Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) (28 page)

Camille smiled.

“Where’s your mom?” he asked.

“Jogging. Every Saturday morning. Grammy doesn’t have to work on Saturdays. I help her in the yard. Mommy runs. Even when it’s raining. Running makes her happy. She says it helps her think. Sometimes at night, too, after I go to bed. But always on Saturday.”

“And your Grammy knows you’re here?” He found that hard to believe.

Camille bit her lip and shook her head. “She thinks I’m—”

Teddy barfed all over the only clean T-shirt Oliver had left. Oliver barked out something not suitable for children of any age to hear. Likely not for most of the adults in Chandlerville, either.

“Eeeeeew.” Fin stabbed his knife into the peanut butter jar and backed away. “I’m not cleaning that up.”

“He does that when he cries too much,” Lisa said with authority, while Oliver held Teddy at arm’s length.

Footsteps clambered from where the other kids had either been upstairs cleaning stuff or in the living room doing the homework they hadn’t finished yesterday. Suddenly Oliver had four more spectators surveying his latest disaster.

“Lunch!” Gabe and Shandra said at the same time.

The high schoolers grabbed their plates. Gabe snagged a bag of chips from the pantry while Shandra took orange soda from the fridge. They sprinted for the dining room as if they hadn’t nearly polished off a box of cereal between them just a few hours ago. Shandra giggled as she passed Oliver.

“Man,” she said, “you smell like baby puke.”

“That’s because I’m covered in baby puke.”

“I’ll take him again.” Camille held up her arms. “He likes me.”

Fin and Lisa deserted Oliver, too, with their plates and drinks. Boris grabbed his food and left without saying a word. Oliver was intimately familiar with the maneuver. In a big family, you kept your head down, you kept moving, and good things happened. The slow and careless were given
projects
, as Marsha and Joe liked to call them. There was always something to do. Especially when there were babies around.

Oliver shook his head, alone now with Selena’s smiling, helpful, not-supposed-to-be-there child. He got another whiff of himself and, resigned, handed Teddy over.

“Just for a second.” He shoved a kitchen towel at Camille in
case there was another eruption and edged toward the laundry room. “Then we’re getting you home. My shirt from last night’s run is filthy, but anything’s better than this. I’ll be right back.”

He pulled the thing from the laundry room floor and shucked his soiled T-shirt off. At the sound of the doorbell, he hung his head and stared at his tattered tennis shoes. They were sporting even more character now, compliments of Teddy.

“Perfect.”

Still holding his running shirt, he used the puked-on one to wipe down his sneakers. Leaving it with the rest of the laundry, he turned back into the kitchen and rushed past Camille.

“I’ll be just a few more seconds,” he promised.

She had Teddy on the floor. The kid was giggling and playing with her ponytails and the pink polka-dotted ribbons tied around them. Oliver slowed, his heart beating frantically at the perfect picture they made—his maybe daughter and his youngest foster brother, sharing a happy, careless moment. Then the doorbell pealed again.

He headed down the hall. He tripped over a backpack half-tossed into a corner. It spilled onto the faded runner that had looked a hundred years old when he’d last lived there. The bell rang twice in a row this time, impatient, demanding. He yanked the door open, pulling his shirt over his head and one shoulder.

“Yeah?” he asked the young woman in a suit standing on the top step. She stared at his half-exposed chest. He shoved his other arm into his T-shirt and pulled down the tail. “Can I help you?”

“Um . . .” She seemed to mentally shake her thoughts back on track. “I’m Ms. Walker. Donna Walker, with Family Services. I’m Teddy Rutherford’s caseworker. Actually, several of the kids are mine. Well, not mine. But you know what I mean.” She took a deep breath. “I apologize for the inconvenience on a Saturday.
Our office was informed by Mrs. Dixon about Mr. Dixon’s heart attack. We already had this unannounced site evaluation on the schedule, and my supervisor wanted me to keep it considering the strain Marsha and Joe are going to be under for the next while. We need to be certain Teddy’s placement isn’t too much for the home. If other arrangements are needed, it’ll be important to make them as quickly as possible. Waiting too long might contribute to any attachment issues Teddy could experience after making another change so soon. That is . . .”

