“That we’re fostering him?”
Dave’s thin lips pull into a tight smirk. “That he was abandoned.”
“And you heard that we’re fostering . . .”
“Through the grapevine. How’s that going?”
How do you think it’s going? The child has been traumatized beyond belief.
“Great. It’s going great. Speaking of going, I have to go find Theodore, so . . .” He starts pushing the cart away.
“Wrong direction. He’s back there.” Dave jerks a finger toward the book department. “Seems like a real bookworm type, huh? Not like Chip. Best Little League player I’ve ever coached.”
Funny, he hadn’t said that at the time. He was the kind of coach who’d started his own mediocre son every game, kept him in throughout, and never pulled the less skilled kids off the bench even when the team was up by fifteen runs in the seventh inning.
“Listen, Sarge, by the way, I’ve got a listing across the street from you . . .”
“The Hyland house. I heard Bob’s retiring and they’re moving to Florida. Well, I’ve got to get—”
“Just one sec,” Dave says.
Billy sighs, knowing where this is going, based on the last time he’d had a listing on the block.
“Listen, Dave, Jessie and I have no plans to paint the house anytime soon.” And if we did, it would still be bright yellow because we like it, and even if we didn’t like it, at this point, I’d keep it just to spite you.
Dave rocks back on his heels. “Yeah, that’s not the problem.”
“The problem? So there’s a problem?”
“Not the paint. It’s like I was just telling Theo, the last thing I need is—”
“Wait, you were just telling who?”
“Whom. Your kid. Theo.”
“He’s Theodore.”
Dave snaps his fingers. “Right! He did say he doesn’t like to be called Theo.”
And I’ll bet you don’t like to be called jackass.
“Anyway, we can’t have potential buyers walking away because they’re worried about getting woken up every morning in the dark by some crazy cock-a-doodle-doo.”
His heart sinks. “You said that?”
“Of course I said it. Chickens belong on a farm—or in a deep fryer.” He laughs. “Finger-lickin’ good.”
“Terrific,” Billy mutters. He turns and pushes the cart toward the checkout, ignoring Dave’s protest that he was only teasing.
After finding the shortest line—not short by any definition—he pulls his phone from his pocket to text his son.
I just ran into Mr. Carver.
He backs up, deleting the Mr., tempted to replace it with a couple of choice words, but he refrains, thumb-typing on: I know he upset you & I’m sorry. Don’t worry about anything he said. Where are you?
After a moment, three wobbly dots appear.
Good. Theodore is writing back.
The dots disappear. Billy edges closer to the register as the line moves forward, watching the phone. The three dots reappear at last, but it takes a long time for them to give way to a text.
I’m going home to make sure Espinoza is ok.
On foot, alone, at night, in the rain?
I’m sure he’s ok. Come back here.
He waits for a response, rocking back and forth on his heels.
“Sir?” The woman behind him taps his shoulder.
“What? Oh—sorry.” He closes the gap between him and the customer in front of him.
At last, Theodore pops up again: He said don’t be surprised if my bird flies the coop.
Dammit. Dave is a bully, plain and simple. Always has been, always will be.
A knot tightens in Billy’s gut. He’ll deal with Dave later. Right now, he just needs to get out of here and track down Theodore, and the conveyor belt has edged forward enough that he can start putting his items on it.
He begins unloading the cart, then winces at a sharp stitch in his chest.
He takes a deep breath. The pain intensifies.
Strained muscle?
He exhales, feeling his legs tremble beneath him.
He must have pulled something. The cart is deep, the cat litter heavy, all that bending, lifting, and twisting . . .
It seems to be easing up a little, though. He stands, just breathing, in, out, gently, gently . . .
“Sir?” Again, the woman behind him taps his arm.
He sees that the belt has moved all the way forward, leaving room for the rest of his purchases. He resumes taking them from the cart. When he comes to the bags of chocolate bars, he hesitates, then deposits them on top of the rack of gum with other customers’ last-minute unwanted items.
“Good for you,” the woman behind him says, and her tone pings some irrational defiance in Billy.
He retrieves the candy and plunks it on the belt. Of course it’s just a strained muscle. And he has plenty of other things to worry about.
* * *
Amelia Crenshaw, you have a DNA match!
She can’t breathe.
Her hand trembles as she opens the email to a message she’s seen thousands of times before, addressed to her clients. This time, it’s for her.
Dear Amelia . . .
She’d known it was coming, yet in its fruition, inevitable has transformed into miraculous.
The email expands upon the subject line, with an invitation to examine the match on the ancestry website. She clicks the link, logs in, and holds her breath, waiting, waiting . . .
Her account pops up. Another click. Click. Click . . .
There it is.
She scans the results.
Quinnlynn Johnson
Relationship Probability: 2nd or 3rd cousin.
Confidence Level: Extremely High.
282 Centimorgans shared across 15 DNA segments.
The only way to contact the match through the site is to message her through her account, but she hasn’t logged in since August.
Not good, but not disastrous. Amelia takes the next step she’d take if the results were for a client: she Googles the name.
