Disclaimers and author's notes in Installment 1 .

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The Providence of Sparrows
by peregrin anna

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Part 8

snow, rain, storms can help--
birds in their one-room family nests
shaken by winds cruel and crazy--
they can all help;
lock not away your love and keep it hid.
     ~ Carl Sandburg

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Gary came to his senses--minutes later or more, he wasn't sure--in the same grungy rest room in which he'd cleaned up earlier in the day.  In his hands were a Northwestern sweatshirt and a pair of too-short sweatpants--holey, sure, but they were dry holes.  There was a towel, too, rough and scratchy against his skin, which ached and stung as it thawed out.  It didn't matter--anything was better than the numbness.  Warm water filled the sink, and Gary splashed some on his face, dried it and his hair, shivered into the clothes as best he could--and socks, thick grey woolen socks.  Whoever had found him those socks was going to be blessed for life.  He would call Reverend Nicks tomorrow and make sure of that.

Someone knocked at the door.  "Gary?  You okay?"

It was Jeff, who watched with concern as Gary opened the door and walked out of the wash room, blinking in the dingy, candlelit dining area.  He turned back for his wet things, but Jeff pushed him away.  "I'll get it, man.  Luigi's putting everything in his dryer upstairs.  Go sit, get something hot inside you."

Gary made his way through the room, which seemed to be full of people, at least compared to this afternoon.  All of them were young, arty-looking types, and almost all of them were staring at him.  After a moment's hesitation, he picked out Rob's streaked head above the rest of the small crowd, at a table in the far corner, hoping he'd find everyone there.  He tried to ignore the looks he was getting as he padded toward the table in stockinged feet and sweatpants that stopped mid-calf.  As he dodged the waving arms of a girl in gothic makeup who seemed to be performing some kind of chair dance to electronic music blaring from a boom box, Gary saw that he'd guessed correctly.  His chair tipped back against the wall, Rob had one arm draped around a still-spacey Trini; across from them sat Marissa, Bernardo huddled in her lap.  The little boy's legs were curled up inside a Bears sweatshirt, the long arms of the shirt stretching far past his hands.  Just as he had on the ice, he'd made himself into a tight, defensive ball.  Marissa had both arms wrapped around the shivering kid, and Luke was next to her, trying to entice Bernardo to drink from the steaming mug he proffered.

"Come on, little guy.  It's really good stuff, I promise.  Look!"  Luke himself took a sip, making a huge production of smacking his lips and rolling his eyes in pleasure.  "Yummmm!"

To everyone's surprise, Bernardo giggled, the first sign of anything other than fear Gary had ever seen from the boy.  When Luke held the mug under his nose, Bernardo unclutched from the ball he'd become, bunched up the arms of the sweatshirt until his hands were free, and reached for it.  He retreated back into his cocoon immediately, hands clutched around the prize, but he was more animated, his dark eyes watching the strangers around him with more interest now than fear.  When his gaze landed on Gary, he flashed a small, quick smile.

Then Luke noticed Gary and stood, waving him to the chair next to Marissa's.  "Hey," he said by way of greeting, "you gonna be okay?"

"I'm fine."  Gary eased down into the chair, his limbs still stiff.  "I'm just never going to be warm again."

"Dude, you were totally out of it when you walked in here."  Luke turned to the table and poured another mug of hot chocolate from a cracked ceramic pitcher.

"Yeah, well, I was a little numb."  Gary wrapped his fingers around the mug Luke handed over, wishing he could just crawl into it.  His skin was nothing but goose bumps.

"You scared me, Gary," Marissa told him quietly, shifting Bernardo as she turned toward her friend.  "I didn't know if you were hurt or...or what."

"It was just the cold.  I'm okay now."  Gary took a long draught of the cocoa.  "Where's Lucy?"

"She's in the ladies' room changing."  Marissa smoothed Bernardo's damp hair in a maternal gesture, evidently as comfortable with the kid on her lap as he was with her.  "Don't worry, she's not going anywhere without her brother."

"Yeah, I got that much.  Where'd the clothes come from?" he asked Jeff, who pulled a chair next to his and plopped down.

"Well, a couple of us had the sweatshirts."  Gary realized now that some of the restaurant's denizens were wearing one layer less than they had been earlier in the day.  "Plus, Luigi lives upstairs.  You must have really made an impression this afternoon, 'cause he let us raid his closet."  Jeff shook his head.  "Man, you make a habit out of this Batman routine, or what?  Your friend told us what happened at the park."

"Right time, right place, I guess."  Gary shrugged and held out his mug to Luke, who was leaning against the table, for a refill.

Rob peered around his friend to stare at Gary incredulously.  "Right time, right place?  At this time of night?  On this kind of night?"

"Well..."  This time, Gary realized, his old excuse was actually true.  "Yeah."  Marissa rolled her eyes.

"You give him hot cocoa, sì?"  Luigi had made his way to their table, carrying a tray of...geez, Gary thought, when was the last time he'd had cinnamon toast?

"Sì," Luke, Jeff, and Rob responded in unison.

"No!"  Luigi deposited his tray on their table and turned to Gary with a conspiratorial wink.  He reached into the large front pocket of the apron that sagged around his generous stomach and produced a bottle--no, a flask, Gary realized--which he unscrewed and tipped into Gary's mug in one smooth motion.  "Much better," he declared as he recapped the bottle.  He pounded Gary on the shoulder a couple of times, then headed back for the kitchen.  "Sì, much better."

"Ah, I'd be careful about that," Jeff advised as Gary raised the cup to his lips.  "Never know with Luigi."

Gary sniffed at the contents.  "It's just schnapps," he pronounced, deciding, as the peppermint warmth spread down his gullet and out to the rest of his body, that it was a damn fine addition to one of his favorite childhood treats.

The music from the boom box changed; now it was a boisterous techno-rap thing.  The rest of Luigi's patrons had stopped paying attention; the novelty of the wet strangers had worn off and they went back to talking, arguing, scribbling on napkins, and yes, chair dancing.  Mimicking the goth girl's waving arms, Luke was still making faces at Bernardo, who was grinning wider and wider.  Finally the kid burst into laughter, so hard and sudden that he sloshed hot chocolate out of his mug and onto Marissa's sleeve.  Not having a clue that it was coming, she jumped and gasped when the liquid hit her arm and hand.  Bernardo froze, the light of his smile disappearing as quickly as it had come.  He squeezed his eyes shut and shook just a little, and didn't uncurl his fingers when Gary reached over and pried the mug away.

"Hey."  Gary set the mug on the table and handed Marissa a napkin.  "Hey, Bernardo, it's okay, look, we're gonna clean it up, see?"  He had no idea if the boy could understand him, but he tried to make his voice as friendly and encouraging as possible.

Marissa tightened one arm around Bernardo and kissed the top of his head.  "It's just a little cocoa.  It's okay."  She dabbed up the spill, then tossed the damp napkin in the general direction of the table.  "All done.  Nobody's angry at you. It's all right."

Bernardo unsqueezed his eyes and stared up at her face, then at the stain on her arm, then at Gary, who forced a smile past the dark thoughts that had resurfaced...these were kids who were used to being in trouble, used to being yelled at, maybe even used to being hurt.  This boy was only...what, four?  and he expected to be punished for spilling cocoa.

"It's okay buddy.  You want some more?"  Gary held the mug out, but Bernardo shook his head, and pulled back into the shelter of Marissa's arms.  She let him cuddle down, rubbing his arm a little, reassuring him, while Gary sat back in his chair.  Eyes wide, Luke looked at Gary, then at Jeff, and some sort of confirmation passed between the three of them.  Jeff mouthed a word that a little kid like Bernardo shouldn't hear.

Gary nodded and opened his mouth to respond, but stopped when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.  In the doorway of the ladies' room, framed by the light, Lucy stood watching their group.  Like Gary and Bernardo, she was wearing salvaged clothes.  A dark green sweater that would have been oversized on a grown man--probably Luigi's, Gary decided--hung down to her knees, and grey woolen socks like the ones Gary wore covered her feet and the rest of her legs.  Her laser gaze honed in on her brother and stayed there, but even when Gary motioned her over, she didn't move through the small but boisterous crowd.  He could understand her reluctance to cross through all that, so he got up and walked over to her.

"Hey, Lucy.  You want something to eat?  Something warm?"   He tried to keep his voice casual, as if this were the most natural thing in the world, as if nothing that had just happened had happened.  The truth was, the girl made him nervous.  He didn't know if she was going to bolt again--though he hoped she was smarter than that--and he didn't know how to begin breaking down her walls.

Lucy looked from Gary to the gantlet of eyes and noise that she'd have to cross to get to her brother, and, evidently deciding that Gary was the lesser of the two evils, nodded.  He reached for her shoulder, but she side-stepped his hand, staying close as they wove their way across the room, but making it clear that she did not want to be touched.

Luke pulled over another chair for her, and finally, her gaze still darting from one strange adult to another, Lucy sat down between Gary and Marissa.  She stared at Bernardo with hungry eyes--whether she wanted to hold the boy herself or to be held, Gary wasn't sure.  When Jeff handed her a mug of the cocoa, she took it, but sat staring into it, not drinking, not even blinking.  Placing a hand on her shoulder, Gary spoke her name softly; she jumped, starting and staring at the others.  Gary cleared his throat.  Luke and Jeff took the hint and moved to the other side of the table, engaging in huddled conversation with Rob and Trini, and Lucy's shoulders dropped, relaxing just a little under Gary's hand.

"You were really brave to try and rescue your brother like that," he told her quietly.

Lucy shook her head.  "It was my fault.  I was looking at the statues.  I should have been watching him.  He got away from me and--"

"And you went after him.  That was the brave part," Marissa assured her.

Lucy stared at Marissa, then at Gary, and he saw, in that moment, just how lost she was, and how much she wanted to trust them.  But the moment flashed through her eyes and was gone; the walls went right back up with her next words.  "Diego sent you, didn't he?"  Her whisper held equal measures of fear and defiance.

"Who?"

"He sent you, that's why you're following us.  Well, we're not going back!"  Her voice rose, her chin tilted up, and her eyes met Gary's with a fierce desperation well beyond her age as she shrugged his hand away.  "I don't care what you do, I don't care what he told you.  We're not going back there ever."

"Lucy honey, I swear, I don't know anybody named Diego."  Gary turned both hands, palms up, in her direction, as if to demonstrate his lack of complicity in whatever nightmare she was running from.  "I wasn't following you; it wasn't like that at all."

Marissa raised one eyebrow at that, but she didn't say anything.  Okay, so maybe Gary had been following them, or at least he had wanted to, but it wasn't with the intentions Lucy was ascribing to him.

"Yes you were!  You were in the alley.  I may be a kid, but I'm not stupid."

"No, you're not stupid at all," Gary assured her, and decided he'd better try another tack.  "I only want to help you guys, and I promise, you won't have to go back anywhere that's not--that's not safe."  A foolish promise, maybe, but Gary was going to do whatever he could to make it true.  "But if we're gonna help, you have to tell us what's going on.  Where are your parents?"  He was taking a chance that Diego wasn't one of the parents, but he figured Lucy wouldn't call her father by his first name.  Lucy shot him another withering glare and then clammed up, tilting her head forward so that her hair covered her face again.

"Sweetheart," Marissa said gently when Lucy didn't answer Gary's question, "nobody here wants to see you get hurt.  We won't let that happen.  But someone somewhere has to be pretty worried about you both.  We want to help."

"Look, I know taking care of your brother is a big responsibility," Gary added.  Maybe if he talked to her like an adult, she'd respond.  "And you--you've done a great job so far, you really have.  Better than most people would.  But what we're trying to tell you is that you don't have to do it alone, not any more.  You've got friends here, people who want to help.  You know me, and now you know Marissa, that's two people.  And then there's these guys--"  He waved a hand at the group across the table.  "Jeff and Luke and Rob and Trini.  They're okay, too, even though the guys are kinda goofy-looking."  Lucy looked up at that, and, proving that they weren't really being as discreet as they'd tried to seem, the three all pulled silly faces, sticking out tongues and rolling eyes.  Lucy ducked her head again, but this time Gary thought that maybe it was to hide a smile.

After a moment of further hesitation, she whispered, "We only wanted to get warm."

Gary frowned, perplexed, and bent his head closer to hers, trying to get a good look at her face through the veil of damp black strands.  "What are you talking about?"

"The fire.  I didn't mean to make it so big.  I'm sorry."  Lucy's knuckles turned pale as she gripped the mug.

"You mean the fire in the barrel?  It was no big deal," Gary told her.  "No big deal at all.  You just needed a little help to put it out."

"I don't need any help!"  Now she did look at him, tossing her hair back over her shoulder, and her eyes flashed more sparks than the fire she'd set.  "It was just fine until you came along and messed everything up!"

The outburst brought activity in the room to a halt for just a moment.  Bernardo's eyes were huge as he stared at his sister, but whether he was afraid of her or for her, Gary wasn't sure.

Gary opened his mouth to point out just who had messed things up, but snapped it shut when he realized that he really didn't know, and that Lucy had lashed out only because she was scared, and not in control.  Instead he took a deep breath, then pointed with two fingers to her mug and told her, "You should drink that before it gets cold, ya know.  It's good stuff, and there's plenty more.  Want some toast?"  He reached for the platter on the table, but Lucy shook her head.  Bernardo, however, leaned forward and snatched a piece of the thick crusty bread.  Lucy shot him a betrayed look, but the boy was too happy licking butter and cinnamon sugar off the top of the bread to notice.

Gary sat back in his chair, at a loss for what to do next.  The recalcitrant Lucy returned to glaring at her cocoa, and showed no sign of speaking.  Bernardo didn't seem to know enough English to answer their questions, and he wasn't old enough in any case.  Across the table, Jeff was watching all of them when he thought no one was paying attention, obviously wanting to help but not sure how to do it.

