by Gina Wilkins
Slowly coming back to coherence, Miranda nodded. “Yeah, we can do that for tonight.” She looked at Mark. “You can stay for a little while longer, can’t you? We need to talk after they’re in bed.”
She obviously needed advice, and since he was the only other adult around at the moment, it looked as though he was elected. Fortunately it wasn’t particularly late, since he had brought her straight home after dinner. “I’ll call Mrs. McSwaim and tell her I’ll be awhile yet. She won’t mind. I’m sure my kids are already in bed.”
Miranda gave him a wan smile of gratitude, then turned back to her nephews. “So, do you two have pajamas and toothbrushes in those suitcases?”
Two synchronized nods. Mark wondered if the boys were always this quiet, or were simply overwhelmed by being uprooted and left with strangers. He suspected the latter.
Miranda drew a deep breath, and he could see her usual spirit slowly begin to reassert itself. “Okay,” she said, “let’s get you guys into those pj’s.”
A short while later, Miranda watched her nephews climb into her bed. It was a queen-size bed, which took up most of the small bedroom, but she liked having plenty of room to stretch out while she slept.
The twins looked even smaller than before as they huddled in the center of the mattress. Considering everything, she supposed they were being brave and stoic about their circumstances, but the pallor of their faces and the expressions in their big brown eyes told her they were extremely shaken.
“Do either of you need anything else?” she asked as she lingered awkwardly beside the bed.
They shook their heads against the pillows.
“Well, then, I’ll be in the next room if you need anything. Oh, and this is the only bathroom in the apartment, so don’t be alarmed if you hear me moving around in there during the night, okay?”
Two more simultaneous nods.
“Okay.” This was so very weird. She took a step toward the door. “Good night.”
“Aunt ’Randa?”
The quiet little voice stopped her just as she reached for the light switch. She didn’t know who had spoken, but she guessed it was Kasey, since he seemed to do most of the talking for the duo. “Yes?”
“Could you leave the door open?”
Of course they were scared, she thought with a sudden rush of pity. The poor kids were in a strange place with a woman they barely knew. It was mind-boggling to realize that she was all they had at the moment. That she was totally responsible for their welfare.
Swallowing hard, she nodded and turned off the light, then stepped out of the room. She left the door ajar by a good three inches, so the light from the living room would spill into the bedroom, at least until after the boys were asleep.
Mark waited for her at the kitchen table. At her request, he had made a pot of decaffeinated coffee—not that she expected to get any sleep tonight even without the effects of caffeine.
“Did you call your baby-sitter?” she asked as she poured coffee into a mug. Mark already had a steaming cup in front of him.
“Yes. She’s my housekeeper. She lives only a couple of doors down from me, so it isn’t a problem for me to be a bit late. I’ll walk her home.”
“It must be convenient for you to have a housekeeper and nanny. Especially one who lives so close by.”
“It is. I used to do taxes for her and her husband. When her husband died last year, she didn’t want to sell her house, but she was lonely, and she had no family to turn to, so we worked out an arrangement. It has turned out very well for both of us.”
He really was a compulsive caregiver, Miranda thought as she took a seat at the little round table. Even when it came to hiring his household help, he was actually providing companionship and a little extra income for a lonely widow.
While taking in strays might be commonplace for Mark, it was hardly characteristic for Miranda. “What am I going to do with these boys?” she asked, hoping he would have a suggestion, since her own mind was pretty much devoid of ideas.
“First you should probably find out whatever you can about your sister’s situation.”
Miranda handed him her sister’s letter, which she had already read twice. “Maybe you should read this.”
He seemed a bit reluctant to unfold the page. “You’re sure? After all, this is your personal business.”
“You’re my accountant,” she said with a shrug. “There’s very little you don’t already know about me.”
“Financially, maybe. This is different.”
“Still, I’ve always valued your advice, and I would appreciate any you can offer me now.”
He hesitated a moment longer, then opened the letter and began to read silently.
Miranda could almost recite the words along with him. Her sister had starkly described the trouble she was in, laying the blame on someone else, and had then begged Miranda to take care of her twins.
It had taken this mess to make Lisa realize what a terrible mother she had been to them, she had written. Selfish and irresponsible and immature. Even if she could take them with her now, they deserved to be raised by someone more settled and responsible, like their aunt Miranda. Lisa needed to put her mistakes behind her—presumably including her twins among those mistakes—and start a new life for herself.
She had packed their birth certificates and immunization records in Kasey’s suitcase, she explained. They had been healthy children who rarely needed medical attention, so Miranda needn’t worry about that.
“The boys have no one else to turn to,” she had added. “Miranda, I know this is a lot to ask of you, but you won’t regret it. They’re good kids. And they’re your family.”
Family. Miranda grimaced as she repeated the word in her mind. It had never been a particularly sentimental concept for her, since her own had been so dysfunctional. The idealized image of loving, supportive parents was foreign to her. The only genuine love she had known as a child had come from her maternal grandmother, who had tried her best to compensate for the emotional neglect her granddaughters had received from their parents.
