Day by Day (25 page)

“Never,” Judy whispered.

“Not once,” Barbara murmured. “Any more than I ever thought I’d outlive one of my sons.”

“Why is that?” Ginger asked. “I mean, if the bonds were so strong between us, what went wrong? What could I have possibly done to deserve this kind of pain? That’s what I don’t understand. I’m not an evil person. I try to keep my faith strong, but I don’t understand why this is happening to me any more than I could try to explain what’s happened to each of you. I know lots of women, and they don’t have these problems with their children. Why me? Why both of you?”

Barbara let out a long sigh. “First of all, you don’t know what problems other women might or might not have with their children. Still, I wish I knew the answers to your questions, but I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Neither do I,” Judy agreed. “But at this point, I’m not sure I worry so much about why it’s happening to me or whether or not I deserve it. I’m having enough trouble living day to day with the reality that it has happened.” She shook her head. “With Candy home now, it’s no different today than it was the last time she tried to stop using drugs. I still love my daughter. I just can’t trust her. Not completely. Maybe I never will, but I still have to think twice about leaving my purse lying around for fear she’ll take money again for drugs. I’m not totally comfortable leaving her alone with Brian, not for very long. When I go to bed at night, I’m half-afraid that I’ll wake up in the morning and she’ll be gone…and so will he.”

She picked up a pebble and tossed it into the lake, sending ripples across the still water. “Candy is helping out at the salon now and getting the records onto the computer. She really seems to know what she’s doing. I started computer classes this morning anyway. Not because she can’t teach me herself, or even because the bank insists that I finish computer classes in an accredited program before reviewing my application for a loan again. It’s because I don’t trust her to show me everything, so I would know if she was cheating us or not. How sad is that?”

“It’s very sad, but it’s also very smart,” Barbara suggested.

“Once trust has been betrayed, it’s very hard to get it back, especially when it involves one of our children. Remember, you’ll be taking a very big risk buying Pretty Ladies. Protect
ing that risk for your sake as well as Brian’s will be important.”

“True,” Ginger noted and fidgeted on the log to find a more comfortable spot. “But that’s exactly my point. Judy’s worked hard all her life. She’s a good person. She doesn’t deserve to have this kind of heartache and stress, especially at this stage of her life.”

“But maybe that’s not the point,” Barbara argued. “Maybe it’s not about whether or not anyone deserves to have heartache or disappointment. Maybe it’s more about having faith that you can endure it,” she said softly. “I think that’s where I’m stuck, at least today. I worry about my faith. I worry that I won’t be able to endure the heartache that lies just below the surface on some days and on others…I feel like I have no faith at all and I’m being strangled with grief for the son I’ve lost. I just want my faith to be strong enough to stop that.”

Ginger snorted. “What good is faith if it doesn’t stop the heartache or the grief or the stress?”

“Faith is just faith,” Barbara argued. “I guess it’s pretty easy to have faith when everything is good in your life.”

“It’s not so easy when everything falls apart, though,” Ginger observed.

“But it’s only difficult if you expect faith to erase all the heartache. Maybe we shouldn’t expect faith to do that,” Judy insisted. “I’m not sure if it will help, but here’s how I’m trying to see it. Life is one bumpy road, full of potholes and sharp curves and more than a few dead ends. Having faith doesn’t mean the road miraculously changes into a smooth one. And faith isn’t like some road crew that comes along and fills in all the potholes or eases the curves or puts
up barricades to keep you out of the dead ends. Faith just means you bump along, get stuck in a pothole once in a while, take a curve too fast, or find yourself backing up after reaching a dead end. With faith, you just know, deep in your heart and soul, that faith will get you to the end of the bumpy road and lead you safely back Home.”

Ginger bowed her head and closed her eyes. She thought about what Judy had said and embraced her wisdom. She looked up and smiled, first at Barbara and then Judy. “And if you’re truly blessed, faith might even give you a friend or two to travel with you,” she added, along with a silent prayer that each of them might hold on to their faith, as well as their friendship, in the weeks and months ahead.

For now, however, she needed to hold tight to her faith, if only to help her face the possibility that Vincent would no longer be part of their lives and be forced to grow up away from the grandparents who loved him.

