Read Online Water from Stone - a Novel by Katherine Mariaca-Sullivan - Free Book Online Page A

rent the room cost her. They’d been there at least four months. She had a job at a head shop near the University, made minimum wage. Apparently, the rest of the money she made, and anything else she could get her hands on, went to crack, heroin, you name it. According to the guy she worked for, he’d wanted to fire her because she was becoming more and more irresponsible, go figure, but the only reason he didn’t was because of the baby. He was afraid of what would happen to the baby if the mother had no income. He even let her bring the baby to work. On a good note, he did say that the mother seemed to be devoted to the child, whose name is Elizabeth, by the way. She was always clean and the mother would fuss over her. He was afraid the baby wasn’t getting enough to eat and would bring in milk and baby food for her.”
    “Is there any family?”
    “Like I told you, not that we’ve been able to trace. According to her boss, she showed up several months ago. Her application doesn’t list family and he never heard her mention anyone. The housemate either. Of course, we’ll keep looking. Ideally, we’ll find a warm and loving aunt or grandmother for the baby. Ideally. But, you know how often ideally works out.” Shirley shakes her head and looks out the window.
    Mar watches Shirley, and waits, but Shirley won’t look at her. “Why’d you call me?” she finally asks. “Why didn’t you take me off your list?”
    Shirley turns from the window and meets Mar’s gaze. “Truth?” she asks.
    “Truth.”
    Opening the file, Shirley takes out a four-by-six inch photo and slides it across the desk. “She reminds me of you,” Shirley says.
    Reluctantly, Mar pulls the photo into her lap and looks down at it. The baby is covered in a hospital blanket and wears a knit cap. Fine, blonde curls spill out around the edge of the hat. Her skin is a translucent white, so pale that Mar imagines she would be able to see the girl’s heart if she pulled the blanket away. Her eyes are the color of the mid-day sky over the Keys. Mar turns the photo over. “She doesn’t look anything like me,” she says and her voice is a whisper.
    Instead of answering, Shirley pushes back from her desk and moves around to the second visitor chair. She reaches for the photo, turns it back over. Mar looks away. “But she acts like you,” Shirley says. “She is sad and lost and lonely,” Shirley’s voice trails off.
    “Like me,” Mar finishes.
    “Like you.”
    Mar looks down to the photo. Now she sees it, the frown between the infant’s faint eyebrows, the ingrained acceptance in her eyes, the set of her mouth. Mar recognizes the resemblance. She has seen this look in the mirror every day for four years. “I don’t think I’d be very good for her,” she says.
    “Try, Mar. Please.”
    Seven
    Mar.
    Mar startles awake, fear clutching at her throat. Gasping, she curls a fist to her chest, feels her heart beating a wild staccato. “ Shhhhh ,” she tells herself when she realizes she is in her own bedroom. “No sharks here, no sharks, no sharks,” she whispers the mantra that has calmed her on countless other nightmare nights. As she quiets and releases herself again to sleep, a wisp of a thought floats behind her eyelids, knocks on her subconscious and, when that doesn’t wake her, forms itself into a long, thin spike and jabs itself straight into nerve central. Mar jerks awake. “The baby!”
    She hurries to the crib that she set up in a corner of her bedroom and looks inside. Elizabeth stares straight up at her, tension pinching her little face, her perfect hands clenched into fists. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry, sweetheart, I thought you were a shark,” Mar coos as she reaches in to pick her up. “Are you OK? Do you want some milk? Are you wet? What’s wrong, little girl?”
    Mar loosens the blanket that swaddles Elizabeth. At the hospital, when Mar went to pick her up, the nurses told her that binding the baby would make her