The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield (75 page)

My heart squeezed. The kid looked like a damned lost cherub who found himself cast down to the filthy earth. It was heartbreaking. 

“Riley,” he murmured, his voice slightly hoarse from sobbing. “Riley Anderson.”

“I’m Charlotte Maxfield,” I told him with a half-smile, handing him the frame. “I’m sorry for tackling you to the ground but I thought you were a thief.”

He didn’t take the picture frame—just stared at it with deeply sad eyes. “I did steal it. I didn’t mean to. But the one I had—Curtis poured grape juice over it. It’s ruined and she wouldn’t give me another.”

Why this boy had Layla’s picture in the first place got my mind whirling with a few dozen theories but the glue that held this young Humpty Dumpty in one piece didn’t seem strong enough for me to test with interrogation.

“What did you do to Curtis?” I asked instead as I flipped the frame around and carefully loosened the panel that held the picture to the glass. 

“N-nothing,” Riley said flatly. “He’s in seventh grade. He’s big. And he’s mean.”

I cocked my head to the side to look at him for a moment. “And I suspect that it’s all he’s got going for him. Otherwise, he’d be doing better things than dousing pictures with grape juice.”

“He’s always picking on me,” the boy grumbled.

Looking at the kid, the way his lower lip thrust out in an effort to hold his suffering back, the stubborn hunch of his shoulders that didn’t want to curl in with defeat, the resentful furrow of his brows as he contemplated his fate and the nameless, faceless person he wanted to blame for it, I saw the child I was less than a decade ago.

When you’ve been weaned on fairy tales, superheroes and happily-ever-afters only to find none out in the real world, you feel a little bit betrayed. You either become another villain or you rewrite your part in the world so that heroes may exist. At least that's what I told myself.

“I bet he does,” I told him as I slowly slid Layla’s picture out of the clips that held it in place. “Bullies do what they do because it gives them satisfaction—satisfaction they may lack in some other aspect in their lives, or simply just the satisfaction that they can do what they like.”

“And while I can sympathize with some people’s problems, there’s no reason to end your misery by starting someone else’s,” I continued, holding the photograph up in the light. Layla was beautiful in it—beautiful but surprisingly sad. “But people don’t always see it that way and sometimes, you’ll have to show it to them.”

Riley surprised me with the understanding in his eyes. “It’s hard to do that when they’re holding your head down to the floor and beating the crap out of you.”

My heart clenched as anger and compassion surged through me in equal dose. “I know it’s hard to hang on to your dignity when you’re face down on the dirt. The goal is to eventually learn how to never find yourself held beneath anyone ever again.”

The boy swiped some snot off his face and wrinkled his nose. “Sounds easier said than done.”

I laughed. “Oh, it definitely does. It took me years to figure that out. I used to get my face submerged in a bucket full of dirty mopping water. One day, I tossed the bucket at the girls who used to corner me in the bathroom whenever I was cleaning. It messed up all their pretty shoes and socks. I told them that the next time they get in my way, the bucket was going to end up on their heads. Thinking about it now, I don’t really think I could’ve managed it considering they were all taller than me but I think at that time, I was so sick of it I believed I could do anything.”

“Did they stop tormenting you?” Riley asked, his eyes wide with expectation.

I smiled. “They did. Not because I scared them off with my threats. I think, in a way, they just finally realized that I was taking away permission. It’s all about permission, Riley. People can hurt you many times in many ways but they can’t break you if you don’t let them. And when they realize they’re beating down a stone wall that’s forever sealed to them, they’ll turn around and go away with their swollen hands and bloodied knuckles with nothing to show for them except for time they never noticed passing, and time they will never have again.”

We were quiet for a long moment before I handed him the photograph. “You must have a perfectly good reason why you want this picture.”

He stared at it for a while before carefully reaching for it. “Do you like the stars?”

“I do. They’re very pretty.”

He nodded. “My science teacher told me they’re part of where we’d all come from, once upon a time. The explanations aren’t really clear as to why they’re out there while we’re stuck here on earth but somehow, they’re always a part of us—a part of our history.”

“You’re a science geek,” I teased him with a small laugh although a part of me sensed the old soul in him. “The stars are billions of miles away, you know.”

Riley smiled, his blue eyes brightening. “They are, but I can see them. Sometimes, just knowing where you come from helps—even if you can’t come home. Even if you can only look at it from afar.”

Oh, Layla. What did you take away from this little boy who already doesn’t have much?

I swallowed the lump in my throat as I watched him carefully slide the picture into his pocket. “Where’s home, Riley? Maybe I should get you back. Your parents might be looking for you.”

He looked up at me with unblinking blue eyes from underneath thick, pale gold hair falling across his forehead. “I don’t have parents. I live with my Uncle Danny. He always drinks though so I don’t like staying in the apartment. He always shouts and falls and blames me for it.”

“You have no idea how well I can sympathize,” I told Riley with a wince I could hardly conceal, remembering the same torturous experience I had living under the same roof with my father who just drank more when he wasn’t passed out on the floor yet from being overly inebriated. “How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

Only twelve—too young to be too old a soul.

We were quiet for a long moment, sitting by the curb and looking up at the overcast skies, absently searching for the stars we knew were out there even though we couldn’t see them.

Hope is not about seeing something you want within reach—it’s trusting that it’s there when you can’t see it at all.

I was no longer a helpless, hapless kid who couldn’t escape the cold prison of my life before. I could help Riley and set him on the better path—the way others had done for me when I stood at my own crossroads.

It took only but a moment for my decision to be made.

I took a deep breath and glanced at the boy’s pensive face. “Come on, kid. We should get you—”

“Riley! Riley!”

