This didn’t have to be her life.
She had a way out.
Vincent’s face was proof.
Soon he would have his second chance. A new family would adopt him. A family more equipped to handle Vincent’s needs. And for the family that adopted him from Haiti? He would become a memory. A hard phase that they went through. They would feel guilty, of course. They would feel like failures. But soon enough those feelings would melt away and it would be like he never existed at all.
“Hey.”
Jen jumped. Her hands jerked off the keyboard. She quickly closed out the internet before her husband could see.
“Whoa there. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
“You were very involved in whatever you were looking at.” Nick swiveled Jen’s chair around. As soon as he saw her, his face went soft with compassion and concern. He pulled her up to standing and wrapped her in a hug. Her heart was still pounding so hard, she wondered if he could feel it. But he didn’t say anything. He kissed the top of her head and whispered, “You’re a good mom.”
She shook her head.
“You are, Jen.”
They were the same words Leah spoke. The same words Leah told her often. But at the moment, Jen couldn’t believe them. Good mothers didn’t resent their children. Good mothers didn’t wish them away.
“I know today was hard.”
“It was horrible.”
“But now we know. We know how to handle parties.”
“After today, she’ll never be invited to one.”
“Kids that age have short memories.” Nick rubbed her back in slow, soothing circles, then pulled her away, firmly clutching her arms. “We’re doing a good job.”
He was. He was doing a good job.
Not her.
“Jubilee’s ready for her goodnight kiss. I can go lie down with her after.”
Jen sniffed and wiped her face dry; then she shuffled across the hall, into the doorway of her daughter’s room. Jubilee lay in bed, her face visible in the soft glow of her night-light. Her eyes were wide and white—two blinking orbs that stared at Jen, a robot of a mother.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she said.
“For what?”
“For being bad.”
The words uncorked her. Jen lurched out of the doorway to her daughter’s bedside. “You are not bad.”
Mama was bad.
Mama was rotten.
Because here was a child who had spent five years of her life in an orphanage. Who had to fight for every scrap of food—never mind toys—because you only got one meal a day, and when bellies were hungry, kids didn’t have the luxury of sharing. A child terrified of the dark because for far too long, she had slept in pitch black. Hot, humid, fetid pitch black where children soiled themselves and whimpered into the void. And hers had been one of the better orphanages. At least there, the boys and girls had been locked into separate rooms at night. Not all of them did that. Some locked fifteen-year-old street boys in with six-year-old girls, and the stories Jen heard made her skin crawl.
This had been Jubilee’s reality. And still, Jen’s heart went hard and mean whenever that trauma surfaced. It was like Jen got amnesia and forgot about the past altogether.
“I love you,” she said, willing it to be true.
“I love-a you too.”
Jen bent over and kissed Jubilee’s head and said apologies of her own, apologies in her heart. I’m sorry I’m not better. I’m sorry I’m not the mother I thought I was going to be. I’m sorry I’m not the mommy you deserve.
When she reached the doorway, Jubilee called her name.
Jen turned around.
“Was Jesus wit me in da orphanage?”
Jen wanted to tell her yes. Of course He was. Jesus was with her always. But the words stuck in her throat. How could she say them when sometimes she wasn’t sure if Jesus was with them now?
Twenty-Nine
Any second now, he would walk out the front doors. Camille knew because she’d logged onto the gym’s website and checked the times. Now she sat in her Highlander, gripping the steering wheel with sweaty fingers, spying from an insurance company’s parking lot across the street at six o’clock in the morning.
Didn’t Rebecca see him with that other woman?
The question kept reverberating in her mind like a giant booming gong, one that Pamela Trentwood hit with glee, and it wouldn’t stop vibrating. The sound kept going and going and going—one long, uninterrupted wavelike succession of clattering noise.
Rebecca had seen Neil with another woman.
She had seen her husband with someone else, and she didn’t tell her. She told Pamela, but not her. It was enough to make Camille’s stomach revolt.
The front doors opened.
Camille ducked, positive he would see her. Of course he would see her. He’d recognize the SUV right away. But he didn’t look across the street. And he was holding the door open for someone else.
A woman walked out, a gym bag strapped across her shoulder.
She was tall and slender and exotic, with black satin hair pulled up into a ponytail longer than Camille’s had ever been. Her body was perky everywhere a female body was meant to be—and she was young.
Much, much too young.
Camille’s throat tightened.
Don’t kiss her. Please don’t kiss her.
She squeezed her eyes shut, then peeked through one of them, watching as Neil walked shoulder to shoulder with this woman who looked way too feminine for hunting and Chuck Norris.
They stopped in front of his car.
The woman laughed at something Neil said. She laughed like her husband was a regular comedian and threw her gym bag into the Jeep beside his Audi.
She drove a silver, doorless Jeep Wrangler.
Camille imagined Neil riding shotgun, his foot up on her dashboard as the wind ran through his thinning hair.
