Excerpt from Absolution by Alice McDermott, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Would you mind taking him for a sec?" she asked, giving me no option, really. Had I not reached up, she seemed ready to let him roll to the ground. "I have got to go tinkle," she whispered.

I'd noticed this before, among girls of her tribe: they knew an easy mark, a girl of lesser means who would be reflexively—genetically—disposed to do for her whatever she asked.

"I'd love to," I said, and meant it. I took the baby from her, a big, warm bundle in his pale blue romper. He was now wide-eyed. She straightened up—"only a sec," she said—and had no sooner gone into the house when his little mouth crumpled and he began to whimper. I lifted him to my chest, held him under my chin. I patted his back to soothe him. He quieted nicely.

We were hoping to start a family of our own—any month now, was how I'd come to think of it—and I felt a surge of confidence. I would be a marvelous mother.

Then the baby hiccuped once or twice, and I felt the warmth of his spit-up on my bare throat. A second later, just as I tried to ease him from my breast, he began to vomit, effortlessly, copiously, as babies do. I felt it running down my dress. That bland, wheaty odor of baby formula—no more awful, really, in that it was regurgitated. I felt it pool warmly in my bra.

Copyright © 2023 by Alice McDermott