The Promised World (23 page)

They were in a police department, which he didn’t like, but Pearl said they wouldn’t be here for long. They’d already had to spend the night on cots in a little room with a coffee machine and William had woken up like a hundred times, whenever a police officer came in to get coffee. The social worker had talked to them early in the morning, and since then, they’d been stuck sitting on
a wooden bench. At first, Pearl was really happy ‘cause the social worker said Aunt Lila wasn’t going to die, she’d just have to stay in the hospital for a while. William was happy about that, too, but after a while, they both got so bored from sitting there that they stopped talking about Aunt Lila or anything. Pearl was half-asleep and William was multiplying numbers in his head when their mom showed up.

The social worker was walking with her, but their mom broke out running when she saw them and grabbed them in her arms.

“My babies,” she said, and she was crying, which made William feel so bad for her. He patted her back the way she always patted his when he cried, but he didn’t say anything. Pearl had already told him, last night, to go back to the not-speaking thing. “Just until I work this out,” she said. Since he wasn’t sure what she was working out, he was too confused to know what to say anyway.

His sister pulled away from Mommy and sat back with her arms crossed. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Sweetie, please—”

“You always take his side about everything. You believe him when he says he’s home all day or he isn’t drinking or he cleaned up the house, when it was really me. You always take his word over mine.”

“Once I get you home, I’ll make it up—”

The social worker put her hand on their mother’s shoulder. “We’re jumping the gun a bit. As I said, this meeting is to give you a chance to talk to your daughter and have us all explore together what the next step will be.”

Whatever they were going to talk about didn’t include William. They got up and walked into a room with a glass door, after telling William to stay on the bench where the secretary would be looking out for him.

The secretary asked if he wanted a hard candy and he took one. It smelled like furniture polish. He sucked as slowly as possible,
but his candy was long gone AND he’d had three drinks from the water fountain AND he’d done a hundred and twenty-seven multiplications before his mom and sister came out. The social worker sat down next to him first. She said his mommy and Pearl both thought it would be a good idea if he stayed at his grandma’s for a while. “How do you feel about that?”

He smiled as big as he could to let her know it sounded perfect to him. Aunt Trish lived with Grandma. He could play with her all day instead of going to school.

But then as he was listening to them talk, he realized something was wrong. The social worker said it was an unusual situation, since they didn’t know their grandmother, but as the state’s policy was to look for kinship foster care possibilities first, and their mother was in favor of it, they would stay there while the home study was being done. Of course, they would have to be monitored. Someone from CPS would be checking on them every few days.

William noticed Pearl was staring at him, warning him not to say anything. So he didn’t, even though he was totally confused. A few minutes later, when the social worker took Mommy back in the glass room, his sister whispered, “I took Dad’s mother’s phone number before we left and I called her this morning. Trust me, if we can’t be with Aunt Lila, this is where we want to go.”

His mouth dropped open. Daddy had told them many times that his mom and dad were dead.

“She wants to see us,” Pearl went on, “that’s obvious, since she was the one who called Mom and persuaded her to let us stay there. She even said she’d pay for Mom to hire a better lawyer, which was weird, but I think she’s just trying to get on Mom’s good side.” Pearl stopped and messed with the ring she had on a chain around her neck. It was their father’s, and the only ring William had ever thought was cool, ‘cause it had snakes instead of being some
boring circle. His sister had worn it every day since Daddy died. “I knew she had money, but she must be really rich to just do that for somebody she barely knows.”

Now he was even more confused. How did his sister know anything about this grandma who was supposed to be dead? But when he asked her, she only said, “I found something in the basement.”

“What?”

She didn’t answer.

“What?” he repeated, shaking her arm.

She pried herself loose and frowned. “Cool out. It’s just something Dad wrote. A long time ago.”

“Like a story?” William knew their father had written hundreds of stories. They were all in boxes stacked like blocks along the wall across from the washer and dryer. Daddy had told William that he could read them when he was older, if he wanted. But if he didn’t, that was all right, too. “The experience of writing them was enough for me,” Daddy said. “Art is its own reward, buddy. You don’t need anyone to tell you whether what you’ve done is good or bad. Remember that.”