Please don’t kiss. Please don’t kiss.
The woman said something.
Neil said something.
Then he lifted his hand in the air for a high five.
An actual high five.
The woman gave him one.
Their hands came down and stayed together for a lingering moment.
Then she smiled.
And he smiled.
And they got in their cars and drove away.
* * *
Camille to Kathleen: I take it back. Please tell Rick I would like the name of a really good PI.
Thirty
Anaya’s day started with pajamas and a bloody nose. Actually, it started with Paige Gray in her pajamas reeling back in her chair and shouting, “That is disgusting!”
Indeed, it was.
Gavin Royce was bleeding all over, and it was day one of Spirit Week. Day one was pajama day. He pinched his nostrils together, but it wasn’t doing a whole lot of good. The blood found its way through, and so far it had gotten all over his hands and his T-shirt and was making a puddle on his desk.
He didn’t seem too upset about it. In fact, he seemed to just sit there and let it happen.
The other children weren’t quite so calm.
Anaya plucked a handful of tissues from the Kleenex box on her desk, hurried over, and attempted to stanch the flow.
Everyone but Gavin had gotten out of their seats.
“Back in your chairs, please,” she said in her mama’s voice—kind but without an inch of slack.
“Is Gavin dying?” Zeke asked. He was wearing a pair of shark slippers designed to look as though the two sharks had eaten his feet.
“No, honey. He just has a nosebleed.”
A horrible, horrible nosebleed.
So bad, there was no way she could send him to the office
by himself. If she did, the school hallway would look like the scene of a massacre.
“Tilt your head up, sweetheart,” she said, hoping that might squelch the flow.
“Ib I do dat, I dwallow doo buch blood.”
“Okay. All right.” She walked Gavin over to her desk, keeping a firm hold on the back of his head and the clump of Kleenex over his nose, already soaked with red. She plucked another clump and added it to the others. “Class, I’m going to run Gavin to the nurse’s office really quickly. You all know the morning routine. Please move your sticks, and start right away on your writing.”
With that, she hurried Gavin to the front office.
As soon as they walked inside, Jan McCormack lurched out of her seat. She made a big fuss, became a mother hen, and told Anaya she would take it from here. She’d better go wash her hands.
When Anaya looked down, she understood why.
They were covered in blood. Just like his T-shirt had been. His Confederate flag T-shirt.
She slipped into the staff bathroom to wash it off with soap and water, reminding herself that Gavin didn’t buy his own clothes. Gavin probably didn’t even know what the flag represented. Gavin was actually a very simple, very endearing little boy with a short attention span and atrocious handwriting.
By the time she returned to her class, a good five minutes had passed and her students—her lovely, well-behaved students—were all sitting at their desks, writing away. Even Dante—who needed a wiggle seat to help him sit still—sat on his knees, his elbow crooked in that odd way of a left hander, his bottom lip tucked under his two front teeth as he concentrated hard on the task in front of him.
Anaya beamed with pride.
Except for the cold lunch cup tipped over on its side, all was in perfect order. Hardly a month into the school year, and they had the morning routine mastered.
“Well, I think such responsible behavior earned you all an extra recess.”
They looked up from their papers, smiling at one another in shared excitement.
“Let’s stand for the pledge.”
Everyone rose together, chairs scraping against the industrial carpet as they set their hands over their chests and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. When they were done, they sat back down and continued their writing. The attendance cup was empty. Anaya righted the sticks in the blue cup, counted the ones in the red, and plugged the attendance into her computer when Paige came up to her desk.
“Miss Jones?”
“Yes?”
“Are you gonna clean up that blood?”
The blood.
She jumped out of her seat like it had morphed into hot iron, grabbed the Clorox wipes in her bottom desk drawer, and hurried over to sanitize the area, embarrassed that she’d forgotten to clean it up right away.
Just as she was finished cleaning, she noticed that the desk across from Gavin’s was empty. She stopped. Straightened. Looked around the room.
“Where is Jubilee?” Anaya asked nobody in particular.
The class looked around.
Anaya turned in a circle, as though Jubilee were playing a funny game of hide-behind-the-teacher, then marched over to the time machine and flung open the door. There was just the beanbag and the flashlight and a stack of picture books about Native Americans.
No Jubilee.
Had someone accidentally moved her Popsicle stick? Was she absent? But no, Anaya remembered seeing her this morning in Supergirl pajamas. She remembered thinking that her hair looked semipresentable today, mostly because of the large headband she was wearing.
“I like your hair, Jubilee,” Anaya had said. “It’s very pretty.”
And Jubilee looked down in that shy way of hers, hiding her smile.
“Did she use the restroom?” Anaya asked, louder this time.
Nobody answered.
They all looked around at one another, until Sarah’s hand slowly rose up into the air. “I saw her go out the door.”
“That door?”
Sarah nodded.