She knows that Johnson is the second most common last name in the country. It’s turned up in countless clients’ trees, always making for a difficult search. But in this case, she’s counting on the unusual first name to help.
It does.
There is only one Quinnlynn Johnson in the world, assuming her name is spelled correctly on her DNA profile. She has a prolific online presence, including social media.
Amelia opens her Facebook page, hoping the privacy settings won’t prevent a non-friend from seeing relevant information.
Quinnlynn Johnson lives in Atlanta. Her profile picture shows an attractive black woman who appears to be in her thirties. Studying it, Amelia notes that Quinnlynn’s skin is much darker than her own, lips much fuller, face much rounder, and yet . . .
And yet . . .
She looks like me.
She stands and strides across the room, wiping tears, shuddering in a breath.
If she’d passed the woman on the street, would she have noticed the resemblance? Or does it seem striking because she’s looking for it?
She dries her eyes, takes out her laptop, and checks to see if the Wi-Fi network is back up so that she can view the photo on her laptop. Nope, still down.
Aaron had once showed her how to connect through her phone’s hotspot, but she doesn’t have the patience to figure out how right now.
She enlarges the photo on her phone. There’s something familiar about the slant of the young woman’s smile, the expression in her eyes . . .
Sure there is, child, because she’s your kin.
Bettina’s drawl, in her head, makes her smile.
She scans the biographical information Quinnlynn has made public, needing to know more, needing to know everything.
Employment: Coca-Cola Company
Religion: Baptist
College: Georgia State
Hometown: . . .<
br />
That can’t be right. It’s impossible.
Marshboro, Georgia?
Bettina’s hometown.
Chapter Eleven
Jessie seats herself beside Little Boy Blue on the couch.
The lavender robe is across his lap. He’s sucking his right thumb, his left hand toying with a square red puzzle piece as he eyes the wooden board. It’s simple, just five colorful shapes.
“Can you fit it back into the spot where it goes?” she asks him.
He glances up at her, then averts his gaze.
“Do you want me to show you how to do it?” She starts to reach, but he flinches.
She leans back, watching him stare at the board.
After a while, he extends the red square, poised to place it. But it’s turned at the wrong angle.
“Just rotate it, like this.” Again, she starts to reach; again, he retreats.
Giving him space, she picks up one of the other puzzles—also simple, with a transportation theme. She dumps out the pieces. He seems startled by the clatter, and for a moment she worries that he’s going to bolt from the room, but he just slides a few inches away from her on the couch cushion.
Keeping the crazy lady at arm’s length. Smart kid, she thinks, and pretends to be engrossed in her task. She can feel him watching her as she fits the pieces back in one at a time, trying several spots before finding the right one and murmuring the names of each piece.
“Train . . . car . . . truck . . . boat . . . plane! I did it!” She claps her hands, dumps it out, and starts again. “Truck . . . plane . . .”
After a few rounds of that, he moves his wooden square toward its space, turning, turning . . . it goes in, and she hears his breath catch in his throat. He gazes down at it for a long time, takes it out again, and puts it back, this time without effort.
“Square,” Jessie says quietly, resisting the urge to make a commotion. “Good job.”
He casts a sidewise glance at her, and she averts her eyes.
She finishes her puzzle, gives herself another round of applause, empties her transportation shapes onto the table again, and starts over.
Little Boy Blue fiddles with the blue triangle piece. Then, he grabs the board, turns it over, and dumps the pieces onto the table. He seems shaken by the clatter, and she sees him shoot a glance at her as if to make sure he’s not in trouble.
“Great,” she says. “Now you turn them over and line them up so that you can see what they are, and you put them back one at a time, just like this, see? Boat . . .”
He just sits there for so long she’s sure she’s lost him, but when she steals a glance at him, she sees that he’s engaged, studying the pieces, strategizing. Sure enough, he pieces it together quickly, and looks at her for a response.
She smiles at the obvious delight in his eyes, and claps. “You did it! See? Square, triangle, oval, circle, diamond! Want to try ag—”
He’s already dumping out the pieces to start over.
Where have you been all your life, Little Boy Blue?
Noting his reaction to everything around him, to Amelia, Jessie wonders whether he’s ever even seen a person of color before, or a toy, a television, a puzzle . . .
A knock on the front door startles them both.
“It’s all right, sweetie. Someone’s here, that’s all.” She stands. “Let’s go see who it is.”
He stays rooted to the couch. She glances at the double French doors to the patio, making sure they’re bolted. The yard is murky in the weak glow of solar path lights. There’s no way he’d leave his puzzle to venture outside, is there? She’ll only be a minute.
She hurries into the front hall and opens the door to a harried-looking woman with windswept dark hair and kind eyes. “Mrs. Hanson? Laura Himmelstein. Sorry it’s so late.”
She shows an identification card—ah, the caseworker. Jessie had forgotten all about her.
“How’s he doing?” Laura asks as Jessie leads her through the house.
“He’s been sleeping and eating like a champ. He’s very bright, and curious.” She stops in the kitchen and they peer at him through the archway.
