Break and Enter by Etienne

was a bewildering array of child seats, but I found one small booster seat that looked as though it would fit the jump seat. We went back to Martha and Mike, and I placed the booster seat in our shopping cart.
    “Did the clothes all fit?” I said.
    “You bet,” she said, “at least as far as I can tell without actually having Robbie try them on. I guess I haven’t lost my touch.”
    She went ahead of us in the checkout lane, and I was pleased to see that I had given her enough cash to cover the purchases.
    In the parking lot, Robbie was yawning, so I suggested that we ought to get back to the cabin for a nap.
    “Thank you so much, Martha,” I said. “I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t stepped up to the plate.”
    “No problem, George,” she said. “I’ll call you tomorrow when I have more information about Robbie.”
    “Good, I’d like to know his birth date and his full name, for starters.”
    We thanked her again, and they went their own way. The booster seat fit the jump seat just fine. We got Robbie secured in it and headed back to the cabin. He fell asleep in the truck and had to be carried up to bed. As soon as we had him tucked in, we crawled into bed as well, although our nap was delayed just a bit—our erections kept getting in the way of sleep.
    I spent a great deal of time Monday morning exchanging e-mails with my lieutenants and Chief Bridges, but I kept the e-mails devoted exclusively to business, making no mention of Robbie.
    The next several days were instructive and occasionally frustrating. We came to know Robbie… and to love him, and I think the feelings were reciprocated. We took him to the local hospital Tuesday morning and waited forever until a young surgeon came to tell us that everything had gone as planned. We were allowed to spend a few minutes with him, but he was kind of groggy from the drugs he’d been given.
    While Robbie was in the hospital, we had an appointment with Ernest Rodgers, our good “old(er)” boy attorney. We’d met Ernest when we’d purchased the strip of land uphill and adjacent to our cabin. He was in his sixties, and we found ourselves liking him immensely—so much so that we’d given him a small retainer in case we ever needed legal representation in North Carolina that couldn’t be handled by our Jacksonville attorney. His secretary showed us into his office.
    “Have a seat, boys,” Ernest said, “and tell me what I can do for you.”
    We filled him in on the details about Robbie, starting with our discovery of him the afternoon we got to the cabin. “What we want to do, Mr. Rodgers,” I said, “is adopt the boy.”
    “Please call me Ernest,” he said. “If we get his grandmother’s approval and the right judge, I don’t see any problem.”
    “That’s what our attorney friend in Atlanta told me,” I said.
    “Does your friend have a name?”
    “Charles Barnett.”
    “Of Chandler, Todd, Woodward & Barnett?”
    “I think that’s the firm’s name,” I said. “Why, do you know him?”
    “No, but I know of him,” Ernest said. “You may remember me telling you that I worked in Atlanta when I was fresh out of law school. I had a good friend in those days who was law clerk for a federal judge. My old friend is now a judge in one of the suburban counties around Atlanta, but I digress. I met Judge Barnett two or three times in those days, courtesy of my friend, and he was a great man. Your friend Charles is his grandson, and I’ve followed his career for years. Do you think he’d agree to assist with this case?”
    “I don’t know why not,” I said. “Do you think we’ll need him?”
    “Son, that man has an outstanding track record in dealing with the kind of bigotry we might run up against, and I like to hedge my bets.”
    “He told me that he’s licensed to practice in both Carolinas,” I said. I fished a business card out of my wallet and handed it to Ernest. “Why don’t you see if you can get him on