Natalie Palmer was the youngest daughter of four and was used to getting all the attention. She was a typical freshman girl in high school who thought she was cool because she had a lot of friends; some of which were seniors. Her long hair was a golden brown with blonde highlights and she had eyes that were as blue as the sky. Natalie was known around the school for being a big flirt who played sports and kept her social life all intact in her busy life. As for her family, it consisted of her dad, mom, three sisters, and her favorite little puppy, Lilly who lived in Pennsylvania.
“You’ve got to be kidding me”, said Natalie as her parents walked through the door holding a baby carrier. “Please tell me that noise of a crying baby is in my head and isn’t actually in this house.”
“Don’t start Natalie,” replied her dad. “It’s just until we figure out what’s happening with your cousin. Don’t come to any assumptions, it’s just a baby. He won’t bother you.”
“Yeah, won’t bother me? How about the crying, the smelly diapers, and the throwing up? You can’t tell me this devil child won’t bother me,” said Natalie as she stormed off to her room, stomping up the stairs.
Natalie’s parents had received a phone call earlier from her cousin’s friend saying someone needed to pick up the baby, Trevor. Natalie’s cousin, Emily, was 28 years old and Natalie’s parents hadn’t heard from her in 4 years. Emily was on cocaine and gave birth to a baby named Trevor. He was in the hospital getting weaned off of drugs for the first two months of his life until he was finally healthy again and was sent home to his unstable mom. Now, Emily was back in the hospital and the baby was handed off to her friend which was why Natalie’s parents had gotten the call to come pick up Trevor. There was no one else to take care of him. The Palmer’s knew they had gotten the call because Emily knew better than to call her mother. Emily’s mother was currently taking care of Emily’s first daughter, Bailey, and told Emily she didn’t want to hear from her again until she got her life back to normal.
The night Trevor was brought into the household, everyone was excited to have a little baby boy in the house. The whole family helped out with Trevor except Natalie. Instead, Natalie took care of Lilly and didn’t pay much attention to Trevor. She was selfish and didn’t want Trevor to take all of the attention from her.
The next day, when Natalie’s family realized they would be keeping Trevor for a while since Emily was ill, they started making plans for putting him into daycare since the Palmer’s both worked. The situation was stressful but her parents knew they had no other choice than to care for the innocent baby. It was not his fault he was born to a mother who couldn’t take care of him. In fact, he was better off with Natalie’s family anyway.
Natalie’s family continued on with their daily routines and normal life, just with an extra child. When they ran errands, everyone always stopped to say how adorable the baby was with his long eyelashes and big beautiful blue eyes. Natalie got sick of everyone ahhing over the baby and catering to his every need. She was used to being the baby of the family and having the spotlight on her. So instead of spending time with her family during the evenings, she kept to herself in her room and stayed with Lilly. Most of her time in her house was spent with Lilly because she was the only other one that didn’t pay attention to Trevor. Except, soon, Lilly started to be more attentive towards Trevor and she became protective of him. She started keeping watch at the doors to make sure strangers didn’t come in, stand by whoever was holding the baby, and sleep right next to the baby’s crib at night instead of sleeping with Natalie.
Weeks went by and Emily had contacted Natalie’s parents once. She asked how Trevor was doing, said “thank you” for taking care of him, and hung up. This conversation made Natalie’s mom angry because she didn’t understand how a mother could care so little about her son. After talking to her husband, they decided to go to Emily’s apartment in Kensington, Philadelphia to talk to her about her intentions with Trevor. On the way to Emily’s apartment, they got lost so when they saw a police officer, they stopped him and asked for directions.
“Excuse me sir, could you tell us where 2604 East Huntington Street is?” asked Mr. Palmer.
“Uhh yes I can. You go to that traffic light,” the officer said pointing ahead of them. “Take a left, go through two stop signs, and take another left. But can I ask you a question?”
“Thank you and sure, what is it sir?” Mr. Palmer looked confused. Why was a police officer asking him a question?
“Do you know someone, family, who lives there?”
“Yes sir, my niece.”
“Well I’m sorry to say but you need to get her out of here. This is a bad, bad area of town. You don’t want her caught up in this mess around here.”
“Oh, thank you sir, I will sure try. Thanks for your help.”
“You’re welcome. Now you two have a good and safe night.”
“You do the same, officer.”
This gave the Palmer’s quite a shock. They could tell the area they were driving through was not the safest of areas, but they didn’t know it was so unsafe a cop would tell them to get their niece out.

