Her Second-Chance Family

He glanced at his watch. She’d been at it almost two hours without stopping for much more than a sip from her water bottle—a stainless-steel bottle she must have filled from a tap at home.

It had to be beyond tepid at this point.

He wasn’t sure why he was concerned, but he found himself going downstairs to the fridge for a cold bottle of water. Then he stopped. He didn’t know much about this girl, other than she was on probation for breaking into his house and that she lived with a hippie woman who probably frowned on store-bought water. That would explain why the kid had a stainless-steel water bottle.

He grabbed a glass instead, filled it with ice and tap water and then headed to the backyard.

“Thought you might want something cold,” he said by way of greeting.

Willow looked at him a moment, then nodded. “Thanks. I should have stuck my water bottle in a cooler.”

“I wasn’t sure if your hippie chick allowed things like ice,” he teased.

He saw immediately that his joke fell flat.

Willow shot him a penetrating glare. “Listen, the other kids and I can call her that and joke about it all we want. Well, the other kids wouldn’t tease her because they’re so used to her they don’t see anything odd anymore. But you don’t know her. You don’t have the right.”

Sawyer wasn’t used to being called on the carpet by anyone, especially not a sixteen-year-old thief. But he simply acknowledged her comment and nodded. “Sorry.”

Her annoyed expression softened slightly. “Yeah, me, too. You probably just picked up on it from me. I wasn’t fair to her then, or you now. So I guess I’m the one who’s sorry.”

Sawyer liked to think he was a quick character study. That he could assess people in short order, but he was stymied by Willow Jones.

A thief—for sure. But also someone who admitted when she’d made a mistake. And a hard worker. And someone who wasn’t afraid to call an adult out when they were in the wrong.

“You sure you want to do this the whole summer? Even with the pool eating into it, I’ve got a lot of yard.”

Sawyer had fallen in love with the house the first time he’d walked through it with his real estate agent. He loved the hardwood floors and the open concept downstairs, but he’d almost turned it down because the yard was so big, and he thought a pool in Erie was really a waste of money and space. There were maybe three months out of the year that you could use it unless you heated it.

“I consider what you did today enough to balance your karma,” he added, and immediately hoped that he hadn’t put his foot in his mouth with the comment.

Willow shook her head, then took a long drink before saying, “No, Audrey’s right. She normally is. Don’t tell her I said that,” she added. “But I’ve thought about it and I do owe you.”

“I got all my stuff back.”

He’d been working the day Willow and her friends had broken into the house. He’d taken his car into the shop and their shuttle service had dropped him off at home. He assumed that was why the kids thought he wasn’t there.

He’d heard voices and a commotion downstairs, realized what was happening and called 9-1-1. Then he’d simply waited upstairs in his office for the cops to come.

A couple of his buddies had ribbed him about not playing Rambo, and if he’d known the thief was a teenage girl, he might have considered it. But there was nothing in his house he was willing to risk his life over. He’d just thrown the lock on the office door and waited.

Because he lived in Harborcreek, just outside of Erie proper, the state police were the responding officers. There was a barracks nearby and they were on the scene in five minutes.

They’d caught Willow red-handed.

She denied that she’d had accomplices, but Sawyer knew what he’d heard. And he really doubted that she was able to move his flat-screen TV on her own.

The cops had found that the trunk of his 1966 Pontiac GTO red convertible in the garage was loaded with other valuables. The fact that the miscreants had been planning to steal his car had made him the angriest. It was originally his father’s car and had languished in the barn out back until Sawyer fixed it up when he was sixteen. He’d worked for two summers to pay to rebuild it.

Willow hadn’t ever given the cops the names of the other thieves. She insisted that she’d been the only one.

When Sawyer said he’d heard conversations downstairs, she’d retorted, “I talk to myself. Most days, it’s the best conversation I’m likely to get.”

He added smart-ass to his mental list of things he knew about Willow. Thief, hard worker, loyal to her friends...and smart-ass.

She shook her head. “No, mowing your yard today isn’t enough. Maybe you got all your stuff back, but it’s the sense of violation. Bea got into my stuff the other day. She went in my room looking for paper and found a picture of mine. She took it and showed it to Audrey. I was so pissed—I mean, upset.”

