Don’t Let Me Go(38)

“Like what?”

“Like she only sees you maybe an hour a day as it is, and that doesn’t seem to be enough to motivate her to make a change, and, more to the point, the police might call it kidnapping.”

“I can’t go to jail,” Billy said. “Period. It’s out of the question.”

“And I’m more likely to go to jail for a thing like that than the both of you two put together,” Felipe added.

“Yeah, like the cops just love my skin tone,” Rayleen shot back.

“Guys! Will you please just listen? It’s my idea, not yours. You didn’t take me away. You just took care of me because my mom wouldn’t. She’s not gonna call the cops, because they’d know she was on drugs. Before she could call the cops she’d have to get clean, and get rid of all her drugs, because she knows we’d tell the cops about the drugs she’s been using, and if she gets clean, she doesn’t have to call the cops at all, because then I could just go home.”

“Hmm,” Rayleen said.

“But what if she does anyway,” Billy asked, “just because she’s irrational?”

“Well, the cops’ll ask me, right? They’ll say, did these people take you away from your mom? And I’ll say, no, not at all, I just can’t stand to be around my mom when she’s loaded, which she always is right now, because, really, that’s true, you know. And I’ll just say I asked you guys if I could stay with you, and you said I could for just a little while, until things got better at my home with my mom, and that’s not against the law, right?”

“I don’t know about this,” Billy said, chewing on the nail of his middle finger.

“Me neither,” Felipe said.

But Rayleen said, “I think it’s a great idea. I’m willing to risk it. I’m already on record as her babysitter, as far as the county is concerned. I’ll leave you guys out of it completely. I’m willing to just go down there and tell Grace’s mom she has three choices. Lose Grace to the county. Lose her to us. Or get her act together. If she goes to the cops, which she’s in no position to do, I’ll just say Grace refused to go home and I let her stay with me. And Grace will back me up.”

“Wow,” Billy said. “I was never part of a kidnapping plot before.”

“It’s not kidnapping,” Grace said, much too loudly. “It was my idea!”

“OK, enough!” Rayleen snapped. “Enough talking about this thing. I’m going down there.”

And she marched out.

Grace sat on the couch with Billy, who was biting his thumbnail, and she slapped his wrist.

“Ow!” he said.

“Stop biting your nails!”

“That hurt.”

“I didn’t hurt you any worse than you’re hurting you.”

They heard the knock on the door of Grace’s apartment, and they went silent.

Nothing happened.

Another knock, louder this time.

Still nothing.

“Great,” Billy said. “Her only daughter’s been kidnapped, and she’ll never even know it.”

Grace punched him on the arm, but not very hard at all, and said, “She’ll find out, Billy. She wakes up a little bit every day. Well. Most days.”

Then Rayleen let herself back into Billy’s apartment, looking kind of worn out, and saying, “I guess I’ll just have to keep trying till I get her.”

? ? ?

After the meeting, Grace went upstairs to the attic apartment to talk to Mrs. Hinman, because she still had a nagging feeling that Mrs. Hinman was feeling hurt or left out or both.

She knocked on the door, saying, at the same time, “It’s only me, Mrs. Hinman, Grace.”

She’d learned that you had to do that with all the grown-ups in this building, because they were all pretty much scared of everybody and everything, all the time. Grace wondered if that was just this building, or if it was all the grown-ups in all the buildings in the world, but she only lived in this one, so there was really no way to know.

“All right, dear. Just a minute.”

It always took Mrs. Hinman a long time to undo the locks.

When she finally did, she opened the door, of course, but she still seemed a little worried, as if Grace might have brought a team of thugs and bandits along for the visit.

“Can I come in?”

“Well, of course, dear.”

Grace walked into Mrs. Hinman’s living room and watched her redo all those locks.

“Did you hear about Mr. Lafferty?”

Mrs. Hinman shook her head and made a disapproving sound with her tongue. A kind of “tsk” noise.

“Such a tragedy. Such a shame. Only fifty-six years old. And he had no one. No one. Even his grown children wouldn’t talk to him. Of course, everybody always feels sorry for the person who has no one, but usually it’s for a reason. There’s a reason why nobody talked to Mr. Lafferty.”

“I talked to him.”

“Good. I’m glad you did. I’m glad he had that before he died. Now, me, I have nobody, but it really isn’t my fault. It’s just that I’m eighty-nine, and I’ve outlived my husband and all of my friends.”

Mrs. Hinman had finished the locks by that time, so she waddled into the kitchen, saying, “Can I fix you a glass of juice or something? I don’t have any soda.”