Yours to Keep (5 page)

She rang the doorbell again for good measure then sat on the front step and took out the paperback she was reading, Emma Donoghue’s
Room.
She felt self-conscious. This was the kind of neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else’s business. If someone walked by, or drove by, they’d be curious. They might stop to ask her if they could help. That’s how they’d put it—
Can I help you with anything?

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted something that shoved her pulse into high gear, the shiny black and white of a police cruiser, an SUV, gliding steadily up the street. She made herself sit still, take deep breaths. That police car had absolutely nothing to do with her. Still, she wished she were inside, or behind the house, or anywhere else, really.

Oh, God. It was coming to a stop directly in front of Ethan’s house. It wasn’t a crime, was it? For her to be sitting here on the steps, waiting? Was he going to ask her who she was and why she was here? Was he going to want to see ID? She felt as if she was going to throw up. She had to reach for breaths, one after another, fast and short.

The officer got out of the car and opened the door to the backseat. He was talking to someone inside, and in a moment a teenage boy emerged, clutching a skateboard.

The two of them came up the front walk, a towering dark-haired cop with a big gut beside a scrawny but adorable boy whose green eyes made it clear that he was Ethan’s son.

This was
so
not how she was supposed to be spending this hour. But she had no choice other than to hold her ground and hope for the best. She stood up, stepped down onto the walk. Her heart was kicking in her chest, her breath still a crazy rasping thing, and now her hands and feet were numb from hyperventilating. Would it be obvious to the cop that she was completely freaked out?

“I found your stepson riding his skateboard along a concrete wall next to Route 50.”

“He’s not—”

Something stopped her. She wasn’t sure, afterward, if it was the look on Theo’s face—naked plea—or her own terror at having to explain herself. Or maybe it was a grim streak of pride. With a prickly sense of shame, she’d gone out of her way this morning to dress for a
foray into the heart of Beacon. For—she admitted to herself—another encounter with Ethan Hansen. Her best jeans, a real blouse, ballet flats stolen from her sister’s closet. A touch of makeup, also poached from Cara’s collection. She couldn’t do anything about her shabby backpack, but it was hidden from view behind her. She’d convinced at least one person that she belonged here.

“He wasn’t wearing a helmet,” the cop informed her.

She eyed Theo’s unkempt dark hair. She knew the wall the policeman meant. It butted right up against traffic. If he’d slipped—Jesus! This kid had a serious self-destructive streak.

“I didn’t book him, but I came damn close. He could have been killed. He could have gotten someone else killed. I want you to promise me that you’ll have a long talk with him. And keep a better eye on him. You can consider this a warning.”

Had Theo told the cop straight out that she was his stepmother? He certainly wasn’t doing anything to correct the misconception.

She took a deep breath. Now was the time to clear things up.
I’m not his stepmother, I’m just the Spanish tutor.

If she said that, things would get a whole lot more complicated. She was pretty sure the cop couldn’t leave Theo with her based on her word that she was the tutor. Theo had never met her before. The cop would have to call Ethan for confirmation. He’d probably need to see a photo ID.…

¡Que Dios me ayude!
She never prayed, but the moment called for it.

God was silent.

She took a deep breath. “We will, sir. You’ll never see him doing something like that again.” She said it with a conviction born of genuine gratitude. Bargaining with God.
If we escape this time, we’ll be good. We promise.

Theo shifted from foot to foot and said nothing.

Oh, he was a piece of work! If he’d been one of her nephews, she’d have had his hide for putting her in this situation. Of course, her nephews would have known better. Neither of them would ever do anything to bring the police home. Because they knew, had known since they could talk, that the police had the power to make their mother, aunt, and uncle disappear. Forever.

But this boy—he had no clue. He was a stubborn, spoiled suburban kid, trying out a
rebellion against his father. He didn’t have the foggiest notion what a luxury it was to be him. Man, she’d like to shake some sense into him.

Her anger drowned her fear. “Give me a moment?” she asked the cop.

He looked surprised, but he nodded.