“Audrey doesn’t like swearwords?” he asked.

“She says English is an amazingly complex language and I’m smart enough to find other words to use. Then she gave me a thesaurus.”

Sawyer found himself chuckling.

“It gets worse. She went through the thing and highlighted alternatives.”

“She sounds interesting.”

“Yeah, she’d say that interesting is a nicer word than crazy, so I’ll politely agree.” She finished her water in one long gulp. The ice tinkled against the glass as she set it down. “I’m just about done. I’ll be back next week. She’s coming to get me so I can clean up before we go out to dinner to celebrate.”

“Someone’s birthday?”

“Nah. Audrey’s always looking for a reason to celebrate. When you said I could come mow, it was the last day of school for the kids, so we celebrated...by watching a sunset on the peninsula and listening for the hiss.”

“Hiss?”

“Yeah, Bea has some dumb story about if you sit quiet enough and wait for it, you might hear the sun hiss when it hits the water. It’s some stupid fairy tale some stupid woman Audrey knows told them. She should teach the kid to face reality, not live in some fantasy world where kids use rainbows for slides, and wishes do come true.”

Sawyer didn’t know what to say to that, so he settled for asking, “What are you celebrating tonight?”

“Her firm got some educational building job that she really wanted.”

“What does she do? What sort of project?” he asked before he could stop himself. He thought he might have asked too much, but Willow didn’t seem to mind.

“She’s an architect and does all this funky green crap, uh...stuff. She’s all LEED certified—and before you ask, that means she makes the houses environmentally friendly—and this is some city project with the school district.” Willow shrugged. “I don’t know much about it, but she and the kids are majorly excited, so we’re going out to celebrate. I don’t know why you celebrate getting awarded a job that doesn’t pay you anything.”

Willow’s phone pinged and she scanned the message. “She’ll be here in a few minutes. I gotta run.”

She pushed the lawn mower to the front of the house, then came back and moved the barrels to the garbage bin. He grabbed one and followed.

“Hey, you don’t have to...” she started to protest.

“I’m just carrying a barrel, Willow. Your karma’s intact.”

She shrugged and went back for the third barrel while he grabbed the fourth.

A horn sounded out front. “That’s her,” she said.

Sawyer found himself following her out to the red SUV. The driver’s door opened and a woman got out.

He wasn’t sure what he expected in Audrey Smith. Willow had told him that her guardian was only a dozen years older than her, but this woman looked too young to be pushing thirty. She had dark, curly hair, caramel-colored skin and a quick smile. “Mr. Williams?”

He nodded. “Ms. Smith?”

“The one and only. Call me Audrey,” she added. She turned to her charge and asked, “How’d it go Willow?”

“Fine from my perspective.” She jerked her finger at Sawyer. “You’d have to ask him to see if he’s of the same opinion. I think he’d count it a success since I didn’t steal anything this time.”

Sawyer ignored Willow’s snarky comment. “She did great work,” he assured her guardian.

“I’m going to get the rest of my stuff,” Willow said, and bolted to the back, leaving them alone.

“Thank you for giving her a chance,” Audrey said. “I thought about talking to you myself, but I decided that it was more important for Willow to make it work on her own.”

“She was insistent. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a choice.”

There was a slip in Audrey’s smile as she said with far more seriousness than his words merited, “Everyone has a choice. It’s simply sometimes we make the wrong one.”

The moment passed so quickly that he thought he’d imagined it, because in the next blink of an eye, Audrey’s smile was firmly back in place as she added, “And sometimes we make the right one. Giving Willow a second chance was the right one.”

“And what if she screws up?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“Then we’ll just give her another chance.”

“That’s what Willow said you’d say,” he told Audrey.

Her smile grew broader, if that was possible. “Then maybe I’m reaching her...at least a little.”

“She really doesn’t have to do more than this. She busted her hump today. I finally took pity on her and helped carry the garbage cans. She didn’t even want that much help.”

“You throw your grass clippings out?”