Pearl answered, “Yes, like a story,” but he could tell she didn’t mean it. “Now, stop worrying. Kyle has already been arrested. If Mom gets rid of him for good, we’ll be home soon enough.”

William didn’t want to make Pearl mad, but he said it anyway. “I don’t like this. I want to go home now.”

“Not an option. Even Maisie can’t be there until this is over. Mom said she’s staying with Libby. The CPS people have to approve her, too.”

Libby was Maisie’s preschool teacher. He didn’t know what CPS was, but it made him nervous, thinking that Maisie was stuck at school night and day now. He wished he could listen to his S-H-O-S-T-A-K-O-V-I-C-H and just go to sleep. He felt like something was stuck in his throat, a piece of that icky candy, and
he was trying to think of something else so his tic wouldn’t start up, when their mom came back.

“I’m going to get this straightened out as quick as I can,” she said. “It’s all a horrible mistake.” She was sniffing again and William felt so sorry for her, he touched her face. She kissed his hand. “You know I love you guys, right?” She was looking back and forth from Pearl to William. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

William nodded, but Pearl made her face look all blank and stonelike. She lowered her voice so nobody but them could hear. “You already did. You got Dad killed.”

Mommy burst into tears and William knew for sure that she’d never meant for that to happen. Even if it was her fault, like Pearl always said, it was a mistake. Like what William had done when he told about the Challenges. He put his arms around Mommy and whispered, “It’s okay.”

He had to say it. Daddy used to tell him that everybody needs reminders sometimes that are just for encouragement. Like “I Am So Proud of You” or “It’s Okay.” She smiled through her tears, but she didn’t make a big deal about him speaking. It was like she knew it would embarrass him or even get him in trouble with his sister. There wasn’t a lot of time anyway, because their new grandma had just arrived to pick them up. She came into the room like she was the school principal and everybody had to stop what they were doing and pay attention to what she said.

William was instantly afraid of her because he was still thinking of her as sort of dead, even though he knew that was dumb. But Pearl let New Grandma hug her. So William had to, too. New Grandma smelled really good, but her face was sharp and pinched and her voice was kind of icky, like the smile Sophie always gave him at school right before she hit him in the stomach with a dodge ball.

She didn’t look like Daddy. Not that William could see anyway.
But William didn’t look like his mom, either, so maybe that didn’t mean anything.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a very long time,” she said when she let William go. “You’re my son’s only son.”

She was looking at him so hard, like she wanted to have a staring contest, which always made him start blinking like mad. He pushed on the nose of his glasses. His eyes were watering, too. He always lost those staring contests.

“You’re eight years old now, aren’t you?” she said. “In third grade.”

He nodded, but he was swinging his legs, listening to his sneakers squeak on the shiny tile floor.

What happened after that was another meeting of Mom, New Grandma, Pearl, and the social worker behind the glass doors. It took so long that William bunched up his jacket to use as a pillow and fell asleep on the hard wood bench. When he woke up, Mommy was kissing him good-bye and then he and New Grandma and Pearl were going downstairs to get their bags from the room where they’d put them last night, by the front desk of the police station. A few minutes later, they were in New Grandma’s big white car: Pearl in the front with her, and William all alone in the back.

He was clearing his throat like crazy. He didn’t like this plan of Pearl’s at all. And it wasn’t just New Grandma and his creepy feeling that she was some kind of ghost; it was the way Pearl sounded talking to her. Like New Grandma was the doorman at Aunt Lila’s building, and Pearl was just being fake-friendly, like she was even trying to trick New Grandma or something.

His sister said she’d looked forward to being with Grandma for a long time, which he knew for sure was a big fat lie. It had to be, because if Pearl had known New Grandma wasn’t dead before, she would have asked Daddy about it.

“You can talk, too, now if you want,” Pearl said, turning around
to look at him. She’d been smiling so long it was like her face was stuck that way, but William knew for sure she wasn’t really happy. He could tell by her eyes, which looked every bit as mad as the day he’d spilled water on her cell phone. He even felt guilty like he had then, though he hadn’t done anything.