It was Trini, surprisingly enough, who finally broke the stalemate.  As far as Gary had noticed, she'd been as out of it through the preceding scene as she'd been that afternoon.  Now, though, she rose without a word to anyone, walked around the table, and stopped behind Lucy's chair.

"God, you've got great hair," she murmured, like a bad imitation of a shampoo commercial, but her voice wasn't as flat and lifeless as it had been the last time Gary had heard it.  Lucy blinked, but didn't look up, and Trini reached out, hands tentative, then more confident, as she touched, then stroked, the dark, sleek hair.

Gary wasn't sure if he should allow this, if it would set off another explosion, but when Lucy didn't shrug the older girl away, he relaxed a little.  Marissa was still, listening, taking it in, and Gary knew that if she sensed a problem, she'd say something.

Trini's hands seemed to have a purpose of their own, for while her face still had that just-arrived-from-Pluto detachment, her fingers got busy, not just touching, but moving through the damp strands, finger combing, first slowly, then with more speed and confidence.  Humming softly to herself, she bent her fingers into hooks, weaving and twisting black locks into some kind of braid that lifted the hair up and away from Lucy's face, revealing high, sharp cheekbones and then soft, rounded ears.

Lucy had gone very still, more like a statue than before, and yet as Gary watched, her anger and defensiveness seemed to ebb away.  Or maybe it was just that he could actually see her face now, see how young and how scared she really was.  Trini soon had all of the hair plaited back from Lucy's face and was weaving the long expanse that hung down the girl's back into one tight braid.  Gary, who'd earned his knot-tying merit badge when he was only ten, couldn't for the life of him figure out how she was doing it, still humming under her breath, still seemingly unaware that she was doing anything at all.

His attention was diverted from Trini's methodical fingers when he chanced another glance at Lucy's face.  She remained unmoving, her feet tucked behind the front rail of her chair, but a tear was rolling down her face.  It was a tear, wasn't it, and not a drip from her hair?  But no, another one dropped from her eye, splashing silently into the cocoa.  Gary was just reaching for the mug when Trini somehow tucked the ends of Lucy's hair in on themselves, securing the braid, and patted the girl lightly on the head.  "You know, my mom always used to braid my hair.  I loved it when she did that."

At that, Lucy gave a great, hiccuping sob; her hands flew to her face and Gary grabbed the mug just in time.

Trini jumped back, shocked.  "What'd I do?"

Gary set the mug on the table.  "I think you did the right thing," he told her.  Lucy was crying in earnest now, shoulders heaving, elbows on her knees, face buried in her hands.

Bernardo reached out from his perch on Marissa's lap and patted his sister on the shoulder with a sticky hand.  "No llore, Lucy. Yo lo amo, no llora," he pleaded, his voice more fearful than comforting.  "No cry, Lucy, stop, por favor."

She didn't stop, not even for her brother; she didn't even acknowledge him.

"It's all right, Bernardo, she needs to cry," Marissa soothed.  Gary tended to agree with her.  Bernardo turned his round, worried face from his sister to Marissa and back, then withdrew his hand.

Gary let the heartbroken sobs go on for as long as he could stand them, which wasn't long at all.  He scooted his chair closer, reached over and placed one hand on Lucy's shoulder.  Trini looked on helplessly, like she'd rather be anyplace else at the moment, and finally she shuffled back over to her chair next to Rob.  The three young men had gone silent, watching the scene; even the boombox's venerators had stopped the music.  Their attention made Gary uncomfortable, but Lucy was oblivious.

"Hey," he faltered, leaning close so she could hear him, "it's okay Lucy, really.  It's okay.  You're safe now.  Bernardo's okay, you did good, you took care of your brother...Lucy, we'll find your mom, if that's what you want."

At that, she heaved another sob and tottered over, sideways and forward, burying her head in her arms on Gary's knees.  For a moment all he could do was stare in surprise while hot tears soaked through the hole in the right knee of the old sweats.  He glanced over at Marissa; Bernardo had retreated from his sister's pain and had turned his face into her sweater.  Marissa rested her chin against the top of his head, blinking back tears of her own.  Gary sighed, and rubbed Lucy's back between her shoulder blades.

"It's okay," he whispered over and over, while the girl's sobs subsided into intermittent hiccups, and then deep breaths that sent shudders through her whole body.  Behind him conversations resumed, quieter now than they had been, but getting back to business now that the show was over.  "It's gonna be all right."  Lucy turned her face and settled her head on her folded arms, still resting on Gary's knees.  Her lashes were damp, but her face had lost its tight, defensive lines, and soon her breathing became deep and even.  In the midst of all the voices and banging dishes, she'd gone to sleep.

Marissa echoed Gary's sigh.  "So much for a slow news day."

He looked up to see that Bernardo, too, had dropped off, one hand still clutching a bit of cinnamon toast.

They sat in silence for a while longer.  Gary was afraid to move and wake Lucy; he knew that soon, very soon, they were going to have to talk about what to do, but right now just letting the kids sleep seemed like the best plan.  He settled for sipping at his own cocoa and staring at the travel poster across from him, a tattered picture of the Coliseum.

After fifteen minutes or so, Luigi emerged from the kitchen with a neatly-folded pile of their clothing, plus a grocery sack.  "Here is stuff," he said proudly.  Everything was dry, except for Gary's thick parka, which probably would be damp until spring.  "Wallet in bag, other stuff, too.  Kids' stuff.  But newspaper--all wet, no good.  I throw away, okay?"

Marissa choked on a chuckle, and Gary smiled the ghost of a grin, still circling his hand over Lucy's back.  "It's fine, Luigi.  Thanks."  The round little man set the pile and sack on the table, clearing away the pitcher and mostly untouched tray of toast.  He looked at Gary and Marissa, at Lucy and Bernardo, clucking his tongue.  "Good kids," he said with a smile, and took the dishes back to the kitchen.

People were starting to leave; chairs scraped back, coats were zipping up, candles were gutting out.  "It's gotta be close to midnight," Gary told Marissa.  "What are we gonna do now?"

She leaned back in her chair, shifting the dead weight in her lap.  Even in sleep, Bernardo seemed bent on making himself as small as possible; he remained curled in a tight knot, most of his body inside the huge sweatshirt.  "I suppose...in cases like this, you're supposed to call the police, or Child Services."  But even as she said it, her arm tightened around the little boy.

"Oh, man..."  Across the table, Jeff shook his head.

"What?" Gary asked.

"Look--"  Jeff shifted in his chair and pointed with a half-full glass of wine, "it's not my place to say, you'll do what you gotta do, but--you stick those kids in the system, they may never get out."

Rob nodded in agreement.  "My sister's a social worker.  She was always kind of a bleeding heart.  But now she has so many cases, she can't even keep up with the paperwork.  Kids like that," he said, gesturing at Lucy, "kids who won't talk?  They don't have time to pry it out of them.  They'll just put them in a shelter or foster care and forget about them.  It's like the Hotel California.  You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

Frustrated, Gary ran a hand through his hair and blew out a sigh.  It was possible that Lucy and Bernardo would be assigned to a case worker who'd move heaven and earth to put things right for them, but it wasn't likely, not in a city the size of Chicago.  On the other hand--what else was there to do?

But he'd promised Lucy they'd be safe.  She would see turning them over to more strangers as a betrayal, however well-intended the action might be.

"She'll run away again," Gary said softly, looking down at Lucy and knowing in his gut that he was right.  If she did that, he didn't need the paper to predict her future.  She was tough and smart, but she was far too young to get by on her own.  And her clothes, that thin coat, coupled with her faint, lilting accent--wherever she'd come from, she wasn't used to a Chicago winter, that was for sure.

"Gary?" Marissa's soft voice startled him out of his speculation.  "Why don't we take them to my place, just for tonight?  It's fairly close, and it's too late to do anything right now anyway.  Maybe in the morning we can figure something out."

The relief that Gary felt at this idea was probably, if he believed the rational part of his mind , ill-advised.  They were just prolonging the inevitable, unless they could get Lucy to tell them more about her family and where they'd come from.

And yet, there was no way he was going to say no.

"Okay, well, we gotta..."  He trailed off, a shiver running through his body as he stared at the darkness beyond the windows.  The thought of tramping back to the El through the snow was bad enough, but with the kids in tow, and Marissa's cane nearly useless in the drifted snow, it would be impossible.

"Hey, Gary."  He looked up to see Jeff and Luke standing before him.  Rob was helping Trini with her coat.

"How can we help?"

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Part 9

Nothing's ever really gone, it's all here in my mind
There among the transparent layers of time
A face will rise up to the surface, smile
and fall below the waterline
We're like waves out on the water, we touch then move away
Living in a circle not a line
Just seeing how much compassion in this world we'll find
Like nomads
     ~ Carrie Newcomer

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Bernardo didn't wake up when they slipped him into his own sweatpants, socks, and shoes.  Luke and Jeff traded off carrying the boy and the rest of the little group's gear as they all made their way to the El stop.  Gary, in his own jeans and sweater, over which he still wore the borrowed sweatshirt, was surprised at how warm he actually felt.  Marissa stayed close on his right, her arm linked through his, and Lucy, who was too big to be carried, stumbled sleepily along at his left.  Her hand in his was a weight of trust that he didn't dare think about too much.

By the time they reached the El, the snow had soaked back into his boots and his feet were getting chilly, but it was nothing compared to that earlier, numbing cold.  This was a cold that Gary could almost be grateful for, because the warmth of the El train followed right on its heels.  Once they were on the car, Marissa reclaimed Bernardo from Luke and Jeff.  The boy woke up only long enough to smile drowsily at his sister across the aisle, then settled back to sleep while Marissa whispered something in his ear.  Gary bit back a grin.  The way things were going, he strongly suspected she wasn't going be pressuring him to call the authorities any time soon.

It was a short ride to the next stop, Lucy's head lolling on his shoulder, then just two blocks to Marissa's place.  Luke and Jeff said their goodnights and tromped off through the snow, starting a snowball fight before they'd reached the end of the block.  Their good-natured shouts echoed down the empty street as Gary closed and locked the door.

The kids were settled quickly in Marissa's spare bedroom, Lucy staying awake only long enough to take off her coat and shoes before dropping onto the bed, one arm over her brother.  She was asleep before Marissa pulled a well-worn quilt over her.

Back downstairs, Marissa retrieved a pillow and some blankets from a chest under the front window.  "Are you sure you're going to be warm enough down here?"

Gary wasn't sure if he'd ever really be warm again, but he shrugged.  "Warmer than I would be if I went back outside to get home.  Thanks, Marissa."

She was fussing with setting things out on the couch, but suddenly dropped onto it, arms crossed over the pillow on her lap, and let out an exhausted sigh.  "Boy, when you make a choice, you make it good."

Gary flopped down next to her with a grunt.  He still didn't know what to think about all that, and he was far too tired to figure it out now.

"Who exactly do we have up there, Gary?"

"I wish I knew."  He told her about his suspicion that the kids hadn't been in the US, or at least not Chicago, for very long.

Marissa nodded.  "Bernardo doesn't seem to understand much English, and Lucy has an accent."

How far had those two come, really?  The implications were huge; immigration issues meant that there would be an even bigger tangle of red tape if Gary couldn't find their mom, and maybe even if he could.  "You think we're in over our heads on this one?"

"Honestly, I don't know, but I think--"

"Mama!"  The shrill cry sounded right over their heads.  "Mama, mama, please mama!"

Gary took the steps three at a time.  In the guest bedroom, he clicked on the bedside lamp.  Bernardo was sitting up, blinking, but it was Lucy who had called out.  She was lying on her stomach, sobbing again and pawing frantically at the empty air beyond the foot of the bed.

"Lucy--"  Gary dropped to his knees on the braided rug, reaching for her hands.  "Lucy, it's all right, it's only a dream, wake up, Lucy, it's over."  She squeezed his hands tight and stopped struggling, sucking in great gulps of air.  Her eyes were wide open, but unfocused.  Whatever she was seeing, it wasn't in this room.

"What's going on?" Marissa asked from the doorway.

"She's having a nightmare.  You'd better get Bernardo out of here," he told her in a low voice.  He was barely aware of her  lifting the still-not-quite-awake little boy out of the bed and carrying him into her own room.  Gary was too focused on the wild-eyed Lucy.  Her hair was coming out of Trini's neat braid in crazy wisps, standing out like a dark halo around her frightened face.

He rubbed the backs of her hands with his thumbs, trying to pull her back into reality.  "C'mon, Lucy, what is it?  It's okay now."  How many times was he going to have to say that before it was true?

She drew in a deep breath, blinked, and focused on Gary, chin trembling.  "It--it was my mama."

"You were dreaming about your mom?"

Lucy nodded, pulling herself up and scooting back to sit against the plain maple headboard.  She drew her knees in to her chest as Gary sat down on the side of the bed.

"She was in the water, under the ice, just like Nardo," Lucy whispered.  She stared at the foot of the bed as if the pond were really there, open and waiting to swallow her.  "Mama was there, and I--I couldn't save her."

Gary's heart turned over in his chest at the pure, helpless misery in her eyes.  "You wanted to help your mom, huh?"

"Diego was pulling her under.  He wouldn't let go."  Lucy's voice dropped even further, and she shivered.  Gary reached for the edge of the crumpled quilt and pulled it over her knees.

"It was only a dream," he tried to tell her.

Lucy shook her head.  "It was real.  It was just like--just like when we left."

Now they were getting somewhere, but Gary wasn't sure he liked where they were going.  It seemed like a pretty dark place.  Marissa came back into the room with a glass of water.  Lucy tried to drink, but her hands were shaking and droplets scattered over her chin and the quilt.

"You didn't want to run away from your mom, did you?" Gary asked, rescuing the glass and setting it on the night stand.

Still shivering, Lucy wrapped her arms around her knees.  "I didn't--we weren't running away from her.  It was him--I wanted her to come, but she wouldn't--she's afraid.  She won't leave him, no matter what I say, no matter what he does.  I--I wanted to help her, I wanted to save her, but she was so afraid.  I told her I was smart, and I know English.  We didn't need Diego.  I could take care of us all, like I did after Papa died, I told her that, but she wouldn't listen."  Lucy's chin trembled, and her eyes brimmed over again, even as they pleaded with Gary for understanding, for absolution.  "Why couldn't I save her?"