A
fter cooking dinner, supervising Vincent’s homework and tucking him into bed, Ginger got one last hug from Tyler before he left for Atlanta. “Call me when you get to your hotel,” she told him.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “At two o’clock in the morning? Not a chance. I’ll call you around eight while you and Vincent are having breakfast.”

She held on tight, reluctant to be alone tonight. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

“I’ll be back Wednesday. Now listen. I don’t want you to keep beating yourself up for what happened today with Lily. Maybe it was time for somebody to tell Lily the truth. I just wish I’d had the courage,” he murmured.

“It wasn’t courage,” she argued. “I told you earlier. I just lost my temper. What if she never calls again? What if she decides to take Vincent away from us and put him into a boarding school?”

“Stop.” He set her back and locked his gaze with hers.

“Lily is making her own choices, as bad as we think they are. Whether or not you got angry with her and said things you might regret now won’t make her choices any better or any worse.”

“No, but I shouldn’t have pushed her so hard. I only wanted to make her understand—”

“You can’t make Lily understand anything because you can’t change her heart. Only Lily can do that. We’ve tried being patient with her, but maybe we’ve been too patient. Maybe we’ve made it too easy for her to put Vincent out of her life.”

Ginger stiffened. “How? By keeping him with us instead of letting her ship him off to some academy where he’d grow up alone?”

“No. Well, maybe.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “At this point, I honestly don’t know.”

When she glared at him, he smiled sheepishly. “Now don’t go losing your temper with me. I love Vincent as much as you do. I’m not saying I don’t want him here with us, but maybe we gave in to Lily too easily when she threatened to send him away the first time. Maybe we should have called her bluff.”

“She knew us well enough to realize we’d never let her send Vincent away to live with strangers,” she argued.

He raised a brow and silently challenged her to listen to her own words and take them to heart. When she did, she realized Lily’s threat today had probably been an empty one. Her eyes widened. “Do you think she didn’t mean it today?”

“I think that’s a very strong possibility. Think about it. You got angry and refused to do what she wanted, so she
got angry in return. She wanted to hurt you back. What’s the one way she’s got left to hurt you, other than continuing to exile herself and our next grandchild?”

“Taking Vincent,” she murmured.

He raised a brow again.

She sighed and leaned against him. “You’re a very wise man.”

“Married to a very wise woman.”

She looked up at him and furrowed her brow.

He chuckled. “You married me, didn’t you?”

She nudged him away from her. “Go to Atlanta. I’ve got things to do.”

He grabbed his suitcase and gave her a kiss. “I’ve got my cell phone with me so call me if there’s a problem. Why don’t you take a hot bath and go to bed early tonight? You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“I feel better already, but I’ll feel much, much better after you call us in the morning,” she reminded him. She watched him leave and stayed at the window until his car disappeared from view. Although it was only eight o’clock, she followed his advice. After a long, hot bath, she got into an old flannel nightgown. When she went down the hall to check on Vincent, she saw the light under his door go out and smiled. By the time she got to his room and peeked inside, he was perfectly poised in bed, feigning sleep.

Tears welled. She swallowed a lump in her throat. As hard as it would be to send him back to live with his mother, if and when Lily came to her senses, Ginger knew it would be the right thing to do. She could not stand by and let Lily pack him off to some year-round academy
because it would break her heart, if not her spirit. They could fight Lily legally to keep custody of Vincent, if she tried to send him away.

She would have to fight Lily another way, but Tyler had been right. She could not change Lily’s heart. But God could. Faith and prayer were Ginger’s only weapons and she carried both with her back to her room. She climbed into bed and spent the next half hour in the dark, curled under the covers, deep in prayer that helped to lift the veil of sadness she had worn since earlier that afternoon.

As she was drifting off to sleep, she heard little footsteps out in the hallway. Vincent, however, was not heading toward the bathroom at the other end of the hall. He was coming toward her room. Concerned, she reached up and turned on the light. She had just slipped into her robe when he knocked at her door.

“Grams?”

“Come on in, sweetie.”

He opened the door and poked his head inside.

“Having trouble sleeping tonight?”

He shook his head and came into her room carrying his old sketch pad. She sat down on her bed and patted the quilt. “Sit down here with me.”

