by Nora Roberts
“Okay.” He’d lost five bucks to the little cheat. It was mortifying.
“And I see you’ve eaten. If you’ve decided to stay, I’ll give you over to Mouse shortly. He’ll put you to work.”
“That’d be good.” But he knew better than to sound anxious. When you sounded anxious, that was when they pulled the rug out from under you. “For a couple days, anyhow.”
“Splendid. A free lesson before we begin.” He paused to pour coffee, sniff appreciatively then sip. “Never bet on the house game unless losing is to your advantage. Will you need clothes?”
Though he couldn’t see how losing could ever be an advantage, Luke didn’t comment. “I’ve got some stuff.”
“All right then, you can go retrieve it. Then we’ll get started.”
One of the advantages of being a boy like Luke was that he had no expectations. Another might have anticipated touches of glamour, or adventure, perhaps a bit of jolly camaraderie of carny life. But in Luke’s philosophy, people generally got less than they paid for of the good things, and more than they could handle of the bad.
So when he was put to work by the taciturn Mouse lifting, hauling, cleaning, painting and fetching, he followed orders without complaint or conversation. Since Mouse had little to say for himself, Luke was able to keep his own counsel and observe.
Life in a carnival wasn’t glamorous, he noted. It was sweaty, and dirty. The air snapped with the scents of frying food, cheap cologne and unwashed bodies. Colors that looked so bright at night were dingy in the light of day. And the rides that seemed so fast and fearsome under a starry sky appeared tired, and more than a little unsafe under a hard summer sun.
As for adventure, there was nothing exciting about scrubbing down the long black trailer, or helping Mouse change the spark plugs in the Chevy pickup that hauled it.
Mouse had head and shoulders under the hood, and his tiny eyes were slitted nearly closed as he listened to the idling engine. Occasionally he would hum a little tune, or grunt and make a few more adjustments.
Luke shifted from foot to foot. The heat was terrible. Sweat was beginning to seep through the faded bandanna he’d tied around his head. He didn’t know a damn thing about cars, and didn’t see why he needed to when he wouldn’t be able to drive one for years and years. The way Mouse was humming and fiddling was getting on his nerves.
“It sounds okay to me.”
Mouse blinked his eyes open. There was grease on his hands, streaked on his moon pie face, smeared on his baggy white T-shirt. He was quite simply in Mouse heaven.
“Missing,” he corrected, then closed his eyes again. He made minute adjustments, as gently as a man in love would initiate a virgin. The engine purred for him. “Sweet baby,” he said under his breath.
There was nothing in Mouse’s world more fascinating, or seductive, than a well-oiled machine.
“Jesus, it’s just a stupid truck.”
Mouse opened his eyes again, and there was a smile in them. He was barely twenty, and because of his size and plodding manner, had been considered a freak by the other children in the state home where he’d grown up. He neither trusted nor liked a great many people, but he’d already developed a tolerant affection for Luke.
There was something about his smile—it was slow and pure as a baby’s—that made Luke grin back. “You done yet or what?”
“Done.” To prove it Mouse closed the hood, then rounded it to take the keys from the ignition and pocket them. He’d never forgotten the surge of pride he’d felt when Max had trusted him with the keys for the first time. “She’ll run fine tonight when we head to Manchester.”
“How long are we there?”
“Three days.” Mouse took a pack of Pall Malls from his rolled sleeve, shook the pack and nipped one out with his teeth before offering the pack to Luke. Luke accepted it as casually as possible. “Hard work tonight. Loading up.”
Luke let the cigarette dangle from the corner of his mouth and waited for Mouse to light a match. “How come somebody like Mr. Nouvelle’s in a cheap carny like this?”
The match flared as Mouse touched it to the end of his cigarette. “Got his reasons.” He held the match to the tip of Luke’s, then leaned back on the truck and began to daydream about the long, quiet drive.
Luke took an experimental puff, choked back a hacking cough and made the mistake of inhaling. He coughed hard enough to make his eyes water, but when Mouse glanced his way, he struggled for dignity.
