It was a blue jean jacket that was Levi’s, which meant it would fade out to that particular shade of blue after a hundred washes. The left cuff was ragged, a raw tear in it caused by years of Jennifer chewing the fabric while feeling nervous. This jacket was something that I had bought for her when she turned fifteen years old, and she hated it because it was “new.” Therefore, she had taken the jacket and dragged it along with her bike and put it in the sun until it had become “authentic.”
It wasn’t until I spotted the tears on the baby’s head that I realized I was crying. I was shaking so badly I could barely get myself to lift her up off the sidewalk, but I couldn’t leave her there. So I picked her up and ran inside, shutting the door and locking it like I expected someone to come back and take her away.
I set the basket down on our kitchen table beside the cold coffee. “This is not real. This is not her.” My mind was a jumbled mess of denial. But I knew what I needed to do. I began to rummage through the basket, looking for any sign of who left her here, what they needed from me. There was an old diaper bag stuffed at the bottom, with formula and a couple of onesies, a pacifier. Inside the pocket of the blue jean jacket, a piece of notebook paper.
The writing was not Jennifer’s. It was small, scribbled, almost illegible.
“Her name is Hope. She’s Jennifer’s. I’m sorry, I really am. I tried to do this on my own, but I’m drowning. Jennifer always said you were the only one who actually loved her for who she was. Paul told us three years ago that if we ever showed up, he’d call the cops and say I kidnapped her. He said he’d make sure I went to prison. We were scared. But Jennifer’s gone now. She didn’t make it after the birth. I can’t do this anymore. Please don’t hate her. — Andy.”
I believe I went a whole minute without breathing. The words, “Paul told us,” made me feel physically crushed by an invisible hand.
For five long years, I lived in a permanent state of mourning. I had believed that our last fight in the kitchen was my fault. After all, it was nothing big, we were just fighting about something insignificant, some boy, some curfew, typical teenage drama. The escalation had been done by him, he had insulted her and told her how much she disappointed him. And when she stormed out, I assumed that she was just cooling off. When she never returned, I fell apart.
But Paul knew the entire time.