When they arrived at Emily’s apartment, they were skeptical about going in. She lived in a small, beat up, old brick apartment that was attached to several others down the block. All of the buildings had weeds growing up the side, porches with white painted wooden, broken railings, shutters hanging off the windows, and dirty, foggy windows; most of which were shattered. As they knocked on the door, Emily appeared at the window to see who it was. When she walked over to answer the door, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer looked at each other in horror. Emily opened the door and she looked awful. Her eyes dropped down with black circles, her hair was bleached blond and looked like a rat’s nest on top of her head. Her clothes were baggy and looked like she had been wearing them for the past two months.
“Hey come on in,” said Emily with no expression.
“It’s good to see you,” said Mrs. Palmer trying to be nice. “I hope you didn’t mind us coming last minute but I think we really need to get things squared away. Don’t you?”
As they walked to the couch, or what was left of it, they sat down and began to question Emily. They asked her if she was going to rehab for her cocaine use, if she had a job, and what she was planning on doing with Trevor. Their final decision was that Emily was going to go to rehab until she was clean from her drugs. The Palmer’s would let her come visit Trevor if it was planned ahead of time, and Emily would sign over guardianship to Mr. and Mrs. Palmer for the time being. Mr. Palmer told Emily that she was not to take Trevor back until she was completely free from drugs and found a new place to live outside of Kensington. Emily agreed to the terms and walked them to the door.
“Before you go,” Emily said as they opened the door. “Do you think I could borrow $200. I need money for food and I don’t have a job so until I get one I need money for transportation.”
With Mrs. Palmer being a nurse, she new how drug addicts were. They were pathological liars and were extremely good at making up realistic stories. She didn’t believe Emily’s story, but tried not to think the worst in her so she nudged her husband to hand $200 over to Emily. Emily thanked them and they walked to the car.

Months went by and Trevor began to crawl. Lilly grew from a puppy and was still protective and followed Trevor throughout the house. When Trevor would crawl over to Natalie, Lilly would put her paw on Natalie to catch her attention. Lilly would keep pawing at Natalie’s lap until she would pay attention to Trevor. Lilly was persistent by getting Natalie’s attention and Natalie began to pay more and more attention to Trevor without Lilly pawing her to do so. Natalie realized maybe Trevor wasn’t such a bother after all and was actually kind of cute. There were a lot of things about him that he did and she couldn’t help but smile. His laugh was contagious and his toothless smile with dimples the size of a marble in his pudgy cheeks was one of the cutest things she had ever seen. She began to offer to babysit Trevor if her parents had to run errands or just to give them a break. His smelly diapers and waking up crying in the middle of the night got on her nerves but she learned to look past that. When it got to the summer, she offered to babysit Trevor two days a week so her parents wouldn’t have to pay for daycare. She would hold him in the pool and let him splash around, take him on the swings in their backyard, and read him books.
Trevor loved being around Natalie and everyone could see it. He would reach his little arms as far as they could go to try and get Natalie’s attention to pick him up if she walked by. He would even cry some nights in Natalie’s parents’ arms until Natalie came in to rock him and put him to sleep. Natalie got used to having Trevor around and it got to the point where she couldn’t remember not having him in her life.
One hot, summer afternoon in August, Emily called and Natalie picked up. Natalie didn’t like Emily so she let the phone ring until the answering machine picked up and let her mom retrieve the message later. When Mrs. Palmer came home, she listened to the message. Emily had said that she recently moved to a different, safer area in Philadelphia. She was now clean and was done going to rehab so she wanted Trevor back in her life. She was now ready to be a mother again. This message shocked Mrs. Palmer. She immediately called Mr. Palmer and discussed the situation with him. She knew that drug addicts normally never came clean and it was a vicious cycle but this time, it was not the case.
Mr. and Mrs. Palmer met that weekend with Emily and she looked better than when she came to visit Trevor a month before. Emily’s story was believable and Mr. and Mrs. Palmer had no choice but to give Trevor back to his birth mother.
“This isn’t fair!” screamed Natalie as she burst into tears. “You can’t give an innocent boy back to his crazy, drug-addicted mother! She’ll never take good care of him!”
“I know Natalie, it’s not what we want to do either but it’s only fair that we give him back to his mother. She’s clean now and seems like she’s in a healthy, stable condition. I’m sorry, honey. We’ll still get to see him on the weekends.”

