“Where on earth did you pick up that filthy child, Jonathan? I am nine months pregnant, and I absolutely do not need an infection brought into this house!”
Rebecca stood frozen in the doorway of their suburban home, one hand pressed firmly against her massive belly while the other gripped the frame of the door until her knuckles turned white. Her husband, Jonathan, had just walked through the front door after his shift at the regional hospital, but he was not walking alone. Trailing behind his tired legs was a boy no older than four, a child so thin he looked like a gust of wind might blow him away, wearing scuffed shoes and a jacket so caked in grime that it looked like he had been sleeping on the concrete for weeks.
The little boy looked up, his large, pale eyes wide with an animalistic fear, as if he fully expected to be kicked out back into the rain at any moment.
“His name is Finn,” Jonathan said with a maddeningly calm tone that Rebecca found deeply insulting given the circumstances. “He is staying here tonight, and that is not all, because he is actually going to be living with us from now on.”
“Excuse me, are you out of your mind?” Rebecca let out a sharp, dry laugh that sounded more like a bark of disbelief. “Our baby is due literally any minute now, and her nursery is perfectly ready, her clothes are freshly laundered, and her crib is waiting for her, yet you decide to drag a stray child off the street like he is some kind of abandoned puppy?”
Jonathan did not flinch, simply dropping the boy’s battered, empty backpack on the floor by the entryway.
“His mother passed away in the emergency room tonight, and he has absolutely no one left in this world to take care of him.”
“Then you should have taken him to the social services office, because that is exactly what those facilities are for,” she replied, lowering her voice but allowing the full weight of her contempt to color every word. “I am not running a shelter here, and I certainly have no intention of raising some stranger’s child while I am about to deliver my own.”
The boy immediately ducked his head, and Rebecca watched as his small, grimy hands tightened their grip on the hem of a shirt that was clearly three sizes too big for him. A strange, uncomfortable tugging sensation blossomed in her chest, but she ruthlessly crushed it down, telling herself that she could not afford to be weak or sentimental, not right now when her own life was reaching a breaking point.
“You are going to take him to the bathroom and get him cleaned up,” Jonathan ordered, his voice taking on a stern edge. “After that, he will eat a hot dinner and then sleep in the nursery crib.”
“Do not you dare even think about it!” she shouted, her voice echoing against the walls. “That room belongs to my daughter and I will not have it tainted.”
“It is big enough to be his room as well, Rebecca,” Jonathan said, ignoring her fury.
Rebecca felt the heat rising in her blood until she thought she might scream. While Jonathan went to fill the bathtub, she grabbed an old t-shirt and some spare socks, telling herself she was only doing it because she did not want the child to ruin her clean furniture, not out of any sense of pity. When Jonathan emerged with Finn, who now looked even more fragile and exposed in clothes that hung off his thin frame, the boy sat on his lap and began to eat with a desperate, frantic hunger that made Rebecca physically turn away to hide her face.
“Tomorrow we are going to go out and buy him proper clothes, new shoes, and I will take him to a barber for a haircut,” Jonathan stated, clearly unfazed by her glares. “Then we need to figure out a school district for him.”
“You will take him right back to wherever you found him tomorrow morning,” Rebecca snapped, her jaw set. “I am not keeping this child in my home under any circumstances.”
Jonathan clenched his jaw so tightly that his neck muscles stood out in rigid cords.
“Do not talk like that when he can hear you, Rebecca,” he warned.
“Let him hear me, because he deserves to know right now that he is not welcome here and that he is only a temporary inconvenience,” she retorted.
