Swiss Family Robinson?” It was not a statement so much as a question. Is that okay with you—or am I asking too much?
“Terrific,” Daniel said. “My favorite.”
In less than a minute he was back in Nick’s room with the book, an old copy with yellowing pages. The Swiss Family Robinson, in which the father was able to solve any problem that threatened his family’s survival.
If only. The book offered a dream world in place of a nightmare world, and Nick clearly needed a glimpse of a dream world.
That’s what Daniel had needed at Nick’s age, as well. Routinely beaten by his father as his mother cried and wrung her hands, often before being knocked unconscious in her attempts to protect her son, Daniel had finally appeared in the local emergency room one time too many. Based on the testimony of medical staff and neighbors, he’d been taken from his parents and placed in a foster home.
But not a good foster home like the one he was giving Nick. In a series of miserable places, he’d slept on sofas, cut school to take care of younger children in his foster families, gone hungry, worn dirty clothes and been whipped for any infringement of a rule or shirking of a duty.
Daniel ran away from each of these homes, getting picked up, every time, only to be turned over to another family.
He lost his trust in human beings, thinking that no one would ever love him or even be kind to him. Still in his teens, he ran away again, and this time he was determined to run so far that no one could find him. He stole a bicycle and what little money his foster parents had around the house, grabbed a jar full of coins donated to charity from the general store counter and rode north as fast as he could. When he made the mistake of trying to cross over the border into Canada with a fanciful story but no ID, the border guards detained him for questioning. He could still feel the rage and frustration that made him fight back, injuring one of the guards before they could get him under control. Cuffed and helpless, he was sent back to Vermont and placed in juvenile detention. It was the best thing that could have happened to him, because there, at last, he’d found a family.
He and two other boys, Mike and Ian, discovered they had the same goal, to leave their unhappy pasts behind and become law-abiding and productive citizens. Slowly but surely, he’d learned to trust them. The three formed a strong bond, and when they were released from the facility they became “brothers,” changing their surnames to Foster, and set out to change their lives.
Knowing he had people he could trust absolutely had been the turning point in Daniel’s life. It had led him to taking in foster children—he had that one thing he could teach them, that in him they had someone they could trust, and that trust could eventually extend to other people, too.
So far, each of his foster kids had come to do that. And someday Nick would, too. But when? How could Daniel break through the boy’s silence? Weekly visits to a psychiatrist hadn’t worked any better than Daniel’s own efforts.
Nick didn’t want to be found by his real parents, and that told Daniel the whole story.
When the boy’s eyes closed in spite of his attempts to stay awake, Daniel went back to his own room and fell into bed, emotionally drained, to struggle with his own nightmares.
“WE’RE GOING TO BE FINE, honey. I know it’s scary to leave home for a new place, but I wouldn’t bring you here if I didn’t know it was the right thing to do, would I?” Lilah Jamison slid a sidelong glance at her son. Jonathan was scrunched down in the passenger seat, looking smaller and younger than usual, scared to death by this sudden upheaval.
Was it the right thing to do? She had $290, three-quarters of a tank of gas to get her from Whittaker, her hometown in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, to Serenity Valley, many miles south, a cooler packed with the contents of her refrigerator and not even an inkling of what she would do to support the two of them. But they’d be safe there. She’d researched every corner of Vermont before deciding that Serenity Valley was the perfect place to hide.
She had to hide, had to protect Jonathan and herself from her ex-husband, Jonathan’s father. He’d been imprisoned for defrauding investors who’d trusted in him. Only a few people knew he’d also abused her. And now he was being released from prison. She’d been the one to blow the whistle on him, and she knew he was going to come after her as soon as he had the opportunity. Her muscles tightened, and her hands balled into fists on the steering wheel.
“Where will we live?” Those were the first words Jonathan had spoken in the past hour.
“We’ll start by finding a special, secret place to park the car and set up housekeeping,” Lilah said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Are we hiding out from the bad guys?” Jonathan turned toward her for the first time, looking interested.
She couldn’t tell him the only “bad guy” in their lives was his father. She said, “Hmm. I was thinking we’d be more like The Boxcar Children.” It was one of his favorite books. She hoped it would conjure up a positive image in his mind, even if it was less exciting than escaping from “the bad guys.” “As soon as I get a job, we’ll find a real house.”
Or a one-room apartment like the one they’d lived in after she’d sold their three-bedroom cottage in Whittaker and used the money to pay off Bruce’s remaining debts.
“What kind of work will you look for?”
“Well, I used to be a nurse,” she reminded him. “Then, when you came along, I stayed home with you and did your father’s bookkeeping.” She could hardly bear to say the words. “And you know what I’ve been doing the past three years.”
“Home care,” Jonathan said. “For a nice, old lady.”
“So I can look for several kinds of jobs. And you’ll like your new school,” she went on. “I just know it, because you make friends easily and you’re a great soccer player.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Are we almost there?”
“The exit’s coming up now. We’ll take Route 30 for a few miles, and then we’ll start looking for our hideout.”
DANIEL WASN’T A CHURCHGOER himself, but he firmly believed in Sunday school for children. The boys griped and dragged their feet sometimes, but many of their best friends were kids they’d met at the Churchill Congregational Church, where they learned more about kindness than they did about any particular religion.
He’d finally herded the four of them, their hair still damp from showering and a few hands undoubtedly still sticky from pancake syrup, into the van. “Are we gonna have breakfast at the church?” Will asked.
“You just had breakfast,” Daniel said, glancing into his rearview mirror to catch the eleven-year-old’s eyes. “Seven pancakes, I think. A personal best.”
“I know,” Will said, “but sometimes they have real good stuff.”
“I should hope so,” Daniel said. “If you guys were ever ready in time to get there thirty minutes early, instead of eating breakfast at home in ten…”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mutters came from the backseat. Daniel smiled. Kids who arrived thirty minutes before Sunday school began were served a hot breakfast. It had been his idea, and he still supported it financially. So much poverty existed in and around Churchill that he’d