Head bowed, he appears to have gone back to his puzzle without noticing the visitor, but Jessie sees him steal a wary glance.
“Still nonverbal?”
“Yes,” she tells Laura in a low voice. “I’ve been trying to make him more comfortable, reduce the anxiety level, but . . .”
“It takes more time to make a breakthrough with some children than others, especially in an emergency foster situation, when the separation from the home is still fresh and traumatic. Ideally, we’ll find out where he belongs, and he can go home right away, but in the meantime, we’ll be working to find him a longer-term placement.”
She nods. They’ve been down this road before.
Theodore, too, was supposed to have been a temporary foster placement while his teenaged birth mother was hospitalized with pneumonia. The stay had turned into weeks, months, a year, as she’d regained her health, earned her GED, established herself in a job, and saved enough for a decent place to live. Visiting Theodore as often as she could, she’d turned to Jessie one day with tears in her eyes.
“He doesn’t need me. He doesn’t even care that I’m here.”
“He does,” Jessie had lied, as Theodore used tweezers to sort colored beads into slots in a tray.
“No, he needs you and your husband, your kids, your house. He needs a normal life. He’ll never have that with me.”
He’ll never have that, period.
His mother had let go. Jessie and Billy could not.
Laura asks about the rest of the family, and she explains that Billy and Theodore are out shopping, neglecting to mention her son’s adverse reaction to their new foster child. She also mentions that a friend is visiting from New York. Under ordinary circumstances, with a foster child in the house, she’d have had to give notice about a houseguest well in advance.
She assures Laura that she’s well aware of the procedures—yes, Amelia is only staying for the weekend and no, she won’t have unsupervised contact with the boy. Anyway, she’d passed the required criminal background check several years ago, during an extended visit while other foster children had been in the house.
They go over Laura’s packet of paperwork and discuss what will happen if the child remains with them longer than a few days.
“I’ve already canceled my Monday appointments so that I can be home all day,” Jessie tells her. “I can push back Tuesday, too, if it comes to that.”
“Let’s hope for his sake that it doesn’t, and he’s back home by then.”
Hope . . .
Jessie looks at Little Boy Blue, trying to imagine him back in his mother’s arms, but the thing with feathers just sits, weighted and withered, in her soul.
Dressed in an old brown field coat he’d long ago stolen from Hugo’s barn, hair still damp from his shower, the Angler pockets his keys and turns off the bedroom light. He picks up the garbage bag filled with discarded clothing and peers into the hallway. Deserted.
He’d heard a sobbing Renee stomp up earlier and close her door with a bang. All is silent now as he heads toward the stairway, past enormous school photos of the children. Every time he looks at Pascal’s kindergarten portrait, he sees his own.
He, too, had worn a shy smile and a white dress shirt with a tie, the Catholic school uniform then and now. But he’d had no mother to purchase his own headshot and hang it on the wall, and so had glimpsed it only in the class composite hanging on the wall at that first of many schools he would attend.
In a box of old papers he’d found after his father’s death, he’d seen childhood snapshots of his father—features identical to his own at that age, and his son’s—no, his sons’.
They look like him. We all look like him.
He seizes Pascal’s portrait from the wall and crushes the glass-framed smile beneath his boot heel.
Behind her closed door, Renee
cries out. He continues on past without looking in or bidding her good-night, congratulating himself on a solid step toward undoing his wife’s coddling and pampering.
He’d whip both children into shape in no time if Cecile were gone from the house forever. With pleasure, he imagines bundling her into a tarp and sinking her to the depths of a cold Laurentians lake, but his grin fades when he realizes he’d then be responsible for the care and feeding of both offspring. Better to get rid of the children, one at a time. Make the first appear to be an accident or an abduction.
Cecile would go insane with grief. She might take her own life, and that of her surviving child, in a delusional attempt to join the first in the afterlife. That’s what he’ll make it look like, what he’ll tell the authorities.
He pauses in the kitchen, seeing that he’d left the milk carton out on the counter. Renee should have known to put it away. He’s tempted to drag her out of bed by the hair and make her pick up after herself, but that would invite another tantrum, and he might not be able to control his impulses this time.
Opening the refrigerator to put away the milk, he’s assaulted by Cecile’s stinking slab of Époisses. He seizes it and throws it into the garbage bag. Let her wonder what happened to it. Let her dare to ask.
He ties the garbage bag tightly, carries it out to the garage, and pops the car trunk. It yawns open in the darkness, the interior light long ago disconnected.
It smells of damp earth and of Monique, pulling him back to the night he’d returned to his uncle’s farm after her escape attempt. A knot of dread had clenched his heart as he opened the trunk and shined his flashlight into her blue-eyed terror. She’d known what he was about to do, what he had to do. There was no choice in the matter, no violent impulse.
“Get out.”
She’d whimpered.
He’d yanked her arm, hearing her shoulder snap as he’d hauled her from the trunk. She’d yowled in agony, and he’d clapped a rough hand over her mouth to stifle her.
They’d been too far from the house for an ancient man to hear, though. The Angler had parked not in his usual spot behind the barn, but alongside the path leading down to the lake.
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