The police officer took a deep breath as if preparing himself for the next part, then said, “The department is having difficulties reconciling the evidence that your ex-husband, a forty-year-old man is the same person as the baby boy, who has been tentatively identified by the coroner as being approximately nine-months old. There are some other anomalies about this case we would like your help with, mam. According to her driver’s license, Mrs. Burns was sixty-one years old, but the woman who died in the accident was in her early twenties. Can you shed some light on that. mam?”

“My ex-husband was a biomedical researcher…”, Mary began, “And…and he had developed a treatment to restore youth. He gave his mother a treatment so she could be twenty-two again.”

“And your ex-husband, what happened to him?”, the officer asked, trying to draw her out. So far the ex-wife’s story matched the evidence that the police had found at Mrs. Burn’s house. When they pulled the twenty year old woman out of the wreckage, with a purse whose driver’s license was issued to a sixty-year-old woman, the department had suspected foul play. They sent two squad cars and an evidence team over to Mrs. Burn’s house. When they arrived, they discovered no evidence that a forty-year-old man lived there, but instead they had found a fully equipped nursery. Examination of Mrs. Burn’s diary indicated that both she and her son had somehow been rejuvenated. The curious thing about the diary was that the woman’s handwriting had changed in the past two weeks. Up until two weeks ago, Mrs. Burn’s handwriting had had the shaky, spidery cramped style that one expects of a woman who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis of the hands. Then overnight, the handwriting had taken on the appearance of someone who was in the prime of health. If the fingerprints on the body hadn’t confirmed that the woman was in fact, a sixty year old woman named Mrs. Burns, they would have never believed it. The story was just too fantastic to be true. Still, there was corroborative evidence from the woman’s ex-daughter-in-law to be considered. Some of the investigators theorized that a clone had been substituted for Mrs. Burns, but that was definitely a minority opinion.

“Mam?” the officer queried, “I asked you about your husband…”

Mary answered the investigator’s question dully, “My husband was accidentally dosed with the youth treatment and became a baby again.”

“I see,” said the officer, “Is there anyone else who can corroborate your story?”

“Well,” Mary said speaking slowly because of her state of psychic shock, “There is the family lawyer. He drew up all the papers and knows about what happened to both them.”

“His name was on the papers we found in Mrs. Burn’s purse and he’s already been asked to come in for questioning,” the officer said.

Mary was appalled. Questioning? Did the police think that some crime had been committed?

“Is there anyone else?”, the investigator asked.

“Well, there’s the president of the company he worked for. He knows about it. He gave my husband a huge cash bonus and awarded him a large block of stock for his discovery. The treatment is secret until they finish the final tests and get it approved by the FDA. He would be able to tell you about it if you agreed to maintain the company’s secret,” Mary answered.

“Excellent!”, the officer said, “Would you mind coming down to the hospital and identifying the body of the baby boy? We have a patrol car waiting outside when you’re ready.”

“Patrol car?”, Mary thought, “They must have believed it was some sort of plot and expected me to run out of the house the minute they called. She told the investigator, “I have a baby that can’t be left alone. It will take me a few minutes to get him dressed, would that be okay?”

“Certainly, mam,” the officer said sympathetically, “Take all the time you need.”

“Oh and I’ll need your officers’ help to put his baby seat in the patrol car. It’s illegal to have a baby in a car on your lap. I wouldn’t want to get into trouble,” Mary said sincerely.

“I understand, mam,” the investigator said solemnly, “I’ll call the officers on the radio and ask them to assist you with your baby. I’ll meet you at the hospital, okay?”

“Yes…”, Mary said distantly, “…at the hospital.”

Mary put down the phone and took Tommy into the nursery. It was a bit chilly and she decided to put him in a sleeper. As she opened the snaps on the sleeper and slipped it over his head, she kept asking herself how Bobby could be dead. It was too horrible to be true. A fey look came into her eyes as she pulled the sleeper down over his disposable diaper and snapped the floppy fabric of the sleeper’s legs around his thighs and feet. She looked at the adorable face of the infant on the changing table by her side and compared it to a recent picture of Bobby which hung on the wall; the face was the same. “Noooo!”, she thought, “It’s a lie! Bobby isn’t dead! He’s right here in front of me!”

She glanced at the framed pictures of Bobby on the wall as she carried Tommy out to the living room, thinking, “How could God let a sweet little baby who looked like that get killed? It’s impossible! Pictures don’t lie! This is Bobby! Tom was the one with Marge! He spent all those years figuring out how to become young again just so he could be at his mother’s side. If anyone died with Marge it must have been him! He was wearing the same color plastic pants coming out of the Daycare that he wore when Marge carried him in. There was no way that they could have switched both them and their plastic pants.

My imagination ran away with me when I fantasized that little Bobby answered me. The strain of our separation and divorce made me lose my senses for a little while. I’m alright now. I just daydreamed that Tom and Bobby got switched because I was angry with him. I wanted to humiliate him for leaving me by making him act like an infant. Of course Bobby behaved like a baby. What else could I expect? He’s only nine-months-old! The police know what they’re doing. They told me what happened. It was Tom who died in the accident, not my little baby boy!”

“Come on, Baby!”, Mary told Tommy rhetorically as she gathered up her purse, keys and Bobby’s blankie and diaper bag as she went to the door, “Mommy has to go to the hospital with the nice police officers and she can’t leave you here.”

She went outside, closing the door behind her and locking it. When she got to the Police car, one of the officers opened the rear door and held it open for her, then said, “Mam, Inspector Gates radioed and told us you needed the baby seat out of your car to put in the squad car. If you would be so kind as to lend me your car keys for a moment, I’ll go and get it for you.”

“Oh! Thank you, that’s very considerate of you!”, Mary exclaimed as she handed over her keys, “The key with the black plastic top on the end unlocks the doors.”

“Yes, mam,” the officer said, “I’m familiar with car keys. Just sit on the edge of the backseat and I’ll be back in a minute.

True to his word, the officer was back in short time with the baby seat in hand. The officer helped her out again and fastened the baby seat securely in the backseat of the squad car with safety belts and then invited Mary to get her son settled in his seat. Mary strapped him in carefully and was led around the car by the officer, who opened the door for her. The police officers that Inspector Gates had sent were both fathers of young children and had a justly deserved reputation for solicitousness with women with babes in arms. Inspector Gates had told them that the woman had just lost her mother-in-law and husband in a MVA so they were being especially gentle with her. They had been instructed to see her to the morgue at the hospital and knew what kind of grisly experience awaited her. It was not an experience that they would have wished on the wives of their worst enemies. From what they had heard of the accident over the radio, the truck that had hit them slewed around and it’s long-range, side-mounted gas tank had split open on the car’s passenger side. Sparks from the collapsed tie-rod assembly on the passenger car’s folded front wheel as the metal grated against the macadam had ignited the spilled gasoline within microseconds of impact. While the woman who drove the car wasn’t burned, the male in the car had been badly burned. Fortunately, the force of the impact had broken both of the car’s occupants necks causing them to die instantly and painlessly.