The day after, he did not know if he would go to the station. It will be awkward seeing her, he thought. But he knows he have to, or else he'd disappoint Theodore, and he doesn't want him to get mad.
"I'm sorry, I should not have said all of that." Emily said when she entered the room.
Ray shrugged his shoulders. "I don't want to argue anymore," he said, defeated.
"Me too."
"We can't disappoint Ted any further. Let's get back to work. Have you called any adoption center for the baby?" asked Ray.
"I did, when you left yesterday. It's just a few meters away from my house, you know where I live, right?" Emily pointed to an area in the map on the wall.
"Of course, I've been to your house a few times."
After noon, they decided to take the baby to the center to start the process. "Are we really doing this? We haven't even contacted Mark." Ray felt hesistant.
"Jason did, he told me. Mark didn't want the child. Poor baby, none of her family wants her," Emily stroked the baby's ear. "They haven't even seen her picture. Their minds would change if only they saw how adorable she is."
A tall, young women approached the two of them. "Yes?" she smiled.
"We are detectives working on case," Ray showed his ID. "The mother of this baby was murdered. She had no immediate family who are interested in taking care of the baby, and we did not know how to contact her other relatives. So we just came here."
The woman took the baby and held her in her arms. "What's her name?" she asked.
Ray laughed, and Emily couldn't help but follow. "My god, we haven't even thought of that," Emily said.
"Courtney. What if I name her Courtney? Classy, elegant, and beautiful. Don't you think so?" the woman looked at them for their approval. They nodded.
"That's a cute name for a cute baby," Emily said.
A few minutes after, several children ran out of the door. "They're wearing the same thing," Ray observed. "Are they going to school?"
"Yes," Stephanie said. "Bea is going to take them. She takes care of the kids, while I worked in the adminsitration. I'm Steph, by the way. You are?"
"I'm Emily, and this is Ray, my partner," she said.
"Please come into my office," Stephanie ushered them. "I wanna know more about Courtney."
"You love to read," Ray pointed to the shelf at the right side of the room. Her office is filled with books and they were in different sections; at the bottom is where the fiction books are located, at the third is where the educational books are, and the ones about children are in the first and second.
Stephanie grabbed one book and showed it to them. "This is a scrapbook," she said. "The kids made it for me."
"The center must have been taking care of them really well," Emily touched the cover page. "That's Bryson," Steph said while looking at the picture. "He led the other kids in making this mini-project of theirs."
Emily and Steph started talking about the process of giving Courtney's custody rights to the center. It will be a smooth process: Stephanie had done this more than a hundred times and she knows a lot of people who will make the process move faster.
"Can I just walk outside to see the other rooms?" Ray asked. The two women did not mind.
The center did not have steep stairs, it was their way of protecting the kids. "I haven't seen you in here," A woman appeared beside him and she greets him with a smile.
