Together always (7 page)

Mike Lonigan shut the register and glanced at the kid who was standing between the aisles of food. It wasn't hard to see beneath the surface attempt at tidiness to the worn clothing and scuffed shoes. His elbows showed through the thin fabric of his shirt and the battered jeans were almost an inch too short.

He glanced up once, meeting Mike's eyes for an instant before turning away. That one glimpse left Mike with a haunting image. The kid had the look of a man, but the hollows in his cheeks and the despair in his eyes revealed his

youth. So much emotion. Hunger, anger, frustration—they roiled inside the boy. Where the hell were the kid's parents?

Mike continued to watch him in the angled mirror that hung near the ceiling. Either the boy hadn't noticed the mirror or his hunger was too great to care. Mike knew the exact moment when the can of tuna disappeared into a pocket. It was followed by two packages of cheese and crackers. It wasn't a particularly well done job of shoplifting, Mike thought dispassionately. He'd certainly seen smoother moves. He left the register as the boy moved casually toward the door as if he just hadn't found anything he wanted.

''I usually ask people to pay for the things they take from the store." At the sound of his calm voice the boy froze, his eyes flicking from the door to Mike's stocky form as if judging the distances. He must have decided that he'd never make it. His eyes dropped to the floor.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said sullenly.

"I'm talking about a can of tuna and two packages of crackers. They seem to have sHpped into your pockets."

Those dark blue eyes looked up and then away. His lean cheeks took on a darker tint. Shame?

"Shoplifting is illegal, son. I could call the police." This time the emotion was easy to read. Total panic darkened the boy's eyes to almost black.

"You don't have to do that. I'll give the stuff back."

Mike*s interest sharpened. He'd dealt with quite a few kids who shoplifted and this wasn't a typical reaction. By the time they'd reached the low this boy had obviously hit, most of the emotion had been beaten out of them. Usually they were angry, sometimes defiant, sometimes almost relieved. At least Juvenile Hall offered a chance for a hot meal.

**Why don't you tell me why you were stealing the stuff in the first place."

Silence.

**What's your name?"

**Trace." The boy shoved his hands in his pockets and pulled out the food, holding it out to Mike. '*Here, take the stuff back. I'm sorry I took it." His eyes were pleading. Mike shook his head slowly.

**How long have you been on the street?" He saw the boy's fingers clench the food but his gaze dropped back to the floor and he didn't say anything.

**What about your folks? Do they know where you are?" The boy didn't say a word. He might have been deaf for all the reaction he showed. Mike felt a touch of irritation mixed with admiration. The kid had guts.

The bell jingled and the kid looked up, his eyes widening, his lean body suddenly taut. Mike tensed, his hand reaching for the gun he no longer wore. What if the boy was part of a gang? He pivoted slowly, wondering if he was going to find himself looking down the wrong end of a shotgun. But it wasn't a gang member who stood just inside the doorway. It was a little girl with enormous, deep green eyes, her clothes as tattered as the boy's, a filthy stuffed dog clutched in her arms.

**Trace?" She said the name uncertainly, her gaze going from the boy to Mike and back again as if she sensed that something was wrong. The boy pushed past Mike, setting his hand on the httle girl's shoulder.

**I told you to wait outside, Lily. You weren't to move." Fear lent an edge to his voice and the child's eyes filled with tears.

"You were gone so long. Trace. I got worried and scared. 'Sides, you said we'd get something to eat here and I'm hungry. So's Isaiah. Don't be mad at me."

Trace sucked in a quick breath, his hand softening on her shoulder. "I'm not mad. I'm sorry I snapped at you. You go on back outside and wait for me/'

"Wait a second." Mike saw the boy's shoulders tense before he turned to look at him. Standing next to the child, he seemed hardly more than a child himself, but he couldn't have looked more ready to kill to protect her if he'd been a man full grown. In that moment Mike realized that twenty years as a police officer hadn't been enough to drive all the softness out of him.

"I was just going to have lunch. Why don't the two of you join me?" He didn't wait for an answer. He moved past them and flipped the lock on the door, turning the Closed sign outward before gesturing them toward the back of the store.

