Within five minutes, you and Saralinda buy a phone from a sleepy-eyed clerk who doesn’t give either of you a glance. Another minute and you’re back across the street, ducking inside the train station. You find a corner, rip open the phone packaging, and activate it.
A signal.
Hallelujah!
Kenyon answers the phone at Johanna’s. You tell her your phone number and where the open bodega is so they can buy their own new phone. You’re about to hang up when she says, “Evangeline got an email from Antoine’s mother.”
“What?” you say. You listen to Kenyon, bite your lip, and finally say, “Don’t do it until we get a chance to talk. Okay?” You hang up. You turn to find Saralinda staring at you, her hands on her hips.
“What?” you say.
“Don’t do what until we talk?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re on the train,” you say. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
She doesn’t look happy, but nods. You follow her to the MetroCard machine.
This station is the end of the line, and the Q train waits with open doors. It’s the express train to the city, which will still take over an hour. You enter a car that’s nearly empty and choose seats positioned so that most people in the car will only have a view of your back. Saralinda sits beside you and parks her scooter at her feet.
“Do you see a camera?” she whispers.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to look around for it. Let’s assume there is one.”
“I’m not sure I’d recognize it.” She pauses. “Could you hold your purse in your lap? Also, you’re sitting like a guy. Pull your legs closer together.”
You adjust your handbag and cross your ankles and rearrange your headscarf to hang over your forehead. Ten minutes later, the train doors close, with five people in your car—the other three clustered at the far end.
You’re off, clattering your way north.
Saralinda exhales. “I hope the other two make it.”
“They’ll be fine. They’re leaving to catch the train soon.” You keep your voice low.
“So, what did they just tell you?”
“Antoine’s mother emailed Evangeline. She says she was tricked and she wants to talk to Evangeline and tell her something important. She wants Evangeline to meet her.”
“No.”
“Yes.” You rub your forehead. “And Evangeline wants to go. She knows it might be a trap. I made Kenyon promise they wouldn’t decide until after we all meet up in the city and talk.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Saralinda says.
You are silent, and so is she.
You watch out the train window, which is spattered by drizzle. Beyond the window, Brooklyn spreads out, its lights misty gray.
Saralinda’s eyes drift closed.
It would be good to pull her head down on your shoulder, to hold her. If there’s a camera on this car, cuddling would look entirely right. Mother and child. It would help you hide your faces too. But you can’t think how you’d suggest this to her.
You don’t dare close your eyes, or sleep.
Her head drifts down on your shoulder.
You hold her after all, very gently, and she doesn’t pull away.
At Johanna’s, there was an attempt at getting some sleep. Evangeline made the suggestion. But as soon as everyone agreed to try, she and Kenyon went into the storeroom together and closed the door. Which left you alone with Saralinda. So you got out of there. You went to use the ancient computer.
Clubfoot is a birth defect in which an infant’s foot is turned inward and the bottom of the foot faces in the wrong direction. Without treatment, normal walking is not possible. Most cases of clubfoot are treatable in childhood, however, using nonsurgical and/or surgical techniques.
Now you look down at Saralinda as she stirs in her sleep on the train. A frown deepens across her brow. She mumbles something you can’t make out, and then she calms and settles down into your arms like she belongs there.
You check your phone for Duane Reade locations and find one near Times Square. If there’s anywhere on earth that a pharmacy would fill a prescription without cross-referencing the name to some AMBER Alert, it would be in Times Square. Right?
Once you get her insulin, then you will worry about Evangeline wanting to meet Antoine’s mother. One thing at a time.
Chapter 42. Saralinda
I come awake and the subway car is rocking and there are warm strong arms around me. I know Caleb instantly by the vibration of my hummingbird heart. Everything is not cake and rose petals however because he holds me stiffly as if he doesn’t want to be too close, which what? This is not what I was expecting from the way he looked at me earlier at Johanna’s. Although then again I can present the following additional evidence of WTF also from Johanna’s:
In the wee hours we all agreed we should (try to) sleep for a few hours before heading out at daybreak. Caleb and I were alone since Evangeline and Kenyon closed themselves up together in the storage room “because it’s quieter.” This left me and Caleb alone (opportunity!), only then what happened between us was this:
NOTHING.
Not even a kiss.
Okay I am not the center of the universe and so my wanting something doesn’t mean I get it and let us also remember my obstructionist fairy godmother who I thought I’d invented as a private joke. She is not funny anymore and if I did manifest her in my life by imagining her, then all I can say is that if I find her alive I will stomp her fairy face in with my heaviest orthopedic shoe. Although when I clear a tiny space in my brain I am aware that wanting to stomp the fairy is not just frustration but also other feelings such as fear and other thoughts such as ones I’m having about my mother which I can’t help.
I have lost my point. I am tired, also my blood sugar may be wonky which affects rational thinking.
Oh. Caleb. NOTHING.
