Dana Corbit - Finally a Mother

Tonya grinned as she tightened the band on her raven ponytail. “Then could you look at this problem for me?”

“Absolutely.”

The request for study help came as a relief from the intensity of the moment, that is until she recognized that the honor student was working on derivatives.

“Are you sure you want my help? Can it wait until Mrs. Wright comes back to teach on Monday?”

Her ponytail bobbed as she shook her head, her hand resting on the curve of her tummy. “Today you’re all we’ve got.”

Tonya probably hadn’t intended for her comment to be a monumental statement, but their gazes connected with the truth of her words. While the girls were at Hope Haven, Shannon really was all they had. Well, she and a second social worker, a part-time classroom instructor, a weekends-only cook and a visiting minister, anyway.

Still, her girls were relying on her to help them navigate this terrifying journey into teenage motherhood. They needed her to teach them about proper nutrition and prenatal care, help them keep up with their online high school classes, pray with them, cry with them. And yes, she would even help them with derivatives once she refreshed her memory on how to find those.

“Well, let’s give it a shot.”

She pulled over a chair and sat next to Tonya, studying the steps the teen had typed below the math problem.

“Wait. You multiplied the coefficient wrong here.”

Pushing her red wire glasses up on her nose, Tonya studied the screen and then smiled. “Maybe I should learn to multiply before I take on calculus.”

“The simple mistakes are the ones that trip us up.” Shannon pushed back from the desk and stood, grateful that the answer had been easy to locate.

If only the solutions to the challenges facing these teens were as obvious or as simple. Some of the girls and their families would choose to keep the babies, with real or idealized expectations. Several would choose adoption and become the answer to prayer for childless couples. Some would return to their former lives and try to forget this ever happened. But the truth remained that no matter what decisions they made, no matter what justifications they gave for their choices, none of these girls would ever be the same.

Shannon understood that most of all.

* * *

The pungent scent of stale ice assailed his senses as Trooper Mark Shoffner passed through the frozen-food section on his way to the Savers’ Mart store office. The suspect hadn’t picked the most sanitary place in Commerce Township to hit, but he’d been wrong in assuming that the staff would be equally lax on theft recovery.

Inside the office, the juvenile suspect slouched in a chair in a belligerent teen pose: arms and ankles crossed, a Detroit Tigers baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Mark stopped outside the door, sighing. He’d drawn the short straw again as the new guy at the Brighton Post, having to deal with another James Dean wannabe, especially so early on a school day. If only he hadn’t responded to the call from the area dispatcher.

He had to be the biggest misery magnet on the Michigan State Police force. If his cheating ex-wife, who blamed her infidelity on his marriage to the force instead of her, wasn’t enough, then state cuts requiring the closure of the Iron River Post helped cinch the title for him. With setbacks like these, how was he supposed to build a decorated police career that could prove he wasn’t a juvenile delinquent anymore?

Mark referred to his notes from the manager and looked to the boy again. “Blake Wilson?”

“Present.”

Blake lifted his hand and let it fall without bothering to look up. He was trying to appear tough, all right. But the coating of filth on his jeans, sneakers and flimsy zipper sweatshirt and the grime melding with the crop of peach fuzz on his chin hinted that the world was beating up on Blake Wilson instead of the other way around.

“Well, good.” Mark stepped over the boy’s outstretched legs, pulled out a second chair from behind the desk and dropped into it. “I’m Trooper Shoffner of the Michigan State Police. Now, I’ll tell you how this is going to go. You’re going to sit up in that chair, take off that hat and look me in the eye. Then we’re going to have a talk.”

“So that’s how it’s going to go, huh?” The boy continued to stare at a spot on the floor.

“Unless you prefer me to cuff you now and take you on a ride in my patrol car first.”

Seconds passed without any movement from the teen, but Mark folded his hands and waited. One of them had to win this power struggle, and it was going to be him. Though they’d only just met, Mark knew the kid well. He’d been that kid. But he wasn’t that guy anymore, whether others accepted that truth or not, and he needed to stick with the present if he wanted to show the suspect who was in charge.

Finally, Blake straightened and lifted his head, meeting Mark’s gaze with intelligent hazel eyes.

“The hat.”

Though that gaze flicked to the trooper’s hat in unspoken challenge, the boy yanked his cap off by the bill. A mess of greasy dark blond hair fell loose.

“Thank you.” Mark left his own cover in place, as state police policy required that troopers wear them whenever responding to a call. “How old are you, Blake?”

“Fourteen.”

He bit at skin on the corner of his pinky fingernail and then, switching hands, chewed again. His fingernails were so heavily bitten that it was a wonder he still found anything left to nibble. Just fourteen. Mark jotted the figure in his notebook, guessing that the jaded boy’s life experience made him much older than that. “The store manager has reported that you were caught in possession of shoplifted items when you left the store. Can you tell me what happened?”

The boy shrugged. “I was hungry.”

The manager materialized in the doorway. “Oh, he was hungry, all right. He walked out of the place like it was a food bank or something.”

“Food bank?”

In answer to Mark’s question, the man indicated items arranged on a table lining the office’s back wall. Something heavy settled in Mark’s throat. No cold medicine that could be cooked up into more powerful drugs. Not even a six-pack of beer or a pack of cigarettes. The suspect was accused of swiping a half gallon of milk, a box of corn flakes and a carton of cherry toaster pastries. A teenager’s breakfast of champions. Arresting a hungry kid was the last thing he wanted to do, particularly so close to the annual gorgefest that was Thanksgiving, but unpleasant tasks sometimes were part of the job.

He turned to the store manager. “Thank you for your help. I will be taking Mr. Wilson back to the post for further questioning. I will be in touch.”

The trip would also include a breakfast stop at a fast-food restaurant, but Mark didn’t mention that to the manager, who would be complaining about special treatment. He’d questioned many things about his new faith that had helped him to turn his life around and then failed to keep his wife from leaving him, but the lesson he’d learned about feeding the hungry still seemed like a good idea.

Soon the suspect was Mirandized, cuffed and seated in the back of the patrol car, and they were headed west on the Interstate toward the post. Well, fidgeting in the backseat, anyway. How Blake had managed to do that with his hands cuffed, Mark wasn’t sure, but the boy’s wiggling had already caused the blanket that Mark had tucked around his shoulders to fall behind him. The only thing that stayed in place was the hat that Mark had returned to him.

“You’re just going to make the cuffs rub your wrists raw,” he pointed out.

“So?”

But the squirming stopped for about a minute, and then it resumed as if the boy couldn’t control it. Instead of mentioning it again, Mark took the Milford Road exit and headed south toward a shopping plaza with several fast-food restaurants nearby.