So the next week Trevor’s belongings were packed and moved to his mother’s house. Tears streamed down Natalie’s face as she said goodbye and watched Emily drive away with Trevor in the back seat. She hated Emily. She couldn’t stand her. She wanted to drive to Philly and take Trevor back. She was devastated.

That week Natalie sat in her room. She didn’t want to go in the pool or outside, it reminded her too much of Trevor. Even though she was going to see him again, it was not the same. Lilly comforted her by laying next to her in her bed but all she could think about was Trevor. Never in a million years did Natalie think Emily could get her life back together enough to take Trevor back.

Meanwhile, Emily neglected Trevor. She had lied to the Palmer’s because she was not clean. She was still going to rehab and had to bring Trevor along with her. Their day consisted of sitting on the bench in the air-conditioned mall a couple blocks away from her apartment because there was no air condition where they lived. Trevor would cry out of hunger, thirst, and boredom but Emily did not know how to control him. She would give him a bottle once a day and keep him in his carrier because she didn’t have enough money to feed him more or the patience to keep him entertained.

Trevor was an unhappy baby until one weekend the Palmers decided to drive into Philly to see Trevor. When they got there, Emily didn’t have time to clean up because their visit was a surprise. When Emily saw them knocking on the door, her face turned sheet white and she panicked. As she opened the door, she handed Trevor to Mrs. Palmer and ran into another room. Suspicious, Mrs. Palmer handed the baby to Mr. Palmer and followed Emily. As Mrs. Palmer entered the room Emily was in, she saw something on the floor that caught her eye. When she leaned over to pick it up, Emily ran over and snatched it out of Mrs. Palmer’s hand.
“Excuse me!” exclaimed Mrs. Palmer. “Hand that back. I hope that is not what I think it is.”
“Uhh no it’s not, it’s just…it’s just…” stuttered Emily.
Before she could finish, Mrs. Palmer grabbed the bottle back from Emily’s hand. Mrs. Palmer read the bottle and it appeared to be a prescription. It was a dosage of cocaine written out for Emily by the rehab doctor. It was to be taken twice a day and it was weaning her off of cocaine little by little. Mrs. Palmer was fuming and stormed out of the room.
“That baby is not to go near her!” Mrs. Palmer said sternly to Mr. Palmer. “Let’s go. We’re leaving and Trevor’s coming with us!” As they walked out the door confused, Mrs. Palmer yelled to Emily, “I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk to you but until then, do not contact me!” and she slammed the door.
On the drive home, Mrs. Palmer told the family what she had found. She told them Emily had still been going to the rehab center and mostly just wanted Trevor so she could get food stamps from Welfare and sell them on the streets for money for herself. Mrs. Palmer was completely disgusted with Emily and didn’t call her until two weeks later.

On the other hand, Natalie was thrilled that Emily had messed up and Trevor was back living with them. She didn’t take Trevor for granted anymore and cherished every moment she spent with him. Trevor was just as happy to be with the Palmers as you could tell by him grinning ear to ear. He was such a happy baby. Lilly was back on the job following Trevor around the house but she didn’t have to nudge Natalie anymore with her paw. Natalie was always willing to pay attention to Trevor and couldn’t stay away from him.

The Palmer’s eventually took Emily to court and got full custody of Trevor. Emily was allowed to have supervised visits with Trevor, but Trevor didn’t pay much attention to her when she was there. He was always trying to find Natalie. Natalie was so happy to have Trevor back in her life and couldn’t imagine living any other way.