Her grandmother had died when Miranda was only ten. After that, there had been no one for her to turn to for emotional support except her older sister. And now Lisa had turned to her.
“This doesn’t sound good,” Mark murmured, refolding the letter.
“No. If she has already disappeared into the witness protection program, there’s little chance that I’ll ever be able to find her, right?”
“I have a client who’s an attorney. I’ll ask him to look into this as a favor to me. He owes me a few.”
“Thank you. I’d appreciate that. In the meantime, what am I going to do with these kids?”
“You don’t have to work tomorrow, do you?”
“No, I wasn’t planning to go in at all this weekend.”
“That’s good. That will give you time to make arrangements.”
“What sort of arrangements?”
“You’ll have to make plans for some sort of childcare while you’re working. And there are steps you need to take to have yourself named their legal guardian. My attorney friend can help you with that part, too. It’s clear from this letter that your sister is voluntarily giving up her parental rights.”
“Just wait a minute, Mark.” Aware of the partially opened bedroom door, she leaned closer to him, keeping her voice low. “I can’t be their legal guardian. Obviously I’m not set up to raise a couple of boys, even if that were something I wanted to take on.”
He hesitated a moment, then asked, “What about their father?”
She spread her hands, noting that they were unsteady. “I never even knew his name. And you can bet Lisa won’t tell us, even if we manage to find her. She said she promised him she would never contact him after he gave her the financial settlement.”
“Is there any way you could send them to your parents?”
She felt her expression harden. “Weren’t you paying attention when I told you about them? T
hey won’t help. Nor would I ask them to. I’d rather give the kids to strangers than to send them into that cold, rigid, utterly dismal environment.”
“They’re really that bad?”
“Trust me. My father is a throwback to the Puritans. His word is law, and his laws are unbending. He has very specific ideas about how the world should be run, and about the role of women—which is to be quiet, submissive, dependent and obedient to men.”
“And your mother goes along with that?”
“My mother is content to have all her decisions made for her so she can drift along in a safe, comfortable, predictable world of her own. She’s borderline agoraphobic and rarely leaves the house. My grandmother said she was always like that—afraid of her own shadow and happiest when she had someone to handle every worrisome problem for her.
“She and my father are the perfect match, I suppose. Lisa and I just happened to inherit more of his nature than our mother’s, which didn’t please him at all. We weren’t content to be dutiful, submissive, undemanding daughters who would live at home until he found proper mates for us, if he ever did. That was what he expected from us, and he was furious that we had other plans. There’s no way I would send Lisa’s boys into that home to be raised with those twisted values.”
“Well, since you’ve ruled out everyone else, that just leaves you,” Mark said quietly. “Or the strangers you mentioned earlier.”
“Foster care?” she whispered.
He nodded. “I survived it. I suppose they will, too, if you can’t keep them yourself.”
For the first time since she had moved in, Miranda’s apartment seemed much too small to her. As if the walls were closing in, and all the air was escaping. As if she were caught in a trap. “How can I possibly keep them here? There’s barely room for me, much less a couple of kids. I’m not even sure my lease would allow them to live here with me.”
“This apartment is too small for them,” Mark agreed.
“And there’s my job. Sometimes I’m at the office as much as sixty hours a week. I go on business trips three or four times a year. I can’t afford a housekeeper and an overnight nanny, even if I had a bed for her to sleep in.”
“It would be expensive for you to take them in, though I could help you find a way to swing it financially. It would take most of your earnings, so you’d have very little left to put away in savings, but we could probably stash away a small amount each month.”
Her fingers tightened around her cup of untasted coffee. She had worked so hard for her money, equating her slowly building savings with independence and security. It had been so important to her never to be dependent on anyone else again.
“I can’t do this, Mark,” she murmured miserably. “I’m not qualified to raise a couple of kids. I don’t have the resources or the experience or the right personality for the job. It would be unfair to them to leave them with someone so completely clueless about kids.”
“Then that brings us back to the only other recourse. Foster care.” If there was any disapproval in his voice, Miranda couldn’t hear it, nor did she see any criticism in his expression. He seemed to be making an effort to stay completely nonjudgmental about this process, offering his services only as a sounding board for her decision making.
She swallowed hard. “Foster parents are carefully screened, aren’t they? Only the best and most caring homes are approved, right?”
“Ideally that would be true, of course. But since there are far more children in need of placement than there are qualified homes for them, it isn’t always the case. Still, I’m sure the social workers would find somewhere for Kasey and Jamie to go, even if it took a couple of attempts to find the right setting for them.”
She had a sudden mental picture of the boys being continuously uprooted and moved from place to place. She wondered if Mark had deliberately planted that image, despite his outward appearance of careful objectivity. “I can’t keep them, Mark.”
“You’re the only one who can make that decision, of course.”