So Caleb and I were together alone side by side in the dark on some piles of clothing between women’s dresses and Halloween, and I spent minutes squirmy scared and hopeful that he would say or do something to reach out, and wondering if I should be the one to do or say something (terror excitement indecision), then Caleb got up despite my extremely loud psychic messages sent to him twenty times per millisecond, and he left.
He left.
Once I realized he was not coming back I could have gone after him but instead I held on to Georgia and curled into a tight snuffle to make a list of horrors. Caleb does not want me. My mother concealed Tori from me. I envy Evangeline and Kenyon. I’m on the run. Clever evil adults such as Caleb’s father and Kenyon’s grandfather are after us. Antoine is dead dead dead. (Separation from Georgia is ahead because of my disguise, and yes I know that should not be in the same ballpark only it’s Georgia.) Through hiccups sobs and snot I prayed that Caleb wouldn’t return to find me like this (I have my pride).
So he doesn’t want me after all (mixed messages anyone?) and now on the train I am disguised as a little boy while he is dressed maternally holding me in obligatory fashion. What do I do?
I snuggle closer and fake sleep because actually? I have zero pride.
Also maybe because romance novels have rotted my brain and my independent moral fiber like my mother said—she may be a liar but that doesn’t mean she is wrong about everything.
Caleb’s arms tighten.
“Saralinda?” His hand gently covers my mouth, I suppose to stop me if I startle awake and scream.
I want to kiss the center of his palm. Instead I open my eyes and blink slowly, blearily (if I survive I will consider a career on the stage, no I won’t I will live in a hobbit hole with Georgia who I miss desperately right now, Kenyon will keep her safe, oh Georgia on my mind).
Caleb has no idea I am fully cognizant, I do not enlighten him and he whispers, “We’re still on the train. There are lots of people here now,
so whisper, and keep your head down. Okay?”
I sit up and his arms fall away. I glance around, yes the subway car is now crammed.
“How do you feel?” Caleb whispers. “I mean, your blood sugar?”
I hold out one hand to show him I am not shaking, which I am not because I took no insulin but then again I might be shaking just because anxious, no insulin no insulin no insulin. “No problem yet,” I say.
“I checked and there’s a Duane Reade near Times Square.”
I nod, this is no surprise they are everywhere.
A few minutes later the Q pulls into Times Square. I grope automatically for Georgia and find the scooter. I can’t use the scooter in the subway however. Caleb holds my hand as if I really am a child. I let him, see above about zero pride. We wriggle our way onto the platform and then upward. The Times Square station is crowded so it is a good place to feel safe.
After we emerge onto Broadway and Forty-second into an incongruously fine day that feels like summer not October, our new phone buzzes. It is Kenyon and Evangeline texting from their phone as planned.
—Are you in Times Square yet?
Caleb texts back: At 42nd. Heading to pharmacy.
—See you Bryant Park at 11. E meeting Gabrielle Dubois there.
“What?!” Caleb explodes. He shows me the phone and then texts back asking for more details but they don’t answer and he swears.
It is 8:23 a.m. We flow with the crowds on Forty-second to Sixth Avenue (it is still too crowded to use my scooter but Caleb holds my hand to help keep me steady, I like and resent it both). Then we walk north.
I have been worrying of course, I have never picked up my insulin on my own. Plus there is the AMBER Alert and what if my giving my name at the pharmacy triggers something? Caleb thinks it might and so do I.
As we pass a bakery my feet slow and I stare in the window at the muffins and croissants.
“Want something?” Caleb asks.
“You go ahead.”
He shakes his head. I say, “I can’t but it’s stupid for you not to eat. If you’re hungry.”
“I’m not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He shrugs. We go on in silence and when we get to Forty-fourth just before the drug store I grab his arm. “Wait, I think I have to show the pharmacist an ID. Right now I’m an eleven-year-old boy. Plus my ID was in my backpack which went overboard.”
We stop which annoys the stream of people until we move to stand closer to the building.
Caleb says, “Oh.”
“Maybe you can ask for my insulin? My mother picks it up all the time.”
He bites his lip. “But I just have my own ID.” He looks down at his costume.
We’re out of ideas. We go into the Duane Reade and buy the test kit which is to say a new slick glucose meter that I had sort of been coveting but my mother said we didn’t need.
When we leave the store, Caleb touches my elbow and says, “So, I am really hungry. But it seems rude to eat in front of you.”
“I can turn my back,” I joke.
He doesn’t smile.
I say, “Okay, once I test, I’ll know what’s going on and maybe then I can eat a hard-boiled egg. But now I can definitely have coffee.”
Caleb nods and then his eyes widen. “Saralinda!”
“What?”
“I know how to get a new prescription that we can fill, no problem.”
Chapter 43. Caleb
You and Saralinda speed across town, running/scooting from Times Square over to catch the Lexington Avenue Express uptown, and then running/scooting again.
The sight of you jogging along in your red coat and polyester babushka—alongside Saralinda’s little boy on a scooter—would raise a few eyebrows elsewhere. In New York, nobody glances twice. Still, you are nervous once you reach your hoity-toity neighborhood, where you also have to slow down. You’re not sure if this makes you more self-conscious or less. But from beneath her Yankees cap, Saralinda smiles cheerily at everyone, and even the most fashionable Upper East Side moms smile warmly back.
