Her new life

It was a warm day. With the temperature spiking at almost 100 degrees, and a high humidity that was ever present this close to the sea, it was uncomfortably warm. Adyson pulled her clunking old car into her driveway and parked. She turned her car off and silence pushed in on her ears. After the rattle of her old car laboring to keep running anything would sound like complete silence. The hinge of the door groaned loudly in protest when she pushed it open, and she cringed inwardly. She would have to do something about this old junker, but that would have to wait for a while. She was still desperately behind on her bills.

She walked in her front door into the living room and her heart sank, as it always did when she entered her house. It was a mess, and she knew she should be doing something about it, but she just couldn’t seem to muster up the energy to do it. The old tattered couch was covered in hair from her only pet, an old longhaired white cat that had been her only companion for 5 years, and whom she loved like a child.

She deposited her purse and keys on the coffee table and proceeded to her bedroom which did not lift her sprits any more than the rest of the house. Clothes were strewn about haphazardly, and she had to step lightly in order to avoid the piles that had accumulated over the long months of her depression. She opened her closet, hoping to find at least one clean shirt, but sighed resignedly when she found none. She opened the drawers of her dresser, one after another after finding nothing clean in these either, and slammed the last one shut in her irritation. She threw herself onto her bed and covered her face with her hands. She had no one to blame but herself, and therefore was no angrier that she should have been.

It got worse every day. She would come home and go through the whole routine over and over. She hated her job, she hated her house, she hated her life, but should couldn’t seem to get around to doing anything about it. She was hopelessly depressed. That was the worst thing about being depressed. There were a million things that helped push her into the depression, but the depression itself prevented her from getting up to change those things so she could be happier. It was a vicious cycle and there was no escape, at least none that she could see, locked in the prison she had created for herself.

She needed to get out. She should be up and cleaning, but she couldn’t face it right now. Soon, she told herself, soon, but right now she needed some time to think.

She laughed at herself. All she did was think about the hopeless situation she was in, and doing nothing about it! Then she chided herself, she had been cooped up here for months, doing nothing but going to work and come home to lounge on the couch watching whatever happened to be on. She needed to get some fresh air. She pulled the only thing that was still clean out of her dresser. It was a little tattered, but it was still a serviceable swimsuit. She pulled it on and was surprised that it still fit perfectly. She slipped into an old pair of jeans, not caring that they were dirty.

She almost ran out of her house, excited for the first time in months. She was going swimming. The drive was not long from her house to the beach. She sped a little, but not so much as to attract any unwanted attention, and reached the beach in no time. She was very surprised when she saw that there were no other cars around, which meant no other people.

She ignored the screeching of her cars’ door this time; she couldn’t have brought herself to care about it at the moment. She walked down a small hill that led to the usually crowded beach, and stopped in her tracks. A little ways down the beach and off to the side, in the only shade for a mile, stood a baby carriage. Someone must have forgotten it in the scramble to get their family back to the car and on their way home.

She walked up to it forgetting the whole reason she had come there the instant she looked inside. The baby was still in it! For a moment she feared the heat had already killed the infant, but then the tiny human stirred. Horrified that someone could have forgotten the poor baby in this heat she reached in to scoop the infant out of the carriage and take it to her car, that surprisingly still had functional air conditioning. She noticed a note lying neatly on top of the swaddling blankets. She grabbed the note, and then the baby, cradling it in her arms protectively. She returned to her car as quickly as she could.

Still holding the infant in her arms, she opened the note and read it;

“Tell my baby, when she’s older, that I’m very sorry I couldn’t do better by her. Who ever finds her, please care for her as though she were your own, she deserves better than me. You will not find me, as my body has probably already been swept away by the sea. Her name is Lavanya, beauty and grace, things I’ve never possessed.”

No name, no address. She looked at the little girl she now held protectively in her arms. She was beautiful and perfect, sucking her thumb in that serene innocence only a baby can posses. Adyson resolved, as she never had before, to get her life in order and do right by this little girl, and she started the moment she got home, lovingly caressing her new little daughter along the way.

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