“Can I come in?” he said, his voice muffled. “I need to talk to you.”
I nodded and waited as he slipped inside the car, shutting the door after him. “Don’t you know how to text?”
“Don’t you know how to answer them?” A hint of a smile softened his response.
Admittedly, I hadn’t looked at my phone since using it to find Wanda’s house. “I’ve been occupied.”
“I guessed that.” He gestured to my face. “What happened?”
“You mean why am I upset? Oh, I don’t know. Besides parents hurting their children and my having no way to protect them, and certain people thinking I’m the one keeping them from a happy family reunion, nothing.”
He winced at the hardness in my tone. “Okay, I deserved that.”
Something in me wilted at the admission. I didn’t want to fight; I just wanted to sleep for a month straight. “Look, it’s been a long day, and tomorrow I have to get ready for a visit from DCS, or whatever that department with fancy initials is called.”
“I heard about Zoey and Bianca. That’s great. It usually takes three months to get approved, so I’m glad Bea was able to pull some strings to get the wheels going faster.”
“It helped that the girls were already with me.” I shut the mirror, feeling too exposed to him under its light.
“Look, you were right about Halla.”
His words froze my hand on its way to the door handle. I turned back to him slowly and waited for more.
“I made a few calls to some friends I have in Idaho, and they made calls to their friends and so forth. I talked to a lot of people—no one official, but it raised enough flags to make me think Halla’s father is exactly what she claims.” He paused and ran a hand through his hair in a way that made my heartbeat pick up. There was a tiny scar on his chin that I’d never noticed before, and I wondered where he’d gotten it. “The neighbor actually told me if I knew where Halla was, I should hide her. She said Halla’s mother used to be a friend of hers but when she started commenting about Halla’s dad’s strictness, the mother stopped calling.”
“So you’re not going to turn her in?”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“It sure seemed like it Friday night.”
He sighed and leaned back. “I’m sorry. I really am. I just . . . Lily, you have to see that you can’t do this alone. Are you going to finish school? What about the future? You know the girls need counseling and to go to school and live in a place that doesn’t have questionable men lurking around.”
“I’m changing all that. I’ll get legit, find a big house, and put as many girls as I can there, even those I can’t become an official foster parent for. I don’t want . . . I can’t . . .” I couldn’t finish. I didn’t want to admit that I knew by experience how devastating it was to grow up feeling unloved—and I’d had it nowhere near as rough as my girls. I’d had Tessa and that had saved me, had allowed me to develop into a person who could love and care for others. My girls had no one except me and each other; I hoped that would save them.
He shook his head, but he was smiling. “When you say it, I believe you. There’s this . . . light in your face, and I believe you completely.”
“You do?”
“And I want to help.”
I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but I recognized the look in his eyes. Whatever else he meant, he also wanted to kiss me, and there was no way that was happening, not yet. Not until I could really trust him.
“Truce?” he said.
“Okay. But you do nothing about the girls unless I say. That means you don’t talk to anyone about them being with me.”
He tucked my hair behind my ear and ran his finger along my cheek, sending hot, exhilarating tingles to my stomach. “Deal. But you have to tell me why you were crying.”
I couldn’t, not after what had happened with Halla. What if he thought Ruth’s mother wanted her back for the right reasons? No, for now, I wasn’t going to trust him with anything more.
“I went to one of the foster-parent classes tonight. You know, trying to get my license. It’s pretty horrible what children go through.”
“I know. It’s why I keep working at Teen Remake. I feel I’m making at least some difference. Anyway, I documented everything I learned about Halla’s family, and we can use it if we need to. At sixteen, Halla will probably have a lot to say about what happens to her, especially if we can prove abuse.”
“I can’t risk it yet. She’ll run—I know she will, and I’m not going to betray her. We need more solid evidence. So you’d better tell me right now if you plan to turn her in.”
He shook his head. “We’ll find another way.”
The pressure building in my head eased. “I’d better go in,” I said. “I’m already late. The girls will be wondering where I am.” Besides, I didn’t trust myself—a few kisses, and I’d probably be telling him everything again. Better to keep my distance completely.
“I’ll walk you up.”
I knew better than to object.
We hadn’t yet reached the stairs when movement in a nearby car halted my progress. “Wait a minute. Is that . . .?” I hurried over to the car and tapped on the window. Sure enough, Saffron was inside, making out with her newest boyfriend. She jumped away from him and shot out the door, her hair looking almost as orange as Tessa’s under the fluorescent street lighting.
“Saffron,” I began.
She flashed me a grin as she slammed the door. “Don’t worry. I already made that mistake once, and I’m never going to let a boy get that close again. You should know that by now. It was just a bit of harmless making out.” She waved to the boy as he pulled away.
“Harmless?” Jameson said. “You know boys don’t feel the same way about it, right?”
“Oh? You speaking from experience?” Saffron said. “I heard you two gave the girls a show the other night.”
Jameson looked sheepish, and I felt my face flush. Hopefully, neither of them could see it in the darkness of the parking lot.
