House Without Lies (Lily’s House Book 1)

by Rachel Branton

  “Well, my plan had been to take you for a sunset picnic. Now it’ll be a sunrise.”

  As if to approve of his plan, my stomach rumbled, and we both laughed. “Is getting up early a habit with you?”

  “Actually, sometimes.” His hand stole up to take a lock of my hair. “In a big family, that’s really the only time there’s any quiet. I used to get up to run before I helped my dad in the shop.”

  “I was never a morning person,” I said, “but I am now, so I know what you mean. It’s the only time I can get stuff done.”

  We drove twenty minutes and arrived at a park near the entrance to one of the Camelback Mountain trails. “I knew we wouldn’t have time to hike,” he said as he parked.

  “Already getting a little light,” I agreed, pulling up the hood of my jacket for added warmth over my mostly dry hair.

  “Next time.”

  The comment sent a fluttering through my stomach, reminding me of last night’s world-stopping kiss. I still wasn’t sure what he saw in me, but I was glad that he did.

  Dew marked the table, and Jameson made a face. “Didn’t think of that, but I have a table cloth.”

  “I have something.” I dug in my shoulder bag for the small pack of wipes I’d learned to carry in my purse since Ruth and Halla had come to live with me. You never knew when it would come in handy.

  Instead of closing around the wipes, my hand met a block of cold. Puzzled, I drew it out to see one of the blue ice packs we’d used with Zoey and Bianca’s lunches before they qualified for the free meals at school. “Elsie,” I murmured. I hadn’t seen her up, but it had to have been her, making sure I had ice for my very hot date.

  “What’s that?” Jameson asked.

  I held up the ice pack. “Apparently, the girls think you’re hot, so Elsie is making sure I have ice.”

  He laughed. “I’ll have to thank them.”

  “They are definitely on your side.” I put the blue rectangle back into my bag and found the wipes, wondering if the girls were a good judge of character, or if we were all setting ourselves up for some kind of letdown. Mario Jameson Perez was a man, after all, not some rich hero who would ride in on his white horse to save us.

  Jameson’s hand touched the sleeve of my jacket. “What is it?”

  I sighed, pursing my lips. “It’s just, even after all they’ve been through, they’re still trusting, and sometimes—okay, all the time—I worry about letting them down.”

  “But you are doing something,” he said. “Don’t forget that. That’s more than the rest of the world.”

  “Right. Look at the positive.”

  We wiped down the bench and much of the table, barely finishing in time to watch the sunrise. Fingers of light reflected from the beaded dew on the grass and trees. Jameson put his arm around me, and a peace settled over me.

  My stomach chose that moment to remind us about the food.

  “I hope you like eggs and bacon.” Jameson hurried to open his picnic basket and pulled out round biscuits filled with still-warm eggs and several half strips of bacon.

  There were no wrappers, so I had to ask, “Is there a deli open this early?”

  “These I actually made. The biscuits are even fresh.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Well, don’t be. It takes like ten minutes.”

  He still got up early to do it. I took a bite. “Mmm. I can’t remember the last time anyone made me breakfast.”

  “Since you left home?”

  I smiled and swallowed another bite before answering. “My mother doesn’t make breakfast. Neither did my father. We had a housekeeper who made sure they had their omelets, or whatever, but my sister and I grew up on cold cereal.”

  “Like most of America, huh?” We ate for a few moments in easy silence, and then he said, “When did you decide to start helping girls? Was it when you found Saffron? I heard them say she’s been with you the longest.”

  “Of the girls I have now, yeah. Saffron’s been with me since last September. But I had two other girls on and off the year before that. They were older, though, students at my college who were having family problems. But it really all began when I was six.”

  “Six?” He laughed and shook his head. “Don’t tell me. I can just see you sneaking a kid into your room. From what little you’ve said about your parents, you’d have to be pretty brave to do something like that.”

  I didn’t think I’d told him anything about my parents, but we had talked a lot about other things, and I guess the relationship we didn’t have showed through. “Actually, sneaking something into my room was much later, and it was a cat.”

  “So what happened when you were six?”

  I gnawed on my lower lip, wondering how much to tell him. “I missed two months of my kindergarten year. I was really sick, and my mother hated the idea of me being behind because ‘that’s not what Crawfords do.’” I made quote marks with my finger to show they were her words, not mine. “So when I was better, instead of putting me into school, she sent me back to my old preschool, where I was bored enough that I started helping out with all the kids—getting the drinks, playing with the sad ones. That sort of thing. After I finally got to kindergarten, I just kept it up. I didn’t like it when they left people out.”

  “I can believe it. And the cat?”

  “I was seven, and I found a kitten someone had abandoned in a field. Little tiny thing.” I showed him with my hands. “I had to feed her with an eyedropper. I had her hidden in my room for a week before my sister found out and three months before our parents discovered it.”

  “Resourceful.” Jameson pushed the container of biscuits toward me. “No wonder you’re good with the girls.”

  “Well, hopefully, with your help, I can do more. But we’d better get back. I need to drive the girls to school, and Ruth and Halla have some errands they’re doing for people today, so I need to drop them off as well.”

