"Good afternoon Ms Corcoran."
"Good afternoon, Mercedes." Shelby said, opening her front door. "What brings you this way?"
"A present for Beth. My mom used to read this to me. It's got a princess named Elizabeth." she handed Shelby the book. The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch. The cover showed a disheveled princess and a dragon. "It's not what you think." she said noticing Shelby's face. "She's not Disney princessish."
"Thank you, Mercedes. Quinn is here also. She's in the kitchen getting a bottle for Beth."
"I'll go help her." Mercedes said heading for the kitchen. Quinn jumped guilty when the dark-skinned girl walked in the room.
"Oh, Mercedes. I didn't know you were here." she said trying to sound innocent.
"Just got here. What are you doing?" Mercedes asked peering around the blonde.
"Nothing." she screwed the top on the baby bottle.
"Can I see?" Mercedes held out her hand.
"This is none of your business." Quinn said coldly, like a switch had just been flipped, or more accurately like a mask had just been dropped. "Just stay out of it!"
"Stay out of what?" Mercedes noticed the bottle of Tabasco sauce on the counter. "What are you, crazy?" she grabbed the baby bottle from Quinn and poured the contents down the drain. "Why would you do that?"
"I want my baby back!"
"How's this going to get Beth back?"
"I'll turn Shelby in for being a bad mother." She said smugly. "Then they'll give Beth back to me."
"You hate Shelby that much?"
"Look at what Shelby did to Rachel. That was so wrong!"
"Like you care about Rachel! Yeah it was wrong but Shelby didn't try to take Rachel away from her dads. Even Shelby drew the line there."
"I don't care about either of them. I want Beth back!"
"You can't have Beth back! You know that." She looked in Quinn's blazing eyes. "We all read the papers together when you lived at my house. Final. Irrevocable. It doesn't matter that you changed your mind."
"I want Beth back!" Quinn repeated like a broken record.
"Quinn, listen to me. Please just listen to me." Mercedes held her hands. "My mom's a social worker. You know that right? If your plan works they'll take Beth from the only home she's ever known and put her in foster care while they investigate. You want that?" Quinn turned away. "They won't give her to you, they have waiting lists of people who want kids. That's where she'll end up, with some nice stable married couple that's been waiting 5 years to get a baby. Not an unemployed 17 year old high school student. You've got to know that, somewhere in the back of your mind. It's over, done. Take what Shelby's offering if you want to be part of Beth's life. Or walk away if you can't stand seeing her. But please don't do this!"
"But I'm her mother!" Quinn cried.
"You gave birth to her. So what!" There was no nice way to say it. "When you needed a mother who helped you? Finn's mother. Puck's mother. My mother! My mother didn't even know you but she took you in. Where was the woman who gave birth to you all that time? How do you even know your mother would have come back to you if she wasn't lonely because your dad left?" Okay, maybe that was a bit much but she felt she might as well go on. "You're not ready to be a mother right now, think about what's best for Beth."
"Quinn, they offered you help back then." she put her arm around the girl. Quinn shook, at first Mercedes thought she was trying to shake off the embrace, then she realized Quinn was crying, those deep raking sobs she used to do late at night when she thought nobody was around. "Take it. You need to talk to somebody before you do something really stupid that can't be fixed." She helped Quinn stand up and led the girl to her car. "Come on, you're spending the night at my house."
"Goodnight Ms. Corcoran." Mercedes called as they left the condo.
For some reason the last chapter of Sam and Mercedes' Tardis adventure by Jadziwine made me think of the Paperbag Princess, which actually has very little to do with this story but there you go!
Also, Quinn needs some serious psychiatric help. Don't they have competent therapists in Lima?