She didn’t bother to ask what he would do in her situation. She had little doubt that he would simply make room for two more in his life and his household. That was what he did, who he was. A caregiver. Miranda had never aspired to take care of anyone but herself—with the occasional exception of helping out Lisa on a temporary and superficial basis.
“Maybe you should wait until Monday before you call anyone,” Mark suggested. “Weekends aren’t the best time to try to get help from the Department of Human Services.”
Even the thought of being responsible for a couple of five-year-olds for forty-eight hours made her nervous, but she supposed that was the least she could do for them. “All right. I’ll wait until Monday. I guess I can take Monday off to make arrangements for the boys. I have some personal days accumulated.”
“Mmm.”
She gave him a hard look, trying to determine if there was criticism in the sound he had made, but his expression was still closed to her. “Are there any suggestions you can offer in the meantime? Like what I’m supposed to do with a couple of five-year-olds for an entire weekend?”
“Make sure they eat three well-balanced meals a day. Have them brush their teeth and take their baths. Don’t let them play in the traffic or stick their fingers into open light sockets. Belt them into the back seat when you take them out in your car. What else do you need to know?”
She rolled her eyes. “What do I do with them when they aren’t eating or bathing—or trying to stick their fingers into light sockets?”
“You could take them to the park and let them play on the playground. Take them to a kids’ movie—my girls liked the one we saw the other night. Take them to Pizza ‘n’ Prizes and let them play the games there. There are plenty of things you can do.”
The mention of his girls gave her an idea. “Maybe we could all go to the park together? The twins could play with your girls. They would probably have a great time.”
“Coward.”
“Hey, I’m not denying it. I told you I don’t know anything about parenting.”
Mark nodded abruptly. “Okay. I don’t usually work Saturdays, anyway, once the worst part of tax season is over. We’ll take the kids to the park. Why don’t we meet at my place at three, after Madison’s nap?”
“Sounds good to me.” She had a feeling that she and the boys would all be relieved to see other people by then.
She walked him to the door, then put a hand on his arm to detain him when he moved to step through it. “Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For the dinner? I enjoyed it.”
“So did I, but that isn’t what I was talking about. Thank you for helping me deal with all this tonight. I might have panicked when the boys were dumped on my doorstep had I been here alone. You were calm and practical and helpful, and I needed that.”
“You’re welcome.” He surprised her by reaching up to rub his thumb lightly across her lower lip. “Too bad they couldn’t have arrived a few minutes later, hmm?”
Remembering the kiss that had been interrupted before it began, she sighed lightly. Too bad, indeed. But now that they would be seeing each other again the next day—strictly as friends, of course—the time for a onetime, curiosity-satisfying kiss had passed.
“Too bad,” she agreed with a touch of regret she didn’t even try to hide from him. “Good night, Mark.”
He dropped his hand and stepped out of the apartment. She closed the door behind him, then looked toward the bedroom and drew a deep, shaky breath. Forty-eight hours, she reminded herself. She could handle this.
She would worry about Monday when it arrived.
An odd sound woke Miranda from her restless dozing on the living room couch. She lay still for a moment, wondering if she had been dreaming. But then she heard it again, a whimper coming from the bedroom.
She had worn a heavy, oversize T-shirt and dorm pants for sleeping, so she didn’t bother reaching f
or a robe when she tossed the light blanket aside and stood. Pushing her hair out of her face, she moved toward the bedroom.
The sounds were coming from the bed. She turned on the light. “What’s wrong?”
The boys were huddled together in the center of the big mattress. One of them was sniffling, his face red and wet with tears. The other boy—Kasey, she would bet—seemed to have been offering comfort.
“Jamie?” she hazarded, moving closer to the bed. “What’s the matter? Did you have a bad dream?”
“He misses Mama,” Kasey answered for his brother, confirming her guess at their identity.
Miranda’s throat tightened. Once again she felt completely helpless, her inexperience with children almost overwhelming her.
She perched on the edge of the bed and started to reach out to Jamie, but then she pulled her hand back, not knowing quite what she had intended to do. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I know you miss your mom. I miss her, too.”
It was the truth, actually. Beneath the anger she still felt over Lisa’s foolishness was a deep sadness that her sister had gotten into such a bind.
She had seen Lisa only a handful of times in the past twelve years, but they were still sisters. That connection had not been broken just because they had chosen radically different paths.
She didn’t want to promise the boys anything she couldn’t deliver, but she would try to contact Lisa somehow, if Mark’s client knew how she could do so. Surely Lisa had known how ill-equipped Miranda was to deal with them.
“Mama said we’re going to live with you now,” Kasey said.
“Well, uh…” She patted the pillow behind Jamie. “Why don’t you lie back down and try to get some sleep?”
“Sometimes when we couldn’t sleep, Mama would stay with us,” Kasey said, his little voice rising at the end to turn the sentence into a question.
“Oh.” She moistened her lips, then looked at Jamie, whose eyes were still swimming in tears. She knew she wasn’t offering him much comfort, since she didn’t have the first clue what that entailed. “Okay, I guess I can stay awhile. Would that help, Jamie?”