The Country Guesthouse (Sullivan's Crossing #5)(60)

Romeo stood and stared at her. He didn’t growl or snarl—he was not imposing—he just stood and stared as if making certain Noah was safe.

Victoria departed without another word of goodbye to the adults present. She got in her car, backed out and drove away.

“Can I go see if they’re having snacks in there?” Noah said, referring to the girls and Lucas in the house.

“Of course,” Hannah said. “Try not to stuff yourself with snacks. I’m planning some gourmet peanut butter and jelly for lunch.”

“Right, like you ever do that,” he said. He grabbed his crutches and headed inside. Then he turned. “Does she have to come back?”

“We’ll see,” Cal said. “The judge wanted her to have a chance to meet you, get to know you. You didn’t like her?”

He shrugged. “She’s okay. But she shouldn’t make up stories. My mom said that’s the same thing as lying.”

“And what did she make up?” Cal asked.

“My mom didn’t like scary movies at all. She didn’t like movies that much. Just the ones we watched together. When the commercial for a scary one was on she used to cover her eyes and say, ‘No way.’ She didn’t watch TV hardly ever and I was only allowed one hour, except when we watched a movie. She liked quiet. She loved her books. And my mom hates rides—she threw up on the teacups at Disney. And she’d never let me go on hardly anything cool. And what’s a corn dog?”

“A hot dog on a stick, sort of.”

He just made a face and shook his head. “I didn’t never get hot dogs till I came here,” he said. “My mom was a vegetable nut. She put spinach in everything—she said it was good for my muscles. I been to McDonald’s, like, once! Here is better for food, but for everything else I still want my mom.”

“I want her, too,” Hannah said. “Thanks for doing that, Noah. I am very impressed by your manners.”

“And we know what her favorite color is,” he added. He crutched his way into the house.

Hannah sank into a chair, exhausted. “God, that was interminable.” Owen and Cal wandered into the house, leaving the women on the porch.

“But he did all your work for you,” Sheila said. “He brought her out. She’s a fraud. She knows nothing about her daughter or her grandson.”

“Erin had a dog—a little mutt, part Yorkie. While she was at school, living with us in our little duplex just off campus, her mother had him put to sleep. Victoria said he was old and sick, but she never even called. Erin went home to her mother’s house and the dog was just gone. I hope Noah doesn’t know about that. He’s just a little boy.”

“That was a good first visit—you learned things in a safe setting,” Sheila said. “The judge will want to be told if the visit doesn’t go well. And it didn’t go well from the standpoint of making Noah quite sad because his mother was so erroneously remembered. What was her favorite color?”

“Variations of purple or violet or lilac. She wore it constantly. She painted her bedroom pale purple. We teased her about it. It was so gaggy. But she didn’t force it on Noah... And Victoria read him baby books. What a trouper—he sat and listened. First time I pulled a little-kid book off the shelf in Owen’s house, Noah informed me that he already knew that one, that it was a baby book. I started reading him bigger stories—we’re working on Treasure Island. He can read a lot of it himself. He doesn’t know what all the words mean but he can sound them out.”

“At five?” Sheila gasped.

“He doesn’t play outside as much as the other kids...” Hannah said, repeating what Noah had told her.

“He sure plays outside here. The three of them have been running wild.”

“Since we’ve been here, he’s been very active.”

A glass of wine appeared before Hannah and she looked up into Owen’s eyes. “What’s this?”

“A little sedative,” Owen said. “Noah is already bouncing around, yelling and laughing with the girls, evidence he’s not at all traumatized. They’re playing Uno. And he’s eating all their pretzels. Want wine, Sheila?”

“Of course. I’m on vacation.”

“What did you think of the visit with Victoria?” Owen asked Sheila.

“It doesn’t really matter what I think,” Sheila said. “But it matters what Noah thinks and what Hannah thought. I didn’t get a good feeling from Victoria. If she really wants a relationship with her grandson in spite of the fact that her daughter was opposed to that, then she’ll accept the judge’s decision and ask permission to phone him or text him or email him. She could get to know him a little and send appropriate gifts for his birthday and Christmas. Did you notice she seemed surprised by the crutches? It kind of looked like Victoria didn’t know about his CP or what it meant. Just another little piece of information.”

Owen put a glass in front of Sheila and the other men joined them at the table.

“I’m anxious to hear what you thought, Cal,” Hannah said.

“Well, she didn’t do anything wrong or even suspicious,” he said. “I had a case a long time ago in which a young child’s mother died prematurely and the divorced father had returned to Mexico. The judge wasn’t going to send a small child to a country he didn’t know, to a language he didn’t speak, but the father wanted his son and was entitled to him. The judge set up a series of supervised visits between father and son over an extended period of time and eventually the boy and his father were well acquainted and returned to Mexico, where the man’s parents and siblings lived and were anxious to help out. A visitation schedule with his American grandparents was worked out. I don’t know how they’re doing now, but it was a very rational plan at the time.