Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(48)

Long about midnight, the hooting of a night owl set the dog to barking loud enough to wake the people in downtown Wyattsville. Olivia, sound asleep by then, leaped from the bed in a panic and went running to the living room. “Shush,” she shouted at the dog, in a voice louder than the barking. “There’s no dogs allowed in this building! Don’t you understand that—no dogs!” Olivia knew that having a pet was something the residents of the Wyattsville Arms Apartment Building would not tolerate. Why, just two months ago a man on the ninth floor had been sent packing because of his cat—a cat that mewed in a barely audible voice and didn’t poop outside on the lawn. She gave the boy’s shoulder a shake and pleaded for him to get up and take control of the dog.

Unfortunately, Ethan was not one to be easily woken, so he cracked an eyelid then rolled over and went back to sleep leaving Olivia to deal with the situation as she would. “Go back to bed,” she said, pointing a finger at the folded towel. The dog didn’t budge, just sat there grumbling like he had a bark stuck in his throat. “Go on,” Olivia repeated trying to sound authoritative, but the dog, unimpressed, turned in the opposite direction and trotted over to the window. “Not there,” Olivia shouted, but before she could yank the dog back, he began barking again.

After being bribed with two slices of ham, three shortbread cookies, and a bowl of warm milk, the dog finally curled up on the towel. Olivia waited for a full fifteen minutes to make certain he was going to stay there; then she stumbled back to her own bed. Of course, sleep was nigh on to impossible, so she lay there staring up at the ceiling and picturing the eviction notice that was sure to be slid under her door before morning.

Although certain she wouldn’t catch a single wink, she did at some point doze off and by the time she opened her eyes the sun was well into the sky. Pushing off a residue of drowsiness, she pulled on a bathrobe and hurried into the living room. Both boy and dog were gone. The blankets lay in crumpled heap at one end of the sofa, the folded towel was still on the floor. She walked into the kitchen—the counter was exactly as she’d left it the night before, no dirty dishes, no used glasses. The boy had obviously gone off without a bite in his stomach, without even a glass of milk to tide him over.

“Oh dear,” Olivia sighed, knowing that she, of all people, should understand the feeling of being alone and having no family to speak of. She thought back to the September morning when she walked out of her parent’s house; she could still picture her father standing on the front porch, arms akimbo. If you go, you’re on your own, he’d hollered, don’t come back here looking for help, then before she reached the end of the walkway, he’d turned back inside the house and slammed the door behind him. Of course, she was seventeen years old at the time, a grown woman capable of making her own way in life—this poor boy looked to be eight or nine, maybe ten at the most. Olivia felt a lasso of guilt knotting itself around her heart. She’d always considered herself a Christian woman, yet last night she’d lain in bed wishing she’d never set eyes on either the boy or his dog.

With a sprig of regret taking root inside of her, Olivia returned to the living room and began folding the blankets. “He’s Charlie’s grandson,” she muttered to herself, “his grandson! Whether or not, I’ve any love of children, I should have seen to the lad having a place to go and some way to get there.” Long about the time Olivia began believing Charlie’s ghost would be back to haunt her, the doorbell chimed.

“Sorry,” the boy said, “I forgot to leave the lock open.”

“Oh,” Olivia answered, already forgetting the guilt connected to him being Charlie’s grandson, “I thought you’d gone.”

“Gone where?” he asked as he tromped through to the kitchen, leaving a trail of dirty footprints behind. “I don’t exactly have no place else to go.”

“Oh, right.” She poured a glass of milk and handed it to him. “Don’t worry,” she said, offering solace to herself as much as to the boy, “we’ll work it out. There’s got to be someone who’d be real anxious to have you come stay with them—a blood relative on your mama’s side maybe.”

Trying to remember her thoughts of being a bit more charitable to what was surely the last of Charlie’s kin, Olivia turned to fixing breakfast. “What would you like to eat she asked, forcing herself to give off the sound of cheerfulness. “Eggs and bacon? Cereal? French toast, maybe?”

“You got any potato chips?”

“Well yes, but not for breakfast.”

“Why not?” Ethan Allen asked.

“Because it’s not proper breakfast food. Why, there’s not an ounce of nutrition –”

“Mama says potato chips is a fine breakfast.”

“I’m not your mama!” Olivia snapped. But before a half-second had passed she regretted making such a comment to the motherless boy. “Well now,” she sighed in a voice sweet as sugar cane, “…will you just listen to me; acting grumpy when I ought to be thinking about our breakfast. Let’s see now, I could fix us a scrambled egg omelet with some potato chips alongside of it, how’s that sound?”

“Okay,” he shrugged, “but far as I’m concerned you can skip the omelet.”

By the time Olivia cooked up an omelet and set it in front of the boy, she was wishing she’d never married Charlie Doyle. Of course, she could wish from now till doomsday and it wouldn’t change a thing, she simply had to focus on what it was she could do with this boy and his mangy-haired dog. Olivia knew for a fact, Charlie had no brothers or sisters, and the woman who fathered his son had died some thirty years ago, which left only the maternal side of Ethan’s family. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across from him. “So,” she said, “are you acquainted with any of your mama’s relatives?”