Free Stealing Time by Leslie Glass

She shivered in her spring jacket. A three-quarter moon hung in the sky, just above the block of houses, lending them an exotic touch. April figured the bulb must have burned out and her mother didn't have a spare one in the house to change it. She couldn't reach the socket anyway. For the ten thousandth time April told herself it wasn't easy having a mother who couldn't drive and didn't like going to an American store by herself. Sai knew the prices of things but couldn't read labels or signs. She also didn't like being in the dark. April thought it wasn't so easy being her, either.
She put "Get lightbulbs" on her mental list of things to do for her mother, then stood for a moment, drinking in the night, before going into the house. Sometimes she did this as a kind of restorative after getting home from a difficult tour of duty. Out in Queens, with no towering buildings nearby, there was open sky over her head, and the moon and stars felt like close friends. By their light alone she could see the hot-pink flowers on the azalea bushes that her mother had nagged her father so relentlessly to get. She had been right about them, at least. The shrubs lined the walk like runway lights, inviting her in.
April realized something else was wrong. No lights were on inside the house, either. She frowned and suddenly felt afraid. Her mother didn't drive. Her father didn't drive. Skinny always waited up for April no matter how late she was. This was a common cause of complaint, for April's hours were erratic at best. Skinny didn't care that crime didn't punch a time clock—she thought her daughter was inconsiderate. So where were they?
April opened the door with her key and went inside. No light shone from the kitchen where Skinny sat out her days and nights watching TV, waiting for her husband and daughter to return from their jobs. No light was on in the living room or the big bedroom downstairs that her parents had taken for themselves. Their door was closed. All was quiet. April frowned some more. What was this about? She'd never come home before without her mother there to nag her, plague her with ten thousand questions, or try to feed her a Chinese banquet in the middle of the night. The sudden freedom to climb the stairs to her own apartment and go to sleep in peace should have made her happy. Instead she climbed the stairs to her apartment confused and upset.
April's parents had always told her the Chinese treasured their children more than any other kind of people did. Heather Rose's parents had certainly been distraught at the news of their daughter's trouble, but they hadn't known she'd been injured before. They hadn't known she had not given birth. That meant Heather Rose had kept many secrets from them. She must have felt she couldn't turn to them for help. Tonight of all nights, April had wanted to talk with her own mother about her feelings for Mike and why he was a good man. And she'd wanted to ask Skinny Dragon, the authority on all things Chinese, if there was anything in the world that would make a young mother with a rich husband abandon or kill a baby, no matter where it came from.
On the other hand, parents could turn on a dime when they were thwarted. Maybe Heather's parents had turned on her when she married Anton. Maybe her own parents were turning on her because she was spending her nights with Mike. April figured her mother knew about this the way Skinny Dragon knew about all things, and she guessed by her parents' absence that the punishment was going to be severe. She reached the last step and unlocked the door that did not keep her mother out. She prayed that tomorrow Heather Rose would wake up and talk to her and that she'd find the missing baby alive and well in the appropriate maternal arms.
April got undressed and curled up in her single bed, certain she was too wired by Heather's situation and her own to ever fall asleep. She fell asleep within minutes, however, not with any insight into whether a wife