She paused and really looked Oliver over for the first time since staring at his pecs.

“Excuse me,” she said. “But who are you, exactly? And where are the Dixon children?”

“I’m Oliver Bowman.”

He pulled his cell from his pocket. Though what he’d accomplish with it at this point by calling Marsha, or Travis or Dru, he wasn’t sure. His mother was entrenched with Joe, and his brother and sister were both elbow-deep in their demanding Saturdays, working full-day shifts.

“I aged out of Marsha and Joe’s home seven years ago. I’m back to help the family. My mother was supposed to have let someone in your office know.”

Ms. Walker consulted her notepad. “I have a record of her call. But I see nothing about you supervising the kids in Mrs. and Mr. Dixon’s absence. We’d assumed your local siblings would be taking care of that.”

“I’m giving them a break. The kids are eating lunch in the dining room,” he said. “They’re being well supervised, and—”

A toddler wail unleashed, loud enough to be heard all the way from the kitchen. Though it could have been laughter—with Teddy it was always a toss-up.

“Is that the baby?” the caseworker asked, a second shriek echoing down the hallway. “Is he hurt?”

“No, he’s . . .”

Oliver glanced over his shoulder. Ms. Walker brushed past him.

“Damn it.” He followed in her wake, bringing up his contacts on his phone.

He had his brother’s and sister’s numbers on speed dial. Marsha’s, too. But none of them needed the distraction of knowing he couldn’t handle the one thing his family had asked him to deal with while he was in town. He stopped scrolling at another number and hesitated.

Teddy kept fussing, crying for sure. Ms. Walker was in the kitchen now—with a toddler Oliver didn’t know how to soothe and a little girl who might or might not be Oliver’s daughter. The Family Services caseworker would wonder about Camille being there without her mother. And Oliver would have to come up with some explanation that wouldn’t send Ms. Walker next door for a chat with Belinda Rosenthal. Lord knew what Selena’s mother would have to say about him.

He selected the number and texted,
911. My parents’ place. Hurry
.

Emergencies only, he’d promised Selena. He rushed into the kitchen.

“Hello,” Ms. Walker was saying to Camille over Teddy’s sobs. “And who do we have here?”

This most
definitely
qualified as an emergency.

“What?” Selena panted on the Dixon front porch, sweaty from her run and freaked after Oliver’s text. “What’s wrong?”

Nothing had looked at odds when she’d sprinted by Belinda’s house: no fire, nothing exploding, no cops at the curb. The same with the Dixon place. She’d rung the bell and stopped short of pounding on the door to get in. Oliver had yanked the thing open before she could change her mind.

“I need your help.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the cluttered but empty living room, then down the hall.

God. She hadn’t been in this house in ages. But it still felt the same. Like a large family, like a lot of love, like a home you could be yourself in. Like heaven, she’d always thought.

“My help with what?” She staggered over a backpack that had been left on the floor, then gasped. Oliver’s arm had curled around her waist to keep her moving toward the kitchen. “You said it was an emergency.”

“It is. Just follow my lead. Please.”

“Oliver . . .”

“Please.”

His second
please
was partially drowned out by another woman’s voice. They rounded the corner and Selena stared for the split second it took her to recover from finding whoever else was in the Dixon kitchen—a woman she didn’t know, wearing work clothes in the middle of a Saturday—kneeling and talking with a happy-as-you-please Camille.

Selena rushed forward, alarm bells ringing again.

“Is everything okay?” she asked over her shoulder. “What’s my daughter doing here?” She drew Camille to her side and confronted the other woman, who was standing now. “I’m sorry. Who are you?”

“Camille’s fine,” Oliver explained. “She’s been keeping Teddy company. And this is—”

“Teddy?” Selena asked.

