Part 3
Claire heard her name and left the bag beside the sofa. Lucas stood in the hallway with his father; Ben and Sam were already following.
Daniel ended the call, but the boys watched the phone as though more bad news might come out of it.
“Some people at a television station have been asking about me,” Claire said. “They’ve decided things without speaking to me.”
Lucas searched her face. “Does that mean you can’t work here?”
“My decision hasn’t changed.” She crouched beside the hall table. “I came to take care of you three. A television story doesn’t get to send me home.”
“What did you do?” Ben asked.
The question was so earnest that Daniel drew a sharp breath. Claire answered before he could.
“They found out I grew up in foster care. You remember what I told you about my parents?”
Sam nodded. “But why would that be trouble?”
“It shouldn’t be. I didn’t have relatives who could raise me, so other families did. Some people hear that and make guesses.”
“Were you bad there?” Lucas asked.
“I broke rules. I said things I knew would hurt. There were days when I made everybody’s life harder.” She waited until he met her eyes. “I needed help on those days, too.”
Ben rubbed at the dried paint along his wrist. “Did anybody say that?”
“Not everybody. Enough people did.”
For dinner she warmed bean-and-cheese tortillas in a skillet and made a mild soup. Daniel pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. His phone lit several times beside his plate, and each time he turned it over.
“You can do work,” Lucas said at last, trying to sound indifferent.
Daniel passed him the plate of tortillas. “I’m having dinner.”
Nobody asked whether he would still be there afterward.
They carried blankets into the family room before the evening broadcast. A solid block of wood now supported the damaged sofa leg. Rachel’s birthday photograph stood beside the kitchen doorway, its place chosen by Sam after a solemn inspection of the counter.
Claire sat at one end of the sofa. Sam leaned against her arm, hesitated, then climbed partly onto her lap. She shifted the blanket so his shoes wouldn’t catch in it. Ben pressed against Daniel, and Lucas occupied the narrow space between the adults.
The anchor’s voice arrived over a picture of the house gates.
An exclusive report, she called it. Seventeen caregivers. Six months. Three little boys in one of the area’s most expensive homes.
Claire watched Lucas’s jaw tighten.
Daniel lifted the remote. She touched his sleeve.
“They’ll hear about it elsewhere,” she murmured. “We can answer here.”
He lowered it reluctantly.
The first woman appeared in shadow. Her voice had been disguised, but she spoke with the sharp assurance of somebody recounting a workplace grievance.
“They knew how to scare you. Screaming, throwing whatever they could find. I’ve never seen children that age act that way.”
Sam turned in Claire’s lap. “Did we scare her?”
“She may have been scared,” Claire said. “I’m glad she didn’t get hurt.” She rested her hand over his. “You and I will find safer things to do when you’re angry.”
The next interview showed only a woman’s hands against a steering wheel. She said Daniel was absent, that expensive toys couldn’t raise children, and that another indulgent nanny would accomplish nothing.
Lucas glanced up at his father.
Daniel rubbed one thumb along the remote. “I spent too much time away. She’s right about that.”
“Because we were awful?”
“Because coming home hurt, and I kept choosing the easier place. That was my choice, Lucas.”
The screen changed to a woman sitting beside a carefully arranged lamp. Denise Haskell hadn’t concealed her face. Claire recognized her from the photograph attached to the household employment file.
“I tried to interrupt an unhealthy pattern,” she told the interviewer. “Every room contained reminders. With the father’s approval, I recommended putting those things aside so the boys could progress.”
Lucas surged forward. “She made it sound—”
“I heard,” Daniel said. He put the remote on the table. “I’ll answer for signing. She’ll have to answer for what she did with it.”
Haskell continued. The family’s new hire had no clinical qualifications, she said. A difficult upbringing was hardly training. She questioned whether Daniel understood the difference between someone sympathizing with his sons and someone competent to care for them.
Ben’s face crumpled. He rubbed his cheeks quickly, trying to catch the tears before anyone saw.
Claire leaned toward him. “Ben, nothing that happened to me as a child makes me less able to do my job.”
“But she says you can’t.”
“She hasn’t met me.”
Daniel’s hand closed around Ben’s shoulder.
Then Haskell folded her hands in her lap.
“Some children are too damaged for an ordinary family to help.”
Sam’s face disappeared against Claire’s blouse. Lucas sat so still that she could see the pulse at the side of his neck.
“Are we ruined?” he asked.
“No,” Daniel said immediately.
Claire waited until Lucas looked away from the screen. “You’ve lost your mom. You need people who can help you with that. What she just said was wrong.”
Lucas stared at the wedding photograph. “Mom would’ve yelled at her.”
“Your mother would be on the phone to that newsroom before the commercial,” Daniel said.
Ben gave a wet little laugh. Sam peeked up, and even Lucas’s mouth moved at one corner.
When the report finished, Daniel switched off the set. For a while the only sound was Sam pulling at a thread on the blanket.
“Kids at school will watch,” Ben said.
“Some might,” Daniel replied. “I’ll speak with your teachers.”
“What do we have to tell them?”
“Only what you want to,” Claire said. “You can say you don’t want to discuss your family.”
Lucas kicked the edge of the rug. “I hate those people.”
Claire settled the blanket over his knee. “I’m not going to argue with you about that tonight.”
They went upstairs much later than usual. Sam wanted the hall light left on. Ben asked twice who would be there in the morning. Lucas said nothing, but he waited at his bedroom door until he could see Claire hanging her bag over her shoulder, then asked what time she usually arrived.
She told him. He nodded and went inside.
Down in the kitchen, Daniel found her at the sink, washing the soup bowls though the dishwasher stood ready. He picked up the drying cloth without being asked.
“I brought this to your door,” he said.
“You didn’t send a camera crew into my childhood.”
“I can understand if it’s too much.”
She stopped rinsing and handed him a bowl.
“They’ve just been told families may not be able to help them. Tomorrow they need breakfast with the same people who put them to bed.”
Daniel dried the bowl, turning it several times after it was already dry.
By morning, his name was everywhere on the local pages. Parents shared the clip. Strangers offered diagnoses. Business acquaintances who had fallen silent after Rachel’s death called to discuss his family’s reputation.
Claire kept the boys away from the screens and brought a bowl of eggs to the kitchen island. They were making a late breakfast after a rough night. Ben whisked while Sam tried to retrieve a piece of shell. Lucas supervised from a stool, increasingly offended by Sam’s inefficient method.
Daniel’s phone rang shortly before noon.
He answered in the hall. Claire could hear only his side: his name, a pause, a question about when.
His shoulders pulled back. He searched a drawer for a pencil and wrote on an envelope.
When he returned, the boys had stopped working.
“A woman named Judith Cole is coming Friday,” he said. “She works for child protective services. People called after the television report, and she needs to visit.”
Lucas slid off the stool. “To take us?”
Sam left the shell floating in the eggs. He looked at Claire.
“Is it like when you had to go to foster homes?”
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