Sophie continued.
“Yesterday, I found her crying in one of the service hallways.”
I glanced at my daughter.
“What happened to the mother?”
Sophie shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
She paused.
“She told me she couldn’t take care of her.”
The baby stirred.
Sophie looked down and gently adjusted the blanket.
“She said she was going to disappear.”
My chest tightened.
“Sophie, where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer frightened me.
“You should have called the police.”
“I know.”
Her voice cracked.
“I know, Mom.”
She looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“But I was scared.”
I reached over and touched her arm.
“Scared of what?”
Sophie hesitated.
“Scared they would take the baby somewhere and she’d disappear too.”
I didn’t know what to say.
My daughter was nineteen.
She wasn’t prepared to raise a newborn.
She was barely beginning her own adult life.
But she was sitting beside me with an infant in her arms, and there was something in her expression I had never seen before.
She wasn’t playing.
She wasn’t pretending.
She was terrified.
And determined.
We stopped at a gas station so I could buy formula and diapers.
As soon as I walked inside, Sophie called after me.
“Mom?”
I turned around.
“Please don’t leave her alone.”
I looked at her.
“I won’t.”
When I returned, she was crying.
Not loudly.
Just silently, tears sliding down her cheeks while the baby slept against her.
I put the supplies in the back seat.
Then I sat beside her.
“Sophie, you need to tell me everything.”
She nodded.
She told me about the woman.
About the baby.
About how the mother had begged her to take the child.
And then she told me something that changed everything.
“She gave me this.”
Sophie reached into the diaper bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
I opened it.
There was a name written on it.
And underneath it was a phone number.
I looked at Sophie.
“Who is this?”
“The baby’s father.”
My heart sank.
“Have you called him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know if he’s safe.”
I stared at her.
“Why would you think he isn’t?”
Sophie looked down at the sleeping baby.
“Because the mother told me she was running from him.”
That was enough.