Too late he remembered Willow’s warning and he waited for her to lecture him on saving the planet, but she didn’t. She simply nodded.

“The county composts the clippings,” he added, though why he was defending himself he wasn’t sure.

Willow reappeared and Audrey said, “Let’s put the mower in the car.”

“I’ll help,” he offered.

Audrey shook her head. “We’re two capable women. We can manage. But thank you again for allowing Willow to come today.”

“I’ll see you next week,” Willow said.

As they got in he heard Audrey say, “Ready to party?”

Willow shrugged, but she looked at him and waved, and beneath her veneer of indifference, he thought he saw excitement.

He needed to get some work done, but rather than head back up to his office immediately, he watched until the red SUV disappeared around the corner.

“Hey, Sawyer,” Mrs. Wilson called from her driveway.

He waved back. She took it as an invitation to walk across the street and ask, “Did you fire your lawn service? I use them, too, and if you had a problem...”

He cut her off. “Not at all, Mrs. Wilson. I just decided to go another route this summer.”

“Did you know...” she said, and launched into a litany of neighborhood news. Doug and Julie down the street had their baby. It was a boy. He didn’t admit he didn’t have a clue who Doug and Julie were, and because of that, he hadn’t known they were expecting. Bill Teller’s boys were spending the summer with him. It would be nice for Gina’s son, Austen, who lived with them full-time. And...

Sawyer didn’t know many of the people she mentioned, but that wouldn’t matter to Mrs. Wilson. He knew Mrs. Wilson and the Tellers next to her, but that was about it. But Mrs. Williams still operated on the premise he not only knew the rest of the neighbors but wanted updates on their personal news.

He’d moved here because he wanted some anonymity. This wasn’t the first time that he’d realized his logic was faulty.

If he’d bought a condo in the Boston Store or at Lovell Place in downtown Erie, he suspected he’d have a lot more privacy than he did here with Mrs. Wilson keeping tabs on him and the rest of the neighborhood.

She finally wrapped up her neighborhood updates. “Well, I’m glad there wasn’t a problem with the lawn service. I’ll talk to you later, Sawyer.” She waved and headed back across the street.

He could have warned Mrs. Wilson that Willow was part of the group that had broken into his house, but she’d have spread the news through the neighborhood like an old-fashioned game of telephone.

He wasn’t sure why that bothered him but it did. Sawyer had no reason to trust Willow—as a matter of fact, he had a very good reason not to. But he didn’t think she was going to be breaking into any more houses.

He wasn’t sure if it was a reflection on Willow, or on her guardian.

He thought about Audrey Smith. She wore an air of perpetual happiness, but for a moment as they spoke, he thought he’d caught a glimpse of something else.

It made him wonder what lurked behind her happy facade.

Audrey had said, “Everyone has a choice. It’s simply sometimes we make the wrong one.”

Sawyer couldn’t help but wonder what wrong choices she’d made. And if those mistakes were the reason for that momentary look of sadness.

* * *

WILLOW WASN’T SURE what sort of celebration she expected, but this wasn’t it.

Not that she was surprised. In the four months she’d lived with Audrey, Clinton and Bea, they hadn’t once done anything that seemed...normal.

She’d grown up with other foster children. Most of the time when she went into a new home, there was some sort of pecking order the first few days. The oldest and strongest were at the top, along with the kids who had been in the home the longest. Everyone else was at the bottom.

She got moved around a lot, so she was used to finding her place at the bottom. She was okay with that. The first thing she did in any new home was find a place to stash her e-reader. It was a given that the other kids would go through her stuff. Sometimes it wasn’t just the kids; it was the foster parents themselves. She didn’t care if they took some of her clothes, or looked at her schoolbooks. She could get along without most of her things. And she never went into a new situation with any expectation of privacy. But she couldn’t lose her books. She wouldn’t last long without them.

When she was older and had a job, she was going to buy a book a week—an honest to goodness, hold-it-in-your-hands hardback book. New releases, dusty old tomes. She was going to have a bunch.

In her head, she could see her someday apartment. It would have ceiling-to-floor bookshelves. Week by week, book by book, she’d fill them all.

