Summer on Blossom Street (Blossom Street #6)(28)

I knocked quietly, waited a moment and when there was no response, I let myself in. “Casey?” I whispered. I could see that she was already in bed, facing the wall. Either she was asleep or pretending to be; I assumed it was the latter. Coming all the way into the room, I bent over and laid my hand lightly on her back.

She jerked away from me. I stood there for several minutes, wondering what I should say. A dozen possible remarks swirled around in my head. I felt terribly inadequate to console her, and yet I knew I had to try.

“How many foster homes have you been in?” I asked her. She didn’t answer.

“More than f ive?”

Casey nodded.

“I want you to meet my friend Alix. She was a foster kid, too.”

“Who?”

The question brought me up short. I hadn’t really expected her to respond. “Alix,” I repeated. “She took a knitting class from me soon after I opened my yarn store. She knit a baby blanket in order to satisfy some community service hours she was assigned by the court.” I’d offered to teach Casey, too, but she’d declined, claiming she wasn’t interested.

I waited for a comment or another question, and when none came, I said, “Alix works at the French Café across the street from me now.”

Silence.

Apparently that one-word question a few minutes earlier was all the response I was going to get. “You’ll be with a new family soon and you can settle in there.”

Again nothing.

“Remember, if you want to learn to knit, I’ll be happy to teach you.”

Casey scrambled closer to the wall as if the very idea of me teaching her anything disgusted her. After a few more minutes, I tiptoed out of the room, feeling frustrated and depressed. Brad met me in the hallway outside the bedrooms. “How’d it go?” he asked.

“Badly. What about Cody?”

“He wants her gone.”

I nodded. “I feel terrible for her,” I said. “I just wish there was something I could say or do that would help. She’s upset about being removed from her last foster home and the fact that she has to be with us.” The home where she’d been earlier had been closed by the state because of some code violations. Evelyn hadn’t provided more than the scantiest details. I didn’t know what the circumstances had been, and I couldn’t ask Casey.

“I don’t think she’s a bad kid,” Brad murmured as he headed for our bedroom. “Unfortunately, she just isn’t a good f it for us.”

“It’s only a couple more days,” I reminded him, not for the f irst time.

While Brad showered, I slipped into my nightclothes and climbed into bed. I’d been looking forward to teaching Casey to knit. I suppose it was naive of me to think I could initiate some sort of communication with her through knitting. I’d seen it work so well with others that I’d been hopeful, despite her unambiguous refusal. I picked up the book I was reading—a biography of C. S. Lewis—

which I thought was laudably ambitious. I generally read every night before I fall asleep; Brad does, too. I f ind it comforting to lie beside my husband, each of us with a book in our hands. I see it as a period of calm and intimacy, and as the perfect metaphor—

together, yet individual—for our marriage.

It wasn’t long before Brad joined me, his hair still wet from the shower. I smiled at him and began to speak, then paused when I heard a noise.

“Did you hear that?” I asked in a low voice. He glanced up from his book. “Hear what?”

I listened hard, then shook my head.

A moment later I heard it again. “Brad?”

“It’s nothing.”

I wasn’t so sure and was just about to go and investigate when Chase started to bark.

“There’s someone in the house,” I said in a hoarse whisper, trying to hide my panic. There’d been a rash of home invasions in the news lately and an intruder was the f irst thought that came to me.

“I locked all the doors,” Brad said.

“I know,” I told him, but he was already out of bed, reaching for his pants. “Stay here,” he instructed me.

“Should I call 9-1-1?” I asked, surprised by how tightly my throat muscles had constricted.

“Not yet.” He creaked open our bedroom door and turned on the hallway light.

Unable to remain passively behind, I followed him and quickly discovered the same thing he had. Casey’s bedroom door was open.

“Casey!”

Brad called her name, hurrying down the narrow hallway. I rounded the corner into the foyer and saw that my husband had taken hold of the girl’s arm, his face f lushed with anger. “I caught her walking out the front door,” he said accusingly.

“Casey?” I said. “Were you running away?”

She gazed down at the living room carpet. “You don’t want me here and I don’t want to be here.”

“Where would you go?”

She looked up at me then, her eyes f lashing with anger. “What do you care?”

“We do,” I insisted, stretching out one arm but careful not to touch her. “Running away never solved anything. Listen, we’re all going to try harder. It would help if you gave us a chance, too, you know.”

Cody was up now, standing blurry-eyed with Chase beside him, watching us. Casey stared at him and he stared back.