She grabbed Theo’s arm and tugged him onto the lawn out of earshot. “And you, mister? I think you have some things to say to that cop.”

“I don’t have anything to say to him.” His voice was a man’s, not a boy’s.

“You sure do. You’re going to thank him for saving your life. And thank him for going easy on you. And you’re going to promise him you’re never, ever going to do anything that stupid again.”

As she said it, as her anger overrode her good sense, she knew that she was crazy. If he decided not to obey her, if he decided to kick up a stink, to tell the cop that he didn’t know her from Moses, then she’d be well and completely screwed. Shipped off.

But, to her surprise and overwhelming relief, he stepped back toward the cop and said, “Thank you, sir.”

Sir!
So he did have some sense.

The cop shot her a glance that might have contained grudging admiration.

“Thank you for getting me out of danger and for going easy on me. I promise I won’t do anything that stupid again.” Theo even managed to make eye contact and put an ounce of conviction in it.

The cop sighed. “I hope that’s true, son.”

As the cop returned to his car, Theo slipped past her, drew a key from his pocket, and began to unlock the front door.

“Theo.”

He ignored her.

She ran up the walk and stood on the bottom step, grabbing his arm. “Theo. Did you tell him I was your
stepmom
?”

He kept his face averted, but she could see that it was flaming red. He nodded, obviously miserable. She began to feel ever so slightly sorry for him. It helped that he was as pretty as Frodo in The Lord of the Rings movies. Kind of the opposite of Ethan, with his almost-warrior manly looks.

But she wasn’t going to think about that now. “What possessed you to do that?”

He shrugged. He lifted his pointy chin and faced her and said, “I’ve seen you at school sometimes in the library. Tutoring. So I recognized you, and, I don’t know, I saw you sitting there, and I thought maybe you wouldn’t yell as loud as my dad.”

She had to fight back the urge to laugh. “I probably won’t.” She felt a peculiar surge of tenderness for him, this prickly little troublemaker. As if it meant something that he’d chosen to make her his impromptu stepmother. Of course, it didn’t. He’d never met her, didn’t know her. What he’d said meant nothing more than a possible way out of trouble for him.

He reached for the key again. The skateboard still lay on the lawn halfway up the path.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ana asked him.

He turned back. “Thank you. For getting me out of trouble.”

She laughed, because that wasn’t what she meant, but at least the kid could learn. “The skateboard. I’m sure your dad doesn’t want you to leave it on the grass.”

“He doesn’t care.” He shrugged.

“Really?”

He glared at her, a man’s heavy eyebrows in a boy’s angular face. He had a few angry-looking blackheads where his nostrils flared and a hint of shadow on his upper lip, but otherwise his skin was milk fair, porcelain smooth, and still slightly blotchy with embarrassment.

“Don’t you think you’ve gotten yourself into enough trouble for one day?”

He trudged back and retrieved the skateboard. “Are you going to tell my dad?”

She snorted. “No.”

He looked surprised.

“
Vas a decircelo. You’re
going to tell him. Including the part about how you lied to the cop about me being your stepmom. Now let’s get inside before we waste your whole hour of tutoring time.”

“He’s going to kill me!” His eyes were huge now.

“You knew that when you decided to ride your skateboard on that wall.”

“I didn’t think I’d get caught.” He came past her up the steps.

“Boche.”

He spun. “What does that mean?”

It was a Dominican Spanish corruption of the English “bullshit,” but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “It means I think you knew perfectly well that you’d get caught.”

That silenced him and sent his gaze skittering, anywhere but to her.

He pushed the front door open and she followed him into the entryway, which was bigger than the bedroom she shared with her sister and her niece. There was a plush Oriental rug underfoot, and wide, richly stained floorboards beneath that. She bet Ethan and Theo Hansen never got splinters in their feet from walking on their hardwood floors, or felt uneasy about what might be growing in their carpeting.

