“Etta,” she said.
“Etta?”
But I really messed up in the way I said it, because I said it like that was the weirdest name for a baby in the world. Which I sort of really did think, so the screwup was just in my not keeping that thought to myself.
I should have said something more like “Oh, that’s an interesting name for a baby, I never heard it before. Is there a story behind that?”
I tried to do that, but it came out even wronger.
I said, “What kind of a name is Etta?”
I swear I really meant it to be more like that polite way, but it just came out all messed up because when I’m nervous around people I make stupid mistakes.
“It’s a perfectly nice name,” she said, and she was bristly again by then but I guess I didn’t blame her. “You know. Like Etta James.”
“I have no idea who that is,” I said.
I was actually trying to start a conversation that would get better as it went along, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have known it to hear me.
She just shook her head and they all walked away.
It was just me and the lady cop again. I looked at her and she looked at me.
“Boy, I really messed that up,” I said, “didn’t I?”
“Well,” she said, “if it helps any to know, so did she.”
And it did help—in fact, it helped a lot. I don’t think she ever really knew how much it meant to me when she told me how other people, even fully grown people, mess things up, too.
Chapter Eleven
Brooke: Given Time
I slept a little that night. But only a little. I had Etta in the bed with me. Of course. She was spooned into my chest and belly, and I had an arm over her.
No way was I letting her go again.
Then I woke up and it was dark.
The glowing clock by the bed said it was a little after three. And I just stayed awake, because I wanted to look at her. I had been holding her close in my sleep, but I wanted to know I was holding her close.
It struck me that when morning came I would have to call in sick to work at the department store again. Tell them I was not coming in. Because I wasn’t letting Etta go to day care so soon. I wasn’t letting her go, period. They would ask how long. I had no idea what to tell them. Maybe I would never let her go again.
Maybe I would quit that damn job. Get a better one when Etta and I were over this. If we ever were. My mother would understand that for a time I wouldn’t be saving money to move out. She would have to understand.
Etta started talking in her sleep.
She said, “Brave girl, quiet girl.”
Which struck me as an odd thing for her to say. She never had before.
She didn’t really pronounce the qu sound in quiet, because she hadn’t gotten that sound down yet. But I knew what she meant. I was her mother and I understood everything she said.
I lay still for a time to see if she would say more.
She didn’t.
After a while I reached over her and took my cell phone off the bedside table. Dialed Grace Beatty’s direct line by heart. I knew if I waited too long she would go off shift. And then what I needed to say to her would have to go unsaid for another day. I felt like I couldn’t carry one more thing inside me. I was so emotionally exhausted. Everything felt impossible.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Beatty,” she said.
I said, “It’s me.” And in the silence that followed, I realized it was a strangely intimate thing to say. Almost embarrassingly so.
“Everything okay over there?”
“Yeah. Fine. I just realized that I left without really saying thank you to you. Without telling you how much I appreciate all you did.”
“With all due respect, Brooke . . . ,” she began, and her voice sounded firm. Like she was about to school me in something. It chilled me all through my gut. My emotionally exhausted gut. “. . . I’m not the one you need to be thanking, and I think you know it. I do this for a living. I got paid for helping you.”
“I did say thank you to her,” I said. I sounded like a petulant child. It embarrassed me to hear myself.
“Look,” she said. “I’m not the voice of your conscience, Brooke. I can’t tell you who to appreciate. But I took a full statement from Molly, and I want you to see it. I want you to read it. But in the morning, after you get some sleep. I can’t tell you for a fact that the danger she thought was keeping her from coming out of hiding was everything she thought it was. But I can tell you she thought it was. She had a hellish night protecting your little girl. So take a couple of days to read her story and rest up and get it all sorted out in your head. We’re placing her in a foster home today, and we’ll give her a little time to settle in, and then if you feel you have more to say to her, you give me a call and I’ll work it out so you can see her.”
“Okay,” I said.
A silence fell. And in the silence, Etta said, “Brave girl, quiet girl.” But she was still asleep.
“I’m sorry,” Grace said. “I didn’t hear that.”
“I didn’t say anything. That was Etta. Talking in her sleep.”
“Oh. What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Brave girl, quiet girl.’”
“That’s interesting. Any idea why she said that?”
“No idea at all.”
But it was not entirely true. Simple common sense dictated that she must have heard the phrase while we were apart. And there was really only one person she could have heard it from.
I made a mental note to find someone