She hadn’t meant to break into anyone’s house. But Nico and Dusty claimed they had a foolproof plan and that the guy who owned the house would have insurance, so he wouldn’t be out money in the long run. His insurance would replace what they took.

She knew at the time it was a dumb idea. Yet she’d gone along because she’d thought she’d finally have some money to buy a book.

When the cops showed up, she’d been the one they caught. Nico and Dusty had run and left her holding the bag...or her side of the television, as it were. She could have dropped it to the ground and run, as well, but instead she’d held it up because she couldn’t stand the thought of breaking it.

After that, she’d spent some time in juvie. When she got out, her foster parents didn’t want her, so she’d been moved again. This time to Audrey’s.

But from the first day at Audrey’s, nothing she’d come to expect had happened.

She’d put a piece of tape at the bottom of her door so she could tell when anyone got into her room, but it never happened.

Bea went in the other day, but not to steal stuff. She’d wanted some paper. She’d snooped, but not in a malicious way. No, she’d acted almost as if she were a little sister. Not that Willow had any personal experience with little sisters, but as a reader she’d experienced a lot of them. She couldn’t help but think of Little Women. Or Trixie Belden. Younger siblings were prone to snooping.

But Bea wasn’t her sister. Not really.

And Audrey and the kids weren’t her family.

Sometimes, she almost forgot that.

She looked at the three of them. Clinton and Bea were in the backseat of the car, and she had the front. Audrey had a rule—the oldest person in the car got to sit up front. “...Willow, I said would you like that?” Audrey asked.

“What?” She’d missed the question.

“Your permit. You’re sixteen. You could have gotten it by now. I wondered if it was your choice, or no one had offered.”

“I...” Willow couldn’t hide her surprise. “You’d let me drive your car?”

“If you have your permit, yes. Why wouldn’t I?”

“What if I wreck it or...” She shrugged. She wasn’t sure what other damage she could do, but she knew that cars were expensive and she couldn’t imagine anyone letting a new driver use theirs.

She thought of Sawyer’s fancy car in the garage. He kept it covered with a tarp. They’d loaded it up after Nico found the keys on a hook in the kitchen. Given the care he gave it, she’d wondered if maybe the car was more than just a means of transportation to him.

“It’s a car, Willow,” Audrey said. “I’d be more worried about you getting hurt.”

Willow watched Audrey’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. She didn’t know what to make of Audrey...of any of them. “I was just sitting here thinking I don’t get any of you. It’s like you’re all alien pod-people. You can go through the motions of being human, but if anyone gets too close, they can see that there’s something wrong with you.”

Audrey laughed. “And what’s wrong with me is that I’d let you use my car to learn to drive?”

“That and so many other things. You don’t get mad. You’ve never hit me, or any of us. You seem happy all the time.”

“Except for at night,” Bea said quietly from the backseat. “She doesn’t seem happy at night.”

Willow looked back and there was something in both Bea’s and Clinton’s expressions that said she was missing something here.

She knew that Audrey had had a nightmare and wondered what it was about. She didn’t ask because that would be like admitting she was interested in her, and she knew from experience that wasn’t wise. She’d come to care for a few foster parents and think they might keep her. But they never had. Just like her own parents.

It was easier to not get too close.

She’d read enough books to know that’s what she was doing. She was keeping people at arm’s length to protect herself from being hurt. Sometimes she felt as if her true family existed only in books. Brave and stalwart people who’d never leave her. Who’d fight to keep her.

Maybe Audrey was different, but Willow didn’t want to count on it. So she simply said, “Yes. If you really mean it, I’d like to learn to drive.”

“Great. We’re going up Peach Street for dinner. We’ll stop at the DMV and pick up whatever we need for you to apply for a permit.”

“Okay,” was all she said.

“We’re going to the Mexican place,” Bea said. “I’m going to get...” She proceeded to list all the dishes she was going to eat. Audrey and Clinton joined in, then they started talking about the Greenhouse...

Willow let the conversation flow around her. She thought about the fact Audrey was going to let her learn to drive her car.

