The Guests on South Battery by Karen White

night’s sleep. I just wish all my clothes hadn’t shrunk—I’m a little tired of wearing my maternity clothes.”
    He choked on his bite of doughnut and I slid a glass of water in his direction. After waiting a full minute before speaking, he said, “I have that information you asked me for about Jayne Smith. I must admit that when you first told me her name I thought it must be some kind of alias, but that seems to be her real name—although she added the Y in her early twenties. There is no birth certificate on file owing to the fact that she was deposited on the steps of a church in Birmingham and turned over to foster care shortly afterward. The creative minds in the child welfare system must have given her the name.”
    He grimaced and I felt like crying. It seemed the motherhood hormones that had started in the first month of pregnancy liked to linger much longer than nine months. I supposed they were responsible for my desire now to cry during Humane Society commercials or after seeing Facebook posts showing baby animals that Nola liked to show me. I thought of the woman I’d met in my office and couldn’t reconcilewhat I knew about her with the heartbreaking image of a baby being left on church steps.
    â€œThat’s so sad. So she has no idea who her parents are?” I took a large bite of the purple goat doughnut, hoping it would push down the lump in my throat. My mother had left me when I was six, and I’d been raised by an alcoholic father. For my entire childhood, I’d felt abandoned, but at least I’d known who my people were, had known the house on Legare where generations of my mother’s family had lived. And I’d always had my grandmother, who’d loved me unconditionally. It seemed unfathomable to have no history, no prologue to the story of your life.
    â€œNo. I did a little digging into Button Pinckney, too, since it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that she might have had a baby and secretly gave it up. Lucky for us, Ms. Pinckney was very active in various social clubs, so her photo appears in the society pages pretty much every month during the year Jayne was born—apparently not pregnant and with no gaps in time. In addition, she was her sister-in-law’s companion after her niece’s long illness and death, and, according to everyone who knew Button, never left her side.”
    â€œSo she’s just a generous philanthropist who decided to give her entire estate to a deserving orphan.”
    â€œApparently. And Jayne certainly fits that description, considering how she started out. It’s really incredible that she turned out as well as she did. She was a straight-A student, never got into trouble, and although she had a succession of foster parents, they all had good things to say about her.”
    â€œBut she was never adopted.”
    Thomas shook his head. “Sadly, no. She came close several times, but it always fell through.”
    â€œDoes the paperwork mention why?” I took a long drink of my coffee, unable to forget the image of a small baby abandoned on the steps of a church. I wanted to think that it was because I was a mother now, with my own small babies who needed me. But there was something else, too. Something I couldn’t identify.
    His eyes met mine. “This is where it really gets interesting. Every single one of the foster families said practically the same thing: that she was a wonderful child but in the end wasn’t adoptable because”—he paused and opened a manila folder on the corner of the table to riffle through several pages before pulling one to the top—“things always seemed to happen around her. Little ‘disturbances.’” Thomas made little quote marks with his fingers. He looked down at the page and continued reading. “She was never named as the exact cause, but all events seemed to occur when she was in the vicinity,