Free Hush Little Baby by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

blaring in your ears and cars ripping past you because you were delaying them five seconds.
    “The woods are going to eat us,” said Muffin.
    “Don’t be silly,” said Kit. “Probably when we get to their house, it’ll be this beautiful mansion with horses in a green field. This is Burt and Cinda’s weekend home, where they come for peace and quiet.”
    Kit turned into the lane. She’d never driven on gravel and it seemed to talk under her tires, arguing with her. Little stones spit out the sides. The woods were dark, viney, and wet. She would have turned around, except the road was so narrow, there was no way to turn around. She hardly knew how to back up. She only went places where she could go forward.
    “Or maybe,” said Muffin, “they’re witches and this is their coven.”
    And now the gravel and the woods ended and became meadow, and it turned out that the sun had not finished setting, but just vanished behind the thickness of forest. A great swath of purple and rose sky welcomed them.
    Silhouetted against the sky was a sweet little cottage with shutters at the windows, flowers in beds, and cars parked in the driveway. The drive made a little oval, so Kit was automatically facing home again and did not have to panic over how she was going to turn around.
    Already people were bursting out of the house. Three people — two men and a woman — the woman way ahead of the men.
    The woman had to be Cinda.
    Cinda was thin in a lean strong way, as if she spent her life running toward something. She was maybe thirty. She wore a plain gray T-shirt, hanging down over khaki pants. She had chosen large black-rimmed glasses, as if her dream were to be mistaken for a computer geek. Cinda was pumped. It made Kit smile to see her. Kit adored Sam the Baby, and now here was his mommy, come to snuggle and hug for the very first time.
    And yet… and yet…
    Ed was chugging behind Cinda, and in the settling dusk he looked more civilized; his pockmarks didn’t show, nor his yellow gnarly hands. Had Kit misjudged him?
    Behind them, walking slowly, almost dragging, came another man, who must be Burt. He wore blue jeans so new and starchy-looking they’d probably stand up on their own, but his pullover sweater was misshapen and the neckline was unraveling. He did not smile but glanced twice at his watch, and when he drew up to the car, it was not the baby he looked at, nor his wife, nor Kit, but Ed Bing.
    Cinda was tugging at the back door to get her hands on Sam, but all four doors were locked.
    Cinda and Ed, but not Burt, stooped to look inside the Volvo, peering and squinting, and again Ed cupped his hands to see better, and his eyes surrounded by his fat fists were red and glaring. Kit clicked the locks undone, and Cinda opened the back door.
    Row tuned the radio to an all-news-all-the-time station. There had been every kind of crime, from the new ATM scam to the old drunk driving tragedy. But no kidnapping.
    He was ill with worry.
    This had never happened to him before. Even the night before his SATs, even the hour before his first varsity game, he had not felt this sick roiling in his gut.
    At first he thought he might actually be sick, and Mom would expect him to go home, take an aspirin, and go to bed early. But if there was one thing Row hated more than being sick, it was giving in to being sick. All his life, he’d hated going to bed.
    What were his choices, here, now that he’d let Kit and Muffin drive away without him? He could go to Shea’s and twiddle around, waiting to see if they got back safely. But this would involve explanations to Aunt Karen and Uncle Anthony, and although his aunt and uncle seemed flaky to strangers, it was a facade. Messy, noisy, chaotic, and wacky — but they were very very careful of their children. Shea, who was the youngest — her two brothers were in college — did not do anything without supervision.
    He, Rowen Mason, age sixteen, with an IQ many points above Dusty’s had been