Turning into the parking lot of the daycare, she spotted Ayjia’s red T-shirt. The girl floated on a swing while Dayton crawled across the top of the monkey bars.
With the ease of routine, Porsha handed her a stick of gum and popped one in her own mouth, then dug a sample size bottle of perfume out of her purse, spritzing it once into her own neck then squirting Mercedes.
Mercedes worked her tongue against the bitter tang that landed in her mouth and climbed from the car. She felt icky now and light-headed from her first cigarette in years. She felt like a liar.
“Hi, Janice,” she said, greeting the woman at the gate. “This is my sister, Porsha. Dayton and Ayjia’s mom. Go on, Porsh. They’re going to be really excited to see you.” Mercedes urged her sister to enter the playground, hearing a high squeal of “Mommy!” out of Ayjia. The little girl tripped off the swing and ran like hell for Porsha.
Porsha crouched and closed her arms around the little girl, rocking her back and forth, barely coming up for breath, but holding out one arm as Dayton ran toward them.
Dayton curled one arm around Porsha’s neck and leaned into her, forcing her onto her knees so she wouldn’t be knocked over.
Mercedes smiled, but her throat closed. They had missed their mom so much.
“She’s back,” Janice said. “That’s good.”
“Yeah,” Mercedes said quietly and wiped at the damp tickle on her cheek. “But I still have custody.” Looking Janice in the eye so she understood the severity of the situation, Mercedes said, “Under no circumstances should you let Porsha take those kids unless I’m with her.”
Chapter 23
The knock on her door brought Edith enormous relief, but when she opened it, she found Edward Hilroy, not Dayton.
Her disappointment must have shown because Edward’s smile died and he apologetically offered a frosty cardboard box. “I only thought young Dayton might enjoy an ice cream after his lesson. My grandchildren seem to like these.”
“Dayton’s not here,” Edith said, finding it very hard to keep a level tone. “I’m sorry, Edward. I didn’t mean to make you feel unwelcome, but I’m terribly worried. The children’s mother arrived today. She is quite the piece of work.”
Accepting the box of ice cream treats, she waved him to follow her in, stuffing the box in the freezer without her usual care.
“I am not normally one to gossip,” she said in a low voice, aware of her open screen door. “But that woman has a mouth on her. I tried not to judge her showing up in some shiny limousine tricked out with all the high-rolling rick-rack, wearing little more than a bikini, but the way she made no apologies, and has no sense of what she’s put her sister through these last weeks.” She stopped herself from voicing her fear the man she was with intended to sell the children into child slavery, but it really didn’t seem so far beyond imagining.
“And you’ve already set out his lesson,” he said, noticing the carefully placed books and papers and pencils.
“I have!” Edith wrung her hands, worried sick.
“Is there someone we could call? Do we involve the police?”
“No, the police would be an overstep before we have all the facts.” Thomas would have said so, although he wasn’t speaking to her as often as he used to. She wished Harrison were alive. “Harrison would have trucked down there on the golf cart to ‘take a reading on the situation.’ That was his expression.”
“Why don’t we do that? Where are the keys for the cart?”
“Behind Mercedes’s desk. Can you drive one?”
“Dear Lady, I have been behind the wheel of nearly every vehicle you can imagine. There is no steed I cannot steer.”
“Ayjia, it’s too hot to have you sit on me,” Porsha said, pushing her daughter from her lap to stand beside her on the sofa. “Go eat your pizza.”
“Come sit at the table, sweetie,” Mercedes said, setting plates on the kitchen counter and serving up the slices of Hawaiian while Porsha said, “Yes, I know, I see,” to Dayton. He was showing off a clay dinosaur he’d brought home from school today, but along with admiring it, she gave Mercedes a wide-eyed, overwhelmed look.
Mercedes smiled with empathy, but her heart was with the kids. “You guys have lots to tell your mom, don’t you? Why don’t we take turns giving her our news while we eat.”
“Sounds good. But first let me pop outside for a breath of fresh air,” Porsha said. “Be right back.”
She took her purse and Mercedes felt an addict’s clench of desire for the cigarette Porsha would suck in, but settled for trans fat and nitrites.
