Counting by 7s(62)

As another surprise, Lorenzo from Bakersfield Electric brings a set of solar-powered lights, which at night will send shafts up through the foliage into the starry sky.

It is all so much more than I hoped for.

Lorenzo says that the nursery guys called him. He explains about something called the “favor bank.”

I haven’t heard about this before, but I’m thinking that I have a lot of accounts with people at this point.

I watch as Lorenzo puts the light fixtures in place, but I can’t stop myself and end up moving them around so that they are just where I think they should be.

I explain that I like to see space in terms of triangles, and he listens for a while and then laughs.

When we finish, he gives me his card and says he wants to talk to me about a big lighting job he’s bidding on at the new shopping complex.

I tell him I’d be glad to look at his design sketches.

It can be part of my favor bank.



After he’s gone, I water everything with a hose Henry left for me.

I’m just finishing when Mai comes down the sidewalk.

I go out through the gate and she follows me inside, and I wish that Henry and Phil and Lorenzo and the guys had all stayed.

They deserve to see the look on her face.



We sit on the stairs and watch as people arrive home.

Everyone is pretty much stunned.

I decide not to run my mile, so I’m here when Quang-ha comes in.

He doesn’t say a single word.

I wait. He’s still silent as he takes a seat next to me on the stairs.

More silence.

Then he turns and says:

“I don’t want to know how you did it. I want to believe that you’re magic.”

Maybe because he’s older and a boy, and maybe because he wasn’t really on board with me coming to stay with them, I feel something wash over me when I hear the words.

I think the feeling is acceptance.



The three of us are all together on the steps when Dell comes in from the carport.

I guess he knew something was going to happen. He says that Henry called him. I can’t believe he was able to keep any kind of secret.

Dell is very, very happy when he sees the plants.

Mai uses Dell’s cell phone to tell her mom to come home early. She wants her to get a view of this garden in the daylight.

Pattie makes it to the apartment just as the horizon is going purple.

There are streaks of color overhead as she looks up into the darkening sky.

She says:

“It is no longer wrong to call this place the Gardens of Glenwood.”

We go upstairs together and I take Cheddar and lie down on my bed.

I’m exhausted.

So is Cheddar, I think, but snoozing is his default setting, so I can’t be sure.

I fall asleep even though I haven’t eaten dinner and it’s barely dark outside. I wake up to the sound of the television and the smell of popcorn.

Quang-ha appears in the doorway and says:

“Dell put up the ‘building rep’ sign again in front of the best parking spot.”

We look right at each other.

We are laughing, but with our eyes.





Chapter 54





Dell got the mail.

It was always bad news, so sometimes days went by before he bothered to take out his strangely sharp little key and open the metal box by the front gate.

The mailbox was stuffed.

As always, there were overdue bills mixed with throwaway flyers printed with cheap black ink that rubbed off onto his fingers.

But today there was something more.

He held a letter addressed to Pattie Nguyen in his hands.

She didn’t get mail here. He read the return address.

KERN COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CHILD SERVICES

And he felt suddenly queasy.

He was sweating and dizzy.

Maybe he should just leave.

He could drive off and never come back.

If he did, at least the cat would be covered. He couldn’t imagine a world where Willow wouldn’t figure out a place for the furball.

Dell had delivered the letter to Pattie. And then he’d gone straight down the hall to his room.

Now he was in bed and his laptop was open. He was staring at the Kern County Child Services website.

In the state of California, a person could have temporary custody of a ward of the state for a few weeks, or under special circumstances, for several months.

But after that, the goal was for permanency. The hope was that a guardian would step forward.

Dell felt his left leg twitch.

And then it jerked, spontaneously, like he was kicking a soccer ball.

Ever since he’d started jogging, his limbs seemed to function independently from the rest of his body.

Now, even lying down, it was as if his feet were trying to step forward.

Was it possible he could become the guardian of a twelve-year-old?

Even if he wanted to (and he didn’t really, did he?), he had debt and barely any job security and he’d never even been able to follow through on getting his coffee card stamped correctly at the little place where he sometimes got a morning cup of hot brew.

But hadn’t things changed?

Wasn’t he now the building rep for the Gardens of Glenwood?

Hadn’t he been driving the two Nguyen kids to school every day?