Grace

ghost-baby who followed her, who cried at night, who was just out of her reach, always, so glad it hadn’t ended up hurting her. Thank god for Rebecca.

Stop. Please stop.

But it wouldn’t stop. Grace kept crying. And crying. She knew that cry. Her baby was hungry. She would be sucking on her fists and turning her head from side to side, looking for her milk, but Leah didn’t have any more milk, they had taken that too.

She opened her eyes, looking over at Rebecca, expecting to see her baby boy crying, the sound morphing to Leah’s head into Grace’s hungry-cry, but he was sleeping peacefully in his mother’s arms. Confused, Leah looked again to her right, where the sound was actually coming from.

“Can you please take that baby from the courtroom?” Judge Solomon was still, still dealing with the ghoul-the man clearly had the patience of a saint.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor!” the older blonde stood and Leah saw the infant in her arms she hadn’t noticed before. Clay had been in the way. “It’s just that there’s been an emergency, and I had to talk to my son-”

“Oh, Lady, please, I don’t want to hear anymore.” Judge Solomon groaned, putting his head in his hands. “Can we please just-”

“Grace!” Leah leapt out of her seat, reaching for the baby, but Rob had her caught in the strong circle of his arms, whispering that it was okay, it was okay, it wasn’t Grace, she was okay…

“Grace!” Leah screamed, pointing at the baby in the blonde’s arms, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that it was Grace, her Grace. The woman held the baby close to her, protecting her, turning instinctively away from Leah. “That’s Grace! That’s my baby!”

“Take her out of here!” Judge Solomon banged his gavel.

Donald Highbrow half-stood, asking, “Who, the baby or the mother, Your Honor?”

“Take them both!” the judge roared.

“Noooo!” Leah struggled in Rob’s arms, knowing he had misinterpreted her, believing she had mistaken the baby in the woman’s arms for a sighting of her ghost baby, but that was no ghost. That was Grace. “Rob! That’s our daughter! Let me go!”

He struggled, looking at Donald, asking, “A little help?”

Donald stood, taking Leah by her other arm, and both men carried her, feet off the ground, heading toward the door. The baby-Grace, Grace Grace! — was still crying against the blonde’s shoulder, who was standing at the end of the aisle looking bewildered, rocking the baby without thinking about it.

“Get her out of here! Quick!” the ghoul snapped, shoving Rob as they passed. He gave her a dark look, but the look on the judge’s face was darker.

“That’s my baby!” Leah screamed at the top of her lungs, but she couldn’t fight the men holding her. They were far too strong. “Her name is Grace Patricia Nolan! She has a strawberry birth mark on her belly, just above her navel. She has a teeny tiny baby toenail, so tiny you can barely see it! She-”

“Wait!” the blonde called, rushing to the front of the courtroom. “Wait!”

“Order!” The judge banged his gavel over and over. “Order in the courtroom! Order! Order!”

Leah stood between Rob and Donald, looking at the woman

“Ma’am, can I ask your name?”

“Me? My name is Gertrude Louise Webber.”

“Thank you.” The judge gave her a brief smile. “And is that your baby?”

Gertrude shook her head. “No, Your Honor.”

“Whose baby is it?”

“Mine!” Leah croaked, holding her arms out, oh they ached, like the empty dry socket of a tooth, like a phantom limb, like the rending, tearing pain of a missing womb.

“Oh for God’s sake!” The ghoul threw up her hands, waving Rob and Donald and Leah toward the door. “What does it matter? Now take her out of here and call an ambulance. They’re going to have to put her in restraints again like last time. I told you this would happen Your Honor. She’s insane. She-”

The gavel came down again, once, hard, like a gunshot, and they all froze. Judge Solomon had reached the end of his clearly very long fuse.

“Lady, I warned you. I am holding you in contempt.” The judge nodded toward the bailiff. “Please remove this ghoul from my courtroom.”

Again, the entire courtroom burst into applause and cheers as the bailiff grabbed the ghoul’s arm and she shrieked in protest, trying to shake him off, but he pushed her past where Leah stood, frozen between Donald and Robert, staring at the woman holding her baby.

“Now…” The judge looked between Leah and Gertrude. “Why do you think this is your baby, Leah?”

“Because she is,” Leah croaked, edging a little closer, so close, oh she was so close! “That’s Grace. Rob, that’s our baby!”

She looked over her shoulder at her husband, pleading at him with her eyes. Rob looked between Leah and the child, stunned, like he’d been hit hard on the head with something and wasn’t sure which way to stumble.

“Mrs. Webber.” The judge turned to the blonde, clearly hoping to get some more definitive answers in her direction.

“She’s a foster child, Your Honor. But her name isn’t Grace. It’s Lily.”

The collective gasp that went through the courtroom made Leah shiver. The ghoul had changed her baby’s name to the fake one that pregnant Leah had been given while she was imprisoned at Magdalene House.

“Does the child have a strawberry mark on her belly?” the judge inquired.

Gertrude nodded. “Yes, your honor.”

Another collective gasp.

“And the pinkie toe?” the judge asked, looking at Leah, his face almost as incredulous as her own.

“Barely there,” Gertrude replied, looking at Leah. “Is she really yours, honey? Is this your baby?”

Leah nodded, holding her arms out, the tears falling down her face in rivers. “Grace,” she whispered. “Grace.”

Gertrude looked back at the judge, hesitating.

He shook his head and Leah felt her stomach drop to her toes. “I have never, in all my years on this bench, seen anything like this fiasco today, and I have been sitting on this bench a long damned time.”

“Grace!” Leah croaked, sinking to her knees-they wouldn’t hold her anymore. “Oh God, please!”

The judge asked the woman holding the baby, “Who is the social worker who placed this foster child with you?”

“That woman… the one who just… left.” Gertrude swallowed, nodding toward the door. “Joan Goulden.”

The whole room seemed to sigh and Leah dropped her head, sobbing, and she felt Rob’s hands on her shoulders and then he was kneeling behind her, holding her around the waist, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

But it didn’t matter because the judge nodded to Gertrude, who took two, three, hesitant steps forward and dropped to her knees too, holding the still crying Grace out to her mother.

“Take her,” Gertrude urged.

And then Leah was holding her baby for the first time, all over again, her tears dropping on Grace’s sweet, fat cheeks just like they had on the day she was born.

“Grace,” Leah whispered, rocking her back and forth, the baby’s cries slowing and then stopping, her head cocked, eyes open, as if listening to her mother whisper her name over and over. “Grace, Grace, Grace…”

“She’s so beautiful,” Rob whispered, reaching around to let Grace grasp his index finger, and she did, hanging on tight. “Oh Leah, she looks just like you.”

They were surrounded, everyone crowding around, kneeling down to see the baby, Erica and Clay and Patty, even Donald knelt down to get a good look at the baby who had been the spoils of his victory in the courtroom today. Rebecca came over, and she was followed by a few more curious bystanders, and before she knew it, Leah and Grace were completely surrounded by a circle of adoring admirers.

Leah felt them all around her, kneeling down to exclaim over Grace like they had knelt around the manger of baby Jesus, marveling in wonder at the world begun again in one perfect expression of God as they all looked into