jumped up from the bench with both hands raised in the air. “Pirates!” he yelled. “Mom’s gonna make a sign for across the driveway that says Landlubbers Beware, and we’re gonna cover the picnic table with black and make it into a ship with a skull and crossbones flag on a mast in the middle. We’re gonna have a treasure hunt and play games like walk the plank and pin the eye-patch on the pirate and everything.”
“Don’t forget movie time,” Wayne said.
Mary saw Jamie shrug. She wondered if he might be embarrassed to have his father show films from all his previous parties and point out how much the boys grew from year to year. She would have to talk to Wayne about it.
“The invitation is a treasure chest,” Jamie said. “There’s a map inside. Can I go get one, Mom?”
“Of course, sweetie.”
“My, my,” Grandma Rose said after Jamie and Tommy had disappeared into the house. “He was so tiny when you first took him in. Just as if he were your own.”
Mary bit her tongue. She thought of all the times she cooed and sang to the rhythm of the rocking chair while Jamie sucked on the bottle until his little belly was round and his eyes closed in contentment. All those times she obsessed about ear infections, sniffles, and fevers. How she celebrated his first smile, first laugh, first word—Mama—first steps.
“He’s a cute kid all right,” her father-in-law said. “But you could be in for trouble if he’s still with you when he’s older.”
Mary sucked in her breath.
Rose winced. “Now, Harold, dear...”
“Dad doesn’t mean that the way it sounds.” Wayne put his hand on Mary’s arm. She shrugged it off.
“I’m just saying,” Harold muttered under his breath.
Mary leaned forward, her eyes flashing. “You’re just saying what, Dad? You’re just saying what about my son?”
“Here it is!”
Jamie rushed over to his grandpa, waving a party invitation in the air. His face glowed. Mary smiled, but inside she was shaking. She had steadfastly refused from the start and always would refuse to consider the possibility that this beautiful child could ever not be her son. She hated the way Wayne worried that if he were taken from them, she’d be devastated and go back to the way she was before. Things had been agonizingly tense between them the two times Jamie’s birth parents came to visit, but fortunately, after Jamie turned one, John and Josephine Buckley disappeared. On Jamie’s second birthday, Mary had announced that from then on his name would be Jamie Buckley Williams, and after that Wayne stopped saying anything to her about being worried and she stopped noticing that he still was.
“Jamie Buckley Williams.”
“What? What’s wrong, Mom?”
Alarmed to realize she’d said Jamie’s name out loud, Mary pulled him into her arms. “Nothing’s wrong, sweetie,” she said. “Absolutely nothing.”
FOUR
I stayed in the women’s bathroom until I was able to regain my composure. Then I speculated about why Brion Kacey and Betsy Chambers would refuse to let me read the Mellon case file. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that there was something in the record they were afraid might damage the agency’s reputation. That could have explained why Brion got so upset when I told him about J. B. Harrell’s allegation that a five-year-old foster girl had been hurt in the Mellon home.
But then why, once Brion and Betsy knew that I was already aware of the incident, did they still refuse to let me read the file? The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if they knew more about Anthony Little Eagle’s death than they’d let on. I pressed my back against the wall and told myself to slow down, be careful not to jump to conclusions.
Brion’s voice kept echoing in my head. No one...no one will be allowed access to the case file. I thought about how he had given me “permission” (so to speak) to talk to the social worker who had placed Anthony Little Eagle in the Mellon home.
“Thank you, Brion,” I said into the mirror as if speaking directly to him. “That is exactly what I am going to do. Lynn knows what’s in the case file, and she will tell me what it is since you won’t. And don’t worry about Mr. J. B. Harrell, because I am about to prove him wrong.”
With my confidence somewhat restored, I headed down the stairs to the second floor to see Lynn Winters. If she had seen anything in the case file about a suspicious injury to a child in the Mellon home, I was sure she never would have placed Anthony Little Eagle there.
When I walked into the foster care suite, I was surprised to find myself comparing its brightness, from the afternoon sun shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows, to the smoke-filled stench and fog of the courthouse basement up north where I had worked before. The soft voices of social workers talking on their phones was a stark contrast to the cacophony of ringing phones, loud voices, and hiss of steam rushing through the ceiling pipes back then. I hurried between the rows of white cubicles that formed a passageway that led to my office at the end.
I stopped at Lynn’s cubicle and peered over the waist-high wall, but she wasn’t there. Her workspace, unlike those of my other staff, was not yet decorated with family pictures and other personal items. No pictures on the walls, only a computer, a telephone, and a neat stack of papers on her desk.
“She’s in the field.” I turned toward the sound of Melanie’s voice, from the adjacent cubicle. “She was here earlier but she left a few minutes ago.”
“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know how to respond to the unspoken concern in my worker’s voice. “I’ll leave her a note, but if you see her, could you let her know I want to see her right away when she gets back?”
“Sure, Sylvia.”
I left the note propped up on Lynn’s phone and then went back to my desk to do paperwork. As the day dragged by, every time someone knocked on my office door, I looked up expectantly, and each time I was disappointed to see that it wasn’t Lynn Winters. At five thirty I finally gave up and headed home.
—
My Suzuki Sidekick, fifteen years old and with 180,000 miles on it, wasn’t the only beater car in the lot behind my apartment building, but it had to be the most reliable one there. In the drab lobby I checked my mailbox before getting on the elevator. The man-boy with spiky blond hair and perpetual sleep in his eyes who lived on the second floor and yet never came up with enough energy to walk up one flight of stairs got on with me.
“Hey, Miss Jensen.” He smiled, showing his perfect white teeth. Like he was following his mother’s admonition to be respectful to the resident spinster.
“Good evening,” I said. I didn’t know his name. He, like all the other college students and young professionals who lived in the building, would move out as soon as he was able to improve his circumstances. I stared at the holes in the knees of his jeans.
“Have a nice evening, Miss Jensen,” he said when the elevator stopped and he got off.
I pushed the button for the fifth floor, wondering how I might manage to have a nice evening when all I wanted was for tomorrow to come. When
