Cold Springs(123)

“We made it,” she announced, with all the certainty, all the absolute conviction of Asa Hunter on the drill line. “After a long hard fight and a few bad moments—”

She paused for nervous laughter.

“—we realized our goal. I'd like to thank Mark Jasper, our board chairman, for steering us through the crisis and soliciting the last three million dollars . . .”

Healthy applause. The man with the graying ponytail and the denim clothes waved, his eye twitching as Ann looked back at him—and Chadwick could tell he was a man who had lost a battle.

“And Norma Reyes,” Ann continued, “for all her hard work.”

More applause, a few appreciative whoops, a shout of Ay, qué pico! from one of the Latino parents. Norma waved the praise off with a grin.

“And David Kraft,” Ann continued, “who couldn't be with us today, but who worked very hard to see this moment.”

Halfhearted applause. Probably no one at the school had known David that well, any more than they had known him a decade ago, when he was a student.

According to Sergeant Damarodas, who had taken to giving Chadwick regular phone calls as a form of lingering punishment, David had disappeared shortly after the school scandal broke. His blue SUV had been found at the West Oakland BART station, no keys in the ignition, no signs of foul play. Missing Persons and Homicide had been notified, but David's parents told them that he'd packed his clothes before disappearing. They said David had been talking for some time about moving away, starting over, and they seemed relieved that he'd finally done it. Chadwick wasn't surprised. He wished the young man well. He thought it would be sad if the police treated him like a runaway child, rather than an adult who had the right to disappear. He hoped David finally found a place where he fit in.

Ann closed with a few comments about the construction, the new Laurel Heights they all would create together. She gestured to the corner of the court, where a small patch of asphalt had been jackhammered open, revealing soil that had not seen daylight in eighty years. This, she said, would be where the first foundation pylon was planted. She asked Norma Reyes to help her overturn the first spadeful of earth.

The elementary children craned their necks to see. They'd been sitting impatiently in front until now, but this was interesting. Digging in dirt, like writing in cement—this they could understand.

The ground was officially broken. Chadwick and Olsen applauded along with everyone else.

The crowd dispersed, adults and older kids to assault the food tables, children to scramble over their beloved jungle gym that would soon be demolished. Ann worked the crowd—inserting herself into groups of gossipy parents, seeking out the ones who were trying to avoid her and engaging them in conversation.

Norma Reyes stood by the broken ground at the far end of the basketball court, her hand resting on the shovel handle. Chadwick met her eyes, briefly, and his heart twisted. He knew she was thinking about another plot of ground, another ritual when she'd turned a spadeful of earth.

“You excuse me?” he asked Olsen.

“I'll grab a brownie,” she said. “Just remember—you know, our pickup . . .”

There it was again—the tiny hesitation after her last word, as if she were about to say something else. He'd heard that in her voice all week, and had begun to wonder if it was the residual trauma of their morning in the cornfield. Perhaps, after almost dying, she was reluctant to put a period on the end of any statement.

Chadwick waited, but she said nothing else, just squeezed his forearm and headed for the dessert table.

He crossed the basketball court to where Norma stood.

She studied his face, his beige overcoat, his sand-colored clothes. Her eyes lingered on the boot cast.

“How much longer?” she asked.

“Six weeks. Old bones knit slowly.”

“It hurt?”

“I've had worse. You should see the bruises from my ex-wife.”

“The least that could've happened,” Norma said, “is they break your jaw and wire your mouth shut. But no.”

“You thought about my offer?”

She looked down at the chunks of shattered asphalt, the tree roots and dirt clods and stones—a small, carefully planned upheaval, a single-serving earthquake.

“Yeah.” She propped the shovel handle against the fence. “Yeah, I thought about it. I finally learn how to hate you, and you pull something like that.”

“I'm selling, regardless. If you'd rather, you can buy me out, keep the house . . .”

Her eyes burned with a small dark horror—the afterimage, Chadwick supposed, of the moment she'd opened the cupboard in the Mission house, let loose a spill of plastic and black hair and pale flesh that had resolved itself into the face of a friend. She said, “John used to say you only find one home in your lifetime—one true home.”

“John also said never trust a Realtor.”

“Send me the papers. I'll arrange the sale.”

“And the college scholarship fund?”

“I'll be the trustee,” she agreed. “Race will be the first recipient. The other Laurel Heights parents won't like that much, with me applying to be his legal guardian.”

Chadwick heard the nervousness in her voice. He knew Norma faced an uphill battle in the courts, even if she could provide Race a home that was better than his grandmother's, much better than a foster home. She might lose her bid for custody, but she was trying. She had put herself on the line, opened herself up for hurt, because she wanted to help the boy. That in itself was a victory.