“Great. We had pancakes and sausage and chocolate milk.”
Lilah’s stomach growled. “That does sound good,” she said. She felt terrible about asking someone else to feed her child, but he hadn’t had a hot meal in more than a week.
“And I made a friend.”
“Now that is wonderful. What’s his—or her—name?”
“His,” Jonathan said, directing a brief “I hate girls” scowl at his mother. “Nick. He’s nice.”
“Tell me about him.” Please tell me you asked all the questions and didn’t answer any.
“He told me he’s a foster child. What’s a foster child?”
“Well, sometimes,” Lilah said, dreading the inevitable consequences of giving Jonathan a definition, “parents can’t take care of their own children. They have to let other people take care of them until they can get their lives in order.”
“Is your life in order?”
“You and I are together and we always will be,” Lilah said with a forced steadiness. “That’s what I call having your life in order.” How long could she keep up this pretense? A week of job-hunting had netted her nothing. But tomorrow could be different. Would be different. Because she’d never lose Jonathan to foster care, no matter how good that care might be.
“Who are Nick’s foster parents?”
“He lives with a guy named Daniel. A vet…veternar…”
“Veterinarian,” Lilah said.
“Vet-er-in-ar-ian. Some other boys live there, too, and a sort of grampa. His name is Jesse. Nick says they’re all real nice.”
“Really nice,” Lilah said automatically.
“Yeah. But he looked real tired—really tired—and I asked him why, and he said he’d had another nightmare last night.”
“Another nightmare?”
“He says he has ’em all the time.”
“That’s terrible,” Lilah said, her heart going out to this child she didn’t even know.
“Remember when I had those bad nightmares?”
How could she ever forget? Jonathan hadn’t had one since he was three, when his father went to prison. Her child might be living in a car, eating cereal and sandwiches, but every night, when she’d tucked him into the backseat, he slept like Rip Van Winkle.
“I told him you made me a dreamcatcher, and I didn’t have ’em anymore. I told him maybe you’d make one for him.” He looked at her, the question in his eyes.
“Of course I will,” Lilah said. “You could give it to him at Sunday school next week.” She couldn’t tell Jonathan the dreamcatcher had nothing to do with his nightmares going away. Even at three, he’d been far too aware of his father’s brutality. He’d even tried to shield her from Bruce’s fists with his small body. His father was his nightmare, and hers, but he’d left his nightmares behind with their source. Lilah still had a few. She hadn’t found a job, and now she was down to $215.
“What color do you think he’d like?”
“Red and white. He likes the Boston Red Sox.”
“Just like you.” Lilah smiled. “Okay, red and white it is. Wow, that was quite a talk you had with Nick.” Now, the quizzing. Lilah’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Um, what did you tell Nick about yourself?”
“What you told me to. My father’s dead and we moved here. And Mom, guess what the Sunday school lesson was about.”
“What?” She was so relieved she could barely breathe.
“Telling the truth.”
God, forgive me.
LOOKING OUT HIS WINDOW, Daniel saw the woman get out of the car and watched the boy run toward her. He might have called her pretty if she hadn’t been so painfully thin and drawn. Her clothes were wrinkled, and her hair, although it was neatly combed, was dull and lank. But her posture was confident—determined was more like it—and it was clear that she and the boy loved each other. He was curious about her.
“Okay, spill it,” he said to his passengers as they moved away from the curb. “How was Sunday school?”
Jason, almost sixteen and the oldest of his boys, spoke up first. “Not bad.”
“The usual.” Maury, a few weeks younger, was Jason’s sidekick. “Another life lesson.”
“Which life lesson?” Buzz words irritated Daniel, even when they came from the mouth of a Sunday-school teacher.
“Being honest.”
“Us, too,” Nick piped up.
“Ah,” Daniel said. “A coordinated curriculum.”
“Whatever,” Nick said. “So this new kid asked me a question and I told him the truth.”
A breakthrough! Had Nick told this boy the truth about where he came from?
Act casual. “What’d you tell him?”
“He said I looked tired, and I told him about my nightmares.”
“What they were about?” The other boys had fallen silent, as if they were all holding their breath.
“I told you,” he said. “I don’t remember.”
Hopes dashed, Daniel asked for and got a full report, not on the sin of lying but the inefficiency of it. And then they were home. Home to the scent of braising pot roast, to the comforting sight of Jesse carefully removing an apple crisp from the oven, to the racket of four boys shouting, arguing, laughing, racing up and down the stairs of the huge, creaky old Victorian house and the family dog, Aengus, barking, delighted they’d come back.
To Daniel, it sounded like the sweet strains of the Westminster Abbey boys’ choir.
“LILAH JAMISON?”
“Yes.” Lilah gave the portly manager of the Ben Franklin dime store a confident smile. Don’t be modest. Sell yourself. You have to, for your sake and Jonathan’s.“I saw that you’re looking for a person to handle your crafts section. I’m a crafter myself, and…”
“Already filled,” the woman said. “Retha, she’s one of our cashiers, says her daughter wants the job.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d gotten this response. Jobs in Churchill went to relatives of current employees. Lilah wanted to say, But have you interviewed Retha’s daughter? Does she know anything about knitting? Or decoupage? Or tole painting? But it wouldn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was Retha’s daughter.
“Well,” Lilah said, forcing another smile, “thanks for talking to me.” She couldn’t ask the woman to call her if she had another opening. She hadn’t been able to afford a cell phone since Bruce had gone to prison. Her address, at the moment, was CWC 402, her license plate number. “While I’m here, I’d like to look at yarn.”
Now that Lilah was a customer rather than a job applicant, the woman was all smiles. “You picked the right day,” she said. “We’re having a sale.”
Lilah fought the tidal wave of discouragement threatening her belief that leaving Whittaker had been the right thing to do. First, she’d gone to the hospital to look for work as a hospital nurse or a home caregiver. “No openings in nursing,” said the head of personnel, looking at her warily.
“I also have bookkeeping experience,” Lilah said.