  We cleaned up our picnic and walked back to the car. His fingers closed over mine. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Thank you for asking.”

  We reached the car, and he leaned over to kiss me. The kiss was so brief and chaste that my heart had no reason at all to be threatening to pound out of my chest or for my knees to lose all function. I sank gratefully into the seat as he opened the door, my hand going inside my bag to touch Elsie’s ice pack.

  It had only been two days, and I couldn’t possibly be falling in love, but there was so much right about this man, and all my responsibilities hadn’t scared him off yet. That alone was a miracle.

  After her first few weeks with me, Saffron had started walking dogs, running errands, and cleaning for several widows at the church we attended. It had been her way of helping me buy our food—and to appease my roommates, who were at that time mostly too busy to notice I had a continuous, non-authorized visitor in my private room. When they did notice, they were never above eating our bribes.

  Later when Ruth and Halla joined us, Saffron moved on to the burger place and passed her old jobs onto them. Since both Ruth and Halla had poor social skills and dressed funny, it was unlikely they would have convinced strangers to trust them without Saffron’s hearty recommendation, so it worked out perfectly. It had taken encouragement in the beginning, and many times I’d been late to class to go with them, but now the girls were reliable, and the widows loved them. They had regular clients on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The errands didn’t pay a lot, but the income helped them buy clothes, food, and other necessities my income wouldn’t stretch enough to cover.

  Unfortunately, their first job was far enough away that they needed me to drive them if they were ever to arrive on time—they were still young girls and liked their sleep. From the first widow’s house, they’d go from job to job until they arrived home.

  “What about Elsie?” Ruth asked as we climbed into my car.

  “Saffron is staying with her.” I hoped I’d remembered to put everything in my binder. I�
�d brought the court papers for Zoey and Bianca, but they were the only girls I was willing to talk about to Jameson’s friend. Maybe I’d add Ruth, eventually, because her mother didn’t seem to want her home, but I needed to find out what I had to do to be qualified. I couldn’t let any of the girls return to dangerous situations.

  As I dropped the girls off, making sure they had their lunches and money for an emergency phone call, I worried about the meeting. What if Zoey and Bianca’s uncle changed his mind and wanted them back? Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. Still, I decided to go to the meeting because if I didn’t change something, I didn’t know how we could ever do more than simply survive.

  Teen Remake was located in a corner office in downtown Phoenix, next to a dentist and a chiropractor. The front office even looked like a dentist’s office, down to the young receptionist, who looked up from behind a desk when I walked in. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Lily Crawford. I’m here for a meeting about becoming licensed as a foster parent?”

  “Oh, Mario’s friend.” Her smile put me at ease. “Sure, the interview.”

  What she meant by that wasn’t exactly clear, but I was glad I hadn’t mentioned Jameson by name, or she would have wondered. I might have to rethink the name choice.

  “Yeah, is he here?”

  The words were barely out of my mouth when he came through the open door. “Hi, Lily, come on back.” He held out a beckoning hand.

  The receptionist gave me a nod and turned her sweet smile to a stressed-looking couple who had come in the door after me. They were probably here about their child.

  “What exactly does Teen Remake do?” I asked in a low voice as Jameson’s hand touched my back, leading me though the door. “It’s not one of those boot camp behavioral places, is it? Where parents ship off their kids and don’t see them for months? I’ve heard terrible things about those.”

  “No, we’re not like that. Well, we do take the kids camping, but it’s not abusive or threatening the way some programs are. Parents are always invited, and why not? In most cases, they’re the ones paying for the treatment. Basically, what Teen Remake does is to figure out what’s gone wrong in the child’s life and try to remake that part so the rest can work as it should. The first step is understanding why the teens don’t want to do whatever it is their parents and society requires of them. It involves a lot of talking and activities, and that’s why we use not only paid counselors, but a lot of volunteers. For the most part, the children are still living at home or in foster homes, so we don’t have children staying here, though we do have connections with a group home we sometimes send them to.” Jameson’s face had become animated, telling me how much he enjoyed his work.

  “A lot of the time, we’re working with the parents just as much as the kids,” he added, lowering his voice, even though we were far enough away from the front now that no one could overhear. “Frankly, there are far too many instances where parents simply expect too much too fast from kids. We find that easing the expectations, without abandoning them all together, of course, helps them show the child the love they really need. Teaching the parents to moderate their responses and to take time to think about their actions helps everyone.”

  “You sound like you really love it.”

  We rounded a bend in the hall. “I do. I’ve seen kids completely change. Of course, the really violent ones or those with severe addictions aren’t referred to us. But we do get a lot of kids with depression, kids who cut themselves, refuse to do homework, sneak out at night, steal stuff. That sort of thing.”

  Half of this new hallway was full of windows, allowing us to see into the rooms. In one, young teens sat in a circle, throwing a ball. In another, they were playing video games. “I know what you’re thinking,” Jameson said. “But those video games are specifically designed for depression. It’s a pilot program.”

  “The girls and I play games quite a bit on the weekends.” I hesitated before adding, “Zoey still cuts herself sometimes, but a lot less than she used to.”

  “Well, if we get you approved, maybe she can come here. She’d probably do really well because our programs are hands-on instead of bookwork or lectures.”

