Free Book of Mercy by Sherry Roberts Page A

observed.
    “That’s about the size of it,” Antigone said. “Is it any wonder his mother was frantic to get him out of that environment?”
    “Well, what about the vaccination record?”
    “We did have that,” Antigone saw Mrs. Sweetings’s tense shoulders begin to relax, “but my deer ate it.”
    “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Mrs. Sweetings said. She shuffled the forms in front of her and restacked them in even neater piles. “Ms. Brown, I really can’t admit the boy without some documentation that he even exists.”
    “Course, I exist. I’m standin’ right in front of you,” Ryder said belligerently. Mrs. Sweetings took a step back.
    Antigone quickly inserted herself between the two. “Look, would just a birth certificate do?” Mrs. Sweetings gave a curt nod. “I’ll have my sister write the county clerk’s office in New York and get them to mail us a copy. Surely, there’s one on file. In the meantime, can’t he just start school?”
    “I’m not supposed to do this, Ms. Brown.”
    “Mrs. Sweetings,” Antigone appealed, “this isn’t some impersonal place like New York. Don’t we in Mercy care what happens to our children? This town didn’t get its name for being rigid and inflexible.”
    It actually was named for a textile mill, where at the turn of the century children much younger than Ryder worked long hours beside their parents amid noisy and dangerous machinery. In its heyday, Mercy towels were known throughout the country as “the bath towel that shows no mercy to moisture.”
    “Well,” Mrs. Sweetings considered for a moment, “we wouldn’t want him to get behind in his schoolwork. But I will be watching the mail for that birth certificate, Ms. Brown.”
    “Of course.” Antigone shook her hand and thanked her.
    “Simply take this form down the hall to the guidance office, and they’ll help you with your schedule. Welcome to tenth grade, Irwin.”
    Ryder stiffened beside Antigone, who grabbed the paper and quickly ushered him out of the office. “She start spreadin’ that Irwin shit around, and we’re gonna have a problem,” he said.

Chapter 9
Doing Business with Hector Bob
    “Y OU REALIZE WE’RE PROBABLY breaking, like, a zillion laws,” Ryder said.
    Antigone looked at him. “Yeah. Don’t tell Sam.”
    Antigone Brown, five months pregnant and enchanted with fetal kicks in the middle of the night, felt the tug of maternal instinct grow stronger with each day. Babies were like the moon, she discovered, capable of great gravitational effects on the senses and feelings of their mothers. Perhaps that’s why she found herself in a deserted back street that served as the office of a man named Hector Bob. Something she didn’t understand had pushed her here, and she couldn’t remember ever being so frightened.
    “I need to go to the bathroom,” she said.
    “You went five times on the way,” Ryder said. “And I wouldn’t trust the ‘facilities’ around here.”
    Antigone glanced around them. He was right. It was a bright September day, a day to ride with the top down and laugh and embrace the wind. Instead, they huddled in the red Mustang behind an abandoned hotel in a once bustling part of Greensboro, North Carolina. Antigone had intentionally parked in the middle of the alley, in the glaring sun, away from the shadowy buildings. Ryder complained that they were too exposed with the convertible top down, but Antigone insisted that she needed air—lots of air.
    At one time, trains rattled the railroad tracks behind the old hotel. Sleepy travelers woke to shaking beds and the early morning light in their eastern windows. Now mice and vagrants slept peacefully in the abandoned clapboard hotel and traveled the unused tracks like trails through the urban woods. It was a forgotten place, left behind by glass skyscrapers, a place for rendezvous of the questionable kind.
    Sam thought they were shopping for a baby stroller when, in reality, they were in the