"I think I've got some hamburger. How does that sound?"

"It sounds great." Lily beamed up at him and Mike blinked. He couldn't remember ever seeing such an utterly exquisite child. Not pretty in a childlike way but out-and-out beautiful. She was going to be a knockout in a few years. Trace watched him more warily, but hunger won out over caution and he followed Mike into the back room.

There was a tiny kitchen in one corner, wedged in among boxes of liquor and cases of beer. Mike made lunch with easy efficiency. His first thought was to make the meat patties as big as possible, but when the stomach had been empty a long time, too much food could have painful results. Within a few minutes he set modestly sized hamburgers, along with glasses of milk, in front of his unexpected guests.

Lily bit into hers with every sign of tasting her first decent food in months. Trace was more cautious, his eyes watching Mike warily. But again, hunger was a more powerful force than caution or pride, and he soon dug into the food.

During the course of the meal, Mike managed to pry a few pieces of information out of them. Lily was more forthcoming than the boy, happy to tell him anything he wanted to know. From Lily he learned that they'd come from Oklahoma and that they'd been in L.A. since before Thanksgiving. He also learned that, as far as she was concerned, the sun rose and set in the tall boy next to her. Every nOther sentence began with **Trace said" or ''Trace did."

Trace was less generous with information. He admitted that they had no money, that they'd been on the streets for several months, but he wouldn't talk about how they'd come to be on the streets or what they were running away from. Whatever it was, they weren't going back. The look in the boy's eyes as he spoke made Mike forget how young he was.

Mike took a certain pride in his ability to judge character. He knew he was going out on a Hmb but he simply couldn't turn them back onto the street. They needed more than a hot meal. A lot more.

**How did you end up at my store? From what Lily says, you took a bus here this morning."

Trace hesitated a moment and then pulled a ratty envelope out of his pocket, shoving it across the tiny table toward Mike.

**The guy who gave us a lift to Denver said that we should come here if we needed help."

Mike stared at the bold printing, feeling his heart give a sharp kick.

''What was his name?" Was that his voice sounding so anxious?

"John. He didn't say a last name."

"I don't need one." Mike's rough fingers smoothed out the envelope. Maybe it wasn't too late to make up for the past, after all. Maybe he'd given up hope too soon.

**I tell you what, Vm going to close up early today. You two can come home with me and stay the night. We'll decide what to do with you in the morning.'*

Trace stared at him, his expression wary. "Lily and I stay together. Nobody is going to separate us."

Mike nodded. "Fine with me."

An hour later he was opening the door of a small house in a modest neighborhood above Glendale. Trace stepped inside, feeling as if he were walking into a dream. In his childhood he'd sometimes fantasized about living in a house that didn't lie in the middle of the prairie. A cozy house with green lawns and trees around it. This house could have been the one in his dreams.

"You two could both use a shower, I'd guess. There's a bathroom upstairs and one downstairs. Why don't you get cleaned up and I'll see what I've got for dinner."

"We just ate." As if on cue. Trace's stomach growled loudly. He flushed and Mike laughed, not unkindly.

"It's going to take your stomach a while to make up for lost time. It's best if you eat a few small meals instead of one or two big ones. Give your belly a chance to adjust. Come on, I'll show you the bedroom you caa use and then the bathrooms. Take your time getting cleaned up."

Later that night as he lay in bed, Trace stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. The first decent bed he'd had in months and he was wide awake, his mind churning with possibilities. Mike Lonigan was gruff but he seemed kind. Lily slept peacefully in the twin bed across from him, Isaiah clutched firmly to her chest. Mike had suggested that the dog could use a washing and they'd see about it tomorrow.

Tomorrow. It had been so long since he'd made any plans for tomorrow beyond just surviving. Despite himself. Trace felt a shallow flicker of hope. Maybe their luck really had

changed. If Mike would help him find a job... Maybe he'd even let them live here if they could pay rent.

He shut his eyes, forcing his mind to go blank. It was too soon to start hoping. He'd see what tomorrow brought before he made plans for the day after.

