Then it came again.
Thin. High. Desperate. Not a cat. Not the wind.
I dropped the towel and went to the window that faces the small park across the street. Under the orange streetlight, on the closest bench, I could see Jax. He was sitting cross-legged, his boots up on the bench, his jacket hanging open despite the cold. His pink hair caught the streetlight and glowed. He was bent forward over something in his arms, his whole body curved around it like a shield.
I grabbed the nearest coat, shoved my bare feet into whatever shoes were at the bottom of the stairs, and ran.
The cold hit me like a wall when I got outside. I crossed the street at a sprint, the frozen ground hard under my thin-soled shoes, my breath coming in white clouds.
“Jax! What is that?!”
He looked up when he heard me. His face was calm. Not the smug calm he deploys when he knows he has done something that will irritate me. Not the studied boredom he uses as armor at school. Just steady and present, his attention fully on the thing in his arms.
“Mom,” he said quietly. “Someone left this baby here. I couldn’t walk away.”
I stopped so fast I nearly slipped on a patch of ice.
Not trash. Not clothes. Not anything my brain had been reaching for as an explanation. A newborn. Tiny and red-faced and wrapped in a blanket so thin it might as well have been paper. No hat. Bare hands. His mouth opening and closing in weak, exhausted cries. His entire body shaking.