"Oh, Lucy," Marissa breathed.

Gary was thinking the same thing, but he couldn't breathe.  The look in those eyes--he'd seen it before--in the mirror.  To see it reflected back in the eyes of a girl, not even a teenager yet, that kind of agony, that much responsibility and pain...

He didn't have to think about what to do next.  He reached out and took her by the shoulders, looking her right in the eye.  "You listen to me, Lucy.  You did save your mom.  You have.  Just now, you did.  You did it for your brother already, and yourself, and now we're gonna help with your mom, okay?  Okay?  You just gotta trust us."

Lucy watched Gary for another moment, then nodded.  Tears ran down her cheeks, but she was too used up to really cry any more.  Gary hugged her.  "We'll find your mom.  And this Diego guy--"

As if she knew what Gary was about to ask, Marissa put a hand on his shoulder.  He looked up to see her shaking her head.  "She's had enough nightmares tonight," she whispered.

Gary gulped, then finished, "--he's not gonna bother you any more."  Lucy nodded again into his shoulder.  Her whole body had gone limp with relief and exhaustion, and she let him settle her back onto the pillow, tucking her in as if she were half her real age.

That was only fair, Gary thought; she'd had to take on the burdens of someone twice her age for who knew how long.

She was back asleep by the time Marissa kissed the top of her head.  Gary went out and turned on the hall light before shutting off the one in the spare room, just in case either of the kids woke up during the night.  What was left of it, anyway.  Marissa met him in the hallway, her expression troubled.

"Gary," she whispered, "I know you needed to say those things to her, but what if we can't find her mom?"

"We will," Gary told her.

"But--"

"We will," he repeated, "because we have to."  He glanced back through the open doorway at Lucy's outline, barely visible in the soft grey dark.  "I promised."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Gary was warm enough that night; in fact, he was downright toasty.  In his dreams, it was a dank summer afternoon by an algae-infested pond, and he was twelve years old, sweating as he picked kernels of corn from a can and threaded them onto a barbed hook.

"You sure this is gonna work?" he asked the boy sitting on the rock next to him.

Jason Miller shrugged.  "Grandpa says it's how they always caught crawdads when he was a kid.  'Course, those were Louisiana crawdads, not Chicago crawdads.  Try it over here on the other side; the drop off's steeper."

"What's crawdad taste like?" Gary asked as he clambered over the rocks to the good spot.

"Like shrimp, I guess.  They look like shrimp."

"Yeah."

Gary wrapped the free end of his line around his finger, dropped the baited hook into the water, and lay down on his stomach so that he could peer into the water.  He and Jason both had nets handy, just in case.

It was funny--everybody back in Hickory probably thought he was riding the El, going to Cubs games and movies, and doing all that city stuff, and maybe they would, later in the week--but here he was fishing for crawdads--he could probably do that in the creek behind his house.  Still, it had been really nice of Mr. and Mrs. Miller to bring him along on this visit to see their son and his family.  He'd known Jason since they were both little kids.  Jason's parents always came back to spend holidays with his grandparents, and Gary had been glad to have another kid his age just down the block.  They'd grown up with a mutual fascination for baseball and just about any other sport, so they always had plenty to do together.

"Hey, Gary!"  Jason's little brother Andy, freckled and sunburned, came running up to the pair on the rocks.  "Catch anything yet?"

"Aw, man..."  Jason, his eyes shadowed by his baseball cap, made a disgusted face.  "Get out of here, will ya?"

"But I want to see what Gary's doing."

"Well, you saw, dork, now leave.  Go play with the other babies on the swings."

"I'm not a baby anymore, dork, I'm eight.  Hey, Gary, who do you like better--R2D2 or C3P0?"

Gary and Jason exchanged a glance, and Jason rolled his eyes.  "Chewbacca," they said in unison.  Anybody knew a Wookie was better than a robot.

"Can I try?"  Andy reached for the spool of line, but Jason swatted his hand away.

"No way."

"Aw, let him try it," Gary said.  He kind of liked the little kid, though it was weird to have someone shadowing him all the time.

"Fine, but he goes over there."  Jason waved his hand at the far side of the pond.  "All his jabbering's gonna scare the crawdads away."

Gary helped Andy tie on the hook and bait it, and Andy scampered off around the pond, calling, "I'll show you guys!  I'm gonna catch the most of all."

"Yeah, sure, booger head--without a net," Jason retorted, but not so loud that his brother could hear.  He shook his head.  "You are so lucky to be an only kid," he told Gary.  "No little brothers to bug you, your own bedroom--must be rough."

"It's okay," Gary said with a shrug.  He didn't want to argue with his friend, but sometimes he didn't think having a little brother would be so bad.  At least then if he wanted to play catch, he wouldn't have to go looking all over the neighborhood for someone.

"Hey!  Hey Gary, look!"  Andy's voice piped across the pond.  Gary looked up and saw the kid waving as he balanced on a log that lay half on the rocks and half over the water.

"Shut up, turd!"

"Hey Jason?"  Gary was watching the little boy hold his arms out for balance as he ventured farther out over the water.  Even from this distance, he could see the log wobbling.  "Should he be out there?"

Jason heaved the long-suffering sigh of a put-upon older brother.  "Andy, get back off that thing before--"

But it was too late; the log tilted down toward the water and then tumbled in, throwing Andy into the pond as well.  Gary was up and running before the splash was done, unwrapping the fishing line from his finger as he sprinted around the pond.  He heard Jason behind him, but Gary was faster, always had been.  He got there first, and didn't stop to look for Andy, just dove off the rocks where the log had been.

He wasn't an idiot; he dove in at an angle, letting his arms lead him out to the deeper water.  He'd just opened his eyes, trying to spot Andy in the murky depths, when something brushed his side--probably just a fish, but it startled Gary, and he jerked away from it too quickly, grazing his temple against a rock.

Wincing in pain, he almost missed the flash of blond hair that went by, but when he reached for it, it was gone.  He was running out of breath, he had to get to the surface--but he wasn't sure anymore where the surface was.  Darkness and water were everywhere; he kicked away, he didn't know in which direction, and got his feet tangled in the thick weeds.  He couldn't get free, he reached down to tear the ropey plants away, but he was running out of air and there were spots in front of his eyes.  He opened his mouth to call for help and the water rushed in and he knew he'd be lost down there forever, trapped, he'd be under the ice when winter came and no one would be there to help Lucy and Bernardo--they'd join him one day...

"No--"

Gary jolted awake, gasping for air.  It took a moment to remember where he was, and why.  He wasn't drowning, he wasn't even wet, but the blankets were tangled around his legs and he was sitting not on Marissa's couch, but on the floor.

He shook his head, rubbed his face, ran a hand through his hair.  Awake now, he could see that it was still very early; the street outside the front window was quiet, the dark sky lightened by the pink tinge that snow in cities reflects back to the clouds.  Gary put one elbow on the couch and one on the coffee table, intending to pull himself up and kick off the blankets, when he remembered the first part of his dream, and dropped back to the floor with a thump.

It had been real.

Not the drowning part; he'd never gotten that far.  But the rest of it, the summer week in Chicago with his neighbors' grandkids, Jason and Andy, crawdad fishing--in the same pond he'd fished Lucy and Bernardo out of tonight--and Andy, tumbling off the log into the murky water.

All that had been real; the dream had only veered from reality when it came to what happened after Andy had fallen.

Gary had made it to the rocks, had poised for the dive through the algae bloom; even now he could remember sucking in a breath and squeezing his eyes shut...

...and then hands had grabbed him from behind and pulled him off the rock.

"Don't be stupid, kid," a gruff voice said, and a man, not as old as Mr. Miller but older than Gary's dad, knelt on the rocks, reached into the water, nowhere near where Gary would have landed had he made the dive, and pulled Andy out of the pond by his overall straps.  Sputtering and coughing, the little boy was scared, but otherwise all right.

"Thanks, Mister," Jason said, and then proceeded to chew out his little brother for the stunt he'd pulled.  "Geez, Andy, how could you be such a moron?  Mom's gonna kill you!"

"You were supposed to be watching me!"

The man put a hand on Gary's shoulder, drawing his attention away from the bickering brothers.  Gary could recall sharp blue eyes, but the rest of the face was fuzzy in his memory.  "Next time you decide to save somebody," the man told Gary sternly, "look for him before you jump."

Wide-eyed, Gary nodded.  "Thanks."

The man's face softened into a smile.  "You're a good kid, Gary Hobson."  He strode off through the trees, leaving Gary gaping.

"Hey, we better go home," said Jason.

"Yeah--do you know that guy?"  Gary pointed toward the trees, but the man was no longer in sight.

Jason shrugged.  "Uh-uh."

"Andy?"

"Nope."

Gary frowned.  "Then how'd he know my name?"

"I dunno."  Jason pushed his brother onto the path around the pond, prodding him ahead of the older boys.  "He was kinda spooky, wasn't he?  I bet he was some kinda bum."

"What are you talking about?"  Aside from knowing his name, the old guy had seemed merely helpful.

"Didn't you see his hands?  Even after he got Andy out of the water, they were still dirty."

And back then, Gary had shrugged that off; in fact, except for the faint memories of the park's layout that had niggled at his brain all day, he'd pretty much forgotten the entire incident.  But now--well, pond water wouldn't wash away ink stains...

He shook his head as he untangled his legs from the blankets.  Now it was all coming back to him, clear as day: Jason, Andy, crawdads, and the man who, if Gary's dream was any indication, might have saved Gary's life by keeping him out of the pond.

It wasn't possible, was it?  It couldn't have been--

But the old man had known his name.

Anything can happen...

...Things happen for a reason...

Gary stretched back out on the couch, thoughts and memories whirling through his befuddled brain.  Too tired to work it all out, he slipped back into sleep, wondering if he really could remember a rolled-up newspaper in the man's back pocket, or if that mental picture was just his exhausted mind playing tricks on him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Part 10

You were born
to nomads
though you didn't
want to be...
another town
another round
in a world
that made you
dizzy
     ~ Odilia Galván Rodríguez

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The meow came far too early.  It was also too close to Gary's ear.

When he blinked against the first dim rays of morning sun, he moved the arm that had been covering his face down to his chest.  Immediately his hand was licked by a sandpaper tongue.

"Oh for crying out loud," Gary muttered.  As awareness dawned, he could feel the weight of the cat on his stomach, and the force of its steely stare.  He let his hand flop over the edge of the couch, where another, bigger slap of wet tongue went to work on the spots the cat had missed.

"Cut it out, Reilly."  Taking that as an invitation, the guide dog plopped his head onto Gary's chest, and now, in his half-awake state, Gary had to deal with two stares.  He blinked his eyes fully open...

Make that three.

Three stares and a giggle.

"Good morning, Bernardo."

Bright black eyes twinkling under long dark lashes, the little boy broke into a wide grin.  "Is dat su gato? "

"I told you, that's a cat."  Lucy's voice carried from the kitchen.

Gary groaned as he sat up.  The few hours of sleep he'd had weren't nearly enough to ease his stiffness and aches from the night before.  He picked up the cat under its front legs and held it out to Bernardo.  "You want it?"

The boy giggled again and ran back into the kitchen, Reilly on his heels.  Cat meowed.

"Looks like you're stuck with me, buddy," Gary told it.  He swung his feet to the floor, letting the tabby wriggle out of his hands.  Cat, too, headed for the kitchen.  "Must be where all the action is."  From the smells wafting through the first floor, there were definitely interesting things going on in there, and Gary's stomach rumbled at the scents of coffee and bacon.

Retrieving the paper from the foot of the couch, he padded into the kitchen.  Marissa and both children were already dressed; Marissa was busy cooking while Lucy set the table and Bernardo played with the animals on the floor.

"Good morning, Gary.  Hungry?"

"Well, yeah."  Gary goggled blearily at the eggs she was scrambling.  Somehow he'd never pictured Marissa as the big breakfast type.  "Do you always eat like this?"

"Not at 6:30 in the morning, but I thought we could all use a little sustenance after last night."

There was more than a night's worth of hunger to make up for, Gary thought, noting again how thin both children were.  Lucy looked smaller than ever without that useless trench coat covering her up.  Neither her red cardigan nor the wide-collared, blue-checked shirt she wore under it reached her wrists, and yet they both hung loosely on her frame.  The braid was gone, but her hair was neatly pinned back from her face with a couple of barrettes.

Over in the corner, Bernardo sat with his back against Reilly's bulk, feet spread wide, teasing the cat with a twist tie from the bread.  He batted it back and forth between his hands on the tile floor while Cat tried to pin it down with a paw.  Funny, the animal had never seemed much interested in pet games before.  Gary opened his mouth to say something, then shrugged.  Might as well let them have their fun.  At that moment, Cat spared a glance over its shoulder, and if he hadn't known better Gary would have sworn the thing was winking at him.  Shaking his head, he turned his attention back to the meal preparations.  He listened to Marissa cheerfully telling Lucy where to find the silverware, then asked, "Are you always this chipper at 6:30 in the morning?"

Spatula poised over the skillet, Marissa cocked her head to one side, grinned, and then nodded.  "Yes."

"Sadist."  Gary dropped into the closest chair.

She chuckled.  "How'd you sleep?"

"Well, uh--"  He ran a hand through his hair.  "We're gonna need to talk about that."

Marissa raised one eyebrow, but didn't press him any further.

The twist tie skittered under the table.  Scooting over to retrieve it, Bernardo stared up at Gary for a moment, then fired off a question in Spanish.  Lucy, who was passing forks around the table, shook her head.  "No.  I already told you that last night."  He tried another one, this time while watching Marissa.  "I'm not going to ask her.  You ask her yourself.  In English, Nardo."

Sidling up to Marissa, Bernardo tugged on the hem of her sweater.  "How do you know what's to cook?"

