Crescent Heart

W silently in the bus station a few minutes before midnight, Carolyn and Art Bradley wondered how in the world they had gotten themselves into this baby business. Neither of them wanted to voice an opinion, neither wanted to lose the courage they had so carefully nurtured together, but privately each speculated: Carolyn had answered the advertisement, made the first call; but Art kept talking about how empty their house seemed. Yet even to themselves the answer was obvious: they wanted a baby, and they were willing to do whatever was necessary to get one, including meeting a complete stranger at a midnight bus station and housing her for three months. In fact, the Bradleys had paid an exceptional amount of money to the Lullaby Adoption Agency for just such an opportunity, and they were in way too deep, psychologically as well as financially, to back out now. At least the bus appeared to be on schedule. Midnight was not the time to wait for a bus, or to arrive in one, for that matter. But the message Carolyn had received earlier that afternoon, sufficiently cryptic to start the secretaries talking in her office, was clear on the time of arrival: “K. Miller on Greyhound from Dayton at 12:12 a.m.” A few days earlier they had been notified that their pending obligation was being called in—a sort of last minute check by Lullaby to be sure the couple wasn’t reneging—but real information, other than a first initial and a last name, had been purposely withheld. Confidentiality was a large part of any adoption program, yet somehow they had expected a little more than a name and bus route. After all, this was not the mother of their future baby; they were simply obliged