THE BABY KILLER

A few years before I left home, a girl I knew locked her baby in the trunk of her car, and abandoned her car in the parking lot of a popular Catholic Church. Silly girl. The car was discovered a few weeks later, and the baby was as cold and dead as you would expect it to be. The police were called, and the girl was arrested.
At her trial, the girl claimed the baby was already dead. A likely story. But the doctors supported her claims. Well, they couldn't disprove them, which was as close to innocence as they could have granted her. The girl got off with a bit of probation. The baby got buried in a plot next to its grandparents.
My parents lived a block away from where the baby died. And it's murderous mother lived a block away from there. I passed her house when I returned home for the holidays. I stared hard at her front windows, wondering what she's doing with herself these days. If she's had another baby. If she's used to everyone staring at her, and talking about her, and wishing her dead. But I never saw her.
No one did. No one knew how she was, or what she did. No one cared.
Then, last summer, I went home for my father's birthday. I was put in charge of ordering and retrieving his cake. So, just before dinner, I went to the bakery to pick it up. And while I waited for the cashier to make my change, I spotted her in the back, icing what I was paying for. What are the odds?
Four years after taking the life of a life she spent nine months making, someone granted her forgiveness, and gave her this job, to get her life back on track. A step towards normalcy, or as close to it as she'll ever get.