a ride home, Connie?”
“No,” her friend answered. “I’m on my way to do some grocery shopping. That’s if my idiot husband can manage to find his way back here without driving himself into a snowbank someplace. God forbid.”
“I’m sure he’ll make it,” laughed Francesca. “Just be careful out on the roads when he does.”
“And you be careful too,” said Connie. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I will,” Francesca promised.
With that, she nodded good-bye and walked out to her car. Once inside, she started the engine and sat there for a moment, turning things over in her mind. Francesca wondered if perhaps Peg and the others might be right. Maybe it was a crazy idea to respond to the ad. But then she began to wonder about the person who had placed it, and a thousand intriguing questions danced in her head. Where did this woman live? What kind of person was she? Why did she need someone to help her? What were the children like? Could Francesca help them?
There was, Francesca well knew, only one way to answer any of these questions, so she took a deep breath, made the sign of the cross, and started on her way back home.
CHAPTER 11
“Mom?”
The voice came to Loretta Simmons from someplace far, far away, like an echo in a canyon.
“Mom.”
It came round again, this time closer and more insistent. There was something tormenting in the sound of it, the way it sought her out no matter how she struggled to escape it.
“Come on, Mom.”
She was hiding now at the bottom of what she could only perceive as a deep, dark well, a well from which someone, very much against her will, was trying to pull her up and into the light. She did her best to resist, to stay burrowed in the darkness, but she knew it was of no use. No matter how hard she struggled against it, she was being borne inexorably to the surface.
“Come on, Mom. We’re gonna be late!”
Facedown in the pillow, clenching the bedsheets beneath her, while a cold rivulet of drool seeped from the corner of her wide-open mouth, Loretta Simmons opened her eyes. She tried to move, but it felt as though she were lying beneath an anvil that was pressing her deeper and deeper into the mattress. She was too tired to even yawn. Wearily, she lifted her head off the pillow, pushed aside the hair hanging over her eyes, and looked into the face of her son, standing at the edge of the bed. Wiping the side of her mouth with the back of her hand, she glanced at the clock. Seven twenty-five. God, she had forgotten to set the alarm again. There was no way the kids would make the bus; she would have to drive them to school again. Dropping her head back onto the pillow, she let out a sorrowful groan and squeezed her eyes shut once more.
Up to that point, Loretta had been lost in a very pleasant dream, the last remnants of which were now quickly receding from her memory like smoke up a chimney. Desperately, she tried to pull it all back, to piece together the remaining fragments, before it disappeared forever. It was the type of dream she seemed to have with growing regularity lately. Whenever she had it, there was always something oddly familiar about it, like she was acting out the script to a play that had essentially all the same dialog and characters but was constantly being set in someplace new. This time around, she recalled standing on a balcony overlooking a shimmering, moonlit bay. A warm, gentle breeze caressed her face and hair, while from down below, the sound of calypso music rose above the sighing of the gentle surf. She wasn’t alone, of course. Standing there with her on that beautiful balcony was a man. There was always something very familiar about him as well, even though she never could quite make out his face.
“Tell me you’ll stay,” she recalls saying to him in the dream.
“Of course I will stay,” he had told her, reaching out for her hand.
“Tell me you’ll never leave.”
“Never.”
“Tell me you love me.”
“With all my heart.”
It was all something right out of a romance novel, but just the same, it all came out so heartfelt, so dramatically real to her. It swept her away. The secret passion, the longing in her heart. It was all ready to burst forth, like the sun emerging from the clouds.
But then, just at the moment when the man finally took her in his arms and began to bring his lips to hers, that climactic moment when the music swelled and the violins began to play, the voice had come and chased the whole magical scene away. Now, try as she might, there was no way to put herself back into it, no matter how tightly she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Get up, Mom,” insisted her son, nudging her in the arm. “We’re going to be late for school!”
“Go get dressed, Will,” Loretta grunted. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
“I’m already dressed,” he replied. “When are you going to make breakfast? I’m hungry.”
“You’re nine years old,” she complained. “Can’t you make your own breakfast? Do I have to do everything? Pour yourself a glass of juice. Have a bowl of cereal. Make yourself some toast.”
“We have no juice, there’s no clean bowls, and the toaster is broke, remember?” her son impishly reminded her. Then, in a more pleading tone: “Come on, Mom. I’m really hungry.”
Loretta let out another groan and rolled over onto her back. She rubbed her eyes and stared forlornly at the ceiling. “Is your sister up?” she said.
“In the bathroom, brushing her hair, where else?”
“Okay,” his mother yawned, dragging herself from beneath the covers. “Go. I’m up.”
Loretta set her feet on the floor and rolled her neck and shoulders for a minute to shake out the cobwebs. Despite the urge to crawl back under the covers, she stood and shuffled out into the hallway. As she passed the bathroom, she rapped her knuckles against the door.
“Don’t be all day in there, Miss America,” she warned her daughter. “Get a move on. Somebody else might need to get ready, you know.” Then she trudged downstairs to the kitchen to make herself a cup of instant coffee. Loretta preferred fresh-brewed, especially in the morning, but there was no time to make it, and in any case, the coffeemaker was broken as well.
Will was already sitting on the end of the living room couch, playing a video game on the television, when Loretta came downstairs. Beside him, on the end table, rested a paper plate holding several saltine crackers. Next to it, a butter knife rose from an open jar of peanut butter. His eyes glued to the television, Will munched away on the peanut butter crackers he had made, oblivious to the crumbs falling onto the couch and rug while he manipulated the game controller. It wasn’t the breakfast of champions, thought Loretta, but she supposed that her son could eat worse in the morning. It would have to do. Just the same, she couldn’t suppress her exasperation at the mess he was making.
“Watch what you’re doing!” she cried. “You’re getting crumbs everywhere! Why is it that no matter how hard I try to keep this place clean, it still ends up a mess?”
“Cleansing breath, Mom,” said Will placidly, without looking away from the video game. “You’re starting to get worked up again.”
“Don’t give me that,” she snapped in reply. “Turn that thing off and finish eating your breakfast at the table. And get your backpack ready for school. Who said you could sit around wasting time playing those games when we’re all going to be late? And have you even looked at that science project you had me working on for you till all hours last night?” She followed that up by screaming upstairs, “Penelope Simmons, get yourself down here. Now!”
Penny descended the stairs a few minutes later. She was a pretty girl with blue eyes and dark, straight hair like her mother’s. However, her choice of attire