“That’s different,” I said. “I’m a lot older. I’m supposed to be . . .” What, trying to find a husband? So not going to say that in front of Jameson. It wasn’t as if I was an old maid.
Saffron laughed. “I know. But I promise, I learned my lesson when I got pregnant. That’s never going to happen again. Ever. I know there aren’t many guys out there that are worth anything.”
“Hey,” Jameson protested.
“Okay, maybe you. But I hear the jury’s still out on that one.” With a flip of her hair, Saffron turned toward the stairs.
“Yeah I know.” Jameson looked at me as we followed more slowly.
He was so appealing that I wanted to wrap my arms around him and kiss him senseless, but things were too up in the air between us right now. I thought he was on my side, but there was too much regulation in him. How could it possibly work between us?
After saying hello to the girls, Jameson left me at the door with a glance at Saffron and a chaste “friend” kiss on my cheek. Even so, his touch sent my heart racing again. Well, I’d given up a lot for the girls, and I could give him up too.
The minute the door was shut, the girls clustered around me. “I thought you weren’t going to date him,” Bianca said.
“Well, a woman can change her mind,” Elsie put in.
“That’s right, we can change our minds,” I said. “But for now he and I are just friends.”
Saffron rolled her eyes. “Sure, you are. Anyone can tell he is so into you. Like he said, it’s not the same for guys.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to be into him.” Time to change the subject. “Now why aren’t you guys ready for bed? We have to be up bright and early.”
“Why?” groaned Zoey, one of her long sleeves riding up enough to show that recent cut on her arm. “School is already early enough.”
“Because DCS is coming to see this place, and we have to clean it and make it look like only you an
d Bianca live here.” Bea knew about Saffron, but I wasn’t sure how that might figure into the equation. If it came up, I could always say Saffron slept in the living room.
“Really? We’re approved?” Zoey had started to sit on the couch, and now she jumped back up, her eyes wide.
“Well, temporarily, but yes.” I hugged her and Bianca, and then Halla and Ruth, who were jumping up and down. “Someday you’ll all be legit.”
More jumping up and down and excitement until a pounding came on the floor from the apartment below. “Oops,” I said. “Quiet down! Everyone to bed. Don’t forget to brush your teeth. I can’t afford a dentist.”
As the girls scattered, Elsie’s hand slipped into mine, as if she were a much younger child. “It won’t happen for me,” she said. “My father will never let me go. He’d kill me first.”
A chill crawled over my shoulders. The words that came to me were the ones Jameson had just said to me in the car: “Then we’ll find another way.”
10
Elsie went with Ruth on Tuesday to take care of the errands, while Halla walked over to Makay’s. The apartment was all ready for DCS when the caseworker arrived. She was a plump, older woman with thin, bowl-cut hair, who seemed distracted and uninterested, breezing through the place without really seeing it. The only thing she wanted to verify was if the girls slept in the bedroom by themselves.
Calling on my high school drama classes, I smiled and pointed to Halla’s chair bed next to the couch that we’d left unfolded. “I sleep in here, which works out well because I stay up later than the girls. I’m a student most of the time. Still got a couple years left. But we’re hoping to get a two-bedroom apartment soon.”
She nodded. “I’ll be talking to the girls, of course, but this is as good as many foster homes I see. It’s a good thing you’re doing for them. Siblings this old are extremely hard to place together, especially where there’s been sexual abuse. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No. I don’t usually even date.” But unless that seemed too weird, I hurried to say, “I have recently gone out a few times with a guy who works at Teen Remake.”
“He doesn’t sleep here, though?”
“Oh, no!”
She cracked her first smile at my shock. “Well, you’d be surprised at what goes on. I don’t like to place young girls in homes where boyfriends sleep over.”
I thought of Ruth and had a surge of hope. “What if they’re with their own mother?”
The social worker’s face sobered. “That’s the one exception. Unless the boyfriend has a record of some sort or is abusing the girls, we don’t have much control over who the mother is sleeping with.”
She took a final look around. “Do you have your landlord’s approval letter?”
“I need his approval?” Uneasiness fluttered in my stomach.
She drew out a form from her binder. “Yeah. Just have him fill this out. It tells us he knows you’re fostering the girls here and that it’s all right.”
“Okay.” That shouldn’t be too bad, admitting that two of the girls lived with me.
“Just send it in when you have it, or give it to Bea.”
“I will.”
“We’ll schedule regular visits, but we’ll let you know when. As long as everything works out with the girls, I think we’re good for now.”
“Thanks.”
Just that fast, my dump of an apartment became Zoey and Bianca’s official home.
