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Bloodline
(1995)
Missy Hewett was a success story in the small town of Prosperity, Maine. She was smart, pleasant--and pregnant in high. Giving the child up for adoption was the answer, but then Missy decided she wanted her baby back. Both she and McMorrow, writing a story on teen parents, find it's not that simple. In fact, in Missy's case, hunting a baby is a risky business. McMorrow can lose big, too, as he tracks down the people who were part of Missy Hewett's life. And the baby--maybe you can put a price tag on a human life. "Were you like that in high school?" "Like what?" Missy said, her arms still folded. "A serious student," I said. "I had to be serious," she said. "Why?" "Because nobody else was gonna do it for me," she said, her voice hard as stone. "If I blew it, I blew it." Where did the baby fit into that?" I asked. "She didn't," Missy said. "She deserved better." "It must have been hard." She shrugged. "A lot of things are hard," she said. "Do you think talking about it would make it easier for somebody else?" "Might teach them," Missy said. "Teach them what?" "That you can't trust anybody but yourself. And guys suck." "That's kind of a hard attitude," I said. "How old are you? Nineteen?" "Eighteen," she said. "That isn't always true, you know." "It has been for me," Missy said. Waldo Regional High School was a low, sprawling brick complex that filled most of what had at one time been somebody's cow pasture, off Route 137 on the western outskirts of Belfast. Like most of the county, the former cow pasture was close by rolling dark hills, the quiet beauty of which had only lately begun to appeal to money tourists from the south. For nearly a century and a half, those hills had been a beautiful but unrelenting enemy to anyone who tried to farm or log the steep terrain. While a few merchants and lumber barons had made the fortunes that threw up the stately mansions in the towns by the sea, most people gouged a hard living out of woods and pastures and gardens. Instead of mansions, their legacy was tiny back-back road cemeteries where many of the graves belonged to children. The place hadn't changed much. |
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