Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(51)

“Not very well,” Olivia answered.

“But good enough to maybe get by?”

“I suppose.” She shooed the dog from her chair and sat down, ready for the start of The Red Skelton Show. It was her very favorite hour of television, because his antics usually had her laughing so hard, tears slid from her eyes. It was virtually impossible for a person to think sorrowful thoughts when they were watching Clem Kiddlehopper.

“How about we play a few hands?” the boy asked.

“Play cards? Now?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “It’d keep me from dwelling on how I been orphaned.”

Olivia, under any other circumstance, would have flatly refused, but the boy seemed to be so needy that, without complaining, she walked over and snapped off the television set. “Okay,” she sighed, “you want to deal?”

Ethan nodded, his grin stretched out wide as could be, “Penny a point?” he asked.

Olivia agreed, and before she could change her mind, there were five cards lying in front of her. “Looks like you’ve played this game before,” she said.

“I used to play with Mama. She was good as they come—even if she was holding a royal flush, you couldn’t know by the look on her face.”

“Royal flush? What exactly is that?”

“How about we up it to two cents a point?”

Olivia shrugged, “Okay, if while we’re playing, you tell me a bit about yourself.”

“I reckon that’s okay,” he said begrudgingly, “but, don’t ask me no questions about Mama or Daddy’s murder, ‘cause I done told you I didn’t see nothing.”

“Not a word about that,” she crisscrossed her heart.

After an hour of playing, Ethan had won ninety-eight cents, but Olivia had learned almost nothing of any significance—certainly nothing about his having any other relatives. What she did learn was that his mama had a fine voice and high hopes of one day becoming a Radio City Rockette. “You ever been to New York City?” he asked; when Olivia answered she hadn’t, he simply shrugged and said, “Me neither.”

It didn’t take a terribly astute person to see the boy was hiding something—he’d start out talking about one thing or another; rethink it, then stop in the middle of a sentence. He did that most every time Olivia hit upon questions about his mama and daddy’s relationship. “Were they real happy together?” she’d asked and for a moment it seemed he was on the verge of letting go of something; then he smacked the cards down and snarled some comment about how he was tired of the game.

Olivia started wishing she’d held back a few of the peppercorns given to her by Canasta Jones—one or two of those in a bowl of okra soup and Ethan Allen might get to feeling better.

That night Olivia tossed and turned until the sheets were tangled into a knot and the blanket slid off the bed. Every time she closed her eyes and settled into a comfortable spot—there it was, the image of Charlie walking hand-in-hand with this miniature look-alike. There was no wondering whether or not the boy was actually related; they both had eyes sloped down at the corner and colored the shade of blue that drifts across the sky just minutes before nightfall. Long about three o’clock in the morning, Olivia, badgered by the voice of her conscience, decided that she owed it to Charlie to look out for the boy. Minutes later she bolted upright, wondering if she’d lost her mind entirely. For the remainder of the night, she was haunted by a picture of herself looking like Francine Burnam—A dozen Ethan Allen look-alikes dangling from her arms and legs like the ornaments on a Christmas tree. Still, she kept telling herself, she owed it to Charlie to do something.

By morning, Olivia had come to a somewhat shaky decision; she would watch over the boy—not forever, but until she could find a place where he truly belonged. As soon as they’d finished breakfast, which was cereal for her and potato chips for him, she loaded both boy and dog into the car and headed for Clairmore—a town nine miles from Wyattsville, a town where there’d be less chance of being spotted by someone on the building’s Rules Committee. “We need to get you some clothes,” she told Ethan, “you can’t go around wearing the same thing day in and day out.”

“Why not?” he answered, then said he’d prefer to have a new ball seeing as how his Spaulding had disappeared through the kitchen window.

“You shouldn’t be playing ball inside the house,” Olivia replied without taking her eyes from the road.

“It’s not a house,” he grumbled.

“Okay then, you shouldn’t be playing ball inside the apartment.”

“There’s nothing else to do.”

“There is too,” Olivia said. But after watching television, she was hard pressed to come up with a second suggestion; which is why she ended up purchasing five comic books, a set of checkers, a Monopoly game and a jigsaw puzzle picturing the entire Baltimore Orioles Baseball Team, in addition to a selection of underwear, tee-shirts and dungarees. At first she’d thought the comic books, mostly about monsters and superheroes, were somewhat unnecessary, but then she remembered games required a partner’s participation.

When the clerk finished tallying the cost of everything, which was more than Olivia had planned on spending, she turned and saw the boy balancing himself on a bright red Schwinn bicycle. “Now this,” he said, “is something I could really use.”