“Perché dire che?”
“Because it could be the truth. My friends and I are making it come true. A real shelter, but one that isn’t constrained by tiresome bureaucracy, one that doesn’t have to account for every penny and isn’t—never mind. If you go to this place now, they’ll give you a safe place to sleep. And they’ll keep the lectures to a minimum. Number’s on the back of my card, okay?”
She stood, and tried to let the kid go, but Rake saw that the kid was now holding her hand. She gave him the rest of the euro bill and the card. “Buona fortuna.”
“Grazie.”
“That card works for your friends, too, and your sister. Anytime. I know summer’s coming, but it’s still pretty chilly at night. I’m not disrespecting your sister,” she added as the boy opened his mouth. “I’m sure she’s working very hard for you, like you are for her. But you’ve got other safe options for sleeping. And living. You—you do. They’re out there, you can find them. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.” Rake didn’t translate; the kid seemed to know exactly what she was saying.
“Tutto okay, I get it. It’s fine, I’m okay!” That last was shouted, and Rake realized the kid had spotted someone at the mouth of the alley. He turned to look and saw another dark-haired street kid, only this one looked familiar.
“Hey, I think I know that guy.”
“Ciao du Nuovo!” Lillith called, waving. “Grazie per il telefono!”
Rake snapped his fingers. “Got it! That’s the boy Lillith talked into letting me borrow his phone a thousand years ago.” At Delaney’s snort, he added, “What? It’s been a busy week.” Meanwhile, the kid Delaney had reeled in like a trout had joined his friend and they both took off for parts unknown, doubtless to clip wallets elsewhere.
“Well, that was interesting.”
Delaney snickered. “Don’t worry, I would have protected you from his corkscrew.”
“Jesus! You knew he had his hand on that thing the whole time?”
“Sure.” This in a tone of “Of course the ground gets wet when it rains.”
“Because that’s what you do. Protect.”
Another snort. “Don’t romanticize it.”
I had an eventful childhood.
Yeah, Rake thought, and not for the first time. I’ll bet you did.
“Hey, can I have one of those?” He’d known about her belly purse, of course, but his mother hadn’t raised thieves, just snoops. He’d left the thing alone, and not just because of the color. But now he knew she kept cash, credit cards, and business cards in it. “D’you mind?”
“My card?” she said, surprised. Her fingers dipped into the awful pink pouch and she pulled one out for him. “What in the world do you want that for?”
“I like them,” he said simply. “If I had cards, they’d be just like this. Well, maybe with bloodred lettering.”
“When I grow up, I’m using a hologram for a business card,” Lillith predicted. “Everyone will!”
“Makes sense.” He tucked her card away. Twenty-two letters. Charity. I. C. Delaney. And he still hadn’t asked her about the results of the DNA test. And she still hadn’t volunteered them. He knew why he was waiting, but why was she?
And, hours later, when he couldn’t sleep after the frightening texts from his brother, Rake was able to put a name to the expression on her face when she snatched the would-be nimble-fingered felon.
Nostalgia.
Twenty-five
“So you buy boatloads of chocolate and stuff and deliver Easter baskets, and don’t run marathons, but do take in strays—children and stranded millionaires at least—anything else?”
“No.”
“Bullshit!” He was delighted and didn’t care who knew it. Every damned day with Delaney was interesting—fun, even! “So you help kids get off the streets? Well, duh, obviously … I mean, do you do that all over, or just in Italy?”
“No, I don’t get them off the streets,” she answered with peculiar emphasis, like that’d be the last thing she’d do, like he was an idiot for even thinking it, much less asking. “They get themselves off the streets. Sometimes I can help. That’s it. That’s all it is.”
“Why do you always downplay?” Lillith asked, doing her best eight-going-on-thirty impersonation. “Mama did the same thing. Like helping people was a secret no one should ever find out.”
Well, sunshine, given that your mom’s idea of helping people was thievery followed by blackmail, it’s no wonder she didn’t like talking about it.
“It probably goes back to their eventful childhoods,” Rake explained to Lillith.
“Boy, that phrase really stuck with you, huh?”
“Oh yeah. Mostly because I thought Blake and I had eventful childhoods. Comparably speaking, ours was a walk in the park.”
“Yes. Even when you were poor, you had more than I ever did.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Delaney looked shocked. “I— Jeez. I can’t believe I said that.”
“I’m not offended,” he rushed to assure her. “Really. It’s fine.”
“Thanks, but I was more alarmed about being indiscreet than offending you. You should’ve been a bartender—I always tell you more than I mean to.”
He found that incredibly touching. Top Five Compliments Of All Time touching. Praise of any sort, he was discovering, meant a lot coming from Delaney. It could even be argued that she was a steadying, mature influence on him.
Naw.
“Come on, you impoverished jackass, your phone’s in here.”
There we go.
“Nice try,” he said, taking Lillith’s hand again and following Delaney off the sidewalk and up the steps to the FedEx service station, “but I can’t be distracted that easily.”
“I’ll buy you some gelato on the way back to the hotel.”
“Cantaloupe, please! Two scoops. No, wait … chocolate. No—hazelnut with a strawberry chaser.”
“I can pay,” Lillith piped up.
“I’ve got it,” Delaney said reassuringly.
“Dammit! Don’t distract me, either of you, I want to talk about the cool thing that just happened. So you and Donna helped kids, but only sometimes, and you don’t want it romanticized even one time.”
“No. Donna didn’t—she left us years ago, when she found out she was pregnant. We only saw her a couple of times after that.”
“Oh.”
At the short silence, Delaney elaborated. “Nothing against your mom. She just wanted a different life; she wanted you to be different. No shame in that, and we respected her wishes. Though there were some pretty bitchy email chains before the end of it all.…”
“She told me she had to run to stop running.” Lillith shook her head. “I didn’t get it. I still don’t.”
“The point,” Delaney continued kindly, “is that she loved you even before you were born, and wanted you to have a wonderful life. And she needed to make that happen on her own. But she always knew how to reach us. I think she thought of us as an emergency escape hatch. Only…”