a certain gleam in her eye when she investigated the old river rock fireplace that seemed so out of place among filing cabinets and her desk, and the government office reject chairs lined up against the walls for kids who were in the office having paperwork done or were waiting to see him.
Soon she had a fire crackling away in that hearth every single day. The kids loved it, and the older ones lined up for the opportunity to chop and haul wood for her.
Then her desk had been pushed back into a corner, and the ugly metal frame green and orange vinyl chairs had disappeared. From somewhere she’d found an old blue sofa that she’d put a bright plaid throw over, and several wingback chairs which she had grouped around the fireplace.
An old trunk served as a coffee table, and it always had a heap of comic books, coloring books and crayons on it. She had hung lace valances on the tall old windows, and their wide casings held an assortment of plants that the children clamored to water.
A huge round fishbowl with four residents of various colors and fin shapes had a place on top of her filing cabinet. Standing on a chair to sprinkle feed for the fish seemed to be a special honor reserved for newcomers who arrived confused, frightened and tearstained.
Often the quiet murmur of voices drew him out of his office and he would find her, work stopped, having a quick snuggle on the couch with a needy child.
With something approaching reverence she took the artwork the children had made, and while they watched, she would pop it into a cheap frame and hang it on a bare spot on the wall. One whole wall, floor to ceiling, was nearly completely covered with these bright testaments to the resiliency of the human spirit.
The only pictures that had hung on the walls before were the worker’s compensation posters that Mrs. Bartholomew had put up religiously. As if she was in any danger of falling off a ladder, or being backed over by a truck. Pretty hard to miss something that big in that shade of pink. But if someone had hit her with a truck, he had the uncharitable thought it was the truck that would have needed repairing, not Mrs. B., as she had reluctantly permitted herself to be called.
“What are you going to do when you run out of walls?” he’d teased Holly one day.
“Run out of walls?” she’d said, astounded. “We have a whole ranch.”
Somehow having every wall on the whole ranch hung with the kids’ colorful drawings appealed to him very much.
“Where are you getting the frames from? You’re not buying them yourself, are you?”
She’d shrugged.
He’d quietly arranged for the downtown hardware store to donate a hundred frames. When that box arrived, she’d oohed and aahed like it was Christmas morning and he had given her diamonds.
The truth is he probably would have kept Holly even if not a lick of the office work got done. She attracted the kids, and she was good with them. She had, seemingly effortlessly, turned the dull space of her office into an area of good cheer and happiness, a place that it felt good to spend time in.
He even found himself wandering out there to get a handful of those little butterscotch candies she kept, and to sit on the couch in front of the fire and visit with whatever kid was on her sofa for the afternoon.
But, amazingly, she still got the office work done with incredible accuracy and efficiency. Her mind was exceedingly quick, not rigid and slow moving as her predecessor’s had been.
It was Holly who had first mentioned the water as a possible source when a terrifying number of kids had first started getting sick at Hopechest. And then everybody was sick. Her mind had sorted through information to the common denominator with breathtaking quickness. He credited her with the fact that the situation had never been allowed the opportunity to deteriorate into a terrible tragedy.
And though Holly Lamb was nothing to look at, she was a huge step up from Mrs. Bartholomew. She always looked presentable and professional and to Blake’s abject relief she had yet to wear pink. And every now and then he would notice her eyes behind those huge glasses, and try and figure out what color they were.
Some days he would be convinced they were blue. And the next day he would decide they were brown.
His office had changed in the most subtle and pleasant ways since her arrival, and he was already keeping his fingers crossed that she would never, ever quit.
Hard, though, to think of her as Todd Lamb’s daughter. He wondered what her mother was like.
And then he remembered the expression on Holly’s face when he had first come through the office door today.
It had troubled him then and it troubled him again now. When he had asked her what was wrong, she’d laughed it off and tried to turn it into a joke, but the expression on her face had been downright strange.
He shot a look at the boy sitting sullenly beside him in the passenger seat. He knew that look anywhere. Guilt. His instinct told him the boy could tell him all about that look on Holly’s face if he was approached in the right way.
“So,” Blake said, looking straight ahead at the road, “where are you coming from?” Out of the corner of his eye he caught the slight hunching of thin shoulders.
The boy hesitated, and then muttered the name of a juvenile detention facility.
“Oh, yeah,” Blake said. “I saw the inside of that one once or twice myself when I was your age.”
Startled surprise, quickly masked. “Sure.”
“No kidding.”
“What for?”
“I took motorcycles that didn’t belong to me.”
“Cool.”
Blake decided to let that pass, and he knew better than to pry about what the kid had done. He could find out later if it interested him.
“When did you get out?”
“A couple of weeks ago. I tried to find my sister. I promised.”
“Yeah. She told us.”
“I was supposed to go to a foster home when I got out, but I’ll be sixteen in a few weeks, so I figured I’d take a miss.”
Under the nonchalant expression, Blake heard the question. Am I in trouble?
“I’ll find out for you,” he said, just as if the question had been asked out loud.
The boy gave him a surprised look.
“How come my secretary looked so strange when I walked in?” There. He’d given him something, now he wanted something back.
The boy took a sudden interest in his sneakers, then his fingernails, then the scenery outside the windows.
“I dunno.” His eyes were skittering around like crazy.
A lie. Blake gave him the look that said he knew it was a lie, and the boy tried to do a turtle and pull his head inside his own jacket.
A long silence ensued, which Blake did nothing to break.
“I was really mad. And scared. And tired. It was a dumb thing to do.” The voice was coming from somewhere inside the jean jacket.
“What was a dumb thing to do?”
“Pulling the blade on her.”
Blake, who prided himself on being unshockable, on keeping his cool in any circumstance, swerved the vehicle onto the shoulder and braked to a halt so fast that the boy’s head popped out of his jacket.
“You did what?” It registered, somewhere in him, that this was not him, the unflappable Blake Fallon. But the thought of someone scaring his sweet secretary filled him with a quiet and protective rage that did not bode well for the boy sitting next to him.
Tomas shrank back against the door. His hand moved stealthily for the handle. “Don’t hit me,”