  “I’ll be interested to see more.”

  “Oh, you’re going to love it.” He paused in front of a door. The window on this room had shutters that were angled upward, obscuring most of the inside. “Here we are. Bea, the woman you’re seeing today, is a counselor with the Department of Child Safety, or DCS as we call it, and she comes in part-time each week to check on the progress of the children they’ve sent to us whose programs the state is subsidizing.”

  He reached for the door as he added, “I talked to Bea this morning when I arrived and gave her the heads up on Zoey and Bianca.”

  Unexpected anger made me catch my breath. I’d wanted to test out the woman first, to see how I felt about her. Now there was no going back.

  Jameson tapped on the door. “Come in,” called a voice.

  We went inside, and the woman behind the desk stood up to greet us. She was probably in her late thirties, but it was hard to tell by the ebony smoothness of her skin. Her hair was as dark as Ruth’s frizzy mess, but it was gelled and conditioned and scrunched to a beautiful perfection. I’d researched this style for African-American women and had tried it on Ruth in the hope of getting her to lose the hat, but we hadn’t been all that successful. Maybe it was time to try again, because this woman’s hair was amazing.

  She came around the desk, her slim hand extended. “Hi, I’m Bea Lundberg. I’m a social worker with the Department of Child Safety, but I also provide oversight here at Teen Remake. You must be Lily. Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you too.”

  “Please have a seat.”

  I glanced at Jameson, who nodded and thumbed at the door. “I have to get back to work. Check in with me before you leave?”

  I felt a slight panic, but I pushed it away. Of course he had to work. “You just want to play video games.”

  “Busted. I could get someone else to fill in for me, if you’d—”

  “No, no, I’m good.” It was better this way because he’d met all the girls, and I didn’t want him slipping. He’d already said more than enough. I gave him a wave and sat down in the nearest of the three seats Bea had indicated in front of the desk.

  Instead of returning to sit behind her desk, Bea sat down next to me, tugging down her pencil skirt and crossing her legs. “So, Mario tells me you have a few girls living with you, and you’re interested in becoming their official foster parent.”

  “Well, I’m already their guardian, but it’s basically for school purposes.” I drew out the papers from my binder and handed them to her. “The judge was clear that it didn’t mean I had custody.”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot more involved for that.” Her eyes skimmed the papers briefly. “Tell me about the girls.”

  I told her about their mother dying and how they’d gone to their uncle’s to live, where they’d stayed for two years before finally running away in December. “I found them in a park. I usually go to Flagstaff over the Christmas break, but luckily, I stayed.”

  My mother had been livid at that, but I hadn’t dared leave Saffron, Ruth, and Halla for more than one day. It would have been different if my mother had been the kind to open her home to visitors. Saffron, she might have welcomed, thinking she was a roommate, but not Ruth or Halla.

  “They were sleeping at the park?”

  “Not until right before I found them. They’d been staying with different friends, but it was the day after Christmas, and I guess they ran out of places to go.”

  Ruth had seen them first on Christmas afternoon when I’d been at my parents’ during the day, and we’d gone looking for them when I returned to Phoenix, but they must have hidden. I’d gone back the next morning, just to be sure, and found them cold and unhappy.

  “Bianca was crying, and they were both hungry and needed baths,”
I said. “It didn’t take much to convince them to come home with me. Later, I talked to their uncle, and he agreed to let them stay.”

  “Just like that?” Bea’s raised eyebrow implied doubt.

  I met her gaze. “I told him I knew he’d been abusing Zoey sexually and had started on Bianca. That’s why Zoey ran and took Bianca with her. She didn’t want her sister to be abused like she’d been.”

  Bea’s lips tightened. “Poor kids. And the uncle’s given you no money?”

  “No. I was able to get the girls free lunches, though, using my income and the guardianship papers.”

  “Good.” Bea uncrossed her leg and leaned forward. “The first thing that needs to happen here is I need to talk to Zoey and Bianca. I can do that at their school, if it’s more convenient. Then I’ll go visit their uncle as a precursor to getting you some funds for their care.”

  “He won’t pay,” I said. “As he said to me, they’re not even his kids.”

  “Since he’s not the birth parent, it’s unlikely he’d be charged maintenance anyway, unless there was an inheritance he received when the girls’ mother died. Or unless he wanted to work toward keeping custody.”

  I took a deep breath before saying, “That can’t happen. Zoey was also abused by at least three of his friends. She’s pretty sure they paid her uncle.”

  Bea’s nostrils flared, hinting that she was as upset as I was about Zoey’s situation. “Not the first time I’ve seen that. At any rate, because he’s already assigned guardianship to you, we’re almost there. We just need the state to take custody.”

  “I don’t want to do anything if that means they’ll be uprooted again. Not even for help. They’re happy now.”

  Her eyes bore into mine. “I’m good at what I do, and that is helping children like Zoey and Bianca. I believe from what Mario told me that they’re in a good situation now, and since you mentioned sexual abuse, I am required to conduct a thorough investigation. Even if their uncle wants them, they won’t be returned to him any time soon, as long as both girls are claiming abuse.”