Finally a Mother. Dana Corbit

hat.”

      Though that gaze flicked to the trooper’s hat in unspoken challenge, the boy yanked his cap off by the bill. A mess of greasy dark blond hair fell loose.

      “Thank you.” Mark left his own cover in place, as state police policy required that troopers wear them whenever responding to a call. “How old are you, Blake?”

      “Fourteen.”

      He bit at skin on the corner of his pinky fingernail and then, switching hands, chewed again. His fingernails were so heavily bitten that it was a wonder he still found anything left to nibble. Just fourteen. Mark jotted the figure in his notebook, guessing that the jaded boy’s life experience made him much older than that. “The store manager has reported that you were caught in possession of shoplifted items when you left the store. Can you tell me what happened?”

      The boy shrugged. “I was hungry.”

      The manager materialized in the doorway. “Oh, he was hungry, all right. He walked out of the place like it was a food bank or something.”

      “Food bank?”

      In answer to Mark’s question, the man indicated items arranged on a table lining the office’s back wall. Something heavy settled in Mark’s throat. No cold medicine that could be cooked up into more powerful drugs. Not even a six-pack of beer or a pack of cigarettes. The suspect was accused of swiping a half gallon of milk, a box of corn flakes and a carton of cherry toaster pastries. A teenager’s breakfast of champions. Arresting a hungry kid was the last thing he wanted to do, particularly so close to the annual gorgefest that was Thanksgiving, but unpleasant tasks sometimes were part of the job.

      He turned to the store manager. “Thank you for your help. I will be taking Mr. Wilson back to the post for further questioning. I will be in touch.”

      The trip would also include a breakfast stop at a fast-food restaurant, but Mark didn’t mention that to the manager, who would be complaining about special treatment. He’d questioned many things about his new faith that had helped him to turn his life around and then failed to keep his wife from leaving him, but the lesson he’d learned about feeding the hungry still seemed like a good idea.

      Soon the suspect was Mirandized, cuffed and seated in the back of the patrol car, and they were headed west on the Interstate toward the post. Well, fidgeting in the backseat, anyway. How Blake had managed to do that with his hands cuffed, Mark wasn’t sure, but the boy’s wiggling had already caused the blanket that Mark had tucked around his shoulders to fall behind him. The only thing that stayed in place was the hat that Mark had returned to him.

      “You’re just going to make the cuffs rub your wrists raw,” he pointed out.

      “So?”

      But the squirming stopped for about a minute, and then it resumed as if the boy couldn’t control it. Instead of mentioning it again, Mark took the Milford Road exit and headed south toward a shopping plaza with several fast-food restaurants nearby.

      “We’ll call your parents once we reach the Brighton Post, but I’m hungry, so I’m going to stop for some breakfast.” He glanced at the boy in his rearview mirror. “I can pick something up for you if you like.”

      Unmasked longing flitted through Blake’s eyes as he took in the brightly colored fast-food restaurant signs, but he blinked it away as he met Mark’s gaze in the glass.

      “Can’t we just go to my house first? I mean...it’s right by here.”

      Mark wasn’t sure which surprised him more, that a hungry teen was turning down food or that the boy was begging to see his parents sooner than he would have been forced to once they reached the post. Since he’d suspected that Blake might be a runaway, he was curious to see just how close they lived.

      “Why would you want to go there now?”

      “My parents will go ballistic when they hear about me getting into trouble anyway, so we might as well get it over with.”

      The Lie-o-meter should have exploded on that one because Mark wasn’t buying it. The kid had probably figured out that the store was unlikely to press charges. Or maybe he had a juvenile record a mile long and wanted to delay Mark’s chance to get back to his computer. Mark’s lips lifted at the thought. Blake had missed the laptop mounted on the patrol car’s dashboard if he believed a side trip could slow access to that information.

      “Good to get it over with.” His gaze flicked to the mirror. “Sure you don’t want to eat something before—”

      Blake shook his head, interrupting him. That settled it. Something was making the boy desperate to get home. Something more powerful than hunger intense enough to drive him to steal. And Mark had to know what it was.

      “Okay, what’s your address?”

      He popped open the laptop and typed the address Blake gave him into the GPS. The short trip led to a rural area near the line that separated Oakland and Livingston counties. Turning off on a county road, he made a second left onto a lane with only a few houses spaced along it. He pulled onto the narrow drive of an expansive two-story brick house, remarkable in no way beyond its size. The place had seen better days. Its outbuildings were faded. Its gutters hung loose. Its long, blacktop drive begged for recoating. The owner had obviously tried to warm up the place with a fall display of hay bales and yellow chrysanthemums next to the porch, but the effort only reminded Mark of a tiny color portrait on a bare wall.

      “Is this it?” At least it was a house. Many of the suspects he’d met lived with less. Far less.

      “Guess so.”

      From the way Blake was looking at the place, Mark could only guess that he hadn’t been there in a while. Maybe his premise about the boy being a runaway was right. No need to mention it now, though. He would have answers to at least some of his questions soon.

      “Sure your parents will be home?”

      “Hope so.”

      Mark climbed out of the car, put his cover on his head and crossed to the rear door on the passenger side. After Mark had helped him out of the car, Blake looked over his shoulder, indicating his cuffed hands.

      “Sorry,” he said with a shake of his head.

      Frowning, the boy allowed the trooper to lead him up the walk. They climbed the crumbling steps onto the porch, and Mark rang the bell. Female voices filtered through the wood before a young girl pulled open the door. A very pregnant Hispanic teen.

      She stared at them with wide eyes. “May I help you?”

      “Who is it?” Another teenager pressed in next to her, this one a Caucasian blonde, clearly pregnant, as well. She shifted her feet, and her gaze slid right to left in that uncomfortable reaction that even innocent citizens sometimes have to an officer in uniform.

      “Is it for Miss Shannon?” A third teen, this one African-American with what appeared to be the beginning of a baby bump, pulled the door wider so she could fit into the space.

      Finally, the door came fully open, and enough girls to field a soccer team looked out at them, some with open curiosity, others with caution. Most were clearly pregnant.

      What had he just walked into? Mark scanned the front of the house, trying to locate a sign, but he didn’t see one. He’d had no idea that homes for unwed mothers still existed. Didn’t pregnant girls usually walk the same high school halls with other students these days? It was obvious, though, that Blake had played a joke on him by leading him to one of these places out of the past. The kid might think this was funny now, but he wouldn’t be laughing when they returned to the station and he booked him.

      But when Mark turned to him, Blake wasn’t paying any attention to him. He was staring straight ahead, his posture rigid, his chest pushed forward. Mark followed the boy’s gaze to the petite brunette who had appeared in front of the girls. And Mark couldn’t have looked away if the woman had demanded it with a handgun.

      She