“Hey, Aaron, you’re back!”
He turned and saw his next-door neighbor Edith leaning out of her doorway. “Yeah,” he bit out. “I came to dig through your garbage. Why aren’t you down there doing it?”
Before, if he’d said a thing like that, she would have cussed him a blue streak and threatened to hit him. Instead, she smiled like he was the cutest thing. “Garbage isn’t my thing,” she said. “I’m, like, allergic to refuse.”
Allergic to refuse? Where did she get this stuff?
She strolled toward him. “So, Aaron, have you thought about my offer?”
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“Well, you should. I thought it all out. We’ll put a door between our apartments — ”
“Stop it,” Deni cut in. “He’s not coming to live with you, so give it up.”
Whoa.
Edith challenged Deni with a look, and he almost expected his neighbor to lunge. He’d seen her lose her temper before.
“I don’t believe I was talking to you.” She turned from Deni back to Aaron, her tone all sweetness. “As I was saying, Aaron, we can put in a door and you can stay in your own apartment, and I can stay in mine, but we can go between and I can look after you. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“My apartment needs a plumber,” he said. “It smells bad.”
“Well, we can clean it up. Didn’t your warden say he was getting some plumbers to come help us?”
Warden. That was a good word for Doug Branning. He gave her a smirk. “I thought you were allergic to refuse.”
“Hey, for you I’d do anything.”
He tried to think of one thing she’d ever done for him before.
“Come on,” Deni said. “Give me a break.”
Edith ignored her. She was really piling it on. “Think about it, Aaron. I know you’re mature enough to do what you want. You’ve been surviving just fine for the last couple of months and taking good care of your brothers and sister. It’s not like you need constant supervision.”
Deni took Aaron’s hand and started to pull him toward the stairs. “I told you to leave him alone.”
“Yeah?” Edith thrust her chin up. “And who made you queen? I’ll talk to him if I want.”
Aaron jerked free. “They won’t let me live here,” he told Edith. “They don’t trust you.”
“Well, if you tell the judge that you really want to live with me, he’ll listen. They care what you think.”
“No, they don’t. Nobody cares what I think. You get a judge involved with us and we’ll be in four different foster homes before you know it.”
“Just think about it,” Edith said. “You know you want to live with me, Aaron. I can give you your freedom.”
Aaron let Deni pull him toward the stairs, but he looked over his shoulder at Ed ith. He’d never associate the word
freedom
with her. Instead, she seemed like a slave. To what, he wasn’t sure. She was so skinny that it looked like her bones would break. Her skin was pale, her hair stringy.
Something wasn’t right about her offer, but it was tempting.
They reached the stairs, and he followed Deni down.
“Do you believe her?” Deni asked. “Like she really wants to help you? After all those months when she didn’t care a thing about you?”
The not-caring might be a good thing. If someone didn’t care, they wouldn’t watch you that closely. If there was anything he wanted right now, it was his freedom. Chances were, she’d be like his mother, hardly paying attention at all. The judge and the sheriff would
think
he was supervised, but really, he could do whatever he wanted, take care of his brothers and sister the way he needed to without any outside help. Maybe it would work.
He couldn’t see her going in there and cleaning out the toilet, though. He’d have to do that himself. But since being at the Brannings, he’d kind of gotten used to work. Maybe if he came back here and cleaned it up, the sheriff would look and see that it wasn’t such a bad place after all. Maybe he would agree to let them come back.
As he followed Deni back around to the garbage dump, he began making a plan.
T
HE SHERIFF CAME BY
S
ANDWOOD
P
LACE THAT EVENING TO
interview some more of the apartment dwellers about Jessie’s life and death. When he was finished, he came around back to talk to Doug.
“I’ve been trying to investigate Jessie’s current boyfriend,” he said. “The guy has a rough past. It looks like he’s cleaned up his act. He’s living with his parents, working hard. I don’t really think he was involved with the murder, but he’s helping me piece together the timeline leading up to her death. Oh, and by the way, Moe Jenkins actually managed to get a lawyer to file papers today to get immediate custody of the kids. Probably paid him with stolen goods.”