“Not my usual brand.” His voice was a thin squeak before he took another determined drag. This time he swallowed the smoke, gagged and fought a sweaty battle to keep from losing his lunch. It felt as though his eyes were rolling back in his head to meet his rising stomach.
“Hey. Hey, kid.” Concern at the green tinge of Luke’s skin had Mouse slapping a fist to his back hard enough to take Luke to his knees. When he vomited weakly, Mouse patted his head with a greasy hand. “Holy cow. You sick or something?”
“Do we have a problem here?” Max crossed to them. Lily broke from his side to crouch beside Luke.
“Oh, honey. You poor thing,” she crooned, rubbing a hand up and down Luke’s back. “Just stay down there, sweetie, till it passes.” She spotted the smoldering cigarette that had dropped from Luke’s hand and clucked her tongue. “What in the world was this child doing with one of those awful things?”
“My fault.” Mouse stared miserably at his own feet. “I wasn’t thinking when I gave him a cigarette, Max. It’s my fault.”
“He didn’t have to take it.” Max shook his head as Luke braced himself on his hands and knees and struggled with the nausea. “And he’s certainly paying for it. Another free lesson. Don’t take what you can’t hold.”
“Oh, leave the child be.” Her mothering instinct on overdrive, Lily pressed Luke’s clammy face to her breast, where he breathed in a heady mixture of Chanel and sweat. Holding Luke close, Lily glared at Max. “Just because you’ve never been sick a day in your life is no reason to be unsympathetic.”
“Quite right,” Max agreed and hid a smile. “Mouse and I will leave him to your tender care.”
“We’ll fix you up,” she murmured to Luke. “You just come with Lily, honey. Come on now, lean on me.”
“I’m okay.” But as he dragged himself to his feet, his head spun in counterpoint to his roiling stomach. The sickness spread its slippery fingers through him so expertly, he had no room for embarrassment as Lily half carried him back to the trailer.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, baby doll. You just need to lie down awhile, that’s all.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He wanted to lie down. It would be easier to die that way.
“Now, you don’t have to ma’am me, honey. You call me Lily just like everybody.” She had him tucked under one arm as she opened the trailer door. “You lie right on down on the sofa and I’ll get you a nice, cold cloth.”
Groaning, he collapsed facedown and began to pray with a fervor he’d just discovered that he wouldn’t throw up again.
“Here you go, baby.” Armed with a damp cloth and a basin—just in case—Lily knelt beside him. After slipping the sweaty bandanna from his head, she laid the cloth over his brow. “You’ll feel better soon, I promise. I had a brother who got sick the first time he smoked.” She spoke quietly, in that soothing sickroom voice some women assume so naturally. “But he got over it in no time.”
The best Luke could manage was a moan. Lily continued to talk as she turned the cloth over and stroked his face and neck with it. “You just rest.” Her lips curved as she felt him drifting off. “That’s the way, honey pie. You sleep it out.”
Indulging herself, she brushed her fingers through his hair. It was long and thick, and smooth as silk. If she and Max had been able to make a child together, he might have had hair like that, she thought, wistful. But as fertile as her heart was to love a brood of children, her womb was sterile.
The boy did have a beautiful face, she mused. His skin gol
d from the sun and smooth as a girl’s. Good strong bones beneath it. And those lashes. She let out another sigh. Still, as appealing as the boy was, and as much as her soul ached to fill her life with children, she wasn’t certain Max had done the right thing by taking him in.
He wasn’t an orphan like Mouse. The child had a mother, after all. As hard as her own life had been, Lily found it next to impossible to believe that a mother wouldn’t do all in her power to protect, to shelter, to love her child.
“I bet she’s frantic for you, baby doll,” Lily murmured. She clucked her tongue. “You’re hardly more than skin and bones. And look here, you’ve sweated right through this shirt. All right then, we’ll slip you out of it and get it washed up for you.”
Gently, she tugged it up his back. Her fingers froze on the damp cloth. Her quick, involuntary cry had him moaning in his sleep. As tears of grief and rage sprang hot to her eyes, she slid the shirt back down.