Marissa smiled down at him.  "I'm not sure what you mean."

"He wants to know how you can cook breakfast when you can't see the food and the pans and stuff," Lucy explained.

"Oh, that's easy.  I feel things.  Here, close your eyes."  Once she'd demonstrated, Bernardo mimicked her.  "Hold out your hand--no peeking."  Marissa placed an egg in his palm.  "What's that?"

"Huevo!"

"Nardo..."

Bernardo turned his sister, all wide-eyed innocence.  "Don't know the word, Lucy."

She sighed.  "Egg.  That's a simple one.  I can't believe you forgot it."

Gary grinned at her worldly, grown-up tone.  "Kids, huh?" he asked her with a wink, but she ignored him, concentrating instead on finishing her task, while Marissa tried to explain Braille labels to Bernardo.

The last fork in place, Lucy didn't seem to know what to do with herself.  She watched Marissa, looked out the window, drifted over to pet a grateful Reilly--all while assiduously avoiding eye contact with Gary.  Was there anything in the world more uncomfortable than an embarrassed pre-teen?   She didn't need to worry, however; he didn't plan on bringing up last night just yet.  Right now, it was nice to pretend, for a few minutes at least, that all this was perfectly normal.

Gary unrolled and was about to open the paper when the front page photo caught his eye.  Bernardo saw it, too; he hurried over from the range, egg still in hand.

"Frog!  From the--the--from yesterday, Lucy, recuerda?"

"From the park," Lucy corrected.  Gary held up the paper so she, too, could see the photos of Jeff's snow sculptures that graced the Sun-Times, along with the headline, "Gallery in White."  A shiver ran through Lucy's body, so strong that Gary could see it.  She pressed her lips together and nodded, then got up to help Marissa butter toast, taking the egg from Bernardo's hand as she did so.

"Pretty cool, huh?" Gary asked Bernardo.  "You like the robot?"   The boy nodded with a wide, toothy grin when he saw what Gary was pointing at.

"Okay, let's eat."  Marissa brought plates of bacon and toast to the table.

Gary jumped up.  "Sit down, I got the eggs."  This was more food than he'd had for breakfast in quite a while--most days, if he was lucky, he had time for a muffin or a bagel, and--oh yeah, coffee.  Leaving the eggs for the moment, he grabbed the pot to fill Marissa's cup, and his own.  When he turned from the counter he stared in surprise--Bernardo, though gazing longingly at the food, was backing out the door.

"Hey, where you going, big guy?  It's time to eat."  But the boy stayed in the doorway, glued to his spot.

"What is it?" asked Marissa.

Lucy sighed.  "He's forgotten about eating with grownups."

"What?"  Gary frowned in confusion as he poured the coffee, while Lucy walked around the table and took her brother by the hand.  She led him to an empty chair and said something in Spanish, softly, but Gary caught his own name, and Marissa's, and, again, like a specter that wouldn't leave those kids alone, "Diego".

Bernardo, still watching the adults apprehensively, slid into the chair, and Lucy explained, "Diego never let us eat with him and Mama.  He said kids needed to be not seen and not heard, and that he saw too much of us as it was."  Doling out eggs, Gary froze, spatula suspended in mid-air.  The matter-of-fact tone with which she related it was worse than the words themselves.  "We had to wait until he was finished, and then Mama would feed us when he left.  But she wouldn't eat with us.  He didn't like that."  She shrugged.  "Nardo is little.  He just forgot that sometimes people eat together.  I told him you wouldn't yell at him or kick him or anything if he sat at the table at the same time as you guys."

Marissa sucked in her breath and made a strangled, choking sound that brought Gary back to the present.  He snuck a glance at his horrified friend, and cleared his throat.  Resumed his task as though nothing had been said, as though he didn't want to find this guy Diego and strangle him with his bare hands already.  He tried to match the girl's calm tone.  "You're right, Lucy, we wouldn't."

Regaining her composure, Marissa uncurled her fingers from the edge of the table.  Gary patted her shoulder surreptitiously as he moved to set the empty frying pan on the counter.  They were in this together, and they were more than in over their heads, but they had to keep their anger from the kids.  They'd seen too much of that already.

"We want you here--both of you," Marissa said, her voice carrying only the slightest edge.  "It's wonderful to have such good company for breakfast."

Gary sat back down, his appetite diminished.  Still, out of force of habit, he picked up his fork, aiming for the eggs, until he realized that no one else at the table had moved.  Lucy folded her hands, and Bernardo followed suit.

"Oh, yeah."  Gary, too, folded his hands.  "Grace," he muttered, just in case Marissa wasn't picking it up.

Well, if she hadn't been, she would have a moment later, when Lucy made the sign of the cross.  "In the name of the Father..."  Her brother watched her, imitating the motions and echoing her a syllable or two behind.  It was the traditional Catholic mealtime prayer:  "Bless us, oh Lord, and these your gifts..."

Though Gary sat politely, hands folded, head bowed, he couldn't help juxtaposing the image of these kids, faithfully thanking God for whatever food they got, with the thought of them being told, in words and actions, that they weren't worth it.  Maybe Marissa was thinking the same thing; she chewed on her lip throughout the short prayer, though she joined in on the "Amen."  Gary echoed it as another thought occurred to him--maybe this was what made it bearable at all.  Lucy and Bernardo crossed themselves again, and then began eating, Bernardo waiting until Lucy took a bite and nodded at him.

Once he got started, though, there was no stopping him.  He snarfed down half his eggs in the time it took Gary to swallow his first drink of coffee, and asked for more toast before his sister had jam on hers.  Bernardo managed to get strawberry preserves on the table, himself, and the dog, in that order, as he insisted on topping his toast himself.  Lucy scowled at the mess until Gary joined in Bernardo's laughter at Reilly, who was trying desperately to lick all the jam off his nose, and they all relaxed a little.  Long enough to finish breakfast, anyway.

Eating at the speed of sound meant that Bernardo finished before anyone else.  Anxious to speak to Lucy and get some details, Gary took him into the living room, turned on the tiny television that Marissa kept for guests and for the few programs she listened to, and, lucky day, stumbled onto a show about a blue cartoon dog and a real human.  "Blue's Clues!" Bernardo exclaimed, and settled happily onto the couch, still licking jam off his fingers.  Cat and Reilly weren't far behind.

"Scavengers," Gary muttered as he stepped over them on his way back to the kitchen.  The sun was finally coming through the windows as it put in a late appearance, brightening the room.  Lucy met his eyes once, then quickly stared back down at her nearly-empty plate.  Though she'd eaten as much as her brother, she'd left hardly any sign of having been at the table--no crumbs, no spills, no smears.  Here was a kid who was used to disappearing.

"Hey, uh, Lucy, how old are you?" he asked, feigning a casual tone as he refilled his coffee and sat back down.

"Eleven," she said, a cautious note in her voice.  "I'll be twelve in March."

That would put her in, what--fifth grade?  Sixth?  When Gary had been that age, his biggest worries had been his batting average and math homework.  Well, that and...and crawdad fishing, he thought, remembering the dream he'd had last night.

Marissa picked up the ball.  "Where are you from?"

"From?"  Lucy didn't look up; she traced patterns with her fork in the bit of jam and eggy goo left on her plate.

"Where did you live before you came to Chicago?"

"Lots of places...um, Texas, and Oklahoma, and--"  Her frown deepened.  "Missouri."

"What about before you came to the United States?" Marissa asked.  Her own meal finished, she sat with both hands folded in her lap, head held high in the same pose she used when she was about to grill Gary over something.  To his surprise, though, the question unleashed a Lucy they hadn't known existed.

"Oh!"  She beamed at them both, the smile suffusing her face with warm light; her eyes grew unfocused and dreamy.  "I was born in La Union.  In El Salvador," she added, when neither Gary nor Marissa reacted.  "So was Nardo, but I don't think he remembers.  He was only two when we left."

Gary blinked.  "That's a long way from Chicago."  Lucy met his eyes, and the light in her face dimmed.  She nodded.

"Lucy," Marissa asked, "can you tell us about it?  Tell us how you got here."

"I--I don't know how..."

"Make it like a story--like one of your books."

Gary, who thought it might be best to keep it in safe territory at first, added, "Tell us about El Salvador.  I've never been there."

"It is warm," Lucy said, and she rubbed her arms and closed her eyes.  Her voice drifted into a stronger accent, musical and soft.  "It is warm, and there are mountains, and the sea, and trees.  It's so green, and the clouds would come and sit on  hills like a blanket, y a veces los domingos Papá nos tomaría a la playa al juego en las ondas... "

She didn't seem to realize she'd slipped into Spanish.  It didn't even matter to Gary.  She was talking about home, and she was happy, even if it was only for a moment.  He wasn't going to break the spell she was using to cocoon herself in a little bit of comfort.

"But it was poor."  Switching back to English with an ease that would have made Gary's high school Spanish teacher envious, she shook her head and traced the raised flowers along the rim of her plate with one finger.  "Everyone was poor.  The hurricane came, and it knocked down all the trees in the coffee plantation.  Papa and Mama couldn't find work.  So when Uncle Luis wrote from Chicago, Papa decided to bring us here.  I didn't want to come.  I liked my friends and my school."  She met Gary's eyes for a brief second, then looked down again.  "That's where I first learned English, you know."

"You must have had a great teacher.  You speak better English than some adults around here."

"Señora Ernesto said I was the best in the whole class," Lucy said, without pride or guile.  "She said I was smart.  But Papa said there would be better schools here, and we would be able to go to school for longer than he had.  Mama never went to school at all.  They wanted a better life for us."  She blinked back tears.  "Papa brought us here because he loved us."

Marissa reached over and squeezed Lucy's hand.  "How could he help loving you, Lucy?  You're a wonderful girl, smart and brave and kind."  Lucy stared at Marissa as if she'd just been told that the sky was purple and the ocean red.  She shook her head and opened her mouth, but Gary jumped in.

"You gotta trust Marissa," he told Lucy.  "She's always right.  Just ask her."

Marissa turned to him in mock indignation.  "Gary, I do not think I'm always right."

"Well, you are," Gary said with a slightly wicked smile.  "Most of the time."  Unfortunately, their lighthearted teasing didn't bring back the smile Gary'd been hoping for.  Lucy looked from one to another, confused.

"It's okay," Gary assured her.  They'd better get on with it, then.  "So you came here."

She shook her head.  "We didn't have enough money to get all the way to Chicago at first, so we worked on the farms--well, I did in the summer."

Gary wondered about that.  He'd had friends who had detasseled corn; he'd even done it himself for a grand total of two weeks before the heat, the bugs, and the sharp edges of the corn leaves had convinced him that a paper route, while less lucrative financially, was still a better job.  But he'd been fourteen at the time.  Was it really legal to have kids Lucy's age--heck, she couldn't have been more than ten--doing that kind of labor?  Her next words convinced him that it couldn't have been.

"Some of the other kids, they'd work all the time, not just in summers, but Papa always had me go to school."  Her head nodded slightly as she said this, as if to say that she agreed with her father's decision.  "He made me practice English all summer, too, and wherever we were, he'd find a library and let me spend Saturdays there.  He said that if I knew the language here, people would listen to me.  They would take notice.  Some of the teachers did, sometimes.  They liked it that I always knew the lessons.  Mrs. Marchisi, my teacher in Texas, even gave me Anne of Green Gables."  Lucy's expression slid into wistfulness.  "I wanted to read the rest of them, but then we had to move.  I loved Anne..."

Marissa smiled.  "Me too.  Isn't it great when she breaks the slate over Gilbert's head?"

"Yes."  But Lucy's plaintive smile had disappeared.  "I left my book at...at..."  She turned to Gary.  "Do you think Mama will bring it to me, when you find her?"

"I don't know.  I'll try, okay?"  She nodded, and Gary brought the conversation back to the main point with a blunt question.  "Lucy, what happened to your father?"

Her face closed over.  She bit her lip, and looked down at her plate.  "The last farm we worked at, in Missouri...he got sick.  There wasn't money for a doctor, he said.  He said he would be okay.  But then he got more sick, and they took him to the hospital, and he--he died."  Lucy waged a battle for control, gulping in air and squeezing handfuls of her linen napkin.  She let out her breath and continued, with more steel in her voice than Gary had thought a kid could muster.  "When they took him to the hospital, I had to stay with Nardo, but I wanted to go and help Papa.  He told me to--to be a big girl, and to take care of the family.  He said that we still were going to Chicago."  Her voice had dropped to a whisper.  "Mama didn't know how to talk to the doctors.  I could have--"  She gulped, and stared at Gary.  "Do you think if I had been there, I could have helped him?"

Gary didn't know what the situation had been exactly, and he didn't care.  All he wanted was for this girl to stop blaming herself for rotten luck, and for the screwups made by the adults in her life.  He reached for her hand, still clenching the napkin.  Her fingers uncurled under his own as he told her, "The thing about doctors, Lucy, is that they can do what they need to do without a lot of talking.  They can usually figure out what's wrong with someone with just a couple tests.  I'm sure they did everything they could for your father, and nothing you did could have changed it."

She searched Gary's eyes, her own wide.  "Really?"

"Really," Marissa told her firmly while Gary nodded.  "This time it's Gary who's right.  But still," she added, her voice losing its edge, "it must have been very hard for you to lose your Papa like that."

Lucy sniffed, pulled her hand out from under Gary's, and brushed it over her eyes.  "Mama had to ask people for money so we could wear nice clothes to his funeral.  Papa wouldn't have liked that, but Mama said we had to do what was right by him and by the church."  She recited all this carefully, controlled, and Gary knew there wasn't going to be a scene like the one the night before.  Then, she'd been exhausted, all her defenses down.  Now she was in control again, the brave strong girl her papa had left in charge.  Still, Marissa's hand slid across the table again to squeeze Lucy's, and this time she didn't let go.