He put the sketch pad on the bed, climbed up next to her, and sat cross-legged. When he looked up at her, his gaze was troubled. “Are you still sad?”

She tussled his hair. “What makes you think I’m sad?” she asked, all too aware of how badly she had failed to mask her emotions in front of him.

“I get sad sometimes, too,” he murmured.

She sighed. “Yes, I guess you do. I think everybody gets
sad once in a while, and today was my day,” she admitted. “Do you want to talk about what makes you sad?”

He stared at his lap. “No. Not tonight. Do you?”

“No. Not tonight,” she whispered, taking her cue from him. “But I think I won’t be sad tomorrow. That’s what happens, you know. One day you can get real sad, but the next day is usually better.”

“But I gotta go to the dentist tomorrow.”

She chuckled. “You don’t like going to the dentist?”

“Nope.”

“Me, either, but we have to take good care of our teeth, don’t we?”

“I guess.”

“There must be something about tomorrow that will make you not feel sad,” she insisted. “Don’t you have a spelling test tomorrow?”

He grinned. “I’m a good speller.”

“See? Getting a chance to prove you’re a good speller will make you happy, won’t it?”

He nodded. “What about you? What are you gonna do tomorrow that won’t make you sad anymore?”

“Hmm. Let’s see. I have to work tomorrow while you’re in school. Maybe I’ll eat a piece of chocolate. That usually makes me happy.”

“Don’t you have any chocolate you can eat tonight?”

She frowned, even though she seriously considered going downstairs and raiding the cupboard to find the bag of chocolate kisses she hid for emergencies. “Even if I did, it’s too late to eat chocolate. Besides, I already brushed my teeth.”

“When I’m sad, I look at my pictures.” He reached over
and pulled the sketch pad onto his lap. “Maybe you could look at them so you won’t be so sad tonight.”

Moved to tears, she had to blink them away. Once he had started art lessons, Vincent had shared his new drawings, but he had never shared the pictures in his old sketch pad with them before. She was incredibly touched by his concern for her and just as curious to see what he had kept private for so long. “Are you sure you want to share them with me?”

Instead of responding, he opened his sketch pad and started at the back with the last page. “This is Gramps, but I’m not done yet. I still gotta finish it.”

Speechless, Ginger stared at the pencil portrait of her husband and tried to reconcile the childish sketch she had expected to see with the startling image Vincent had drawn. Though the portrait was not as good as a professional one, Vincent’s talent was nothing short of amazing—if indeed he had drawn this picture by himself. “Y-you drew this? Mr. Andrews didn’t help you?” she asked, suspecting his art teacher might have helped him more than a little.

“Mr. Andrews makes me draw pears and apples sitting in a bowl, but I like to draw people better,” he explained and quickly turned the page, working toward the front of the sketch pad. “See? That’s you, Grams.”

Sure enough, her own image stared back at her. He had even drawn her favorite pair of dangle earrings. “Yes, it is. You’re a wonderful artist, Vincent.”

“Wanna see more?”

She smiled. “Who’s next?”

He hesitated, then turned back a page. “Do you think this looks like my mom?”

She caught her breath for a moment and traced the features he had drawn with the tip of her finger. How could he have captured that look in Lily’s eyes so well? “I think it looks just like your mom,” she managed after she swallowed the lump in her throat. “You miss her a lot, don’t you?”

He rubbed the tip of his nose. “She’s pretty busy right now, but I think she misses me a whole lot. Do you think she gets sad sometimes, too?”

“Yes, I’m sure she does,” Ginger murmured, unable and unwilling to crush his hopes and tell him his mother was not coming for him any time soon. Not now. Not tonight.

“Who else have you drawn?”

“Lots of people, but you don’t know them. They live in Chicago.”

“I’d still like to see their pictures,” she suggested, curious about the people who had been important in his life before he had come to live with his grandparents.

He continued working forward in the sketch pad. “This is Mrs. Washington. She had five cats.” He shivered. “They were mean old cats, too. See?” He held out his hand and pointed to a very thin white scar on the tip of his baby finger. “I got bit once right there.”

She grimaced. “I guess that hurt!”