We both glanced up at the sharp bellow of a very familiar female voice.

Here we go. Showtime.

Layla was running down the sidewalk, looking disheveled for the first time since I met her. She was wearing dainty house slippers with her slightly creased powder blue dress and knit wrap, her hair bouncing around her shoulders in careless disarray.

I got up to my feet and helped Riley up, planting myself between the two of them in case Layla was about to wring him in the neck for breaking into her house.

Squaring my shoulders, I opened my mouth to tell Layla to, first of all, stop screaming the entire neighborhood down, but when she finally came up close, my throat seized up in an instant.

Even without her usual polish, Layla was still quite lovely—except for the angry red handprint slightly swelling on her left cheek.

I blinked, shaking my head slightly as if to clear the unexpected sight.

The welt still looked as crude and brutal on her porcelain skin as it appeared on first glance.

“You!” she sputtered incredulously. “You’re not supposed to be here until twenty after!”

My brows went up. “Really? That’s the first pertinent thing you want to discuss right now?”

She looked like she was gritting her teeth but the slight shifting from Riley pressed up behind me caught her attention.

“It’s a bit early for the Halloween make-up, don’t you think?” I blurted out even though I must’ve known the truth because I did my best to block Riley from the view of a story he would understand too well.

Layla’s blotchy face tilted my way again as if she just remembered I was there. Her red-rimmed eyes still glassy with tears, and her pink, runny nose told me that this was no Halloween make-up. 

It was one of those horror stories some of us lived with every day of our lives, the kind we didn’t tell a soul about.

Because until we say it out loud, it’s not true. Until then, we keep hoping it’s just a nightmare we can wake from.

“Riley needs to go home,” Layla’s voice cracked as she spoke but her eyes quickly darted behind me, craning her neck around for the boy who was cowering behind my back. “He needs to go. I have to make sure he gets home and—”

“We’ll get him home safely,” I interjected firmly, pulling off the rose pink cashmere scarf that had been loosely wrapped around my neck. 

My anger slowly set in at the sudden clarity of the situation, and if I didn’t want to drag Layla to the nearest police station or explain to a twelve-year-old boy why her face resembled a salami, I had to find a distraction. “You might want to cover up though, if you don’t want to show up on the tabloids tomorrow sporting a handprint on your face.”

Without giving her a chance to protest, I slipped my scarf around her neck, draping a part of it over her head like a veil. It didn’t completely hide her injury but it made her less recognizable.

“Um, thank you,” she mumbled faintly as she clutched at the scarf around her throat, her eyes lowered. 

“I’ll ask for explanations later but are you hurt anywhere else?” I muttered under my breath, in a voice so low I had to lean in so Layla alone could hear me. “Do we need to get you to a hospital?”

She couldn’t conceal the anguish that flickered across her mottled face quickly enough but she gave a quick shake of her head. “No, I’m alright.”

My lips pursed in a frown. “No matter how many times you say it, it’ll never quite feel like the truth.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Charlotte,” Layla hissed at an admirable attempt at indignation. “I had a little accident.”

“Right, an accident,” I said with a roll of my eyes, unable to help the edge in my voice. “What, did you accidentally run smack right into Don’s hand? Did his fist accidentally make contact with your cheek?”

Layla’s eyes flashed with anger. 

Of course, she’d be angry. 

When you know that you deserve better but let yourself endure the abuse anyway, you always get angry because you couldn’t understand why you let it happen—over and over again.

I was angry a lot for a while. I probably used a lot of the same excuses Layla did.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Layla replied in a low, warning tone. “I just want to make sure my—that Riley gets home okay.”

My eyes narrowed at her near-slip. 

For someone who meticulously counted every ounce of breeding and poise as the measure of a person’s worth, Layla cared very little about the messed-up half of her face or the fact that she was standing in the immaculately-manicured sidewalk of her very prestigious neighborhood in a house dress and slippers. 

Her sole focus was on the boy who raced out of her house after stealing a picture of her, of all things.

I decided that even though I needed to confront her about the truth that was literally on her face, there was something else at the heart of this entire bizarre situation.

Something like a twelve-year-old boy with the same pale gold hair and angel-blue eyes as Layla.

“What’s wrong?” I heard Riley pipe up as he stepped around from behind me before I could stop him.

I bit my lip hard as I listened to Riley suck in a sharp breath when he saw Layla’s face.

“He did that to you?” The young boy’s voice wavered with a choked mix of tears and outrage. “He hurt you?”

Layla was quick to shake her head in denial. “No, no! Riley, it’s—”

“Was it because of me?” the boy demanded, flushing in anger even as he blinked back the tears glistening in his eyes.

Layla sank to her knees, her trembling hands settling on the boy’s shoulders. “No, Riley. It has nothing to do with you at all. Don’t think that.”

The kid sucked in his lower lip as he drew a shaky breath, his hand reaching out to gently touch Layla’s cheek.

The woman who never left home without putting on her cool, if not icy, exterior, looked nothing she usually did as her eyes fluttered close at the boy’s almost reverent touch, her lips pressed together in a clear effort not to burst into sobs.

“I’m sorry,” Riley whispered as he withdrew his hand. “I’m sorry I made him angry at you.”

The sound of a car buzzing by broke the spell and both Layla and I looked around at the reminder that were out in public for anyone and everyone to see.

“I’ll call my driver and we can drive Riley home,” I told her as I whipped out my cellphone to speed-dial Gilles. I paused and glanced at her. “How about you?”

Layla got up to her feet and pulled Riley toward her, her hand resting on the boy’s head. “I’ll come with you, if you don’t mind. I just don’t want him to go home on his own.”