Lucy swiped at her eyes one more time with her free hand.  "After that, we had to work some more, both Mama and I, until we had enough money to come here.  All summer.  All over the place.  But we had to come; it was what Papa wanted, and there was no place else to go.  Uncle Luis lived here--Mama had the envelope with his address from his last letter.  We walked there from the bus station."  Her eyes went wide at the memory.  "I'd never walked so far and still been in a city, never.  The buildings are so tall, and so many people.  I thought it must be as big as San Salvador.  Now I know it's even bigger than that.  And that all the people...not many of them are..."  She drew in a deep breath, and Gary could hardly hear her when she finished.  "Not many of them are like you guys."

Gary wondered just how far the little family had walked.  It could have been a very long way, and if Lucy's mom didn't speak English, that meant the girl would have been in charge of asking for directions, leading the way through a completely foreign city.  Most adults would cringe at the prospect of shouldering of such a responsibility.  No wonder Lucy'd thought she needed to save her mother, too.

"When we got there, Uncle Luis wasn't living in the apartment his letter came from.  Nobody knew where he'd gone.  Mama sat down in the hall of that apartment building and cried and cried.  She just sat on our suitcase and held Nardo and cried for hours, it seemed like.  I told her it would be all right.  I told her I would get a job here, too, until we could find Uncle Luis, but she said this was the city, and I couldn't work here."  She glanced up at Gary, and the dark shadows were back in her eyes.  "We were still in the lobby of that apartment building when he found us."

The venom and despair in that simple, two-letter pronoun stiffened Gary's own spine.  "You mean the man you were talking about last night.  Diego?"

Lucy nodded.  "He was the manager, but he lied and told Mama at first that he owned the building.  I think he liked Mama, he thought she was pretty.  She is, she's really pretty, when she's not tired.  But she'd been crying all day; I don't know why he thought she was pretty then.  He said there was a place we could stay.  It was his apartment.

"At first he was nice.  He made Nardo and me be quiet all the time, but he let me go to school--he even went to sign me up, because Mama couldn't.  She was so afraid because she didn't speak English, you know, and Papa had always told her she should learn, and she'd always laughed at him.  Diego told Mama she wouldn't have to get a job if she helped him with the apartments.  Help," Lucy spat, with a cynicism that was as far from the normal kid's as her sense of responsibility.  "She did all the work, all of it.  He even tried to make her fix the plumbing.  Mama knows sewing and coffee beans and corn, not plumbing!  When she made mistakes, he would yell at her, and sometimes he...he..."  Lucy squeezed her eyes shut and gulped in air.

"Diego hit your mom, didn't he?" Marissa asked softly.

Lucy choked back a little sob.  "Yes.  I tried to tell her we should go look for Uncle Luis.  I even tried to use the phone books and the computer at school to find him.  I knew that was what Papa wanted, that was why he brought us here.  He wanted us to come to Chicago, but not...not like this."

A dream, and a simple one at that, turned into a nightmare.  Gary wished he could have been there, wished anyone could have been there, to stop any of the wrong turns that had led to this situation.

"What else did he do, Lucy?"  There was a slight, shaky edge in Marissa's voice.  "Did he ever hurt you?"

Lucy's glance flitted over at Marissa's face, then Gary's.  There was something she couldn't come right out and say, not just yet.  "I stopped going to school.  I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't--I couldn't protect them if I was at school."

"Them?"  Gary tried to keep his tone careful, gentle, but he didn't quite succeed.  "You mean he hit your brother?"

"He--he usually didn't hit.  He usually just yelled at us.  But sometimes..."  She gulped.  "He said that if we ever told, he would send us all out on the street.  Afterwards, he would say he was sorry, but that was a worthless word.  Papa told me you shouldn't say anything you don't mean, and Diego didn't mean it, he never meant it.  I know, because he would always do it again."  Lucy drew in a deep breath.  "Father Estevez, at our church in La Union, always said God wants us to love everyone.  I tried to be a good girl and be grateful, like Mama said, but--but I couldn't.  I hate him."

Gary was pretty sure that the good Father hadn't intended to include anyone as evil as Diego in his dictum.  If he had, well, then the man was a whole lot more forgiving than Gary ever would be.

"You don't have to love someone who hurts you," Marissa told Lucy.  "That isn't what Father Estevez meant.  God didn't want you to get hurt.  You wouldn't be here right now if that was true."  Lucy squirmed in her seat.

Still fuming, still unable to believe that their mother hadn't tried harder to protect her kids, Gary asked, "What made you run away?"

At that, Lucy sighed, her shoulders drooping under the weight of memory.  "Mama always told us to stay out of the way if we could, but...one time, it was right after Christmas, he wanted a beer, and he told Nardo to get it.  Nardo was coloring on the floor, and he didn't hear.  Diego kicked him, hard..."  Lucy sucked in a breath.  Clutching at Marissa's hand like a lifeline, her other arm wrapped around her stomach, she rocked in her seat, back and forth, back and forth.  "It wasn't fair.  Bernardo's too little!  So I stepped in the way when he tried to do it again.  I told him if he wanted to kick and hit, he should do it to me, because at least I had the guts to stand up to him, and I was old enough to take it!"

Gary wanted her to stop.  He didn't want to hear anymore.  He had to, but--

He really didn't want to.

Over on his left, Marissa's free hand was covering her mouth, trying to hold in her outrage.

Unlike the adults, Lucy wasn't crumbling.  If anything, she looked fiercer than ever, her anger lending strength, her eyes flashing cold, cold light.  "So he gave it to me.  He hit me.  And Mama--Mama tried to stop him, and he turned on her.  And that's when I knew."

She stopped, head bowed, silent.

"Lucy?  What did you know?"

When she looked up at Gary again, the anger was gone, and all that was left was the cold, terrible weight of responsibility.  "I knew that if we stayed it would only get worse.  When he left to drink at the bar, I told Mama we should leave, but she wouldn't, she was too afraid.  She said he would find us and send us back to El Salvador, or have us put in jail.  He told her all kinds of things about immigration people and the police, and I think they were mostly lies, but she believed them."

"So," Gary said, pushing the words past his anger, "you ran away."

Lucy sighed and nodded, her eyes bleak.  "Two days later."

Gary glanced out the window over the sink, at the cold, snowy yard.  Up until yesterday, they'd only had a few inches of snow all season.  There was no way Lucy could have known what to expect from a Chicago winter.  "That means you've been on your own since..."

"New Year's Eve."  Lucy looked so tired, almost as tired as she had last night, and Gary hated to keep pressing her to talk about this.  But how else was he supposed to help her?

"There were people over, Diego's friends, and he told us to keep out of the way.  I waited until they were good and drunk, and then I took--I took some of his money.  Not a lot.  I'm not dumb.  If he'd noticed, he would have blamed Mama, and--but I took it from his sock drawer, where he kept extra for beer and cigarettes.  I thought--I thought by the time he noticed it, I would have found Uncle Luis, and he'd help us pay it back.  And I tried, we stayed at the library every night, until the guard found us and kicked us out a couple days ago, and I looked in all the phone books, but he isn't there."

"And you didn't tell your mother you were leaving?" Marissa asked gently.

Lucy shook her head.  "She wouldn't have come.  I thought that if we left, maybe it would be easier for her, maybe Diego wouldn't have us to get mad at, and he wouldn't be so mean.  But now I think--I think he's not going to get any less mean.  I think he'll always hurt Mama."  Her voice broke, and hopelessness leaked through the cracks.  "He's hurting her now, and I don't know what to do."

Her face a mirror of the anger and sorrow Gary himself felt, Marissa got up and stood next to Lucy, putting an arm around the girl's shoulders.  Lucy blinked back tears at the contact, but didn't relax.

Elbows on the table, Gary leaned forward, sought and held her gaze, making sure she saw how deeply he meant what he was about to say.  "The first thing, Lucy, is that you know that you're safe.  He's not going to touch you again.  No matter what we have to do.  I don't know exactly what is going to happen, but we will make sure that happens, okay?  He had no right to hurt you, to hurt any of you, and you were very brave to stand up to him."

She shook her head fiercely.  "I wasn't brave."  She turned her face into Marissa's side.  "I left my mama with him."

"No, no, no, Lucy."  Marissa turned and pulled the girl in close.  "You did what you had to do, and it was a *very* brave thing.  Gary told you last night, remember?  You got your brother away, and because you did, you met us, and now we can find a way to help your mom."

Lucy turned her face to look at Gary, her eyes wet.  "You said we'd find her."

Gary nodded.  "We will."

"And then what will happen?"

"I don't know, Lucy."  Gary reached to the counter behind him and pulled a tissue from the box there, offering it to Lucy.  "But we'll do everything we can to help you."

Sniffling into the tissue, she pulled away from Marissa.  "I want Mama, and I--I want--"

It was almost as if she didn't dare say it.  Gary raised an eyebrow and forced the corners of his mouth up, trying to encourage her with a smile.

"I want to go to school again."

At that, Gary really did smile, a small but genuine grin, just like the one he saw on Marissa's face.  "I think we can help with that, too."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Part 11

Everything that's done gets done in a circle
Everything that's hidden gets brought to the light
When wisdom speaks, close your mouth and listen
When something's wrong make it right
We shall surely be known forever by the tracks we leave
     ~ Carrie Newcomer

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The tension broken, Marissa patted Lucy on the shoulder.  "Tell us your mom's name, your last name, and where Diego's apartment was."  Lucy did so, spelling out the names while Gary wrote everything down.  Not that he would have trouble remembering most of it.  Inez Savaria--like music.  Diego Linares--in Gary's mind, those two words were carved in ice.  A south side address, a run down neighborhood, a cold, colorless place to raise two kids.  The pencil broke when Gary stamped a frustrated period at the end of the street name.

Marissa cleared her throat.  "Lucy, I need you to go sit with your brother.  Gary and I have to talk.  We're not trying to hurt you or shut you out," she explained gently, "but we have to decide what to do next."

"But--"  Lucy looked from one to the other, brow furrowed.  "I think I should get a chance to decide.  It's my life."

And she'd fought tooth and claw to hang onto it.  Gary wondered what Marissa was up to, but he let her play it out.

"You're right.  We won't decide anything without talking to you first, but Lucy, we do have to talk, grownup to grownup, before anything can happen.  Will you go in and see what your brother's up to?"

Lucy finally nodded, wary, but willing, for now, to trust them.  Gary wondered just how long it had been since she'd been able to trust anyone.  "Okay."

"Just give us a few minutes," said Marissa, and dropped into her chair as Lucy left the room.

Gary was too overwhelmed to try to suss out Marissa's reasoning on his own.  She sat with her elbow on the table, chin cupped in her hand.  "My God, Gary," she sighed when the soft rise and fall of the children's voices drifted in from the living room.

"Yeah."  It was all he knew to say.  There was really nothing else that could be said; no way to sum up the history that Lucy had just laid out for them.  Gary leaned back against the counter.  "She teared up a little bit here and there, but for the most part that kid was as cool as an expert witness in court."

"Which is part of why I wanted to get her out of here for a couple of minutes," Marissa explained.  "After everything she's had to carry, she needs to know she doesn't always have to be the adult.  She needs a chance to be a kid."

"What if that chance has passed her by, though?"  Gary twirled the pencil in his fingers, staring at the information he'd jotted on the pad of paper.  "I mean, it's not like we can take away what's happened to her."

"No, but hopefully we can give her the chance to set it aside for a while."  Marissa got up and started carrying dishes from the table to the sink.  "She has to deal with it, and both those kids are deeply traumatized, but--well, once in a while we all have to let go our burdens and let someone else be in charge."

"Yeah."  Gary opened three different drawers before he found the towels.  "So now we find her mom..."

"What is it?"  Marissa had caught the hesitation in his voice.

"It's just--how could a mother let that happen to her kids?  I mean, not that my dad ever would have done anything like that, but if he'd tried, I know my mom would have hauled me out of Hickory in a heartbeat."

Flashing a rueful smile, Marissa handed him a plate to dry.  "Your mom probably would have laid Bernie flat out on the floor with an uppercut to the jaw."  Her smile faded as she added, "But Inez Savaria isn't your mom.  She's all alone, she thinks she has to rely on this--this vulture for everything.  It sounds as if he's convinced her that the sky will fall in on her if she walks away from him.  I'm sure she's scared to death, Gary, and that fear can be paralyzing."

"I think it's clean."  Gary took the spoon Marissa had been scrubbing within an inch of its life from her hand.  "Okay.  I get it.  And I do feel sorry for her.  I just don't know how she could miss what was happening to her own kids."

"Maybe because it was happening to her, too."  Silverware clattered into the basket and Marissa reached for the sprayer to rinse them off.

"What a mess," Gary muttered.  He dried all the forks and knives at once, but put them away carefully in their appointed spots, so Marissa would be able to find them again.  "So now we go get Inez."

"Well...yes.  But maybe we need to think it through first--I mean, you can't just go charging in there like St. George after a dragon."

"Why the hell not?"

"Well, for one thing, you don't have a horse."

"Ha."  Gary couldn't even make it sound like a laugh.

"She may not even be there.  No matter how scared she is, she has to want them back.  And we don't know how dangerous this man truly is."

It was quiet for a moment, except for the clinking of glasses in the soapy water and the faint squeak of the towel against china.  The sun glinted off the snow outside the window, the bright, sharp light casting blue shadows of the neighbor's fence.  It was going to be a cold day.  Thank goodness those kids were in the next room, and not hanging out in another alley somewhere.

"Gary?"

"Hmm?"

"What did you mean about last night?  When you said you wanted to talk to me about how you'd slept?"

"Oh."  In the rush of new information, he'd nearly forgotten his dream, and what he'd remembered afterward.  He outlined it for Marissa, both versions.

"But Gary, that would mean--"  Her hands paused in the middle of scrubbing the fry pan; her eyes widened in wonder.  "Lucius Snow saved your life!"

"It--uh--kinda seems that way, maybe."

"Maybe?  He knew your name, you remember the ink stains on his fingers, and it was the same pond we were at last night?  You're sure?"

