Take a Chance on Me(42)

Yes, Ivy wielded some kind of magical powers with children.

The night had turned into jeweled perfection, the sky washed with diamonds, glistening on the dark velvet surface of the lake. The thunder had rolled off into the distance, dying without a hint of moisture.

Grace and Casper had climbed onto the boulders to watch the show, Amelia standing on the pathway behind them, snapping shots destined to appear on the Deep Haven Facebook page. Their mother and father had brought their folding chairs and now sat like royalty among their subjects. Owen, of course, vanished the moment they hit town—probably stirring up trouble with his buddies. Eden sat next to her mother, fiddling with her smartphone.

“This is amazing,” Ivy said, catching dripping custard with her tongue. “The harbor beach is packed.”

“People come in from all over the county to watch the fireworks,” Darek said. “It’s the hottest ticket in town—to watch the display over the harbor, reflected in the water.”

“You’re so lucky to live here. I read about Deep Haven—there are articles in the Minneapolis paper sometimes about events up here. But I never dreamed it would be so quaint.”

Events. Like crimes? Felicity’s death—and Jensen’s guilt—had made the news even in Minneapolis. But that had been three years ago. Certainly she wouldn’t remember that.

No. This was a fresh start with a woman who’d slipped into his life without baggage, without the headlines standing between them. A woman who didn’t see his mistakes but his future.

He licked a chocolate drip running down the side of his cone. “Deep Haven is a great place to grow up.” For him, at least. He wanted to believe those words for Tiger, too.

“I never lived in one place for more than a year,” Ivy said. Tiger scooted off the blanket and went to sit on the rocks.

She finished the top of her ice cream and started in on the cone. “After the state severed my mother’s rights, I spent about a year bouncing around the system. I’ll never forget my first long-term placement. I arrived just before Thanksgiving. There were three other foster kids who lived there, but the family had six grown children who all brought their spouses and children with them. The house was packed, about fifty people over for dinner, and I remember listening to the noise, the laughter, the way they all knew each other, and . . .” She raised a shoulder, then looked away, her voice thickening just a little. “It was nice.”

Nice. But he could hear so much more in those words. He grabbed a napkin and wiped his wrist, working on the edges of the cone. “How long did you stay?”

“Until the next June.”

That was a long-term placement? Eight months? He swallowed down a tightness in his throat, his appetite gone. “How many foster homes did you live in?”

She looked at him, found a smile. “Fourteen, total.”

Fourteen. He couldn’t help himself. “I’m sorry, Ivy.”

She shook her head. “It taught me to be resilient.” She finished her cone and reached for a napkin.

“Is that why you became an attorney? To help kids in the system?”

“And women like my mother, too. And to make deadbeat dads like mine help raise their own children. There’s nothing worse than a man who has a child, then walks away.”

“Yes,” he said, feeling a twist of shame. He finished his cone without tasting it, glad for it to be gone. “Is that what happened to your mother?”

“She got pregnant at fourteen, ran away from home, and I landed in foster care for the first time before she turned twenty-two. By then, she’d lived with two other men, had an abortion from the first man, and was nearly killed by the second one. In between boyfriends, we lived in boxes and abandoned cars, and she did anything she could for money. . . .

“We ended up in Minneapolis, with a guy she met in Des Moines. He was a trucker and, I think, took pity on us. He had three kids of his own. I liked it there; I shared a room with his daughter, who braided my hair and let me play with her Barbies. He tried to help my mother, and it worked for a while. She got a job at a mail-stuffing place and stopped using. It was a real home, you know? I started going to school, making friends, believing that finally I might have a dad. Then my mom got hurt on the job—lifting something, I think—and it put her on her back. She started taking pain meds and it all started again. One day I came home to find her passed out, hardly breathing. I called 911 and that was the beginning of the end. I was permanently removed when I was nine.”

At nine, he’d been in third grade, spending his summers learning to swim and fish with his dad while Ivy tried to figure out why she didn’t have one.