“Kindergarten, but not here.” Mercedes regretted being so frank as the nurse’s brows went up. “I know they’re missing school. It should only be a day or two.”
Dayton continued making car noises in the corner.
“Is their school aware of the reason for their absence?”
“Um—” Damn. “I’ll call them as soon as I get home.” No way could she drive back to Holbrook and put them in school tomorrow. Although, if she didn’t get this shot today, she might have to consider it. She would definitely call, see what the school nurse suggested.
“Is their mother ill or something, Ma’am?” the woman asked.
“Or something,” Mercedes admitted, giving the woman a meaningful smile. Maybe she’d take pity.
“Then perhaps you should call social services.”
Mercedes’s smile froze. She thanked the woman for her time, mentally flipped her the bird, then dragged the kids out to the car.
“No shot, no shot,” Ayjia sang, as she skipped to the car.
Mercedes drove back to her apartment, slipped the kids inside, and pulled out her phone to see Porsha had texted.
Leave the kids with Mom. Heading to Florida with Carlos. Will be gone a few weeks.
“Weeks!” Mercedes let their bags drop around her ankles.
“Mom?” Dylan guessed. “Does that mean we’re going to stay with Nana?”
“No,” Mercedes said, perhaps too forcefully because both kids went very still. “No, I’d miss you if you went to Nana’s,” she said more gently. And Nana wouldn’t miss the kids for days if they were snatched by a pedophile or run over by a truck.
Mercedes tried Porsha’s cell but only got voicemail.
“Can we go swimming?” Dayton asked.
“In a bit. I need to make some calls first. Why don’t you watch a show?”
“Can I look at the pool?” Dayton asked.
“From the patio, yes,” Mercedes said, glancing at the time as she looked up the school’s number. She might still get the school nurse. It wasn’t quite three.
The nurse was gone, but the principal, a woman, came to the phone.
“When they both didn’t show up, we were less worried,” the woman said. “Since that often happens.”
“Really?” Mercedes got a sinking feeling. Both kids had only started school this year. They shouldn’t be missing any.
Mercedes explained her problem and the principal was very sympathetic. “But since it didn’t happen here at the school, under the supervision of our staff, I’m sorry. We really aren’t in a position to help.”
“Well, who is?” Mercedes asked with some exasperation. “I mean, the hospital here is likely to give me the same run around. What do I do?”
A second of silence then a gentle tone. “It might not be my place to suggest it, but perhaps you should talk to social services?”
Mercedes shut her eyes. It was so sordid, so typical of their family. She had really hoped her sister could raise these kids to adulthood without turning them into case files.
“They’re very sweet kids, despite their situation,” the principal said.
“Situation?” The kids were in a situation?
“The lack of stability at home,” the woman clarified.
“I thought they had more than they apparently do,” Mercedes admitted.
“Let me give you a number.”
“No, it’s all right. I’ll...figure it out.” Mercedes hung up.
This shouldn’t be so hard. Her sister was the problem. The kids weren’t any trouble. She walked from the kitchen to see Dayton had crawled over the balustrade around her ground level patio, crossed the grass and was now climbing the pool fence.
Mercedes rushed outside. “Dayton, I said to look at it from the patio. Get down from there and come here, please.”
“Mercedes, do you have children visiting?” The voice came from a group of ladies in tank tops sharing a table and a deck of cards in the shade of a palm.
“My niece and nephew, Mrs. Brewster. You remember them from Christmas?”
“Oh, yes. You’re still on vacation, then? Because I have a faucet that needs attention. When will you be able to look at it?”
“Um, tomorrow, I think— Dayton! Here, please. Now.”
The chain link rattled as he leapt to the concrete between her patio and the pool, his sneakers making a slapping sound that rang off the two-story building behind her.
“Thank you,” Mercedes muttered. Weeks, Porsha had said. Weeks. And, as Mrs. Garvey had pointed out, all of Mercedes’s vacation time was gone.
Okay. Not a problem. She just needed to find a way to keep the kids occupied during the day so she could work. People with kids did it all the time.
After making peanut butter sandwiches, she opened the browser on her tablet and began calling daycare providers.