"Yeah, but--doesn't that strike you as really crazy?  I mean, what are the chances?"

"Maybe it wasn't chance at all.  Look, you said you knew the Millers because their grandparents lived near you in Hickory?  Why did they like you so much?"

"I--I don't know."  Gary shrugged.  "Mrs. Miller always told me I was a good kid.  I shoveled their walks and stuff, and there was one time I found her husband's medicine on the street and brought it to her."  Marissa's mouth opened; she was about to make some kind of point, so he quickly added, "I was only in it for the cookies, though.  She made the best chocolate chip oatmeal in the county."

Ignoring the last bit, Marissa pointed a soapy finger in Gary's direction.  "You set yourself up for it.  All of it."

"What are you talking about?"

"You were who you are--the kind of person you are--a long time before that paper showed up at your doorstep."  Marissa finished washing the pan with a knowing smile.  "If you hadn't been so kind to the Millers, you wouldn't have been here in Chicago when Andy fell in that pond."

Gary took the skillet, rinsed it, and started to dry.  "Yeah, but Snow would have fished him out."

"Maybe, maybe not.  According to your dream, he was there to save your life, at least as much as Andy's.  If you hadn't been there at all, Gary, who knows?  Maybe the paper would have been passed on to someone else."

Dropping the pan on the counter with a rattle that made Marissa jump, Gary stared at his friend with his mouth half-open.  "You don't seriously think he did this to me.  What, you think I'm gonna wish this on someone else when I--when I--"

"That won't be for a long time," Marissa told him firmly.  "And no, I don't think he wished it on you.  But what if there had been no Lucius Snow that day?  What if he'd made some other choice with how he used the paper?  Where would you be then?  And where would all the people you've saved be?"

Tossing the damp towel over his shoulder, Gary leaned against the counter with a sigh, his back to the window.  "Well, I guess somebody else would have--"

"No."  Marissa slapped a hand on the edge of the sink, sending up a little spray of water.  "Somebody else would have done it differently, and you, and those of us who owe our lives to you, Gary, we'd all be--well, things would be a whole lot different.  This is what I've been trying to tell you since yesterday.  You are not who you are because you get the paper.  You get the paper because of who you are."

"What do you mean?"

"You haven't read the paper this morning, have you?"

"No."  He glanced guiltily at the floor under his chair, where the Sun-Times still waited for him.  "But you know what, I thought about that, too, and what--what happened last night, that wouldn't have been in the paper anyway, would it?"

"Which is exactly my point.  You went to help because you wanted to, not because the paper compelled you to.  And now you're planning to spend the day helping those kids even more."

Gary fingered the fringe of his towel, but he didn't say anything.  One part of his brain was busy trying to fit all these pieces together, while the other was thinking that all these years in choir must have really developed Marissa's breath control.  The woman could talk a blue streak when she put her mind to it.

"The point is," she continued, going in for the kill as only Marissa could, "It's all connected, whether you want it to be or not, even when you can't see the connections.  You never know when saving one small, unimportant life can change the whole world, because the truth is, no life is unimportant."  She indicated the living room with a wave of her hand.  "It might not be smart to get this involved every time, but sometimes, it pays off.  Everything the paper gives you to do matters in some way."

"Everything?" Gary asked, thinking of all the trivial saves he'd been handling lately.

"Everything.  Including saving a drug-addled girl from a mugging.  Without Trini, Lucy wouldn't have opened up last night.  What's more, if you hadn't saved her life and met her friends, we might not have gone back for that dumpster fire, and we wouldn't have been in the park when Bernardo fell through the ice."

"I guess you're right."  Maybe Marissa was comfortable with finding cosmic patterns and purpose in everything, but Gary's head was spinning.  It had never really occurred to him that he'd brought the paper on himself, and it was strange to think that all the time he'd been complaining about it, some part of him had wanted it in his life--that he himself was part of the equation that determined what showed up on his doorstep every morning.

After a pause, Marissa picked up a sponge and started wiping down the counter.  "I'm not, you know," she said, so quietly that it took a moment for her words to register.

"Excuse me?"

"Always right.  I'm not."

"Well, Marissa, I--"

Hand and sponge came up to stop Gary.  Marissa looked a bit sheepish.  "The thing is, I didn't sleep all that well, either.  And I did a lot of thinking, and--what you said on the El last night, I think you hit the nail on the head.  You already made this choice a long time ago, because it's who you are--someone who cares about all kinds of people."  She waved the sponge.  "From presidents and plane passengers right down to homeless kids.  What you just told me about meeting Lucius Snow proves it.  Obviously he cared about--"  The corners of her mouth lifted.  "--about sparrows, or he wouldn't have been there to help you and Andy.  Who knows how many other lives you've saved just by saving Lucy and Bernardo?  The consequences will echo for a long time, long after you and I are gone.  Maybe you just needed the time to get really involved with someone like Lucy to be reminded that what you've done in the past three years, and the way you've gone about it, matters, regardless of what's happened in the rest of the world."

He sighed, and something in his heart that had been winding tighter and tighter since New Year's eased.  Though he was grateful to his friend, Gary didn't have a response.  He decided that maybe it was time to leave the lofty realms of speculation and get back down to business.  "Where does the fry pan--"

Marissa smiled, understanding, and pointed.  "Left of the stove."

"Speaking of changing things--what are we going to--"

"Mrreeow."  The cat had crept up behind Gary, startling him so that he dropped the pan on the floor.  There was a giggle from the doorway, and Gary turned to find Bernardo grinning at him.

"Cat wants you.  Got milk?"

"Uh, gee, Bernardo, thanks for the heads up."  Gary knew what the cat was after, and it wasn't a calcium fix.  He stepped over to the table and picked up the paper.  "Now what?"

"Bernardo!  'Wishbone' is on."  The boy spun on his heel and ran back to the living room.

Marissa waited for a moment, but when Gary didn't say anything, she went back to washing the dishes.  Gary stood before the table, paper open between his spread hands, absorbed not only in the story he'd found on page four, but in his thoughts, in calculations, in wondering if he was right.

If the paper...if the universe...was really bending to his will.

There was only one way to know for sure.  But he had to be prepared.

"Hey, uh, 51st and Kedzie, that's near your church, isn't it?"

"A few blocks away.  Why?"  Marissa asked carefully.  "Busy day?"

He told her.

"That's the only thing in the paper?  A hit and run leaves an unidentified woman who was getting out of a taxi in a coma?"

"That and Jeff's snow sculptures, yeah."  Gary turned to the front page, peering at the photos and trying to determine the angle of the sun.  If he was right...

"Well, you have to stop it."

"I know that, Marissa."

"What time?"

"Soon, but not right away.  Can I use your phone?"

She nodded, and he picked up the handset from the wall-mounted unit.

"Gary, what about McGinty's?  There are deliveries due today, two day's worth, actually, and the roads are so much better; people will expect us to be open..."

"I know, we'll have to--"  Gary turned his attention to the woman who'd answered his call.  "Uh, yeah, Miguel Diaz, please."

"What does he have to do with it?"  Marissa's brow furrowed, while the voice on the other end of the line told Gary that Miguel was on assignment.

"He is?  Do you know where?"  A pause, some conversation in the bullpen, and Gary was told that Diaz was shooting in "some park somewhere."

It was, as Crumb used to say, close enough for government work.

"Okay."  Gary hung up the phone.  "Okay, look, I've gotta go to the park first.  Miguel speaks Spanish, he can help me talk to this lady and..."

"Whoa."  Marissa waved the dishtowel she'd been using to dry off the counter.  "For the sake of those of us who don't have a program, do you want to explain what's going on?"

Moving to the sink, Gary checked back over his shoulder to be sure the kids were still absorbed in the television show.  He bent close and whispered, "Marissa, this lady, I'm pretty sure she's their mom."

"What?"

"I think saw her yesterday at your church."

"The lady in the article?"

"Well, I don't know, there's not a picture, but it says she was fairly young, Hispanic, and it's the same neighborhood."

"And how many people in that neighborhood fit that description, Gary?  It's not all that close to the address Lucy gave us."

"But this woman, Marissa--she was Catholic, for one thing.  She was praying with a rosary.  And she had hair kinda like Lucy's, and--"  He stood up straight, remembering.  "Her coat!  It had patches on the elbows, the same fabric as Lucy's shirt."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm pretty sure."

Her eyes widened.  "You'd better--"

"--get Miguel," they finished together.  They both started for the living room, but Gary put a hand on Marissa's shoulder.

"We shouldn't say anything to them yet."

"No.  If it isn't her, it will break their hearts."  Marissa rubbed the back of her neck for a moment, thinking.  "I guess I'll take them into work with me."

"You think that's a good idea?"

She shrugged.  "Why not?  They'll probably be more help than you are, most of the time."  They hurried through the living room, where Bernardo was on the floor, sharing the pillow Gary'd used the night before with Reilly.  The boy was fixated on the television program, which seemed to center on a little dog in a Sherlock Holmes outfit.  For Reilly's sake, Gary hoped Bernardo wasn't getting any ideas.  Lucy was curled on the couch with Cat, stroking it from head to tail.  She wasn't lost in the program, though; her questioning gaze followed Gary through the room and out into the foyer.  The weak smile he flashed her as he passed was the only explanation he felt capable of making.

"So," he asked Marissa when they were out of the kids' line of sight, "I'll meet you at McGinty's in an hour or so, or at least I'll call when I figure out what's going on?"

Stopping next to the coat tree, Marissa nodded.  She fingered Lucy's worn canvas overcoat.  "Maybe I'll stop along the way and get them something warmer to wear."

"Yeah."  Gary grinned and reached for his hat.  "Like you said, it wouldn't be smart to get too attached."

"I just don't want them to freeze to death, that's all.  And besides," she added with an answering smile, "I never said that I was smart."

"Where are you going?"  Lucy stood in the doorway, hands on her hips.  When Gary didn't, couldn't, answer, she turned to Marissa.  "Where is he going?"

"There's something Gary has to do, Lucy."

She whirled on Gary.  "You said you were going to find my mom.  You promised!"

It would be better to have her angry now than later.  "I need to do something first," he reiterated, pulling on his coat.  Bad idea--it was still damp.  He shrugged it back off, trading it for the extra sweatshirt.  Not the world's greatest fashion statement, but it kept him from having to look Lucy in the eye.  "When I get done, then we'll talk about finding your mom, okay?"

Lucy's scowl deepened.  "I guess."

"Look, I promised to help find your mom, and I will.  But you gotta promise me something, too."  He recalled what Marissa had said earlier about Lucy needing an adult to take charge.  "For right now, you go with Marissa, and do what she tells you.  No running away, no talking back."  Gary took a deep breath, and looked her right in the eye.  "I'm not gonna let you down, Lucy.  Can you hold up your end of the bargain?"

Arms folded over her chest, Lucy glanced at Marissa, her expression softening, the lines around her mouth disappearing.  She turned back to Gary.  "Yeah."

"Promise?"

Lucy nodded.  "I promise."

"I'm gonna hold you to that."

But it was his own promise that followed Gary out the door like an anxious, hovering ghost.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Part 12

We felt like red balloons set adrift
over the wide sky of this new land.
Little by little we lost our will to connect,
and stopped collecting anything heavier
to carry than a wish.
     ~ Judith Ortiz Cofer

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The morning sun was bright, but not warm; its only purpose seemed to be to create an annoying glare that made Gary wish for his sunglasses.  After what had certainly been a sleepless night for city maintenance crews, the streets were drivable, and traffic was heavier than it had been the day before.  If he'd had his jeep at Marissa's, Gary might have simply driven to the scene of the accident on his own.  But he didn't just want to save this woman's life.  He wanted to communicate with her, and maybe, just maybe, set the world right--if only for a couple of lost kids.

Catching those sparrows would be more than enough for him.

He found Miguel Diaz in the park, as he'd hoped.  Kneeling in the snow, face pressed against his clicking, whirring camera, the photographer muttered under his breath as Gary approached.  Gary didn't know if it was good muttering or bad muttering.  He cleared his throat.

"Uh--Miguel?"

The camera clicked a couple more times before Gary was acknowledged.  "Hey, Hobson."  Graceful as a cat, Miguel got to his feet, brushing snow from his jeans.  "Nice get up."  He nodded judiciously, jutting out his lower lip as his appraising glance took in Gary's bulky sweater/sweatshirt combo, leather gloves, red scarf, and navy stocking cap.

"Oh, well, I kinda got my coat wet last night."  Gary cast a glance back to the trees and the pond; everything seemed quiet.  "Haven't had time to go home and pick up another one."

Miguel's mouth curved into a sly grin.  "I can see why.  The ladies really go for the layered look, don't they?  And that five o'clock shadow--verrrry sexy.  Who was she?"

"She's eleven, and get your mind out of the gutter.  It's a long story," Gary added when the photographer's eyes widened.

Miguel shook his head.  "One of these days, Hobson, I'm actually going to figure you out."  He gestured at the snow sculptures.  "Thanks for the tip.  I gotta say, it's not what I would have expected from you.  Since when are you an art critic?"

"Uh, since never, actually," Gary admitted, stamping his boots to keep out the seeping cold.  "I know the guy who did them, and I thought they'd make good copy, or whatever you call it, for the paper."

"Yeah, well, don't think I didn't check around for explosives first."  Miguel walked over to the troll and peered through his lens, turning the camera and moving back and forth until he had the best angle.  Gary followed, noting all the footprints that hadn't been there the afternoon before--some of them his, more of them a good deal smaller.

"Very funny.  Look, I--uh--do you have your car here?"

The camera came away from Miguel's face.  Under his heavy brow, his eyes narrowed.  "Why are you asking?"

"I--uh--"  Gary had been rubbing his hands together for warmth; now he spread them wide, palms up.  "I need your help."

"Oh, man!"  Miguel grabbed his narrow-brimmed black hat from his head and slapped it against his thigh.  "I knew there was a catch!"