Doug couldn’t believe it. “You know why he’s doing this. The same reason that Edith woman wants them. The disbursement is next week and they want the kids’ money.”
“Don’t worry, Doug. I’ve already talked to the judge, and he’s keeping them with you. It’ll take months to get it to court, especially with the outage and so few lawyers and judges working. By that time, some things will have shaken out, and hopefully you will have found their grandparents.”
“But won’t a biological father have more rights than the grandparents? Couldn’t he get Sarah if he wanted to?”
“I would say yes, if he were a fit father. But Jessie had him in court twice for failing to pay child support, and we have it on record that he denied being her father. That ought to play against him. Besides that, the court will want to keep the kids together. If the grandparents come forward to take them together, I think it’ll work out.”
“Let’s just hope the grandparents are decent people.”
Doug glanced toward the woods and saw Aaron peering into the trees with a dull, vacant look in his eyes. Was he thinking of his mother? Maybe bringing him here hadn’t been such a good idea.
He went toward him. “Aaron? You all right, son?”
Aaron jumped, as if he’d been caught in his thoughts. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Ready to go home?”
The boy turned back to the building and looked up at the window that had been his home. Was he longing to go back to that rancid apartment? Or was he simply longing for his mother?
Whatever the longing, Doug’s heart swelled with compassion. The child was in pain, and he didn’t know how to help him.
Only God and time could undo the damage now.
M
ARK RODE HIS BIKE BY THE HOUSE
F
RIDAY AFTERNOON AS
Deni was working in the yard. “Hey, Deni. I was just at the post office, and Mrs. Lipscomb said to tell you that you got what you were waiting for.”
Deni dropped her shovel and almost leapt into his arms. “Really? A letter from Craig? Did you bring it?”
He laughed. “No, she wouldn’t let me. But she said to tell you that she was delivering to Oak Hollow sometime late this afternoon.”
“I can’t wait until then!” She dropped her shovel and started for the garage. “I’m going there now.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “She’s not there. She’s out delivering mail.”
D
ENI FIDGETED ALL AFTERNOON, WAITING FOR THE MAIL TO
come. It still hadn’t come by the time her parents were ready to go to Sandwood Place, so she convinced them to let her stay home. She waited on the front porch for the old Dodge pickup to turn into the neighborhood.
At ten after seven, she heard it coming. She leaped off the porch as the old rattletrap rumbled into the neighborhood. She tried to wave it down, but Mrs. Lipscomb just kept driving.
Fighting the urge to run behind the truck, Deni instead took a shortcut through the yards and got to the neighborhood gazebo before the truck pulled in.
By the time the postmaster climbed out, there were thirty or forty people crowded around. Still wearing her baseball cap and baggy T-shirt, Mrs. Lipscomb grumbled. “Wait your turn, everybody. Never thought I’d be so popular.”
She pulled out the first pack of letters. “Branning!”
Deni lunged forward and took them. The woman winked. Obviously, she had put her letters on top so she would be the first to get them. Deni wanted to kiss her. “Thank you, Mrs. Lipscomb! You rock!”
Quickly she pulled the rubber band off the stack of letters and flipped through. And there she saw it — Craig’s return address. She pulled out the letter and practically danced as she waved it in the air.
“I got it,” she cried to anyone who would listen. “He wrote!”
A few people applauded. Then she saw Mark leaning against the gazebo, a piece of straw in his mouth. Amusement twinkled in his eyes. “How many did you get?” he asked.
She flipped through the rest of their mail, but there were no more. “Just one,” she said, “but I’m sure this one’s all I need.”
She hurried home, then went into her house and ran up to her room to read by the evening light at her window. Carefully she opened the envelope and pulled out the letter.
Dear Deni,
I got all your letters. It’s taken me almost a week to read them all. Glad to know you’ve been keeping up your journalistic skills while everything’s been down. Sorry you had so many problems at first, what with the airplane crashes and all, and I’m shocked that you had so much trouble trying to get to Washington. Too bad you didn’t make it all the way.
