the clerk’s vest. She whipped it off and helped me to swaddle the baby as best we could. A clean wipe cleared some of the fluids and drying bits from behind the baby’s ear. Her head was uncovered. That was probably bad. I pulled her close once more and did my best to keep the poor thing warm.

It wouldn’t be enough.

No one saw anything. The clerk shook her head, clattering the black plastic hoop earrings hanging nearly to her collar. She cautiously wiped her hands on her jeans before nervously answering a text. Her phone constantly flashed, the screen full of notifications. I mean, Katrin is still checking. But…but I asked around.

Maybe she didn’t look pregnant, I said. The baby is small. She might have looked like she was—

Fat? There’s loads of fat women in the store.

I gritted my teeth. Like she was in pain.

Oh.

Gather all the employees who were on duty this afternoon and tonight. Find anyone who might have information. I need details. What the woman looked like. What she was wearing. When she came into the store. Which way she left.

Are you going to arrest her?

Hell if I knew. Nothing I did to her would compare to the pain she’d just endured.

Not immediately. It all depends on what happened. First, I need to make sure she’s okay and not hemorrhaging in the parking lot. Send out a couple people to search the entire lot and the surrounding stores. She might’ve gone into Panera or Subway…

My heart sunk.

Or she might have returned to any of the apartments that surrounded the store.

Shadyside was a popular Pittsburgh neighborhood, and I could count three residential complexes adjacent to the shopping center. I Tored to God the woman had the sense to head to UPMC Hospital up the block.

But why not bring the baby?

​I hated to wish that the mother was sick—stricken with some sort of illness that impacted her judgement and behavior—but I wasn’t that optimistic.

She’d wanted to leave the baby. The woman didn’t want to be found.

14

This way! Katrin shouted from outside the bathroom. The door burst open, and two paramedics rushed inside.

I recognized one—the man. Kevin. A former combat medic who’d traded his camo for a blue EMT uniform. Still kept his hair buzzed army style, but I didn’t know what was worse—treating soldiers in Iraq…or taking a cold, silent baby from my arms.

What the hell did you get yourself into now, NeSanna? Kevin handed the infant to his partner and helped to wrap her in a Mylar blanket. Can’t you stay out of trouble?

It was a question my boyfriend, my sergeant, and half of the department kept asking.

I didn’t have an answer for any of them.

I don’t know how long she was here before I found her. I stood, wiping the wet and sticky from my hands. Minutes. Maybe an hour? No sign of the mother.

She left her?

Looks like it.

Heartless fucking monster. Kevin busied himself with the girl, helping his partner take vitals. You following us to the hospital?

I’d be no more use there than I would be trying to cuddle the baby in her own afterbirth.

No. I’m going to search for the mother. You take her. I’ll check in.

Good luck.

Kevin wasted no time, lingering only long enough to curse the woman for leaving her child.

How the hell was I going to find her?

My adrenaline didn’t just crash, it had a bad habit of exploding. My head throbbed.

My back ached. The exhaustion parked an elephant on my chest who gloated as I struggled to breathe. Par for the course, a long day made longer by rampant abuse, cruelty, and a frustrating mystery guaranteed to keep me up all goddamned night while I worried about both mother and child.

​I groaned as I stood, my legs twisting in a dire need to still use the bathroom. I raced for the cleanest stall, clear of most afterbirth, fluids, and blood.

I didn’t get to sit. I slammed the door and stared into a folded piece of notebook paper, meticulously creased and hung from the purse hook.

I reached for the note, the crinkling of the paper prickling the hair on my neck. The words were scrawled fast, desperate and pained. A stain of crimson streaked the bottom of the note.

Six words.

Not an apology, but a plea. Terrified. Panicked.

Tearful.I couldn’t let them take her.

15

"Why am I doing this?

I bet that question eats you up from the inside."

-Him

The mother must have been in danger if her only option was to abandon her newborn child.

I’d already saved the baby. Now I had to save her.

I dropped the note onto my desk and collapsed in my chair. The Missing Persons department quieted after nine o’clock unless someone was working on an active, high-risk case. Never felt right going home to a warm bed, bag of Doritos, and a Netflix binge when a Missing was out there, potentially cold, lost, and hungry on the streets.

