Summer's Child. Diane Chamberlain

he asked. “Did you get hurt?”

      “I found a baby on the beach!” she said. “It’s alive but it’s all—”

      “What did you say?” Her mother sat up in bed, her brown hair jutting from her head on one side. She looked suddenly wide-awake.

      “I found a baby on the beach,” Daria said, pushing past her father to reach the bed. She tugged her mother’s hand. “I put it on the table in the kitchen. I’m afraid it might die. It’s really tiny, and it’s got a lot of blood on it.”

      Her mother was out of the bed more quickly than Daria had seen her move in months. She pulled on her robe and slippers and raced down the stairs ahead of both Daria and her father.

      In the kitchen, the baby was just where Daria had left it, and the bundle was so still that she feared the baby might now truly be dead. Daria’s mother did not balk for an instant at the bloody sight, and Daria was impressed and proud as her mother lifted the crimson tank top away from the infant.

      “Dear God in heaven!” Daria’s father said, taking a step backward. But her mother was not repelled. With the practiced hands of the nurse she had once been, she began moving efficiently around the kitchen. She filled a pan with water and put it on the stove, then wet a dish towel and began cleaning the baby with it.

      Daria leaned close, made less afraid by her mother’s matter-of-fact handling of the situation. “Why is it so bloody?” she asked.

      “Because it’s a newborn,” her mother said. “She’s a newborn.”

      Daria looked closer and could see that the baby was indeed a girl.

      “Where exactly did you find her?” her mother asked.

      “She was under a horseshoe-crab shell,” Daria said.

      “Under a horseshoe-crab shell!” her mother exclaimed.

      “She was with all the shells washed in from the tide,” Daria said. “Do you think the storm last night washed her up on the beach?”

      Her mother shook her head. “No,” she said. “She would have been washed clean then. And she would have been dead.” Her lower lip trembled and her nostrils flared with quiet rage. “No, someone just left her there.”

      “I’m calling the police.” Daria’s father headed for the living room and the phone. His face had gone gray. Aunt Josie passed him on her way into the room.

      “What’s going on?” she asked. “Oh my God!” Her hand flew to her mouth as she saw the baby lying on the kitchen table.

      “I found her on the beach,” Daria explained.

      “All by herself?” Aunt Josie asked. “Where on the beach?”

      “Right in front of Cindy Trump’s cottage,” Daria said. She saw her mother and aunt exchange glances. People always did that when they talked about Cindy Trump, but Daria didn’t have a clue why.

      “The placenta is attached,” Aunt Josie said, peering closer, and Daria knew she must mean the bloody mountain still lying next to the baby.

      “I know.” Daria’s mother shook her head as she rinsed out the wet cloth under the faucet. “Isn’t this just unbelievable?”

      Daria thought of Chloe and Ellen still asleep upstairs. They shouldn’t miss this. She started toward the kitchen door.

      “Where are you going?” her mother asked.

      “To get Chloe and Ellen,” Daria said.

      “It’s not even eight o’clock,” her mother said. “Don’t wake them yet.”

      “Teenagers sleep the sleep of the dead, I swear,” Aunt Josie said.

      Chloe and Ellen would probably blame her for not waking them, but Daria thought it best to be obedient just then. She stepped close to the table again and watched as her mother slipped the blades of the kitchen scissors into the boiling water for a moment, then snipped the cord coming from the baby’s belly button. Finally, the baby was free of the horrible, pulpy mass. Aunt Josie brought a towel from the downstairs bathroom and Daria’s mother wrapped it around the newly bathed baby and lifted the bundle to her chest. She rocked the baby back and forth. “Poor darling little thing,” she said softly. “Poor little castaway.” Daria thought it had been years since she’d seen so much life in her mother’s eyes.

      The policemen and rescue squad arrived within minutes. One of the rescue-squad workers, a young man with long hair, nearly had to pry the infant from Daria’s mother’s arms. Still wearing her robe and slippers, she followed the baby to the ambulance. She stood watching the vehicle as it drove away, and she stayed there for several minutes after the ambulance had turned onto the beach road from the cul-de-sac.

      Meanwhile, the policemen were full of questions, mainly for Daria. They sat with her on the screened porch of the Sea Shanty and went over and over the details of her discovery until she herself began to feel guilty, as though she had done something terribly wrong and would be hauled off to jail any moment. After questioning her for nearly half an hour, they sent her inside while they spoke with her parents and Aunt Josie. Daria sat on the wicker chair in the living room, the one right next to the window that opened onto the porch, so she could listen to whatever the grown-ups had to say.

      “Can you tell us what teenage girls live on this cul-de-sac?” one of the policemen asked.

      Aunt Josie began ticking them off. “That cottage there on the beach,” she said, “There’s a fast girl lives there. Cindy Trump. I’ve heard the boys call her Cindy Tramp, because she’s easy, if you know what I mean.”

      “Oh, you shouldn’t say that, Josie,” Daria’s mother scolded.

      “But I saw her yesterday,” Daria’s father said. “She didn’t look pregnant to me.”

      Daria leaned her cheek against the wicker back of the chair, positioning herself to hear better. This was fascinating talk.

      “I saw her, too,” Aunt Josie said. “She had on a big white shirt, like a man’s shirt. She could have been hiding anything under there.”

      Daria could almost hear her father’s shrug of defeat. Aunt Josie had been married to his brother, who had died five years ago, and she always seemed to get her way with Daria’s dad.

      Aunt Josie began speaking again. “There’s that girl Linda, who—”

      “She’s only fourteen,” Daria’s mother protested. “And she’s so shy. Why, she can’t even talk to the boys, much less…” Her voice trailed off.

      “We’d still like to know what girls are on the cul-de-sac,” one of the policemen said. “Whether you think they could be the mother of that baby or not. How about in this cottage? Any girls besides Supergirl? Daria?”

      Supergirl? Daria grinned to herself.

      “Yes,” Daria’s father said, “but they’re good Catholic girls.”

      “My daughter, Ellen, is fifteen,” Aunt Josie said. “And I can assure you she was not pregnant.”

      “Same for our daughter, Chloe.” Daria’s father sounded insulted that Chloe might be considered a suspect. “She goes to Catholic University. Got in when she was only sixteen, so you can guess she spends most of her time hitting the books.”

      Daria wasn’t so sure about that. Chloe was smart enough to get good grades without doing much studying.

      “Anyone else?” one of the officers asked.

      “In this cottage?” Aunt Josie asked. “No, but there’s a couple more girls on this block. There’s Polly across the street.”

      “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Josie,” Daria’s mother said. “She’s mentally retarded. Do you really think—”

      “She’s