Chapter Five

Despite Trace's pessimism, their luck seemed to have changed at last. The envelope that had been given to them so many months ago turned out to be the key to their survival—their salvation. Mike Lx)nigan's stocky body was an odd package for an angel but he was little short of that.

He opened his home to the two refugees, offering them a place to stay and the first decent food they'd had in months. When they came downstairs the next mon^ing, Trace was tense, uncertain, wondering how he could persuade this stranger to let them stay. It galled his pride that the only argument he could offer was their desperate need. For Lily he'd swallow that pride, but not without a struggle.

But somehow Mike didn't make it seem like a shameful thing that they needed a home. He made it seem like an equal trade. They needed a home, he had plenty of room. Years later. Trace still marveled at the deft touch Mike had employed. Even the prickly pride of the man-boy he was at sixteen had been soothed and he was left with the vague impression that they were doing Mike some kind of a favor by staying with him.

There were no formal arrangements made, no point where Mike asked them if they wanted to live with him permanently. They simply stayed one day and then two and then a week. At the end of two weeks, Mike found a job for Trace

working in a grocery store not far from his own liquor store. The owner was a friend of Mike's and he didn't object to Lily accompanying his new employee like a small shadow.

Lily opened her heart to Mike with grave ease. She accepted his presence in her life the same way she'd accepted Trace, their running away and living on the street. She seemed to watch the world through eyes that were too old, had seen too much. With Trace and Isaiah close by, Lily's family was complete. Gradually Mike became a part of that small circle and she accorded him the same devotion she gave to Trace.

For Trace, acceptance was much slower. Mike earned his respect, even a certain amount of trust, but affection was something else again. In his limited experience, adults were seldom to be depended upon. His stepfather, his mother, even his father—none of them had shown him a reason to have faith in this newcomer in his life.

He settled into Mike's house cautiously, trying not to grow too accustomed to its comforts, trying not to depend on the stocky gruff man who'd plucked them off the streets.

Mike watched the boy he'd taken in, reading the wariness in the cool blue of his eyes, the stubborn pride in the set of his shoulders. Trace reminded him of another boy, his hair darker, his eyes a different shade but still holding so much young pride. He hadn't understood that pride and he'd paid dearly for his lack of understanding.

Mike wasn't an overtly religious man but he had a strong belief in the powers above. Perhaps he was being given a chance to rectify some of his mistakes. He couldn't change the past, but with Trace he could make up for some of the mistakes he'd made with his own son. Mistakes that had cost him a high price. Surely it was a sign that the two of them had been sent to his store in such a way.

Lily was the glue that held the three of them together. Mike knew that without her, Trace would have struck out on

his own, no matter how foolish it would have been. But he wanted more for Lily than he expected for himself so he stayed. Mike understood and respected his reasons. He didn't yet know why the two of them had left home. Lily was vague on the subject. She'd only done what Trace had told her. On the one occasion Mike broached the subject with Trace, the boy's eyes grew frighteningly cold. When the time came that Trace trusted him, perhaps then he'd find out what those reasons had been.

So he waited, biding his time, careful to respect the fact that Trace was much older than his years, careful not to presume too much too soon. He tried to guide and suggest rather than order and demand and he had the satisfaction of seeing a httle of the boy's wariness fade.

When fall approached, Mike introduced the subject of school with cautious steps. It didn't surprise him when Trace flatly refused to go. The boy had been through far too much to slip neatly back into a typical sbcteen-year-old's life. But he was surprised that Trace supported him when it came to Lily's returning to school. When he thought about it, he realized that he shouldn't have been surprised. Trace was fiercely determined that Lily have a normaj life.

So the little household shifted along together, not quite smooth yet but slowly finding a tentative balance that was comfortable for all of them. The weather cooled and a few trees halfheartedly turned rather yellow. Southern California's version of fall came and went without fanfare. The rains dampened the streets enough to bring out the summer's accumulation of oils, making driving a hazardous affair, and then they departed for another month and the sun shone down with bright good cheer.