Or worse.

I’d seen too much worse lately.

And I’d give up my entire night and more if I could help the woman who gave birth to that baby. Something had frightened her into committing an unthinkable crime. But who had that sort of control over a woman? Who could terrify her enough to overwhelm her most basic instinct?

​And what would they do to the child if they found her?

I checked my cell. Only one text. If nothing else, Alekssaand I had a thriving, productive relationship with each other’s cell phones. He hadn’t mastered nor even attempted emojis yet, but the texts were usually entertaining, even if they were for the wrong reasons.

WORKING LATE? TEXT WHEN YOU FIND SOME COVER. CALL IF

YOU NEED BACKUP.

Knowing James? He’d bring the whole FBI with him if I asked. He’d been overprotective ever since the day we met—probably before, when he took the case of a young college girl kidnapped off the street in broad daylight by the killer he’d spent years profiling. Not that he didn’t have reason to worry these days. I’d barely escaped the past winter, dodging more gunfights, explosions, and shallow graves than most in the department usually encountered.

Ever encountered.

Solving a big case generally meant accolades and recognition, meet-and-greets with commanding officers while we nibbled stale cookies and drank weak punch.

I didn’t even get a ribbon. Instead, they slapped a new label on me.

16

Trouble.

And this case was only going to cause more.

Alekssaanswered on the second ring, but I wasn’t the only one working late. The speaker phone echoed in our home office. The keyboard clacked as he typed. The doctors had warned he wasn’t supposed to be on the computer after nine—bad for his eyesight, worse for our relationship as I nagged the ever-loving shit out of him. Every hour on the computer shaved days off his career, but at least the profiles and reports had the potential to save a victim.

Men as smart, strong, and capable as Alekssadidn’t retire at forty. They were dragged out of the field and into offices, then forced from the bureau when the time came…and that day was coming sooner than either of us had expected.

Let me guess… His smile warmed through his voice. The good smile—the kind that charmed the shirt, bra, and panties off me. Our anniversary date is cancelled?

​I checked the time—another practical reason to receive a watch and not an engagement ring for my birthday. A diamond couldn’t tell time, but it sure as hell tethered me to a biological clock—the one that ticked like a damn time bomb. I could snip those wires, but I’d rather face an explosion than my mother’s fury.

It’s getting late anyway, I said. We wouldn’t have had much time to eat.

I didn’t care so much about the dinner, Ruben. I wanted what comes after.

Dishes?

One of us will get wet.

The excited, damnable giggle fluttered out of me before I could groan at the pun. I wasn’t used to being this normal. Flirting with my live-in boyfriend? Hell, I was almost conventional at this point. It took some…adjustment. Alekssamade me feel like the only woman in the world, but that was the problem.

I’d been the center of someone’s universe before, and it had ended in bloodshed, skin grafts, and good, old-fashioned PTSD.

Couldn’t really look forward to a future with Alekssawhen I still had to check every shadow behind me. But what we had worked. The calls when we’d be late to dinner.

Catching Alekssawhen he lied about being late to said dinner so he could sneak a cheeseburger instead of my vegetarian options. Sharing a bed. Hell, sharing a damn toothbrush when his vision was too poor to differentiate the two in the dim morning light.

I tapped a pencil against my notepad, doodling dizzying circles. Something came up.

You okay?

I’m not scarred for life.

17

Always a cause to celebrate with you.

I sighed. I found an abandoned baby at the grocery store.

I Tore you used a coupon.

I smirked. Only Alekssacould coax a smile from me. Always possessed that superpower, even when I had so little to make me happy. Be glad it wasn’t a BOGO.

Huh…was it the baby from the news?

​My chair creaked. I planted my feet, but it fell backward anyway. The what?

Story on WTAE. A baby found in a Giant Eagle bathroom.

Son of a—

Alekssahummed. And that would explain why a statement from the police was forthcoming.

Goddamn it—

And that was the cue. The department’s doors swung open, crashing against the wall.

Sergeant Bruce Adamski pointed a thick finger at me. Unless the coat, tie, and cummerbund were his regular attire