Willow stared out the passenger window and, for about the thousandth time, wondered about the family she’d found herself placed in.

Clinton and Bea were Audrey’s foster kids, too, but the three of them were definitely a family.

And a tiny part of her, a part she brutally pushed down whenever it appeared, wished that she were a part of their family, too.

But she wasn’t.

She had to remember that. Sooner or later, social services would move her again. Someday soon, though, she’d age out of their jurisdiction.

Then her life would really begin.

She’d get a job and have that apartment with shelves and every week she’d buy a new book to add to her collection...

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, Sawyer made it a point to be home early on Monday afternoons. He rationalized that when you had a convicted thief mowing your lawn, it was probably wise to be present and keep an eye on your house.

But if he was honest with himself, he wanted to see Willow’s guardian again.

Audrey Smith had been on his mind a lot.

The first week, he asked her about composting.

She went into a long discussion about open piles versus closed barrels. He found her enthusiasm for compost amusing, but he was also slightly envious. He couldn’t remember ever being that excited about anything.

As Willow finished mowing the following week, he came out with a glass of ice water and some chips. “They’re organic,” he assured her as he sat beside her on the picnic table bench.

He wasn’t someone who generally paid attention to the very few groceries he bought. But he figured Audrey did, so he’d chosen the organic kind of chips. And he had to admit, they were pretty good.

Willow took one and studied him a moment. “You like her,” she finally said.

He didn’t need to ask who Willow referred to. “She seems like...” He searched for a word and settled on, “An interesting woman. She’s passionate about the things she believes in.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Willow said. There was a slight scoff to her tone, but he heard something else. Maybe pride? “Audrey’s passion for her new work project is why the kids and I had to spend our weekend at an overgrown vacant lot. We couldn’t even mow it because there was so much junk piled up.”

“Junk?” he asked.

“Yeah, the site is downtown. The city owns it. I guess there used to be railroad tracks that went through there. Now that they’ve closed down and the land reverted to the city, they’re donating it to Audrey’s project. It’s wild and overgrown. We filled ten bags with garbage, and hauled away a bunch of bigger items that couldn’t be bagged.”

“Why is it up to you all to clear it?” he asked. “I thought Audrey was the architect.”

“Oh, cleaning up that lot isn’t her job or ours, and she is the architect, but this isn’t a normal project. It’s a volunteer thing. She says that it will pay off in the long run. Mr. Lebowitz—that’s her boss—will get publicity and she’ll be building a legacy. She could have waited for fall so some of the schoolkids could help clean...”

“Schoolkids?” he asked.

As if talking to a young child, Willow explained, “The project’s meant to educate and empower us, whatever that really means.”

“Oh. And Audrey’s...”

“Certified, like I said. She knows environmental rules and policies, so they talked to her, and she wanted the project. Her boss got behind the idea. He’s technically in charge, but he’s staying behind the scenes. It’s really her project. Which means we get to contribute, too, like it or not. Well, when she got the project, you’d have thought she won a gold medal. And Bea and Clinton, too.”

“And how are they related to her?”

“They’re not related at all, either. She’s just our foster mom. No one else could have gotten foster kids so young, but she decided Clinton was meant to be with her, and since he was with Bea in his last placement, Audrey got Bea, too. She’s convinced she can save the world...”

“One compost pile at a time,” he supplied.

Willow laughed. “Yeah. And she’s convinced she can save all the throwaway kids in the world.”

Was that how Willow saw herself? As a throwaway kid?

Audrey and two kids came into the backyard. Bea and Clinton, he guessed.

Willow jumped up, as if she’d been caught slacking. “You’re early.”

“I brought Sawyer a present,” she said. “But first, Sawyer, this is Clinton and Beatrice...”

“Bea,” the young girl corrected.

“Bea,” Audrey confirmed for him. “Guys, this is Mr. Williams.”

Mr. Williams always had him looking for his dad.

“You can call me Sawyer,” he told Audrey’s kids.

The boy—Clinton—had rusty colored hair and freckles. More freckles than Sawyer had ever seen on one face. And the girl had light brown skin, with a long dark brown braid that ran down her back and landed at her hips.