"No, it's not like that.  When I called you yesterday, I didn't know--"  There was such a world of things that Gary hadn't known then that he wasn't sure where to begin.  He drew in a deep breath and tried to start everywhere at once.  "Something's come up, something important, and I need you, because you speak Spanish, and I don't, and there's a lady in trouble, and her kids, too, and it's kinda far from here, and there's--there's probably a great story in there somewhere--"

Chuckling, Miguel held up a hand.  "Whoa, whoa, slow down.  You talk more than my girlfriend."

"Well, this is important, okay?  I gotta get down to the south side soon if I'm gonna help this lady, and I don't think I can--look, can I just tell you on the way?"

Miguel turned back to the troll, aiming his camera again.  "I have to finish up here, and then find the guy who made them and get some info.  Then we can go."

"No."  Gary grabbed the other man's arm, pulled him up, and swung him around so they were face-to-face.  He let all his own tension and panic, everything that had been building since talking to Lucy that morning, show in his eyes.  "Now."  Miguel stared at him in stupefied wonder.  The guy probably thought he was nuts.  Gary took a deep breath, released the photographer's arm.  "Look, like I said, I know the artist.  I can hook you up with him, but this is gonna be an even bigger story if you just come with me, if you'd trust me--"

Miguel snorted and shook his head.  "Whatever you do, man, don't say that."

"What?"

"'Trust me.'  Whenever you say that, I end up regretting it.  Since meeting you--"  He stuck a finger in Gary's face for every item--  "I've nearly lost my job--more than once--nearly lost my life, nearly been blown up..."  But he was looking Gary right in the eye now, and something must have registered.  Stalking toward his car, screwing on the camera's lens cap, he resumed his litany.  "Nearly been blown up, nearly thrown in jail--"

Gary hurried along behind him, one gloved hand held out.  "Nearly, see, that's the key word--"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Tell me on the way.  But then you gotta help me find the guy who made all this."

"No problem."

"Okay, Deep Throat."  Miguel unlocked the brown Plymouth parked at the entrance to the playground.  "Let's go."
 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
 

Even though it was rush hour all over the city, the neighborhood to which Gary directed Miguel was quiet.  Houses in various stages of disrepair, with an occasional three or four story box of an apartment building thrown in for good measure, lined the narrow, treeless streets.  The cars parked against the curb, most of them at least ten years old, made it harder to negotiate, especially in the snow.  Miguel pulled over as far as he could to let an ancient station wagon get past, then eased back out into the narrow section that had been plowed down the middle of the street.

"Well," he said, his sweeping glance taking in the block, "we're here.  You want to tell me exactly what we're looking for?"

Gary had explained the bare bones; that he'd run into a couple of runaway kids, and thought their mom might be down in this neighborhood.  He'd left out most of the details, unsure that he could even bring himself to repeat them.  "Who.  Inez Savaria.  I hope."

"You hope?  What the hell does that mean?"

"I told you, she might be--there!"  Gary's pointing finger jammed up against the windshield when Miguel slammed on the brakes.  In the intersection just ahead, a taxi had come to a halt, a woman emerging from the passenger's side.  Gary's heart sped up when he recognized the woman from the church the night before; not so much her face, which he hadn't seen, but her coat, with those patches on the elbows, the same blue-checked fabric as Lucy's shirt.

He was out of the car before Miguel could finish asking, "How do you know?"  As Gary approached the intersection, he could hear the woman's desperate pleading, though he couldn't make out a word of what she was saying.  It had to be her, it had to...the thought repeated itself to the rhythm of Gary's pounding feet.

She was hanging on to the partly-open passenger's side door of the battered old yellow cab, her bent posture and animated head-bobbing conveying distress.  Gary's approach brought him up on the cabbie's side of the vehicle, and he heard the driver's voice first.

"Lady, I don't know what you want, but unless you show me some money, I'm calling the cops!"

"Hey."  Gary tapped on the window, and the driver, a bald, narrow-eyed, giant of a man,  rolled it down an inch or so.  "What's the problem?"

"You want a ride?"  The driver was already reaching for the meter.  "Get right on in.  I got no time for this deadbeat."

"She's not a deadbeat."  Gary glanced across the roof of the cab at the wide-eyed, desperate woman.

"Right, like you would know.  We've been going around in circles for half an hour, something about looking for her kids--I mean, I barely even speak Spanish, so I don't know what she's jawing about, and then she said she didn't have any more money--and she wants me to keep going!  What do I look like, some kind of charity foundation?"

Gary had stopped paying attention to the cabbie.  He was staring at the woman, and his relief knew no bounds--he'd been right.  He recognized her eyes.  Lucy's eyes, last night when she'd been having that nightmare, had looked exactly like that.  There were other resemblances--high cheekbones, smooth brown skin, delicate nose--separate details, but a single impression that was all the confirmation Gary needed.

He fumbled with his wallet as Miguel approached and stopped next to the driver's door.  "Hobson?  What's up?"

Gary threw a couple of tens through the crack in the window.  "This guy says--"

--and then he heard it, the squeal of spinning tires, a car out of control on the hard-packed snow.  No time to think, he vaulted over the hood of the taxi, heedless of the cabbie's protest, yelling at Miguel to stay back.

He cleared the hood and the woman turned a frightened, baffled face to the specter of a crazy stranger barreling toward her.   Skidding around the door, Gary grabbed for her waist as a fishtailing Pinto squealed into the intersection, taking dead aim at the passenger's side of the cab.  He heard Miguel shout a warning; he took two more running steps, dragging the woman with him.  The Pinto was coming closer, closer--he could feel the heat of its grill, and they were still between it and the cab.  Without releasing the woman, Gary jumped.

By some miracle, they landed in a corner snowbank.  A metallic screech sliced through the air as the taxi's passenger door was shorn off, followed by a deep "thump" when the Pinto smashed into another pile of snow.  Gary didn't see it happen.  His face was buried in the filthy drift.

"Hobson!  Hey, what the hell--how did you--"  Gloved hands pulled Gary to his feet.  Eyes wide and incredulous, Miguel asked, "You okay?"

Gary spat snow out of his mouth, brushed it out of his eyes, and wondered why this couldn't have happened in oh, say, June or something.  "I'm fine."  He reached down to help the woman to her feet; her arm shook under his guiding touch.  "Look, Miguel, you gotta talk to her."  Gary shivered as the snow that had been lodged in the neck of his sweater when he slid into the drift glided down his back.  He glanced back at the intersection.

The cab driver was standing a few yards away, staring in disbelief, first at the door, then at Gary, then back at the Pinto.  "Son of a--" he muttered.  The Pinto's driver climbed out the passenger's side of his car, since the driver's side was jammed into the snowbank.  Gary knew he should go check it out, make sure that they were all right, but in the original article the only one who'd been injured was the woman, and she was his main concern.

Miguel was speaking to her in Spanish, and, gasping for air, hands trembling as she pointed to the cab, she was trying to answer.  Up close, Gary could see that she was younger than he'd expected; maybe thirty, but maybe not even that yet, despite the careworn lines on her face.

"Is she all right?"

The photographer glanced at Gary and shrugged.  "She seems to be.  Just scared to death.  You wanna tell me what's going on?"

"Ask her her name."

"But Hobson, how did you know about the car?  I mean, it all happened so fast I didn't even have time to get my lens cap off.  The least you could have done--"

"Find out her name, Diaz!"  In his impatience to get to the bottom of things, Gary was about ready to shake the photographer.

At that moment, however, the cabbie came over and poked him in the shoulder.  "What's the big idea, buddy?  This is all your fault, you know."

Gary gaped at him.  "My fault?"

Miguel turned from the woman for a moment.  "Hey, get it straight.  If he hadn't jumped over your cab like that, she'd have been right in the path of that car and you'd be looking at accessory to murder charges!"

Gary stared at the photographer in stunned disbelief.  Murder?  There was no way--but the driver seemed to buy it; he backed down, his expression changing from anger to befuddlement.

"But..."

"Miguel Diaz, Sun-Times."  He whipped out his wallet like a gunslinger drawing his weapon, flipped it open, and handed the driver a business card.  "I'm your eyewitness here.  Who do you think the cops are going to believe?  You want to give a statement to the press now or should we wait for your arraignment?  I mean, what is your problem, anyway?  This woman's trying to find a couple of lost kids and you won't help her?  I'll tell you what the story's gonna be on you, you--"

Gary glanced behind him, and saw the woman running away, down the street, coat billowing behind her.  "Damn!  Miguel--"

They both took off after her, leaving the cab driver gawking.  It wasn't hard to catch up; she was in worn flats and they were wearing sneakers, and the sidewalks were in worse shape than the street.  Miguel was a few feet behind him, cradling his camera to his chest.  "Inez!" Gary called, hoping, knowing he was right.  "Inez Savaria!"

Without stopping, she looked back at him, an expression of total fear on her face.

"Hobson, how--" Miguel began again, but by then Gary had caught up with the frightened woman, grabbing her arm.

"Just wait--Inez, please--"  She was struggling to get free.  "Tell her we don't want to hurt her, for God's sake."

Puffing to a halt next to Gary, Miguel drew in a breath and then spoke words of reassurance.  Inez, her gaze darting from one man to the other, asked a question that caused the photographer to break out into a wide, reassuring grin.

"No, no!"  He shook his head emphatically, held up his camera as he explained something, pointing to Gary with a shrug.  The woman relaxed, but Gary didn't let go of her arm.   "She thinks we're immigration officials or something," Miguel told him.

"No."  Gary wagged his head back and forth.  "No, not that.  Tell her I want to help her.  Tell her--tell her I know where her kids are.  That's what she was doing in the cab, trying to find her kids; she was desperate, she didn't have any money, tell her I know that, but everything's okay, her kids are all right."

"Okay--"  But Miguel didn't get a chance to translate; Gary was too concerned about getting the whole story to Inez Savaria before she took off on them again.

"They're with a friend of mine.  They've had a rough couple weeks, but they want to see her, they miss their mom a lot.  Tell her that they're okay, that Lucy and Bernardo are okay."

He didn't need a translator for that one.  Inez twisted in his grip, her eyes wide as she grabbed at Gary's sleeves.  "Lucia?  Bernardo?"

Breaking into a broad smile, Gary nodded, looking her right in the eye.  "Tell her, Miguel, tell her they're all right, that we can take her to them."

The other man shook his head, mouth twisted in exasperation.  "Geez.  You got a lot of 'splainin' to do, Lucy," he told Gary in a perfect imitation of Ricky Ricardo.  There was one word in there that Inez understood, and she latched onto it with a fierce eagerness, tightening her grip on Gary's sleeves.

"¿Sí, Lucy, dónde esta Lucia?"

Miguel took a deep breath, then launched into an explanation that Gary really wished he could follow.  Inez's eyes filled with tears, she released her grip on Gary to brush them away, and for the first time, he allowed himself to relax, just a little.  It really was going to work out.

"Ask her if she trusts us, if she'll come with us."

"Hobson, you're talking about her kids."  Miguel nodded at Inez.  "Look at that face.  If you told her to jump off Navy Pier and swim to Michigan, she'd do it.  Let's go."

They hurried back to the intersection, Inez reaching for Gary's arm when she slipped on the ice.  The taxi--except for its door--had been moved out of the middle of the street, and the Pinto's driver was busy apologizing profusely to the cabbie.  "Let 'em at it," Miguel said.  "I gave him my card, so if he wants a witness, the cops can call me."  He grinned a lopsided grin.  "I got another story to take care of here."  Gary was grateful; he didn't know how long the police would take to arrive, and he was pretty sure they would spook the woman who was trotting next to him with hungry, pleading eyes.

Unnoticed by the pair in the intersection, the three piled into the Plymouth, Gary in the backseat so Miguel could keep talking to Inez.  Gary wanted to be sure he had the story straight.  "Ask her about Diego Linares," he demanded.  "Tell her she can't take those kids back there, that we'll find a better place for them, but there's no way--"

"Hobson."  Miguel nodded in Inez's direction as he started the engine.  Wide-eyed and frozen in place, she stared at Gary like a rabbit in the headlights of a semi.

God.  He'd said that name.

"What is it?"

Swallowing hard, Gary told him, "This guy's been taking advantage of her since she showed up in Chicago.  He's hurt her, hurt the kids, that's why they ran away."  Gary remembered the awful look on Lucy's face when she'd asked if Diego had sent him to find her.  "Tell her that we don't know him, that she's safe with us."

Miguel relayed the information as he drove, but not without a couple of confused frowns in Gary's direction.  Fear still filling her eyes, Inez stared from one man to the other.  It must have taken a good deal of faith, however impulsive, for her to get in the car with a couple of strangers.  Gary wasn't sure what was being said, but he heard "Bernardo", and "Lucy", and "Gary Hobson."  The last was delivered with a thumb over Diaz's shoulder.

"What are you telling her?"

But Miguel didn't have a chance to answer; Inez had jumped in with a frantic stream of words; questions, from the uplift of her voice, and explanations, and the two began another extended conversation.  Miguel's clipped tone indicated that he'd gone into interview mode.  A few minutes later, Inez answered one last question, then stared out the side window, blinking hard.  Miguel's mouth hardened into a firm line, and his eyes met Gary's in the rearview mirror.

"Shit, Hobson."

"Yeah," Gary agreed.  He could guess what Inez Savaria had been telling the reporter.  "That just about covers it, doesn't it?"

"Linares told her that if she told anyone about the way he treated her or the kids, he'd turn her in to the immigration authorities.  He's convinced her she's in the country illegally, he took her papers, and the kids', and told her they were fakes.  You know, he's probably using them to make copies, to sneak other people into the country and probably exploit them, too."

As far as Gary was concerned, that crime was secondary to terrorizing two innocent kids.  "Well, tell her we'll get it sorted out."

"I already did--but that's not all.  She took off, left him a couple of days ago, and she's been living on the streets, trying to find someone to help her look for her kids.  She said she slept in a church somewhere around here last night.  You know, if I ever meet this guy..."  His voice trailed off, leaving tension in the air along with the implied threat.