“How was school today?” she asked, dragging the children’s attention from the living room where Porsha had gone out the front door. “How’d your spelling test go?” she asked Dayton.
“Good. I got fourteen out of twenty.”
“Really? Mrs. Garvey will give you a sticker for that for sure.” For a kid who’d been getting threes and fours a few weeks ago, it was amazing.
“And,” he said, pausing for effect, “I was the only one to get the tricky word. ‘Has’ sounds like it ends with a z, but it’s an s.”
“You’re right. How did you know that?”
“Mrs. Garvey told me.” He shrugged it off like it was no big deal, but he climbed to his knees to tell the story again when Porsha came back.
“Who’s Mrs. Garvey?” Porsha asked, her tone short as she tucked away her phone and yanked out a chair.
“The lady you spoke to today, the one in my old apartment. She’s been tutoring Dayton.”
“Why?” Porsha cut a slice of pizza in half and took the narrower side.
Mercedes licked her lips, searching for the words to explain Dayton’s challenges without impacting his growing confidence.
“Because I don’t want to be pushin’ forty and have to learn all this stuff then,” Dayton said matter-of-factly. “Like L.C.”
Mercedes snorted. “Is that what he said?”
“Yup. Can I have another piece?”
“Sure, hon.” Mercedes reached to serve it while Porsha said, “Who’s L.C.?”
“Auntie M’s boyfriend,” Ayjia volunteered.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Mercedes said, while a blush stung through her chest, up her neck and into her cheeks. “He was our neighbor. It’s a long story.”
“Oh, do tell,” Porsha said, hitching her elbows onto the table. “You can’t take a superior attitude over Ray and not ‘fess up what’s been going on here.”
“Nothing went on.” But if Porsha took the kids back, it could.
She wanted to swallow a bucket of cyanide for even letting the thought enter her consciousness, but it had occurred. She picked up Ayjia’s abandoned crust and put it on her own plate.
“L.C. lived next door for a few weeks, but he had to move back to his old hometown for family reasons. If you want more story than that, you can wait until the kids are in bed. Right now, I have to take Dayton to Mrs. Garvey’s.”
“No, Auntie M. Not tonight. I want to stay with Mom.”
“The whining. How could I forget that piercing quality?” Porsha asked with thinning patience. “Look, just—” She took a breath. “Just go do your thing. I need to make a couple of calls anyway. Ray’s not answering.” She pawed through her purse. “I think I’ll try a couple of hotels.”
“Sure,” Mercedes said and began cleaning up the pizza, biting back the desire to scream, ‘These are your kids. Pay attention. They missed you.’
While Dayton slowly chewed his last piece, Ayjia brought her plate to the counter. She stayed beside Mercedes after depositing it. “Mom said we’re going to stay here for a few days.”
“I know. Isn’t that great? I get to have you and my sister visit.”
“She said the apartment in Holbrook is gone. Where did it go?”
“Oh,” Mercedes smiled and crouched down. “That sounds confusing, doesn’t it? No, sweetie, the building is still there. It’s just the people who own it thought you guys didn’t need your apartment anymore, so they let other people move into it. Like how Mrs. Garvey is in my old unit.”
“Mom said she doesn’t know where my stuffies are. Rainbow and Bluetail probably miss me, and I forgot to bring some of Polly’s clothes when we came here.”
“I’ll make some calls in the morning and see where your things are,” Mercedes promised. “Can you try not to worry about it right now?”
“Okay,” she said, but her bottom lip came out.
Mercedes hugged her and Ayjia hugged back so hard, her little body trembled.
“Do you want to walk up to Mrs. Garvey’s with me and Dayton?”
Ayjia shook her head. “I want to stay with Mommy.”
Porsha was looking up hotel listings while stacking ice cubes in a tall glass. Mercedes was trying to catch whether anything harder than soda went into it when she heard a beep outside.
Mr. Hilroy had driven Mrs. Garvey down on the golf cart. Mercedes saved her the trouble of climbing out by trotting across the grass toward them.
“What’s wrong?”