Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [88]
I roll my window down, too, and cold air rushes into the truck. “I got the address about an hour ago,” Warren says. “Wanted to see the place for myself. It looks like we got lucky.”
The table is well lit from a chandelier overhead. I spot a turkey, red flowers, white bowls of food. I count half a dozen kids, at least that many adults. There’s an old woman at one end of the table, a man at the other. A boy reaches for a pitcher. A woman is walking back and forth under the archway of the wide opening from the dining room to the rest of the house. She’s holding a baby against her shoulder.
I take a quick glance at my father.
The baby is wrapped in a white blanket that reveals only a tiny face, spiky black hair. The woman paces with a little jounce in her step, as if she is trying to get the baby to fall asleep or to burp her. She laughs and says something to a man at the table. The baby bobs her head and buries her face in the woman’s shoulder. Almost absentmindedly, the woman gives the top of the baby’s head a kiss.
“This is a foster home,” Warren says. “The baby will almost certainly be adopted. White baby. Infant. But this is a good place to be for now. Some of them aren’t so good, but this is a good one. After this I won’t know where she’s gone. It’s why I wanted you to see her now.”
My father is still, as if watching a critical scene in a film, a scene that makes you hold your breath. I know that he is thinking about Clara, and that there is, inside of him, an immense pain. But there is, too, a kind of healing, the equivalent of a sigh released. Through a lighted window we watch Baby Doris, whose real name we will never know.
After a time my father turns. “You ready?” he asks.
I try to speak. I shake my head.
My father nods, and Warren knows to put the Jeep in gear.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the wonderful Ginger Barber—agent, confidante, good friend.
About the Author
Anita Shreve is the author of the acclaimed novels Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Resistance, The Weight of Water, The Pilot’s Wife, Fortune’s Rocks, The Last Time They Met, Sea Glass, and All He Ever Wanted. She lives in Massachusetts.