“I don’t want to,” he finally said, and Pearl laughed a fakey laugh.

“He’ll warm up to me soon enough,” New Grandma said. “Everybody seems to. Your father was the same way. I used to tell him he could charm anyone if he put his mind to it.”

“What about Aunt Lila?” Pearl said.

“Oh, Lila was nothing like Billy and me. But that’s a story for another time. Right now I want to hear all about you.”

She was like every grown-up in the world, asking all these questions, but she didn’t ask Pearl if she liked school or what she wanted to be when she grew up, like most grown-ups did. She asked what books she’d read recently, what she thought about the election, a bunch of other stuff that William didn’t really understand or care about. Pearl answered each question in a tone so bright it sounded like somebody had stuck a flashlight in her face. He wished she would stop acting this way. He wondered how long it would be before they could get out of this car.

“As I told your mother and the social worker, I own property in the area so you won’t have to change schools,” New Grandma said. William recognized this highway. It was on the way to their house in Harrisburg. “My grandfather—your great-grandfather—left me this house when he died.”

Pearl said something William didn’t hear, and New Grandma said, “Yes, it’s only about twenty miles from your house. I wondered if your father moved to Harrisburg to be closer to this place. He knew I was living in New Jersey, but the house has always been maintained. He came here several times in the last year, as a matter
of fact.” She shook her head. “I don’t suppose he mentioned any of this to you kids.”

“No.” Pearl sounded really upset all of a sudden. “But I’m sure he had a good reason.”

“Oh, I’m sure he did,” New Grandma said.

William didn’t say anything; he was staring out the window, watching as they turned down one familiar road after another. Long before New Grandma turned into the enormous driveway, he had a bad feeling about where they were going. But he didn’t tell Pearl or New Grandma that he’d been here before. He didn’t want anyone to know that he’d seen every part of this creepy place.

It was during one of the last Challenges. His father had brought him here on a Sunday morning so early that he was trying not to yawn as Daddy explained that this Challenge was about learning to escape. Daddy had made a bunch of drawings that showed all the rooms and halls of this big house. William was going to have to figure out a way to get outside from every room. He would have been really scared, except that Daddy said he’d do it all with him. He would never have to be alone in this spooky-looking house.

“Who lives here?” William asked, looking up at the windows reflecting the sun. He was worried that the people would come home and be mad that he and Daddy were using their house like this.

“No one. That’s why we’re using it, even though you won’t ever have to escape from any place that’s half as complicated as this. It’s good practice, though, and we can take all the time we need.”

But when they went inside, it wasn’t lonely and deserted like the empty house at the end of their neighborhood. It had rooms full of furniture and even wood by the fireplace.

Now, as he forced himself to walk through the huge front door, he felt like crying, remembering how much better it was to come here with his father than with New Grandma. Pearl seemed excited;
she said, “What a great house” over and over as New Grandma showed them the wall of books in the den and the humongous white kitchen and the view of the woods in back. There were deer in the backyard, just standing around like they had nothing to be afraid of.

But William stayed super quiet. In his head, he was listening to Daddy telling him that he could always escape, even if a house had confusing halls and bedroom doors that locked from the outside and bars on all the windows in the basement. Like this one did, which his father called a “deceptively beautiful prison.”

He asked what “deceptively” meant, and Daddy said, “It’s all a lie. It looks entirely normal, but the grown-ups who lived here were very bad. The children were like Hansel and Gretel.”

William was horrified. The Hansel and Gretel story was his least favorite in the fairy-tale book, because it was so weird. “They tried to eat the kids?”

“Worse,” Daddy said. “They tried to destroy their souls.”

“Wow,” William said. He didn’t know exactly where the soul was, but he knew it was the most important thing, since his father always said so. He said, “But the kids won in the end, right?” The kids always won in Daddy’s stories. That was the point of the Challenges: to make sure William would be a brave kid who could win, too, no matter what. To make sure he would always, always be safe.