As Bright as Heaven(42)

But he’s ours! I want to yell. I want to scream it. You promised, I silently remind God even though I know deep down he hadn’t promised anything.

I say nothing.

“There are so many orphans in the city right now, and it’s such a pity,” Mrs. Arnold goes on as she places her hat on her head. “They certainly won’t know what to do with another one.”

“We can take care of him,” I blurt.

Mrs. Arnold stops fiddling with her hat pin. “Think so? Did your mother ask you to tell me that?”

I shrug like it is the most natural thing in the world for the Brights to take in a stranger’s child. “We have the room. It’s a big house. And Mama loves babies. We all do.”

“Well, that would be very nice if you could, I’m sure. I can put your mother in touch with the authorities who are looking for foster homes for all the children without parents now. You wouldn’t believe how dire it is.”

A man in a gray suit appears in the hallway. “Ah, Ambrose. There you are,” Mrs. Arnold says. “This young lady and I need to go to South Street.” Then she turns to me. “But first we will stop at the funeral home. I want to see this child, and we need to let your mother know where we are going.”

Mrs. Arnold’s automobile is a shiny red Ford that probably sits in a carriage house all the time. Either that or Mr. Ambrose is polishing it every second when he isn’t behind the steering wheel. Every inch of it gleams.

It doesn’t take long to get to the funeral home. As we pull up I wonder if Mrs. Arnold will take the baby away from us if she thinks Willa has the flu. I frantically search my mind for a good reason as to why she doesn’t need to see my mother as we climb the front steps. I don’t want her to know that Mama is upstairs nursing my sick sister.

We step inside the house, which is as quiet as a library. I lead Mrs. Arnold to the sitting room and am about to excuse myself to run upstairs to my room to get Evie and the baby when I see Evie rise from Uncle Fred’s big armchair in the corner. The baby is swaddled in her arms, and his sweet face looks like that of an angel.

“Oh!” Mrs. Arnold says softly. “What a little cherub. Poor, sweet thing.”

Evie looks at me.

“Mrs. Arnold is going to take me back to South Street to see if I can find the house where the baby was,” I say.

“Of course.” Evie’s face is expressionless. I can’t tell what she is thinking.

“Yes, I’ve a driver, and we can get down there and back again in good time,” Mrs. Arnold says, gazing adoringly at the baby. “I’m sure we’ll find the place where he lived.”

“I see.” Evie is still looking at me with that blank face.

Mrs. Arnold glances up from the baby, and her gaze spins around the room. “And where is your mother, Maggie? I would like to ask her permission to take you back there.”

“My mother?” I echo her, sounding like a child.

“Yes. Is she upstairs? Can you fetch her for me?”

Evie turns at last from me. “Our mother is indisposed at the moment. But Maggie can get our uncle Fred for you, instead, although he’s very busy in the back as you can imagine. Perhaps I can just relay the message to Mama?”

Mrs. Arnold thinks on this for only a second. “All right, then. Tell her we will be back before dark.”

I don’t want to stare in admiration at Evie as we leave, but I feel certain that she, too, didn’t want Mrs. Arnold snatching away the baby because of Willa being sick. My sister had come up with the perfect excuse for why Mrs. Arnold couldn’t speak to Mama. Mama is indisposed. Whatever that means.

It takes a few minutes to get to South Street, but it isn’t nearly enough time to figure out how I am going to avoid running into someone who knows the baby and his dead mother and sister. Mrs. Arnold asks which of the four addresses on the list Mama was at when I found the baby, and I say it was the first one. She tells Ambrose to turn up the street past the barbershop and soon we are at the curb where I’d seen that cat.

“All right, then,” Mrs. Arnold says. “Which direction from here?”

Once you start getting the hang of not telling the truth, it not only gets easier, but you can think up lies quicker. I no sooner open my mouth to answer her than I realize all I have to say is that I walked up the street, not down it. Just up from that first building that Mama went into are more alleys, on both sides of the street.

“It was up that way,” I say, “but it’s hard to remember which alley it was.”

Mrs. Arnold pats my arm. “Take the first one to the right, Ambrose,” she says. He does and we stop at the first building on the corner. It might have been the one where I found the baby, except it isn’t.

“Perhaps this one?” she says.

And I say, “Maybe.”

“You said you heard the baby from the street, so it couldn’t have been farther up the alley than this, right?”

I can only nod.

A man comes out of the building then and Mrs. Arnold pokes her head out the car window. “You there! Sir! Might I have a word?”

The man just stands there, like he can’t quite believe she spoke to him. He has bushy eyebrows and a thick mustache. He holds a faded tweed cap in his hands, thready in places.

“Yes. Might I have a word? It will only take a moment.”