“My mom got mad and said I didn’t have to get babysitted by Mrs. Washington any more, but we were moving soon anyway so she let me live at Mrs. Washington’s house for a little bit more.”

“You lived there at Mrs. Washington’s house?” she asked, certain she had misunderstood him.

He nodded. “My mom was always real busy, but she
came to see me sometimes. Once we went to the aquarium. We liked the turtles best.”

Stunned to learn her daughter had left Vincent to live with a sitter, Ginger embraced Lily’s threat to enroll him in a boarding school as very, very real.

“I liked Nancy better,” he offered and turned back another page, revealing the image of a teenage girl with short spiked hair and a nose ring. “She had seven holes in one of her ears. See?” He pointed to one of her ears and counted each of the holes. “She said it didn’t hurt when she got them holes, but I think it did.”

“Smart boy! Did you live with Nancy, too?”

“No. She babysitted me when Mrs. Washington had to go out.”

He introduced six more babysitters, one picture at a time. First, Mrs. C. Her last name was too hard to pronounce. According to Vincent, she had a lot of children to watch every day, and he had made lots of friends at her house, naming Hannah, Dillon, Kaylee, Colin and Mikey as the friends he missed most now. “Me and Mikey had bunk beds at Mrs. C.’s house,” he announced. “I wanted to sleep up top, but Mrs. C. said I was too little.” He lowered his voice as if Mrs. C. might overhear him. “One time, after Mikey fell asleep, I tried to climb up the ladder, but I got scared. I’m bigger now. I don’t think I’d get scared if I tried to climb the ladder again.”

“I don’t think you would, either,” she assured him.

“Would you like to have bunk beds for your room here?”

His eyes twinkled. “Could I sleep in the top bunk?”

“I don’t see why not. We’ll talk to Gramps when he gets back from Atlanta, how’s that? Show me who’s next in your sketch pad.”

He identified the next woman, who appeared to be in her late fifties as Mrs. Garinetti. He loved her spaghetti. Good thing. She served it every day for dinner, but he had his own room at her house, which he liked a lot. Betty, another adolescent sitter, was one of his favorites because she took him to the mall with her to hang out with her friends.

“Did she babysit you when you lived with Mrs. C.?” Ginger asked, wondering how he had survived layer upon layer of caregivers.

“Betty lived with me and my mom for a little while, but then she had a baby and we didn’t have enough room, so I went to live with Mrs. Scott.” He went on to describe how the woman, who looked rather grumpy, had a menagerie of reptiles, including snakes and lizards, which she used to threaten to turn loose to keep some of the children she cared for in line. “She made the snake eat a real mouse,” he exclaimed and proceeded to demonstrate by lying down and wriggling about on the floor like a snake and using his fist to represent the mouse.

“Why didn’t the mouse run away?” Barbara asked, trying not to laugh.

Flushed and breathless, he stood up. “’Cause she freezed the mouse first.”

“Oh! That sounds awful!”

“Nah. It didn’t hurt the mouse. She fed the snake goldfish, too, but the lizard ate crickets. Sometimes I helped her catch them in the garden. Crickets like to hide under rocks.” He plopped back up on the bed and sat down beside her again. “That’s all I drawed ’cause I don’t remember my babysitters when I was little.”

She shook her head. “No, I suppose you don’t,” she murmured.

“I like you and Gramps the most,” he whispered. “You’re the best babysitters I ever had.”

She hugged him hard. “We’re not babysitters, Vincent. We’re your grandparents. Your family.” Almost overwhelmed with guilt for not knowing how her own grandson had been raised and not intervening before now, she fought back more tears. Knowing the sheer number of caregivers during the eight years of his life certainly helped to explain how he had adapted so easily to living with his grandparents. His allegiance to his mother, however, remained strong which only served as a reminder of the strength of the bond between mother and child and the need for Vincent to maintain contact with his mother, even if he could not live with her.

Missing from his collection, oddly, was a picture of Lily’s husband. “What about your stepfather? Now that you have a new sketch pad, are you going to draw him?”

Vincent closed his sketch pad. “I think I wanna draw Officer Joe. He’s cool.”

Her eyes widened. Vincent had not said much after coming home from spending time with the young officer last Saturday, and she was pleased Vincent was willing to talk about it with her now. “Cool?”