When I arrived for my one o’clock shift at the factory, the receptionist told me my father wanted to see me in his office. Unease shifted through my mind, followed by a not-so-subtle increase in my heart rate. Until I’d begun working for him, Nolan Crawford had really been a non-entity to me. When we were young, Tessa and I had been careful to answer his questions promptly and not to upset him with our noise, but as he was home so rarely, it wasn’t much of an issue. He was practically a stranger. I didn’t know what his favorite color was, he’d never come to any of my plays, and aside from Christmas and the Fourth of July, we didn’t act like a typical family. The factory in Phoenix was two hours away from our house in Flagstaff, and he’d more often than not stayed at his apartment in town, coming home on Thursday or Friday for the weekend. On the weeks he didn’t return to Flagstaff, my mother wouldn’t leave her bed. I didn’t understand that until I was older and overheard him on the phone with a woman, whispering seductive things I’d never even imagined him saying to my mother.
When I entered his office, he looked over the reading glasses perched on his nose and gave me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Have a seat,” he said, indicating a chair at the desk. His blond hair had streaks of gray, and he was carrying at least fifty extra pounds, but he exuded power.
I sat. You didn’t say no to my father.
He watched me settle before dropping his gaze back to the report on his desk. “I heard your mother came to visit you at your new apartment?”
“Yes.” This didn’t sound good.
Again he looked up from his reading, his bushy eyebrows slightly drawn. “She’s worried about you. She wants you to come home.”
“I’m fine. Doing great, in fact. I love Phoenix.”
“You can return here in the fall when you go back to college. Have you made the new changes to your schedule? I think you’ll pick up French quickly enough.” He looked down, as if the conversation had been concluded, though I knew he expected an answer.
“No, I haven’t. Look, Dad, can we talk about this later? I’m going to be late for my shift.”
His eyes met mine. “You no longer have a shift. That’s what I’m trying to say. So you’re free to go home and spend some time with your mother.” He raised a hand before I could protest. “Your job will be waiting for you when you return to school in the fall.” With that, he went back to his report.
Spend time with my mother? Was he joking? After she’d made me lose the job I needed to support the girls, knowing full well how devastating that would be for them and for me?
“I can’t leave.”
My father didn’t look up for a full two seconds; then he leaned back and removed his glasses, keeping them in his hands. “Why not?”
“I’m doing some work at Teen Remake—helping kids. I’m becoming licensed.” I didn’t mention licensed at what. “Please, I need this job.”
“Does this have to do with those girls you have living with you? Lily, it’s good you want to help, but you will go home and forget this nonsense. Your family needs you.”
My family. I knew by the set of his jaw there was no use arguing. My father was always, always right, except when he wasn’t, and then we all still pretended he was.
I stood slowly and started toward the door, pausing there. “You’re right, they do need me. That’s why I’m staying.”
Shock registered on his face before he rose, as if his height would force me into compliance. “Lily—”
“Thank you for the offer of a job this fall, but I need a job now. I’ll have to find something else.”
“What about your schooling?” If his voice could be any more rigid, it might shatter with his next breath. “Does this mean you don’t want help from us?”
It was a threat, but the only help they’d given me was this job, and if they used it as a way to control my life, how could I accept? “Actually, I could really use your help now by letting me keep my job.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Right.” I left before he could say any more, hurrying to my car, where I stared out the windshield, seeing nothing and feeling only shock.
What was I going to do? No more income from this job. That meant no better apartment. I had enough coming for June’s rent, and whatever Teen Remake gave me in the meantime would have to do for food, but they barely paid above minimum wage, so that meant scraping by yet another month until the foster care check arrived in July. Even with that, I wouldn’t be able to save enough for a down payment and first month’s rent on another pl
ace.
Wiping away the tears, I drove to Tessa’s apartment. I needed my big sister. She took one look at my face and hurried me over to her couch. “What happened?”
“Dad fired me because Mom wants me home. I told him no.”
Tessa’s freckled face flushed with her shock. Only she understood what it was to stand up to him. Slowly, a smile spread across her face. “Good for you! I’m proud of you.”
“Really? I’m not being stupid?”
She hugged me. “No. You’re my hero. And you’re a hero to those girls.”
“What if I can’t pay the rent? Or buy food?”
“I’ll help you. And you can get another job.” Tessa drew away and looked into my eyes. “Besides, you hate it there. I know you do. We should be celebrating.”
A bit dazed, I sat there as her comments sank inside me, pushing past the paralyzing fear. Deeper and deeper until they reached my heart. My sister was right, and now that she mentioned it, the idea of never going back to the factory made me feel giddy with happiness.
“I’m free,” I whispered. “Free!”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about.” Tessa gave me a high five. “The factory’s not right for you, and if Dad and Mom had any idea of who you are, they’d know that. I know what you want: your dream house, helping the girls.”
“But what about you?” I thought she hated working there just as much.
Tessa shrugged. “It’s different for me. I don’t mind the factory for now. I like the people I work with.”
“Yeah. I did too.” My co-workers were the only thing that had made it tolerable.
“Speaking of which, I think I’d better jump in the shower and get ready for work.” Tessa rose from the couch. “I’ll talk to Mom and Dad,” she added. “Let’s just give them a few weeks to settle down.”
House Without Lies (Lily’s House Book 1) Page 12