Max stood in front of the mirror he’d set on stage and rehearsed his sleight-of-hand routine. He watched as the audience would watch as coins slipped in and out of his fingers. Max had performed his version of the Sympathetic Coins countless times, enhancing it, refining it as he did with every trick and illusion he’d learned or invented since he’d first stood on the corner of Bourbon and St. Louis in New Orleans, with his folding table, his cardboard box salted with coins, and the Cups and Balls.
He didn’t often think of those early days now, not now that he was a successful man, past forty. But the bitter, desperate child he had been could sneak back to haunt him. As it had now, in the guise of Luke Callahan.
The boy had potential, Max mused as he split a gold coin into two, then three.
With a little time, care and direction, Luke would make something of himself. What that something might be, Max left up to the gods. If the boy was still with them when they reached New Orleans, they would see.
Max lifted his hands, clapped them together, and all coins save the one he’d started with vanished.
“Nothing up my sleeve,” he murmured and wondered why it was that people always believed it.
“Max!” A little out of breath from her dash across the fairgrounds, Lily hurried toward the stage.
For Max it was, always was, a pleasure to watch her. Lily in snug shorts, snug T-shirt, with her painted toes peeking out of dusty sandals was a sight to behold. But when he caught her hand to help her onto the stage and saw her face, his smile faded.
“What’s happened? Roxanne?”
“No, no.” Shaken, she threw her arms around him and held tight. “Roxy’s fine. She talked one of the roustabouts into giving her a ride on the carousel. But that boy, Max, that poor little boy.”
He laughed then and gave her a quick, affectionate hug. “Lily, my love, he’ll be queasy for a while, and perfectly miserable with embarrassment for a great deal longer, but it’ll pass.”
“No, it’s not that.” Tears already rolling, she pressed her face into his neck. “I had him lie down on the sofa, and when he fell asleep I was going to take off his shirt. It was all sweaty, and I wanted him to be comfortable.” She paused and took a deep, steadying breath. “His back, Max, his poor little back. The scars, old scars and new welts that have barely healed. From a strap, or a belt, or God knows.” She rubbed tears away with the heels of her hands. “Someone must have beaten that boy horribly.”
“His stepfather.” Max’s voice was flat. The emotions pumping through him required the most finite control. Memories, however vicious, he could battle back. But the rage for the boy all but defeated him. “I’m afraid I didn’t believe it was that serious. Do you think he should see a doctor?”
“No.” With her lips pressed tight, she shook her head. “It’s mostly scars, awful scars. I don’t understand how anyone could do that to a child.” She sniffled, accepted the handkerchief Max offered. “I wasn’t sure you’d done the right thing by taking him in. I thought his mother must be desperate for news of him.” Her soft eyes hardened like glass. “His mother,” she spat out. “I’d like to get my hands on that bitch. Even if she didn’t use the strap herself, she allowed this to happen to her own little boy. Well, she ought to be beaten. I’d do it myself if I had the chance.”
“So fierce.” Gently Max cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. “By God, I love you, Lily. For so many reasons. Now go fix your face, make yourself a nice cup of tea so you’ll be calm. No one will hurt the boy again.”
“No, no one will hurt him again.” She curled her fingers around Max’s wrists. Her eyes were hot with passion now, and her voice amazingly steady. “He’s ours now.”
Most of Luke’s nausea faded, but his embarrassment peaked as he awakened to find Lily sitting beside him, drinking tea. He tried to make some excuse, but she spoke cheerfully over his stammerings and made him a bowl of soup.
She continued to talk as he ate, bright, sunny conversation that nearly convinced him no one had noticed that he’d disgraced himself.
Then Roxanne burst in.
She was dusty from head to toe, the hair Lily had braided so neatly that morning in wild disarray. There was a fresh scrape on her knee, and a long jagged tear in her shorts. The ripe scent of animal followed her into the trailer. She’d just finished playing with the trio of terriers from the dog show.
Lily gave the grubby girl an indulgent smile. Next to seeing a child eat, Lily loved to see them covered with dirt as evidence that they had played hard and well.
“Is that my Roxy under there?”