A banister curved up a long set of steps littered with books and papers and what looked like clean laundry waiting to go upstairs. The laundry was neatly folded. More button-downs and khakis, a few T-shirts and pairs of jeans—Theo’s? Father and son suburban uniforms. On top of the pile, small tighty whiteys and larger gray boxer briefs, white tube socks and brown dress socks.

Dammit, now she knew what kind of underwear Ethan wore. She liked boxer briefs. They were the only dignified form of male underwear.

Theo leaned his skateboard against the wall.

“I’m Ana, by the way. I should have said that earlier.”

“I’m Theo.” Color rose in his face. That awkward teenage misery. It softened her further toward him. It wasn’t his fault that he had no idea how lucky he was. Few people did. They took their complete comfort, their sense of belonging where they were, for granted. It was, she guessed, their right.

“This way.” He shambled away from her.

She followed him into a spacious, brightly lit kitchen that could have been straight out of a magazine spread. On the far side, a big dark-wood table squatted on its trestle. Nearer, bar stools clustered around a kitchen island with glossy granite countertops. Behind a farmhouse sink, two huge windows looked out to a vast span of lawn—Theo’s personal soccer field—elegant landscaping with clumps of tall grass, and an expanse of woods past which no other houses could be seen.

She’d probably never have a kitchen this big and beautiful in her life. She wondered if Ethan actually cooked. So many of the people she tutored for had expensive kitchens they used mainly to microwave food. If she ever had her own house, and enough money to furnish
it any way she wanted, she’d spend all the money making the living room and bedrooms cozy.

Theo cleared two spots at the table, pushing place mats and papers and a laptop computer onto a heap of other stuff.

She reached out and rescued the laptop from its precarious perch, setting it carefully on the table. Fifteen-year-olds still had such an imperfect grasp of cause and effect. That’s why the driving age should be twenty-five. Or thirty. It terrified her that Marco was about to learn to drive, even though it would save her skin a million times over.

She set her backpack on the floor and sat down next to Theo. “So tell me why you need a Spanish tutor.”

“I don’t.” Theo picked up a pen and turned it between fingers with nails bitten to the quick. His gaze was on the pen.

“Well,” she said evenly, “why does your dad think you need a tutor?”

“I’m behind everyone else in my class because I started a year late.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“You’re a freshman, right?”

“Yeah. Everyone else had Spanish in the seventh and eighth grades, but I did French. They were all way ahead. I was never going to catch up.”

“So you dropped it?”

His body went rigid.

“Your dad told me.”

He scowled.

She ran a hand over the smooth surface of the table. “It’s hard to learn a new language.”

A slight shift in his shoulders told her that he was listening.

“When I came here, they put me in a kindergarten classroom where everyone spoke English all the time. I knew a little bit, but basically I had to figure everything out—how to ask to go to the bathroom, how to find out someone’s name, everything.”

Theo’s head had shot up as she’d spoken, and now his eyes fixed on her face. “So what did you do?”

“I cried every night. I listened a lot. Eventually, I picked it up.”

She watched his expression soften while he thought about that. Then he dropped his
gaze again to the pen, turning it in his hands. “I suck at Spanish.”

“Nah. You just need practice. Are you usually good at everything in school?”

“Pretty good.”

“So when you’re good at most things it’s hard when you find something you’re not so good at. But it just means you need more practice. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Your English is really good now.” Theo took a deep breath. “I thought because I knew so much French it would be easy to learn Spanish.”

“But it doesn’t sound anything the same, does it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand when the teacher speaks.”

“We can fix that.” She pulled her backpack onto her lap and extracted a notebook and some pens.
“¿Tienes tarea?”
—“Do you have homework?”

His green eyes widened.
“No entiendo,”
he admitted. “I don’t understand.”

“Tarea,”
she said, pointing to her backpack.

“Yeah.” He got up and trudged out of the kitchen, and she heard his feet clomping up the stairs.

She took a deep breath.

On the plus side, she’d won him over. Gotten his attention.

On the minus side, Ethan Hansen would be home at any moment, and more or less the first thing she’d have to say to him was that she’d pretended to be his son’s stepmother. She hoped he wouldn’t think she was angling for the job.