You’re amused until you spot a redheaded woman. You stop and look after her for a second, but it’s nobody you know.
Saralinda skids to a halt and turns. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
You come up beside her. “Sorry.”
“What is it?”
“It’s not important,” you say. “It’s just, this is Evangeline’s neighborhood too.”
Saralinda connects the dots. “You’re scared of bumping into Spencer Song?”
“It crossed my mind. I know it’s unlikely.”
“I think they live further uptown. High Eighties.”
“Oh.”
“Do you believe Evan’s right? That her stepmother is too much of an airhead and a wimp to go after Evan’s money?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone else is doing the dirty work for her. She’s very pretty.”
“That’s kind of sexist,” Saralinda complains.
You shrug. “Evangeline agrees that Spencer’s manipulative. Manipulators don’t have scruples. They go after what they want, however they can.”
“So you think she’s involved?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” You shrug again. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence Evangeline was in the carriage house with us.”
Saralinda sighs.
Or that you were, Saralinda, you think, but you don’t say it because you’ve finally arrived at the café.
A few minutes later, you leave Saralinda—with her test kit and the rest of the money—at Chatime. You linger outside the café, looking through the glass at where she’s standing on line among the uptown moms. Will they spot that she’s a teenage girl? Or will they interfere, thinking that a small boy shouldn’t be there alone? Will someone recognize her from the AMBER Alert?
She turns and her eyes meet yours. Her lips move, and you read them easily because she already said it on the trip uptown:
You don’t have to do this.
I do, you mouth back.
You turn and jog onward. The plan is for Saralinda to go without you to Bryant Park if you don’t get back for her fast enough.
Your building is on Sixty-fifth. A lucky break: The doorman has his back turned. You enter the lobby, sail confidently into the elevator, and press the button for the twelfth floor. You shed the coat and headscarf and drape them over your arm.
Don’t be home, don’t be home, don’t be home.
Standing before your apartment door, you think of Antoine, but your key works. Inside, you know instantly and with enormous relief that, as you hoped, your father is not home. When he is, his presence dominates the very air. Your mother is surely here—she always is—but her room is at the other end of the apartment, off the kitchen.
With luck, she won’t know you have come.
You enter your father’s study, its walls lined with framed diplomas and award citations and pictures of him with minor celebrities of the intellectual variety, writers and doctors and the occasional politician.
His prescription pad is in the top desk drawer. You rip some pages off and shove them in your pocket. Each one has his medical identification information at the top.
You don’t hear her come in until she speaks.
“Hello, Caleb.”
Your mother stands in the doorway of the office with the toes of her shoes short of the threshold, as if she doesn’t want to cross it.
She’s wearing shoes, not slippers, you notice with surprise.
Also, she is fully dressed, not in pajamas. She’s wearing pants and a red sweater, and has her long dark hair pulled back and twisted up in a neat bun on her head. Her brown eyes are wide. She looks her age, which is to say young. She was only seventeen when you were born.
She smiles tentatively. r />
Though she still couldn’t go out onto the street and look like she belongs among all the self-confident moms, there is something different about her today.
Her arms move as if she wants to reach out to you but doesn’t dare. They fall back down and she clasps her hands and says breathlessly, “I have news.” Before you can respond, anxiety reenters her face and she looks around.
“I have to go,” you say, and push past her. “Sorry.”
“Wait!” she calls. “Wait, listen to me—”
You’re at the apartment door.
“—listen, your father has asked me for a divorce!”
You stop. You turn.
There is so much unsaid between you—including all the things you have only just realized about her, and about her relationship with your father.
Her eyes are shining. “He says I can have custody of you—you’re almost too old for anybody to have custody of you anyway—and alimony. I can start my life over. We—” She holds out her hands. “We can start over. If—if you will.”
Years ago, she tried for a few weeks to fight for a divorce.
“I don’t believe it,” you say flatly. Your mind races. What does this mean? Is this part of his game?
“I didn’t either,” she says eagerly. “But he let me meet with a lawyer. And that lawyer has talked to his lawyer already.”
“But why would he—” you start, and then you shake your head. Saralinda is waiting for you. She needs insulin. Then you’re due downtown—Kenyon, Evangeline, Mrs. Dubois.
“I’ve got to go,” you tell her.
“But—”
“Do whatever you want! It doesn’t involve me!” you snap, and then you’re gone, slamming the door behind you.
Chapter 44. Saralinda
Timing is tight to get to Bryant Park, and on the last leg after we leave the subway, I am glad for my scooter (which is not meant as a dis at Georgia).
When Caleb returned, he did not say a word as he gave me the prescription paper he stole from his father, stole. And he also did not say a word as I handed him the cookie which I bought for him. (I knew I shouldn’t spend any more money, we have so little, and there was a moment when I wondered if I could get away with stealing it but I did pay.)