he saw a small car, many years old, parked at the curb well away from the entrance to the building. It was dusty, as all Vermont cars were after negotiating the dirt farm roads into the town center, but otherwise it looked as if it had been well cared for.
A woman sat at the wheel, probably waiting for one of the children the breakfast program was intended to benefit. He could see little of her, just blond hair hiding her face as she bent over the steering wheel, reading, maybe, or just resting. His boys had already tumbled out of the van and gone on their way to rattle the cages of their long-suffering teachers.
Daniel thought about going to speak to her, offering to drive her child home after Sunday school so she wouldn’t have to wait, but he decided against it. If she’d wanted company, she’d have gone into the church for the adult class.
Besides, he had a whole hour to himself, and what was he going to do with it? What any normal, virile, macho man would do. Go to the grocery store.
LILAH SAW THE CHILDREN begin to stream out of the church and looked anxiously for Jonathan. When she saw him, he was in deep discussion with a freckled redheaded boy about his age. Her muscles tightened. What she hated most about her situation was that she and Jonathan had to lie about themselves. But what if someday he forgot?
She got out of the car. She had to end the conversation before Jonathan became too chatty. When he saw her, he gave the other boy a wave and came running toward her, his eyes bright. She forced a big smile. She had to calm herself down—she couldn’t start quizzing him about his conversation right away. “Did you have fun?” Lilah asked as they pulled away from the curb.
“Yeah.” Jonathan looked happy.
“How was breakfast?” As she’d searched the grocery store bulletin board for job possibilities the day before, she’d seen a flyer inviting children to come for “breakfast and Bible study.” Feeling desperately shy, she’d taken him into the church this morning, where he, to her relief, was greeted warmly.
“Great. We had pancakes and sausage and chocolate milk.”
Lilah’s stomach growled. “That does sound good,” she said. She felt terrible about asking someone else to feed her child, but he hadn’t had a hot meal in more than a week.
“And I made a friend.”
“Now that is wonderful. What’s his—or her—name?”
“His,” Jonathan said, directing a brief “I hate girls” scowl at his mother. “Nick. He’s nice.”
“Tell me about him.” Please tell me you asked all the questions and didn’t answer any.
“He told me he’s a foster child. What’s a foster child?”
“Well, sometimes,” Lilah said, dreading the inevitable consequences of giving Jonathan a definition, “parents can’t take care of their own children. They have to let other people take care of them until they can get their lives in order.”
“Is your life in order?”
“You and I are together and we always will be,” Lilah said with a forced steadiness. “That’s what I call having your life in order.” How long could she keep up this pretense? A week of job-hunting had netted her nothing. But tomorrow could be different. Would be different. Because she’d never lose Jonathan to foster care, no matter how good that care might be.
“Who are Nick’s foster parents?”
“He lives with a guy named Daniel. A vet…veternar…”
“Veterinarian,” Lilah said.
“Vet-er-in-ar-ian. Some other boys live there, too, and a sort of grampa. His name is Jesse. Nick says they’re all real nice.”
“Really nice,” Lilah said automatically.
“Yeah. But he looked real tired—really tired—and I asked him why, and he said he’d had another nightmare last night.”
“Another nightmare?”
“He says he has ’em all the time.”
“That’s terrible,” Lilah said, her heart going out to this child she didn’t even know.
“Remember when I had those bad nightmares?”
How could she ever forget? Jonathan hadn’t had one since he was three, when his father went to prison. Her child might be living in a car, eating cereal and sandwiches, but every night, when she’d tucked him into the backseat, he slept like Rip Van Winkle.
“I told him you made me a dreamcatcher, and I didn’t have ’em anymore. I told him maybe you’d make one for him.” He looked at her, the question in his eyes.
“Of course I will,” Lilah said. “You could give it to him at Sunday school next week.” She couldn’t tell Jonathan the dreamcatcher had nothing to do with his nightmares going away. Even at three, he’d been far too aware of his father’s brutality. He’d even tried to shield her from Bruce’s fists with his small body. His father was his nightmare, and hers, but he’d left his nightmares behind with their source. Lilah still had a few. She hadn’t found a job, and now she was down to $215.
“What color do you think he’d like?”
“Red and white. He likes the Boston Red Sox.”
“Just like you.” Lilah smiled. “Okay, red and white it is. Wow, that was quite a talk you had with Nick.” Now, the quizzing. Lilah’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Um, what did you tell Nick about yourself?”
“What you told me to. My father’s dead and we moved here. And Mom, guess what the Sunday school lesson was about.”
“What?” She was so relieved she could barely breathe.
“Telling the truth.”
God, forgive me.
LOOKING OUT HIS WINDOW, Daniel saw the woman get out of the car and watched the boy run toward her. He might have called her pretty if she hadn’t been so painfully thin and drawn. Her clothes were wrinkled, and her hair, although it was neatly combed, was dull and lank. But her posture was confident—determined was more like it—and it was clear that she and the boy loved each other. He was curious about her.
“Okay, spill it,” he said to his passengers as they moved away from the curb. “How was Sunday school?”
Jason, almost sixteen and the oldest of his boys, spoke up first. “Not bad.”
“The usual.” Maury, a few weeks younger, was Jason’s sidekick. “Another life lesson.”
“Which life lesson?” Buzz words irritated Daniel, even when they came from the mouth of a Sunday-school teacher.
“Being honest.”
“Us, too,” Nick piped up.
“Ah,” Daniel said. “A coordinated curriculum.”
“Whatever,” Nick said.