Roxanne grinned, then reached into the refrigerator for a cold drink. “I rode on the carousel forever, and Big Jim let me toss the rings as long as I wanted.” She glugged down grape Nehi, adding a rakish purple moustache to the dirt. “Then played with the dogs.” She turned her gaze on Luke. “Did you really smoke a cigarette and get sick all over?”
Luke bared his teeth, but didn’t speak.
“What’d you want to do that for, anyway?” she went on, bright as a magpie. “Kids aren’t supposed to smoke.”
“Roxy.” Her voice a trill of cheer, Lily hopped up and began to nudge the girl toward the curtain. “You have to get cleaned up.”
“But I just want to know—”
“Hurry up now. It’ll be time for the first show before you know it.”
“I only wondered—”
“You wonder too much. Now scoot.”
Annoyed with the dismissal, Roxanne shot a look of dislike at Luke, and met one equally unfriendly. Doing what came naturally, she stuck out her tongue before flipping the curtain behind her.
Torn between laughter and sympathy, Lily turned back. “Well now.” Luke’s anger and humiliation were so clear on his face. “I guess we’d better get busy.” She was too wise to ask him if he felt up to the night’s work. “Why don’t you run over and tell one of the boys to give you some flyers to pass out once people start dribbling in?”
He shrugged his shoulders by way of agreement, then jerked back as Lily’s hand shot toward him. He’d expected a blow. She could see that by the dark, fixed look in his eyes. Just as she could see that look turn to blank confusion when what she gave him was a fast, affectionate ruffling of his hair.
No one had ever touched him like that. While he stared up at her, stunned, a knot formed in his throat, making speech of any kind impossible.
“You don’t have to be afraid.” She said it quietly, as though it were a secret between only them. “I won’t hurt you.” She slid her hand down to cup his cheek. “Not now. Not ever.” She would have liked to have held him then, but judged it too soon. He couldn’t know, as she did, that he was her son now. And what belonged to Lily Bates, she protected. “If you need anything,” she said briskly, “you come to me. Understand?”
He could do no more than nod as he scrambled to his feet. There was a pressure in his chest, a dryness to his throat. Knowing he was perilously close to tears, he darted outside.
He’d learned three things that day. He suppos
ed Max would call them free lessons, and they were three he would never forget. First, he would never again smoke an unfiltered cigarette. Second, he detested the little snot-nosed Roxanne. And third, most important, he had fallen in love with Lily Bates.
3
Summer heated up as they traveled south. Portland to Manchester, on to Albany, and then Poughkeepsie, where it rained hard for two miserable days. Wilkes-Barre, then west to Allentown, where Roxanne had the time of her life palling around with twin girls named Tessie and Trudie. When they parted two days later, amid tears and solemn vows of eternal friendship, Roxanne had her first taste of the disadvantages of life on the road.
She pouted for a week, driving Luke crazy with praise for her lost friends. He avoided her whenever possible but it was difficult, as they were all but living under the same roof.
He bunked with Mouse under the capped bed of the truck, but a good many of his meals were taken in the trailer. And more than once, he found her waiting to spring out at him when he stepped out of the bathroom.
It wasn’t that she liked him. In fact, she had developed the bone-deep disgust that neither yet recognized as natural sibling rivalry. But since her experience with Tessie and Trudie, Roxanne had come to crave companionship of her own age.
Even if he was a boy.
She did what little sisters have been doing to big brothers since time began. She made his life hell.
From Hagerstown to Winchester, from there to Roanoke and on to Winston-Salem, she nagged him unmercifully, dogged his footsteps and pestered relentlessly. If it hadn’t been for Lily, Luke might have fought back. But for reasons that eluded him, Lily was crazy about the little brat.
Proof of that affection was obvious during a run-through of the performance in Winston-Salem.
Roxanne’s messing up the timing, Luke thought smugly as he watched the rehearsal while loitering in the tent. Skinny twerp couldn’t get anything right today. And she was whining.
The poor rehearsal gave him hope. He could do the trick a lot better than she could. If Max would give him the chance. If Max would just teach him a little. Luke had already practiced some of the flourishes and stage moves in front of the tiny bathroom mirror.