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“Lucille didn’t tell me about this.” Freyja smiled, looking at the baby.
“Oh, how cute,” Skylar cooed, then asked, “What’s his name?”
“Yeah, Claudia. What’s your kid’s name?” Jess laughed, holding her stomach.
“I’m gonna kill you if you don’t shut up,” I growled before I added, “Look, everyone. Let me be clear. I was walking back from the liquor store when I found the kid just lying in the alley. And why in the hell are you all here? Don’t you have better things to do?”
“Jess told us what happened,” Bailey admitted. “We’re here for moral support.”
“And I tagged along because we need to talk about that cryptic text you sent last night.” Jess winked before she added, “Just how drunk did you get?”
“What text?” Skylar asked, looking at the bane of my existence.
“I’ve known Claudia long enough to know she only drunk texts because someone pissed her off or she’s about to get laid. So spill, woman. What kind of fucked-up fuckery did you get yourself into last night?”
I really hated Jessica at that moment.
She was quickly adding fuel to the already simmering pile of bullshit I had to deal with.
Fucking instigator.
Instead of answering her, I held my head up high and walked out of the alley with the baby and headed straight for my house.
I was not talking about last night.
“Well, kiddo, you look healthy enough. I guess that’s something,” I said, laying him down in the makeshift bassinet Jessica retrofitted for me. Well, it was basically my laundry basket with several fluffy blankets in it, but the kid didn’t seem to mind. Taking the bottle of warm formula Skylar got from running to the grocery store, I plopped the nipple into the kid’s mouth and the hungry varmint started guzzling it like it were a fifth of jack.
Wouldn’t mind a glass of my own.
Oh well.
Maybe another time.
Plopping down on my couch, I sighed. “What am I going to do with him?”
By the way, Jess was right.
It was a boy.
“Legally, he needs to be handed over to the hospital,” Jessica stated.
“Why, so they can call CPS and put him in the system?”
“That’s how these things go, Lidi. You know the system isn’t perfect, but it’s all we’ve got.”
“It’s bullshit, if you ask me,” I grumbled. “Poor kid is going to be poked and prodded. Then CPS is going to waltz in and take over. They are going to put the kid with a foster family while the police investigate the matter. Which will turn up nothing, thereby making the kid a ward of the state. If he’s lucky, he will get adopted by a good family, but let’s face it, that shit rarely happens. So, the kid will spend the next eighteen years of his life being bounced around from one foster home to another, where he will age out. That’s if he’s not gotten into trouble or worse, doing time in the state penitentiary. All because I handed him over to the fucking hospital.”
“Jesus, Claudia.” Bailey frowned. “That was fucking horrific. Why not just tell us how you really feel?”
“Well, what do you want to do?” Jess asked.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, looking at the little boy, who couldn’t be more than two months old. He was cute. Head of shaggy brown hair, beautiful silver eyes, and the cutest dimples I’d ever seen.
He was perfect.
“What if I kept him?”
Jessica looked at me. “What do you mean, keep him? This isn’t like finders keepers, Claudia, or a dog you found on the street. This is a kid.”