“Marsha and Joe’s youngest,” he explained over the low-level racket of what must be the rest of the Dixon brood doing something in the dining room—presumably eating lunch. “He was sleeping while Fin and Lisa made—while I was making sandwiches for the kids. He spit up on me, and Camille was playing with him on the floor while I changed and the kids took their food to the dining room. That’s when Ms. Walker—this is Donna Walker from Family Services—rang the bell. So I called you. I thought it would be a good time for Camille to head home, before things got any more offtrack for Marsha and Joe’s site evaluation. You remember how important those can be for a new foster child’s placement.”

He sounded so certain he was making sense.

“What are you talking about?” Selena sputtered as Camille lifted the cute, red-headed little boy into her arms. “How did my daughter get here?” Selena cast Camille a disbelieving look. “You’re
supposed
to be next door playing while your grandmother works in the yard.”

“I’m Ms. Walker.” The other woman reached out her hand, all business. “Family Services. How exactly do you and your daughter know the Dixons?”

The rest of what Oliver had said, his stoically in-control expression with just a hint of desperation around the edges, sank in.

This was the Dixons’ caseworker.

“Teddy likes me,” Camille insisted. “He likes it when I come over to play, and Mrs. Dixon doesn’t mind.” She grinned at Ms. Walker. “I’ve known him for weeks now. So it’s okay. Mrs. Dixon said it was okay if I play with him sometimes.”

Which most definitely
wasn’t
okay with Selena.

But neither was Oliver making any worse an impression on Ms. Walker than he already had, thanks in part to Selena’s wandering spawn. Camille seemed fine, Selena consoled herself. And
Teddy certainly was content in her daughter’s arms, whatever had happened before Selena got there. The enthralled baby reached a slobbery hand for Camille’s hair and tugged. Camille laughed. He let go of her ponytail and clapped.

Selena snagged the opening and knelt in front of her daughter.

“Sweetie, why don’t you let Oliver tend to Teddy now and head back next door to Grammy’s? Does she know you’re here?”

Camille shook her head as Oliver took the baby. She looked down at her favorite flip-flops. They had fabric daisies glued to the top of them.

“I heard noise from the kitchen,” she said. “The windows were open. The kids were talking and laughing, and there was a loud sound, and Teddy started crying. And I knew I could help. You weren’t back yet, and . . .”

“And I told you I would be only half an hour. You’re not supposed to leave the yard without an adult with you.”

“But I thought Mrs. Dixon was here, and I could help her bake for just a few minutes like before, and—”

“Like before?” Selena looked to Oliver. “How long has she been coming over here?

He shook his head, shrugged. His attention flicked toward the social worker.

“Am I to understand,” Ms. Walker said to Selena, “that you had no idea your daughter was here alone with Mr. Bowman?”

“She was never alone with me.” The tightness around Oliver’s eyes was the only hint to the degree of panic he was controlling.

“The baby doesn’t count,” Ms. Walker corrected.

“Lisa and Fin were just here,” Camille said, as if two more of Marsha and Joe’s foster kids were her good buddies. “They were helping make lunch.”

“And I knew she was here the entire time,” a voice said from the door to the Dixons’ backyard.

Belinda stood there. She’d been listening for who knew how long. She walked the rest of the way into the kitchen.

“Mom?” Selena asked.

“I stepped into my house to take a phone call and was watching through the window while Camille played,” Belinda explained to the social worker. “I saw my granddaughter scamper through the bushes and head over. Marsha’s never minded her coming for a visit before. I figured Oliver wouldn’t, either, until I had a chance to fetch Camille home.”

Selena skewered her mother with a
we’ll talk
glare.

“Mrs. . . . ?” the social worker asked.

“Belinda Rosenthal.”

“How well do you know the Dixons?”

“They’ve been my neighbors since I moved to Bellevue Lane, long before Oliver joined them.” Belinda matched Ms. Walker’s no-nonsense stare. “If Marsha trusts him with her kids, I’ve got no reason to worry about Camille being here for a few minutes while he’s taking care of the house for his parents. No one’s more careful with their children than the Dixons. And Oliver was just visiting our house the other day. Wasn’t he, Selena?”