Mom.” Four lunch boxes clattered onto the table, then the wave dispersed in four directions—the refrigerator, the cookie jar, under the table where the dog lay and to the small television in the opposite corner. A bouncy cartoon ditty filled the room. The kittens raced back in, seeking attention.
A slender boy about twelve or thirteen polished an apple and studied Jake from a careful distance. He wore jeans and a plaid flannel shirt open over a T-shirt. “Your wheels in the driveway?” he asked.
“Yes,” Jake replied.
The boy nodded. “Cool.” Then he looked from his mother’s frowning face to Jake’s unfarmlike attire and asked with an edge of hostility in his voice, “You from the bank?”
Britt put her arm around her older son’s shoulders and forced herself to smile. She tried so hard not to let her financial woes affect her children, but money, or the lack of it, had become so large a part of her life lately that the subject intruded everywhere. Determined to keep it from gaining more ground as long as she could, she said cheerfully, “Matt, this is Mr. Marshack. We were just talking about...about Great-Grandma Bauer.”
Jake saw the transformation take place on the widow Hansen’s face as, snacks secured and the dog and kittens petted, the children gathered around her. He guessed it was maternal reflex at first; she didn’t want them to know she was upset. Then the youngest boy and girl flanked her, each leaning in to her, and she seemed to visibly relax.
“This is Christy,” she said, putting a gentle hand atop a preadolescent with hair the same shade as hers. The child wore glasses with red frames and had eyes that studied him with the same suspicion her mother’s showed.
“David,” she went on, moving her hand to a boy about eight. He was the only one in the group with dark hair, and his blue eyes verged on green.
“And Renee.”
“I’m six,” the plump little girl reported. She was the spitting image of her mother and sister, but with the rounder features of early childhood. She smiled up at him. “You look like Robin Hood,” she said.
Britt’s eyes met his and said without words, But you’re more like the Sheriff of Nottingham. Aloud, she said, “Mr. Marshack was just leaving.”
“Stay cool,” Matt advised.
“Nice to meet you,” Christy said.
David waved at him from his mother’s side, and Renee followed him out to his truck.
“I’m in first grade,” she said, hopping on one foot beside him, then racing to catch up as he got ahead of her. “My birthday is in October. You know, January, February, March, April...”
She went all the way through to October while following him around the truck and watching him open the door and climb in.
He let her go on without comment because he never knew what to say to children. He always got the impression that, despite the less-sophisticated vocabulary and the smaller stature, they were smarter than adults. And this one fairly glowed with curiosity and intelligence.
As he consulted his calendar to check his next call, she pointed to the portable office that sat on the passenger seat. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Files,” he replied.
“What’s that?”
“Papers and stuff.”
“Oh.” Satisfied, she stood on tiptoe to study the dash.
“Renee, honey,” the widow said, appearing from around the hood and taking the child by the hand, “Mr. Marshack has to leave.”
She stepped away from the truck, pulling the little girl with her. “Goodbye, Mr. Marshack,” she said, her eyes hostile again. “Next time you wish to speak to me, please write or phone.”
Jake put the truck in reverse, checked that his rearview mirror was clear, then stepped on the gas, determined that the widow Hansen hadn’t seen the last of him.
The sound of metal crunching and glass popping under his rear tires made him slam on the brake.
“MY BIKE!” Matt stared down at the pile of contorted metal that had been his beloved twelve-speed, his dark blue eyes reflecting his horror. The other three children also stared, open-mouthed.
“Maybe Mom can fix it,” Renee suggested.
“I think it’s dead,” David said.
“You were supposed to put it on the porch,” Christy pointed out. “Mom told you—”
Matt rounded on her. “You shut up!” he ordered, then turned back to the “body” with a gasp of distress.
Jake, riddled with guilt, put an arm around his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll buy you another one.”
“No.” Britt’s voice was firm, though her expression was sympathetic. “He always leans it up against the most convenient prop, then forgets it. I’ve barely missed running over it countless times. He’s supposed to lock it up on the porch. He knows that. It wasn’t your fault.”
Jake had expected her to be grateful to have something to blame on him. He was surprised into feeling responsible.
“Look,” he began, “I’ll be happy to—”
“No,” she insisted, pulling Matt out from under Jake’s arm and putting her own around the boy. “We all have to pay the consequences of our actions. That’s one of life’s primary rules.”
“What about my paper route?” Matt asked plaintively.
“You’ll have to use my bike,” Britt replied.
He rolled his eyes in distress. “Mom, come on. Your bike is dorky! I can’t—”
“What are your alternatives?” she asked.
Jake could see the boy struggling manfully not to cry as he continued to stare at the twisted tubing. “I could ask Howie to take over my route.”
“Then he’ll get the money and not you. How are you going to pay your way on the Scouting trip?”
Jake bit his tongue. He’d never been a parent, but he considered her unreasonably stern. It didn’t seem fair to remind the boy of other things he couldn’t have while he was standing over the corpse of his bike.
“Could I speak to you for a moment?” he asked the widow.
She gave him a cool, reluctant glance, then shooed the children toward the house. “Matt, put the bike in the back of the station wagon,” she said. “I’ll see if Brick can do anything with it.”
As the children moved away, Jake took her elbow and pulled her down the drive, out of earshot of Matt, who was bending over the bike.
“No,”