Chapter 4
L.C. woke in the kind of cheap, Free Cable motel he’d been living in for two years. Most of the time, it didn’t bother him, but now that Zack was with him—
“Dad!”
He realized Zack’s knocking was what had woken him. He rolled off the bed and let his son in. “I was asleep,” he excused.
Zack wheeled his bike into the room, flushed and sweaty. “I was starting to think you had a woman in here.”
A flash of Mercedes with her strawberry blond curls came into his mind’s eye. He blamed the fact that he hadn’t been laid in a long while for the way she was hovering in the back of his consciousness. He usually found his dance partners in bars, but he’d been staying dry so he’d been staying horny. Mercedes had put a thirst in his belly, though. There was something about her that made him dream of another life where they drank shots half the night then screwed until dawn.
He waved at the empty room in answer to his son’s remark.
Zack’s helmet bounced onto the second bed, followed by his shirt. “You don’t need to be here, you know.”
“I paid for the room. I’m feeling entitled.” And, yeah, he was indecently pleased to have a reason to stay the night and perv over Mercedes again tomorrow. Sue him.
Pants hit the floor with a muffled jangle of a belt buckle and got kicked toward the corner. “I mean, I don’t need your help.”
“And yet you accepted it when you needed to empty your dorm room.”
“Yeah, well, that’s when I thought you’d be a help.”
L.C. lifted his head from checking his wallet for pizza money. “Are you packing and getting your own room, then?”
Zack was down to his navy jocks and dug a fresh pair out of his bag. “If you’re going to hit on the one person who might help me stay here, then yeah, maybe I will get my own room. This is important to me.”
L.C. folded his arms. “I didn’t hit on anyone.” He’d restrained himself to a few appreciative smiles. It wasn’t his fault Mercedes offered so much to appreciate.
“Oh, please. Who the hell is Elsie?” Zack yanked out a clean T-shirt. “A friggin’ milk cow?”
“L. C. My initials.” He felt his face heat.
“Where’d Lyle friggin’ Fogarty go? ‘Cause I thought that’s who my dad was.”
“I got tagged with the nickname on a job site in Kentucky because they already had a Lyle. It stuck and I like it, okay?” It felt good not to be Lyle friggin’ Fogarty anymore. It gave him a chance to start fresh in a lot of ways.
“Really? Because it sounded like a line.”
“You’re right. I admit it. That’s how I’ve been picking up all the women I’ve been seeing for the last two years. Broads go nuts over initials. Have you tried it Z.G.?”
“I’m just saying, don’t screw this up for me.” Zack started toward the bathroom, paused and warned over his shoulder, “Or I’ll tell her the L stands for ‘Little.’”
“I’m sorry. I misunderstood,” Janice with Tiny Tykes Daycare said Tuesday morning, wrinkling her freckled nose at Mercedes. “I thought you were looking for after-school care for a kindergartner and full-time care for a one-year-old.”
“No, grade one.” Mercedes glanced to where Ayjia and Dayton looked like giants crawling over the toddler-sized jungle gym in the fenced daycare yard.
“Mmm. Well, I’m sorry. We don’t offer anything midday for school-aged children. They’re usually in school.” She punctuated with a weak laugh.
Mercedes smiled while flutters of panic started in her stomach. She was due for a second attempt at straightening out Zack’s future in an hour. She had planned to confidently show the board the children wouldn’t interfere with her ability to work.
She waited with growing anxiety while Janice waved at a mom steering a waddling girl in a blue dress toward the entrance of the pink stucco building.
“I’ll be right in,” Janice called. “Barbara’s already there.” When she turned back to Mercedes, the tilt of her head held a dismissive quality, like she was about to say goodbye.
Desperation clenched like a fist in Mercedes’s chest. “Can you, um, think of any options I might have? I’m really in a bind.”
Janice sent a puzzled frown toward the kids. “Why aren’t they in school?”
Mercedes opened her mouth to say, Never mind, intending to hustle the kids back to her apartment where she could hide the entire mess from the world until she got herself fired and kicked onto the streets, but the pressure of trying to keep it together was becoming more than she could bear.