Anaya raced over and flung it open, letting in the dreary morning air. She leaned outside and scanned the grounds. The playground. The basketball courts. The baseball field. The fence, and the wooded area beyond.
All of it was empty.
“Everyone stay in your seats.” She propped the door open and stepped outside, her breath growing more and more desperate with every second that ticked by.
“Jubilee!” she called.
Nothing.
She moved farther away from her classroom. She was a shepherd leaving her flock for the one lost sheep. Mama loved that story from the Bible more than any other. She loved that Jesus cared most urgently about the lost one. At the moment, Anaya could understand why.
“Jubilee!” she yelled again.
Nothing answered but the wind.
Anaya had lost a child.
A student in her classroom had run away under her watch.
Panic was beginning to strangle her just as a glimpse of movement high up on the jungle gym caught her attention.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, thank You.” She exhaled the praise on a pent-up breath. It was Jubilee. She was peeking out at her from the top tier of the jungle gym. Anaya cupped her hands over her mouth and called into the wind.
But Jubilee didn’t come.
Anaya waved her hand in an exaggerated motion. “Come on in, honey. Before it starts to rain.”
Jubilee ducked out of sight.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
Anaya looked over her shoulder at the students staring out the windows and jogged out to the playground, her ankle smarting. “Jubilee, honey. We need to go back into the classroom.”
Jubilee remained in hiding.
Anaya climbed the ladder two rungs at a time.
The little girl sat at the top with her legs pulled up to her chest, her head buried in her knees.
“Sweetheart, can you please take my hand? We need to get inside before it starts to storm.”
On cue, the clouds let out an ominous grumble.
Jubilee didn’t move.
Meanwhile, her students were inside the classroom. Unsupervised for the second time this morning.
“Jubilee, whatever’s going on, I promise you are safe and you aren’t in any trouble. I just need you to take my hand so we can go inside.”
Jubilee hesitated, then she took Anaya’s hand.
Together they ran back to the class. They barely made it inside before the clouds opened up and unleashed the rain.
Anaya was just getting her students settled when the nurse came in with Gavin, his face scrubbed clean, his bloodstained T-shirt swapped out for a clean one that said Kate Richards O’Hare. Anaya’s knees were still shaking from the adrenaline.
Thankfully, nobody felt like sharing with the nurse what just happened. Hopefully that particular adventure would remain Yellow 2’s secret. She couldn’t believe she almost lost a kid one month into her first year of teaching.
As soon as the nurse left and Gavin was seated, Anaya brought Jubilee back to her desk. She needed to know why the girl ran off. She needed to know so she could make sure it never, ever happened again. But Jubilee wouldn’t say. She hardly lifted her eyes to Anaya at all.
Anaya took her lovingly by the shoulders. “Listen, Jubilee. I need you to promise me that you won’t ever run away like that again. If you’re scared or upset, you come talk with me about it, okay? I’ll help you feel safe.”
Jubilee nodded.
And Anaya—not sure what else to do—let her return to her desk. Later, when the class was doing literacy centers and Anaya sat at the bean-shaped table in the middle of a guided reading group, Nia raised her hand in the air. She was wearing a pink, fuzzy robe.
“Do you want to read the next page?” Anaya asked.
&nbs
p; “No, ma’am. I want to tell you why Jubilee ran away.”
“You know?”
She nodded emphatically. “I heard it with my own two ears.”
“What did you hear?”
Nia looked around—at Gavin to her left, Sarah to her right, the rest of her busy classmates behind. Then she leaned over the table, as close as she could get. “Paige called her a bad name,” she whispered.
“What was the bad name?”
“I’m not allowed to say it. If I did, Mama would wash my mouth.”
Anaya frowned.
“I can say what it starts with though.”
“Okay.”
Nia stood and walked around the table. She leaned in to Anaya’s ear, her breath warm and sweet like syrup. She cupped her hands and whispered, “It’s the mean word that starts with an n.”
* * *
“She said she heard Paige say it.”
Principal Kelly frowned. “But Paige is saying she didn’t?”
“I spoke with all three girls. Jubilee confirmed what Nia told me. When I asked Paige, she denied it.”
“Hmm.”
Anaya took a deep breath. She wanted Principal Kelly to stand up. To howl. On her behalf, and their behalf, and every other person’s behalf who had been on the receiving end of that word. But he didn’t stand or howl. He just sat there looking mildly uncomfortable, like he ate something for breakfast he shouldn’t have.
Meanwhile, she shook. Her entire body trembled.
Principal Kelly picked up a confiscated fidget spinner and began spinning it over his thumb. “You didn’t hear it?”
“No, I didn’t hear it. But why would Nia lie?”
“Didn’t you say Paige has been leaving Nia out?”
Heat crawled up her neck.
It’s just a scratch, Anaya. Nothing but a scratch.
“With all respect, sir, I don’t think Nia would make up this particular story just to get Paige Gray into trouble.”
No One Ever Asked Page 17