She stopped reading and stared at those words again. After she’d told him of almost dying at the hands of a mad killer, could he really be this dispassionate?
She read back over that first paragraph, trying to imagine the tone of his voice if he were talking. Was there compassion in those words? Love? Longing?
She told herself she was being too critical. He loved her; she knew that.
I was a little surprised you got religion on me. I thought we were of the same mind about those kinds of things. Not that I have anything against religion. It always just seemed like another crutch to me, and you know how I hate crutches. But I guess if that’s what you need to get through the outage, so be it.
Now that I think about it, it’s probably a good thing that you didn’t make it all the way to Washington. It’s not the best time to start a marriage, if you know what I mean. Too much stress, and everything’s just too hard right now. I can’t imagine trying to set up housekeeping with no electricity and no food or water. We’d be at each other’s throats. I guess the best thing to do is postpone until things are a little better. But you’re still my fiancée‚ and I do still look forward to a future with you. I honestly don’t think I can do better.
She paused and stared at the offhanded compliment, looking for the romance in that statement. But there wasn’t any. Was that why he was with her? Because he thought she was the best he could do?
I’m really busy at work. We’ve got our hands full trying to put out fires … literally. Last week a group of people got up in arms about the food being brought in for the government workers, and they started a riot. Somehow they managed to set a fire at the Capitol Building, and it was a nightmare getting it put out. The fire department is voluntary now, and we all had to line up in a bucket brigade, dumping water and using fire extinguishers until the fire was out. Thankfully no one was hurt. Now we have security all over the place.
She stopped reading and tried to imagine the scene. Desperate people screaming outside the building, fighting over food
.
Craig and the others holed up inside, fighting a fire with little more than squirt guns.
No wonder he didn’t have time for romance. She sat down on her bed, feeling selfish and ungrateful.
Important people are coming to depend on me because I’m competent and reliable. Others have thrown in the towel and gone home. If Daniel Jacobs would just leave, I might be considered for Crawford’s chief of staff. His wife is freaking out over all the violence here, and she’s begging him to take her to Ohio to be with her family. I’m egging him on. Might turn out that those crazy citizens shaking the place down will help me to climb the ladder. All of this can’t do anything but help my career when things get back to normal.
She stopped and took that in, wondering if he meant that as coldly as it sounded. Surely not. He couldn’t interpret the suffering of desperate people and the social and economic upheaval of the Pulses as nothing but a career boost. Could he?
Sighing, she read on.
I’d better go for now. Hope all is well with you.
And it was signed simply, “Craig.”
She read it again, searching for the words
I love you
, but he hadn’t written them. Didn’t he know how hungry she was for them?
Had his feelings for her changed or had he never cared that much? Maybe he’d been cold all along. Maybe she’d just been too blind to see it.
She wadded up the letter and tossed it into the trash. Then she got it back out, unwadded it, and read it again. She couldn’t throw it away, but it wasn’t worthy of folding neatly and putting back into its envelope. So she crushed it into a ball and shoved it into her pocket.
She sat on the patio and stewed for over an hour, anger roiling up inside her. She deserved better than this. God had a plan and a future for her, and he certainly wouldn’t have chosen someone who was godless and mocked religion. He certainly wouldn’t have matched her with someone who placed so little value on her. There must be something more for her.
Maybe that was why all this had happened, so she would see the error of her ways and back out of this marriage to Craig.
Oh, right. God had rearranged the universe and changed civilization just to work in her life. How selfish of her, to think it was all about her.
She knew it wasn’t. But could
some
of it be about her? Maybe God — with all the millions of things he had to do — really did care about the details of her life, the big things and the small things, the love and the losses. Maybe in her corner of the universe, she was being taken through this trial for this very thing, so that she would break up with Craig and stop dreaming about something that was not God’s best for her.
Letting her fury drive her, she went back into the house and up the stairs and got out a piece of paper. She sat down at her desk and started writing. Then she realized that he didn’t deserve a handwritten letter. She’d type it.