Page 52 of Love Me Boldly

My chest went burning hot, and my lungs expanded. My heart swelled.

I had no idea who he was, but he wasmine.

It took a breath, one tiny moment, and all the plans I’d worked so hard to make for my life irrevocably changed.

My only sole focus was now on this tiny little bundle so carelessly shoved into my arms.

“Crap,” I whispered and reached for the envelope.

The little guy gurgled and tensed, but as I leaned back into the couch, he relaxed.

So he didn’t like being scrunched up.

“Sorry, little guy,” I whispered.

He peered up at me like he’d heard me and returned to sucking on his bottle, dismissing me for substance.

Couldn’t blame the guy. I tended to ignore people when I was eating too.

My hand shook as I pried open the envelope with two fingers, resettling the baby in my arms for something more comfortable for him, and then pulled out a folded, wrinkled sheet of paper. It stuck on the envelope and looked like it’d been balled up before being flattened and folded.

My heart raced, and my fingers trembled as I leaned back on the couch and unfolded the thick page of paper. Something smaller fell out, and I ignored it, my gaze stuck on the printing at the top of the paper.

State of Florida was stamped at the top of a thin, dark blue line.

“Florida,” I whispered, and my chin started wobbling. My mom lived in Florida. Or, at least, she’d been there for a time…since December, according to the date of birth.

“Jonah Hodges.” I trailed my fingertip over the printed name on the official sheet of paper and then peered down at the little boy in my arm. “Hi, Jonah.”

Tears rushed before I could stop them, dropping down my cheeks, off my chin, and onto the paper. December twenty-fifth. A Christmas baby, and my mom had cared for him enough to get his birth certificate before dropping him off here.

Had she wanted him? Had she hated that she was pregnant? She could have left him at the hospital. Given him up. She could have gotten rid of him, but she hadn’t. She’d somehow wanted him enough to have him, to bring him here.

Can’t take care of him. Don’t have time to take care of that.

Had she tried? Had she gotten off drugs? Had she tried to stay clean and then fallen back into it? God, so many questions swirled through my mind, I couldn’t think straight.

There was nothing else in the envelope, nothing else that would help me figure it out. I tossed both the envelope and the certificate to the table, and the smaller folded sheet fell to the floor. Settling the baby—Jonah—on the couch, I reached down and grabbed it.

Holly loved whales and that story.

“Oh, Mom.” I cried harder and cradled Jonah in my arms. He finished his bottle, and I propped him to my shoulder to try to burp him. Thank God when I’d still had friends, some of them had little siblings, and I’d babysat when I was younger, so I wasn’t entirely incompetent.

But I’d never done it on my own…

Now, he was all I had.

Jonah. Ihadloved whales. All from the story I’d learned in preschool back when my family was relatively normal and we went to church every weekend. That all stopped before Mom took off, but I used to have a book about Jonah and the whale. I’d sing songs about him. There was something so fascinating to me about a boy being swallowed by a whale and spit back out. A story about a boy who’d screwed up, gotten angry with God, and tried to run from him only to be found all over again.

I used to draw pictures of whales, sometimes with a tiny stick figure in the belly of it. They’d be plastered all over our refrigerator. If I searched through the pile of boxes in my closet from all the little-kid things I’d grown out of, there might still be a small orca whale in it.

Jonah. That was the name my mom gave him. She’d thought of me.

The realization hit hard and fast, and while I finished burping him and then changed his overly saturated diaper, I also got up and grabbed a pen and notebook from my school bag.

I was going to need things.

Lots of things.

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