James Henry chose that exact moment to look up from his own mayhem. The Duplos and cars had turned into something very much like a demolition-derby course. “Mommy?” he said.
“What is it, dear?”
“How come you were talking to Uncle Colin?” That was what James Henry called him. It wasn’t accurate, but there was no accurate name for what Colin was to James Henry: nothing shorter than father of my half-brothers and half-sister, anyhow.
“How do you know I was?” Louise answered one question with another.
“’Cause you were talking about money.”
“Oh.” That was more a sound of pain than a word. He was big enough to notice what was going on around him, all right.
Too many questions there, and all of them too pointed. Louise had always believed in being straight with children. She did her best now: “He’s going to loan me some money. Do you know what loan means?”
“You have to give it back?” Her son sounded doubtful.
Louise nodded. “That’s right. When I get some more of my own and I can afford to, I’ll pay it back.” She believed it when she said it. No, this wasn’t the first time she’d had to hit Colin up. She didn’t like to think about paying it all back . . . and so, most of the time, she didn’t.
James Henry found another question with sharp teeth: “How come Marshall doesn’t come around and watch me any more? He’s silly!”
“He is silly,” Louise agreed. “He doesn’t watch you so much any more because he did that while I went to my job. I haven’t been able to do that for a while now.”
“Why?” James Henry asked—the little kid’s favorite comeback.
“Because the company I worked for wasn’t making as much money as it wanted to, and so it didn’t need as many people as it had before. And I was one of the ones it let go.”
“Why?” he asked again.
“I don’t know,” Louise answered, which was the Lord’s truth. How much of all this he understood was liable to be a different question altogether. Talking about money with a preschooler was much too much like getting up on a stump in Peru and spouting Estonian.
Sure as hell, he just looked at her—looked at her with Teo’s dark eyes. She was his mother. She was Mommy. Of course she knew everything. That was a law of nature, same as the sun coming up every morning and going down every evening. It was a law of nature if you hadn’t started kindergarten yet, anyhow.
Tears stung Louise’s eyes. If only the world really worked that way! Mm-hmm, if only. When you looked at it from the far side of fifty, you wondered if you truly understood even one single goddamn thing. And the older you got, the less likely it seemed. She’d been sure about Colin. Then she’d been sure about Teo. Then . . . At least then she’d had a job, for Christ’s sake.
Now . . . Now she wasn’t sure of anything, and she didn’t have a job or much else. “Shit.” Her lips shaped the word again—silently, she thought. James Henry giggled, anyhow. Either she hadn’t been silent enough or he could read lips. Both possibilities made her want to go Shit one more time, but she didn’t. She fixed herself a drink instead.
* * *
Kelly’d got past the worst part of the pregnancy. She didn’t fall asleep if you looked at her sideways. She didn’t work at random times any more, either. They called it morning sickness, but what did they know? It had got her whenever it felt like getting her, as when those egg yolks started staring up at her so malevolently.
She wasn’t quite out to there yet, either, out to where she just wanted to have the kid and get it over with. It was going to be a girl. She and Colin were going to name it Deborah. You couldn’t go far wrong with a name from the Bible—well, not unless you picked something like Jezebel or Habakkuk. So thought Kelly, who didn’t have that kind of name, and Colin hadn’t argued with her. They didn’t argue much, which Kelly took as one more good sign.
She should have been happy, in other words. And she had been happy, right up till that dusty Toyota pulled up in front of the house and Vanessa got out.
She won’t stay for long, Kelly told herself. She kept telling herself, over and over. She won’t stay for long. Vanessa prided herself on making her own way. She couldn’t make her own way out of here soon enough to suit Kelly.
She didn’t know what the trouble was between the two of them. She believed that the first time it crossed her mind, anyhow. The first time, yes. Not the second. By then, she’d worked out what was going on—not what to do about it, but what it was.