was rewarded with a real one from her son.
“Can I have a soda pop?”
“No, you little charmer. We’re going to a laundry place and then to get your brother and sister registered at school. I don’t want you hyped up on sugar.”
He wiggled to signal he wanted down. It didn’t take much bending for his feet to touch the floor. When had he gotten so tall? What was happening to the days? She couldn’t recall a time when she didn’t have children and wasn’t moving from one place to another, running from that feeling of being hunted, by what or whom she didn’t know, but the fear was real and as present as her own heartbeat. She didn’t have to worry about being followed here. She had never told anyone about the aunt who lived in New Mexico.
One promise she’d made to herself and intended to keep was to never again get involved with a man, any man, any time, anywhere. She bit her lip, tamping down regret and shame.
Annie looked around the room she was sharing with Marie. It was decorated in a feminine style with pastel curtains, a restrained floral print wallpaper and white furniture. The floor was hardwood covered by a large area rug in burgundy and blue. It added warmth to an otherwise neutral décor. She wondered about the cousin who had grown up in this room, living in a house where she doubted screaming was an everyday occurrence or drunken arguments the norm. Harve Irish—Harvard Colin Irish, such a formal name for such a down-to-earth guy—had always stood out in her mind as the epitome of what a man should be. Maybe because her mother would launch that accusation like a missile at Trey when he would come home drunk or late or after losing one more job.
“You could take a lesson from Lil’s husband,” she would yell, or taunt, or softly say, depending on the circumstances, “Now there’s a man for you!” And the battle would be on.
Not that he didn’t have it coming. Her father had been a brute—again, her mother’s words. She tore her mind away from going down that road. She did not, would not, revisit the day of the accident.
In an effort to feel better she snapped up the lipstick and applied it with a less than steady hand. She then twisted her hair into a roll and secured it with pins. One thing she didn’t have to worry about was trying to impress some man.
Annie tucked her shirt in, emphasizing her slender waist. She had the kind of body clothing looked good on, no matter what the style. Her usual attire leaned toward jeans and T-shirts, but rather than looking unkempt, she looked casually chic. Tendrils of hair escaped the upsweep and danced around her face in charming wisps. She had the look of the Hadleys, which she rather resented. Why couldn’t she look like her beautiful mother?
She made a face at herself in the mirror and prepared to take on the rather mundane task of doing laundry. For the first time in months she felt as though she could breathe.
Chapter Six — Keep the Home Fires Burning
Caleb was sure of two things: he loved his mother and he hated Mrs. Irish. He could not imagine the cow that owned this house was in any way related to his Grandmother Hadley, a mythical figure of gargantuan personality and presence. He had seen pictures of her. She was sharp looking and held herself with dignity. His mother talked about her like she was an angel capable of walking on water, climbing mountains and baking a prize cake, all at the same time.
Caleb was no dummy. There was a lot about Grandmother Hadley he didn’t know, like who Grandfather Hadley might have been. Mom never spoke of him, as though he never existed. But of course he did, otherwise there would be no Annie. He knew that much. It took a man and a woman to make a baby. That was about the depth and breadth of his knowledge but it was enough to know that somewhere out there was—or had been—a man by the name of Hadley. Unless of course, like his mother, Grandmother Hadley had made up her last name, created it to avoid explaining the unexplainable.
At one of the libraries in the many schools he’d attended he looked on the Internet for the name Hadley and got a gazillion hits. He didn’t know how to narrow it down from there. Then he looked under Milly Hadley and found nothing with that combination. There were lots of Milleys, Millies, and lots of Hadleys but no Milly Hadley. All that stuff about finding anything you wanted on the Internet was a bunch of bull. Maybe you could, but first you had to know where to look and what to ask for.
Maybe his grandmother had been like Mom, looking for the right guy. That’s what his mother used to say when she showed up with a new man, “I’m looking for the right guy.” Showing up with a new man hadn’t happened in a long time, not since before Alex was born. Caleb was keeping his fingers crossed that it stayed that way. The only one of his mother’s friends he’d liked at all was a guy she had been seeing before Marie was born.
He put all the tools away and gave the garage a final look. He didn’t want the old bat finding something to jump on him about. It looked pretty good if he did say so. He’d cleaned up the dog crap, put all the undamaged items back in boxes, and separated the chewed up items into open boxes thinking it was up to somebody else to decide what to throw away, and returned order to the room. The old lady was a nut for neatness, no doubt about that.
“What’cha doin’?” Marie clutched Polly Pig, a scruffy, chubby, pink stuffed animal she’d been given by the social worker when they’d been taken away from their mom because a nosey neighbor reported her for leaving him and Marie alone all the time. They’d spent a week in foster care scared out of their minds they would never see their mother again. Polly was an ever-present reminder that the world was a crazy and often scary place.
“Don’t ask dumb questions. You can see what I’m doing.”
“Mama says don’t call people dumb.”
Caleb’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t say you were dumb, I said the question was dumb.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it’s not the same thing!”
“Mama says don’t yell.”
“I’m not yelling.”
“Liar, liar pants on fire.”
Caleb bit back a retort. Marie had a way about her that would rub velvet raw. He knew when a battle wasn’t worth fighting.
“What do you want?”
“Mama says are you done in here.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I play with them?”
It took a couple of seconds for him to catch up with his sister’s leapfrog thinking, until he saw her eyeing the Barbie dolls.
“Forget it.”
“Please, please, please, please, PLEASE?”
“Caleb?” Annie’s voice came in through the open door that led to the kitchen. The boy’s heart turned over in his chest. He couldn’t identify the feelings that squeezed his belly and made him feel sickish, but when she sounded this way—like a balloon was in her throat and she was trying to talk around it—his entire body seized up.
“Yes, ma’am?”
He loved her so much it hurt and the sadness that showed on her face made him want to cry. She looked around quite as if she didn’t know where she was or how she got there. A sudden smile transformed her. “Caleb! What a wonderful, wonderful job you’ve done!”
He blushed. His mother’s praise meant more to him than anything.
“How much were you able to save?”
He shuffled over to the boxes that held bits and pieces of Transformer figures and doll parts.
“Those two have Barbie dolls still in the boxes or that aren’t broken; that one has the Transformers and cars in it,” he said, pointing to closed cardboard boxes. “These,” he said picking up a piece of plastic, “are what’s left of the rest.”
His mother