Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(49)

The boy shook his head. “I don’t know that she had any.”

“Surely there were some. Sisters maybe, or brothers?”

Ethan, now busy slicing the omelet into pieces for Dog, simply shrugged unknowingly then lowered his plate to the floor.

“Well, maybe if you tell me your mama’s maiden name and where she came from, I could locate somebody…”

“Mama?” he laughed, “Nobody knew where mama came from. According to her way of telling it, she crawled out from under a rose bush.”

“That’s no way to talk about your mama!”

“It ain’t me what said it! Shit, Mama’s the one—”

“Stop that cussing!” Olivia commanded. “An eight year old using such language, why, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

“I ain’t eight.”

“Well, excuse me! What are you then,” she asked flippantly, “nine?”

“No,” he answered, rolling his eyes like people do when they’ve heard something that’s beyond believing, “I’m eleven!”

“Eleven!” Olivia slumped back in her chair, “Eleven? You’re eleven years old?”

“Yeah…and, you can just save the wisecracks about being small for my age.”

Before Olivia could start piecing together the loss of the boy’s parents and the unlucky circumstance of him being eleven, Clara burst through the door. “Guess what?” she called out on her way through to the kitchen, “Somebody in this building has smuggled in a…” The statement was cut short when Dog came flying through the air and landed against her bosom. Clara, being low to the ground and built with a substantial center of gravity, wavered a bit but stayed upright and as soon as she’d regained her balance, she screamed, “dog!”

Olivia could already picture all of her belongings set out onto the curb.

“How could you?” Clara shouted, “You know the rules!”

“It’s not what you think;” Olivia mumbled apologetically, “The dog isn’t mine.”

“Not yours? When it’s standing right here in your kitchen?”

“The dog belongs to Ethan Allen Doyle, Charlie’s grandson.”

“Oh.” Clara looked over at the boy then lowered herself into a chair. “Still,” she sighed, “you know the rules. If The Committee gets wind of this…”

Olivia, feeling the need to talk and knowing that she had some explaining to do, suggested Ethan sneak the dog down the back stairwell and walk over to the building across the street. “You might even want to take a stroll down to the market, pick up some peanut butter and a can or two of dog food,” she said pressing a dollar bill into his palm.

Once Ethan was beyond earshot, Olivia told the entire story; how she’d found the boy on her doorstep, how he supposedly had no other family to turn to and how the dog had come along as part of the package. “What was I to do?” she sobbed, “Toss the poor child out into the street?”

“But The Rules Committee has specifically stated—”

“It’s not as if he’ll be here forever,” Olivia pleaded, “just till I can work things out. It might be a day or two, a week at the most.”

“Well,” Clara hedged, “I suppose if The Committee didn’t know…”

“I’d make sure the dog stays quiet.”

“A few days, you say?”

“Maybe less.”

“I guess I could speak to some of the neighbors…”





Olivia

I can’t help wondering if the turmoil of this life ever ends. Just when I start believing I have an existence to call my own, Ethan Allen shows up at the door, claiming to be Charlie’s grandson.

I can honestly say, if it weren’t for those blue eyes which are exactly the same color and shape as Charlie’s, I would have turned the boy away, figuring him to be an imposter. I probably should have done it anyway—I mean, what’s a woman like me going to do with a child?

Worst of all, he’s eleven! Why, I could barely handle my own year of being eleven.

I can’t even venture a guess as to how this thing will turn out. More than likely, I’ll end up evicted. I’ll be set out on the street with a handful of belongings and nowhere to go. No apartment, no friends.

I feel sorry for the child, but having him and that awful dog live with me is simply too much to ask. I’m willing to lend a hand and help the lad find his true family, but I don’t think I can do much more than that. There has to be somewhere the boy can go—some family, someone who’s accustomed to having children around and knows how to deal with them. Heaven knows that’s way beyond the realm of my capabilities. I don’t like making such a decision; but I can’t think of any other alternative.

I’m not really the boy’s grandma and I’ve got no obligation, but I still feel for the child—everybody ought to have somebody that loves them.





The Best Kept Secret

Who knows what might have happened, had Clara not agreed that tossing Charlie’s poor grandson out into the street would be quite unchristian. But after she’d spent two whole days going from door-to-door explaining the situation and telling folks they were beholden to help Olivia Doyle in her time of need, the Rules Committee had no chance. Even if they had brought in members of the Spanish Inquisition to ask about the rumored barking, residents would have simply shrugged their shoulders and claimed not to have noticed the clumps of dog hair on the seventh floor carpet.