* * * *
The impossible was happening. Right before her eyes, Sabrina’s son was perceptibly growing.
It defied all biology, this exponential enlarging of a newborn whose umbilical connection disappeared by sheer force. But the more Sabrina looked into those blue eyes, those facial foreshadows of Uriah’s stoicism, those fluffs of dirty-blond hair, that skin so strikingly intermediate between her pale and Uriah’s dark – it was God’s cry to her that this was real, that young Michael was her own. The maternal bond was too much like Mom had described it.
At first the changes were as undetectable to a constant observer as the drying of paint, but as the afternoon passed Sabrina had the sense of viewing a fast-forwarded recording. God only knows what this’ll do to screw him up mentally.
The boy nestled in her arms, for she was sitting up now, having endured a sharp afterbirth. Michael studied the arid environment with uncanny placidity. He took particular interest in the derelict machinery, giving the cold shoulder to any passing animals and even to the tempestuous expressions of his mother.
As she shot worried glances into the distance and rubbed her lower belly uneasily, Sabrina realized that Michael might very well become her opposite, only extremely so. At this rate, he would have the mind of a one-year-old upon reaching her physical age. Probably worse.
She’d tried to make him drink, but paradoxically the boy who grew at lightning speed neither wanted nutrition, nor required it. Lucky kid.
It wasn’t luck, of course, but she gave up trying to make sense of things. What scared her was that the surrealism of this real world had begun to kill the faith she tended to fall back on, when sense failed. Not necessarily her newfound religion. This was a despair more powerful than that part of her that had slogged through every adversity in her life, just for life’s sake.
What was worth doing, now that she couldn’t trust the order of the universe itself?
Michael climbed off Sabrina and took his first steps. He stopped at the front door of a building, which opened automatically to greet him.
Finlon Humane Society.
Sabrina found upon standing that she had recovered quickly. Whatever bizarre trait he had, he must have inherited it from his moon-resident mother. Apparently Marshall was capriciously doling out nuggets of mercy to try to get some Stockholm syndrome out of her, but she wasn’t prepared to let this work. She staggered, now decently dressed, toward her wayward son.
By the time she was inside, Michael had his index finger pointed toward a robotic dog. The purest fascination was in his eyes as he turned toward his mother.
Her guts settled about a foot lower than normal. “No, Michael!” She snatched him up into her arms, exited the building, and set her sights west, where Jane had gone.
“Mama.”
Sabrina stopped to look him in the eyes. “Yes, Michael,” she told him with more seriousness than she remembered ever hearing from Cheryl McAllister as a kid. “I’m your mama. And you’re my son.” She broke eye contact and marched down the Aberdeen road. “You may be a freak, maybe even a pawn in Marshall’s game, but you’re my son.”
Her belt buzzed.