Craig was finishing his breakfast and Zach was eating oatmeal—with raisins, no less—Saturday morning when Kara finally emerged from the bedroom and ambled into the kitchen, bathrobe wrapped snugly around her. The usual bowl of oatmeal awaited her beside the microwave, and with a grateful smile to Craig she set it warming, then pulled up a stool beside the youngster.
Zach turned to her. "You were right. It's way better with raisins."
"Ha, I win," she told Craig, shooting him a triumphant smile. She took a look at his clothes; he was fully dressed in work jeans and a T-shirt, boots on his feet. "You're working this morning?"
"Not exactly," he answered. "Some kids on motorbikes carved trenches all across the ball field by Derek's house. I'm going to see if I can repair some of the damage."
Nodding, she retrieved her oatmeal, now warm, and returned to her seat. "What's this?" There was a note on the standalone counter, written in a child's handwriting. She glanced at Zach and pulled it over, reading it aloud:
Dear Craig and Kara,
In case you're wondering, Zach is playing with me in the back yard. He is fun. I hope we can keep him.
Sincerely,
Paws
"I found that this morning when I got up," Craig told her. "Apparently, Paws has gotten attached to the stray boy we found."
Kara lifted one eyebrow. "We'll have to explain to Paws that we can't keep him. He's someone else's pet." She smiled at the youngster, who took the comment in stride. "But it sure was nice of Paws to let us know he was outside so we wouldn't worry."
Craig finished off the last of his juice and took his dishes to the sink. "I'm heading out," he told her. "I might as well get done early, and then we can work on finding Zach's family."
With her mouth full of food, Kara grunted her approval.
Craig went to the bedroom to grab his baseball cap, gray with olive green trim, then turned around to find her right behind him. She stepped close to him and whispered, "Take him with you."
Craig stopped mid-step, hand frozen on the bill of the cap. "What? Kara, I can't do that," he replied in a low voice. "He's not ours. What if we get out there and he trips over the rake and breaks his arm? What am I going to say when the doctor asks me how to contact his parents?"
Kara put her fists on her hips. "What if he stays here, slips and falls in the bathroom, and has to get stitches? He can get hurt here just like anywhere else. He already has."
Craig exhaled loudly. "But…what if someone comes looking for him?"
"You have your phone?" she asked.
He nodded.
"I'll call you. Besides," she frowned, "every hour that no one comes looking for him makes it less likely that anyone will."
Craig shook his head and rubbed his eyes with one hand. Kara was right—all indications suggested that the youngster really had been sent away, abandoned. Craig folded his arms across his chest. He met Kara's eyes for just a moment, then looked aside.
"What?" Kara probed.
Craig gazed out the window.
"Craig Herbert, look at me," she demanded, and he complied. "At this moment, you are the most important person in the world to me, and I want to hear what you're thinking that you're afraid to tell me."
It was no use beating around the bush when she talked to him like that—she would ferret out anything he tried to hide. But what was he hiding? He wasn't sure. What was his hesitation? "I—I just don't want to."
"Why not? You spend hours with the boys on the team every week. Why not this boy?"
He thought a moment, working the problem in his mind. "Because he's not ours. But he thinks he is. And—"
"And what?"
"And I keep thinking about what you said last night—what if things had been different… He looks like me, he acts like me, he has your taste in food…" His hesitation took a defined shape in his mind. "I'm scared, all right? It would not be hard for me to pretend that I'm his father. And I can't do that, not when he belongs to Elliott or some other guy out there."
To his surprise, Kara didn't object. Instead, she blinked thoughtfully. "A day and a half, and already this boy we've never met before has got us—I don't know. All mixed up, at least." She took her fists off her hips and folded her arms, mimicking Craig. "We can do this," she declared, still in a whisper. "Take him with you. If Elliott is his dad, he needs a father-figure. While you're gone, I'll work on how we can track down where he came from."
Craig hesitated, then nodded.
She loosened her arms. "And Craig—it's okay to have a good time with him. He's just a boy. And he's family. We can love him like—I don't know, a nephew—until we figure out what to do with him. And then, like we told him, maybe we can have him over sometimes."
Craig met her eyes again—those earnest, sensitive hazel eyes. "All right. I'll take him with me."
"Okay," she said.
He fetched a second, matching cap from the closet and led the way back down the hall to the kitchen, building up his courage. I've never been afraid of kids before, he thought. So why now?
Zach had placed his dishes in the sink and was standing in the den, contemplating the back yard through the picture window. Craig walked over to the side door, opened it, and beckoned Paws inside. "Want to go for a ride?"
Paws wagged his tail delightedly and hurried into the kitchen.
Craig turned to Zach, who had looked to see Paws enter. "You want to come, too?"
"Yeah!" he answered instantly.
"Is that okay with you, Paws?" Craig asked the dog.
Paws peered up at him and gave an enthusiastic bark.
"All right," Craig chuckled, "Paws says his stray boy can come."
"Where are we going?" Zach asked.
"Out to do hard labor."
Zach's eyebrows lifted as he tried to gauge whether Craig was joking with him again. "Outside?"
"You got it."
"Awesome!" Zach exclaimed, and he hurried to join Craig and Paws as Craig opened the door to the garage. Craig handed him the extra cap, and Zach turned it over, examining it excitedly.
"Have a good time, you three," Kara called after them.
"We will, Mom!" Zach called back, stuffing the cap atop his head.
Craig shot her a nervous look. She returned it with an attempt at a supportive smile, and then he followed Zach out the door.
*****
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 23