Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(50)

Clara reported this back to Olivia on Tuesday afternoon as she and Ethan Allen were sitting down to a dinner of macaroni and cheese, which the boy claimed was his favorite. “Does that mean I can stay here?” he asked when he heard the news.

“For a while,” Olivia answered, “till we can sort things out. I’m sure somewhere there are relatives who are worried sick over your whereabouts.”

Ethan rolled his eyes then swallowed down a bite of macaroni.

Olivia was starting to picture herself hobbling through life with both the boy and the dog chained to her right leg. How could such a thing be happening; especially now that she’d pulled together the remnants of her life and started over. Hoping maybe the boy had rushed to judgment in thinking there were no relatives, she tried again. “So, Ethan,” she asked, “did your mama ever mention where she and your daddy met?”

“Nope.”

“What about Christmas cards, or birthday cards? She maybe get cards or letters from the folks back home?”

“You gotta be kidding!”

“I most certainly am not. Folks generally stay in touch, one way or another.”

“Not Mama!”

“Well, what about friends or neighbors?”

“We didn’t have no neighbors. The Picken’s farm was closest, but Mama claimed she wouldn’t wipe her ass on that mealy-mouthed Missus Picken.”

“I told you to stop using such language!”

“You said, if I was eight—but I’m eleven!”

“That’s still too young to be cussing.”

“I ain’t cussing,” he replied sullenly, “I’m just repeatin’ what Mama said.”

“Well, repeat it without cuss words,” Olivia snapped; then she scooped up his dish and carried it over to the kitchen sink. She would have been angrier with him for bantering about foul language as he did, but obviously the boy had a bunch of hurts tearing at his insides. Anybody could see it in his eyes, in the way he’d look down at his shoes and mumble answers that had the sound of words pushed through a mouthful of marbles. It was a terrible thing to lose somebody you loved—nobody, Olivia thought, knows that more than I do. She slipped back to thinking about the days that followed Charlie’s passing—minutes weighted like hours, hours longer than a day and an aching loneliness that rubbed her nerves raw. Caught up in the moment of remembering, she turned to the boy and said, “I’m real sorry about your mama and daddy, Ethan.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a Spaulding rubber ball which had accidentally followed him home from the market. “I can’t do nothing about that,” he said, and started thunking the ball off the side of the cabinet. Bounce-thunk-bounce. Bounce-thunk-bounce. Bounce-thunk-bounce. It was a sound that could jangle a person’s nerves real quick.

“I wasn’t expecting you could do anything about it,” Olivia answered, sounding unbelievably tolerant. “I was just offering up some sympathy.”

Bounce-thunk-bounce.

She’d come across people like this before, clerks or telephone operators, singled out for some rinky-dink infraction of the rules—angry, but yet unwilling to defend themselves. You had to draw people like that out, ask question after question till you got them started talking, then you might learn the truth of things. “Who was it that died first,” Olivia asked, “your mama or daddy?”

Bounce-thunk-bounce.

“Ethan?”

“They was both killed,” bounce-thunk-bounce, “…the same time.”

“Killed?”

He nodded, but focused his concentration on smacking the ball.

“In a car accident? How?”

“Murdered,” the boy answered, then whacked the Spaulding with such force that it rebounded off the cabinet and went sailing through the kitchen window. Olivia, although she was certain everyone in the Wyattsville Arms building had heard the breaking of glass, went to the boy and in the most comforting way imaginable whispered, “It’s okay, honey,” she wrapped her arms around him, and pulled his head to her bosom. “When you’re ready, Ethan,” she said, “then we’ll talk about what’s happened.”

He pulled back and screamed, “I can’t never talk about it! I didn’t see nothing!”

“Okay,” Olivia replied as if she’d accepted his answer and wanted nothing more, but she knew the explosion of words were hiding something terrible and sooner or later, the boy would let go of it. When he stomped off to the living room, she remained in the kitchen and finished doing the dishes.

Later on, she followed him into the living room and found the dog sitting on her new silk chair. Ethan Allen was stretched out across the floor, his dirty sneakers tracking footprints up the side of the wall. “You got any playing cards?” he asked.

“I believe so.” Olivia stepped over his legs and began looking through the desk drawer. After she’d rummaged through a number of boxes and packets she came upon a worn deck of cards—cards that Charlie, who had a fondness for gambling, had no doubt spent many an evening with. “Here you are,” she said and handed them to the boy.

Ethan shuffled the deck a number of times, then turned to her with a sly glimmer in his eyes. “You know how to play poker?” he asked.