"Yeah.  Me too."  Glancing out the window, Gary was surprised to see that they were already close to McGinty's.  "Thanks for coming with me."

"Oh, don't thank me.  Do you know what this means?  This is Pulitzer stuff, man!"  Miguel slammed his hand on the steering wheel, causing Inez to jump.  "I got my story, and I didn't get shot at or blown up!"

Gary snorted.  He could care less about immigration scandals.  He was just glad he could get the Savaria family back together again, and..."Hey, Miguel, you're still gonna run the story about the sculptures, aren't you?"  He figured he owed Jeff at least that much, and he didn't want the kid's work to get lost in the shuffle he had created.

"Oh, yeah, sure, I'll pass the film on to someone.  Right now we got bigger fish to fry--good old fashioned social justice."

Frowning, Gary leaned back in the Plymouth's generous rear seat.  He pulled the paper out of his back pocket to check on the front page, just to make sure that Jeff would get his due.  Inez was peppering Miguel with more questions, so it was safe to sneak a look.

He didn't see what he expected.  The snow sculptures were gone, but while Linares's name--and a picture, a mug shot--graced the front page, the story wasn't about an immigration scam.

It was about the world turning inside out.

About an altercation at an El station, north of downtown, in just the kind of low-key shopping area that a kind-hearted, practical person would go to in order to find coats for a couple of lost, cold kids.

About a boy screaming as a man matching the description of a convicted felon wrestled him away from the woman he'd been traveling with.

About the woman and a girl slipping off the icy platform and under the wheels of the departing train, right in front of a crowd of stunned witnesses.

"Miguel!"  Gary threw himself forward, leaning over the front seat.  Inez shrank back against the passenger door, but he didn't have time to be gentle.  "Turn, turn left up here, damn it, turn!"

They screeched through a just-red light, blaring horns sounding in their wake.  "This isn't the way to your bar, man."

"No, not McGinty's.  We gotta get to the El stop on Clark, up by Diversy.  We gotta get there now!"

Astonished brown eyes met Gary's.  "Now what?  I thought you said you were gonna take this lady to see her kids."

"If we don't get there, it won't happen.  That guy, Diego, he's going to find them first."

"Diego?"  Inez grabbed Gary's arm, pulling at him.  "Diego?"

"How do you know?"

Panic-stricken, Gary was ready to climb over the front seat and take the wheel himself.  "I just know, damn it, go!"

"But you said the kids were with your friend," Miguel protested, even as their speed climbed, and he began weaving his way around slower traffic.

"They are."  Gary shut his eyes against the afterimages of the story he'd just scanned.  His voice rose over Inez's frantic questions.  "Just go, will ya?  Hurry!"

Miguel wagged his head in mock sorrow, even as he stomped on the accelerator.  "I knew this was too good to be true."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Part 13

Men have forgotten this truth, said the fox.
But you must not forget it.  You become
responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
You are responsible for your rose.

I am responsible for my rose, said the little prince,
so that he would not forget.
     ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

By the time they reached the El stop, Inez Savaria was completely confused and obviously scared out of her mind.  She had retreated to the corner of her seat, shrinking into her coat and keeping a wary eye on the strangers.  Gary didn't know what she was thinking, but he didn't want to tell her what lay ahead.  He was sure the paper had shown him the story so that he could stop it, but still, he didn't want to make a promise he couldn't keep.

He'd already made promises--to Lucy, to Marissa--if he couldn't keep them, then he wouldn't deserve the paper.

If he couldn't keep them, then he didn't want to know the future.  There wouldn't be one.

"Okay, so this is it, now what?"

"I gotta get up there."

Gary leapt from the car before Miguel had it parked.  The El was rattling to a stop overhead.  Trusting the others to follow, Gary flew up the stairs, jumped the turnstile despite the protest of the ticket-taker, and hoped like hell that she'd call security, or, better yet, the cops.  He skidded to a halt on the wooden platform at the same time as the train.  A handful of people emerged from various cars, their attention attracted, as was Gary's, by the raised voices coming through the open door of the car at the end of the platform.

"I'm telling you right now, lady, those are my kids, and if you don't let them come with me--"

"They are not your kids, and you wouldn't deserve them if they were!"

"And who's gonna stop me?"  There was an edge of sneering disbelief in the question.  "You?"

Gary could hear faint sobs as he hurried closer, and identified them as Bernardo's.  Pushing through a growing crowd of the curious, he saw it, all of it, too clearly--Marissa was in the doorway of the car, her back to Gary, a step below a man with a medium build, wavy hair, and the eyes of a snake charmer.  Lucy stood stiffly at her side, just a little behind.  Bernardo clung to Marissa's arm, crying, and Reilly was in front of her, too busy growling at the man who presented the most immediate threat to the little group to warn his mistress that she was nearing the edge of the step, and that the platform below was slick with ice.

What Diego Linares said next froze Gary in his tracks.  The surly lines on his face disappeared as he pleaded with Lucy.  "You kids gotta come with me.  Your mom is worried sick about you."  He turned to Bernardo and repeated himself in Spanish.

Bernardo loosed his grip on Marissa's arm.

"No!"  Marissa reached for him, but missed.  "You have to trust Gary, he'll find your mom, don't trust this man, Bernardo, don't--"

But Gary saw what his friend couldn't; Diego had seized the boy's arm and pulled him in close.  The warning ding of the closing doors sounded, igniting confusion and panic.  Lucy screamed and lunged for her brother, and from somewhere behind him Gary heard Miguel calling him over a rising hum of excited voices.  Marissa dropped Reilly's harness to grab Lucy, who had Bernardo by the back of his sweatshirt, while Diego Linares tugged at the boy's arm.  Reilly was barking now, pushing himself between Marissa and the threatening situation, and her right foot slipped off the step.

Digging his heels into the ice, Gary closed the remaining distance; he reached out and caught Marissa with one arm as she fell, stretching out the other to block Lucy's backward tumble and slam the sliding door back open.  If the door didn't close, the train wouldn't move, and no one would slide onto the tracks while he was around.

No one was going to take the boy, either.

"It's me," he told Marissa, his explanation and apology rolled into those two words as he yanked on her coat sleeve in a motion that swung her around and sent her sprawling on the platform--but not off it, not onto the tracks.  Blocking the door with his foot and shoulder, Gary reached past Lucy and wrapped his arms around both her and her brother, pulling Bernardo out of Diego's grasp.  He spun around, releasing the door as he jumped; his momentum carried all three of them onto the platform beside Marissa.  Tags jingled, and Reilly landed on Gary's ankles in a tangle of harness and limbs.

Both kids were squirming under Gary, and he rolled out of the way to let them up, getting himself even more twisted in Reilly and his gear.  Lying on his back, he only had time to note that the train hadn't moved before Diego, who'd been thrown backward when Gary had pulled Bernardo out of his grip, leapt off the train--or tried to.  He tripped on Reilly's lead and hit the icy patch elbow first, his feet sliding between the train and the platform.  Gary struggled to untangle himself from the dog and reach him, but Miguel got there first, hauling Linares up by the lapel of his black leather coat, muttering something in Spanish with a look as dark as a thundercloud.

Diego glared at the photographer, then saw the cop who was pushing through the spectators, and turned back for the train, but Miguel didn't let go of his jacket.

"Hobson?  This is the guy, right?"

Finally free, Gary staggered a bit as he stood.  "Yeah, he's--"

"Bernardo?"

Gary spun around.  On the edge of the crowd, Inez was on her knees, her hands over her mouth, as if not quite sure what she saw.  The little boy didn't wonder at all; he scrambled to his feet and ran to her hugs and kisses.  Keeping an eye on the pair, Gary helped Marissa to her feet.

"Sorry about that."  He brushed snow and dirt off her coat while Reilly tried to get as close as he could to his mistress.  "I didn't know how else to get make sure you didn't--that the kids didn't--"  He gulped, repeating his mantra to himself:  It hadn't happened, it hadn't happened...

Marissa's hand on Gary's arm was a little shaky, and she winced when she reached back down for Reilly's harness.

"Hey, are you hurt?"

"Bruised a little, I think, but I'll survive."  She drew in a long breath, let it out slow.  "Thank God you showed up."

"Well, I--I was just returning the favor, after last night.  Where did this guy come from?"

She shook her head, her expression distressed.  "I don't know, Gary.  He could have been at any of the stops between here and my place; the kids were so excited about riding the El, and they were looking out the windows--he must have seen them from the platform, and then after the last stop he was there, right there, in our car, and he started in on the kids right away.  I didn't know how I was going to stop him."

Gary wrapped an arm around her shoulders.  He wasn't going to have Marissa come out of this doubting herself.  "You were holding your own just fine."

"But if you're here, then the paper--you were here because--what was going to happen?"

"Someone was going to get hurt," Gary hedged.

"Who someone?"

"Well, uh--you someones.  All of you," he admitted.  "But it was just a bit of ice," he said, "it wasn't anything you did.  And if you want to think about what might have happened, then think about what it would have been like for Lucy and Bernardo if they'd met up with him without you, if they'd been all alone."

"What are you saying, Gary?"

His mouth twisted into a wry grin.  "That maybe things happened this way for a reason."

Marissa reached up to squeeze his hand as she sighed.  "There's something really wrong with that man.  The kids froze up when he got on the train, and the air just went cold, everything felt all wrong."

It hadn't happened, it hadn't happened...

Gary glanced over to his right, where the cop was questioning Linares and Miguel, with outraged gestures, was trying to give half the answers.  Then he looked at Lucy, still sitting alone on the platform, and thought about what could have happened, what had happened for months...He took a step away from Marissa.  He didn't intend to do anything stupid, but boy, did he want to give this guy a piece of his mind.  "There's a cop over there with them.  I should go see--"

"Gary."  Marissa's hand encircled his wrist.  "Don't."

"I just wanna--"

Marissa nodded.  "I know.  But I would like to make sure the kids are all right, and meet Mrs. Savaria."

Gary closed his eyes just for a second, and followed her unspoken advice.  Let it go.  "Yeah.  Okay."

Turning his attention to Lucy, he wondered why she hadn't gone to her mother.  She sat on the platform in just the same pose she'd adopted after her nightmare, knees drawn in and arms wrapped around her legs.  Her gaze swiveled from the police officer talking to Miguel and Diego, to Bernardo and her mother, but she couldn't seem to move.

"I think we'd better talk to Lucy," Gary murmured, adding an explanation of what was happening, and Marissa nodded.  Together they approached the girl, and Gary offered her a hand.  One more glance around the platform, and she took it, letting him pull her to her feet.

"Your mom's here," Gary told her.  Useless, stupid thing to say, but he didn't know what else to tell her.  Her walls were back up, her face a shuttered house; she wrapped her arms tight around her torso, her only response a single nod.

Marissa's voice was gentle.  "What's wrong, Lucy?  Don't you want to go see her?"

Lucy didn't answer, just stared across what must have seemed like an ocean of space at the family she'd fought so desperately to defend.  Inez had Bernardo's face in both hands, her own streaming with tears, asking him questions, and receiving nods and "Sí, Mama," in response.  Finally, with a deep, deep sigh, the woman pulled him in close, looked up, and met her daughter's eyes.  She got stiffly to her feet, clasping Bernardo's hand in her right and holding out her left in supplication.

"Lucy?  Lucia, por favor..."

The girl just stared.  Gary saw it all in her eyes--she wanted her mom, as badly as she had the night before, but she was afraid of what that meant, afraid that she'd have to go back to Diego Linares, afraid she'd be betrayed and left unprotected.

"Lucy," Gary said softly, one hand on the girl's shoulder, "your mom came here with me.  She wasn't with him.  I think that's why he was trying to get you back; because if you came back, then she would."  He bent down to look her right in those huge, needy eyes.  "But you don't have to go back, not ever."  He nodded back toward the cop, whose frown was deepening as he looked from the still-yabbering Miguel Diaz to the shrinking, sullen man in front of him, and then over to the kids and their mother.

Lucy blinked.  Bit her lip.  Then asked a question in Spanish, barely loud enough for Gary to hear--but it was enough for her mom.  Inez nodded.  Lucy needed one careful step, then another, before she gave in to her emotions and catapulted herself into her mother's waiting arms.

Gary heaved a huge sigh of relief, and turned to explain to Marissa, who was waiting patiently.  Instead, Miguel hurried over, delivering a punch to Gary's shoulder.  "Score one for the good guys, huh?  They're gonna want us all down at the station house to sort everything out, but believe me, this Linares guy is toast.  He's going down for a long time."

"Good."

"But I tell you, Hobson--"  Miguel shook his head ruefully.  "One of these days, you and me, we're gonna have a long talk.  How you pulled that one off--the least you could have done was wait for me to get set up before you started yanking everybody out of the guy's clutches.  Man, what a shot that would have made--"

"This was not a photo opportunity," Gary told him firmly.

"Right, Superman.  Don't think I'm as dumb as that Jimmy Olson kid.  One of these days, I'll catch you putting on a cape, and it's gonna make my career."

"Miguel."  Gary pointed at the trio in front of them, lost in their reunion.  He didn't bother pointing out that he'd never be Superman, and had no intention of donning a cape.  "There's your photo op."

"Yeah."  Miguel's face softened into a grin as they watched Inez Savaria embrace both her children at once.  He fingered the lens cap of his camera, but didn't remove it.  "In a minute."

"Gary?"  Marissa slipped her hand into his.  "What's happening?"

"Everything's all right," he told her.

This time, it was true.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Part 14

I will pass, we will pass,
says the water,
and the truth sings against stone...
I will pass, we will pass.
So sings night to day,
month to year.
Time
corrects the testimony
of winners and losers,
but the tree never rests in its growing.
The tree dies, another seedling comes
to life, and everything goes on.
         ~ Pablo Neruda

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
 

Given their relatively small roles in the portion of the drama in which the police were interested, it didn't take long for Gary, Marissa, and Miguel to give their statements.  Inez, on the other hand, was holed up with the detectives and the translator in the one of the precinct offices for almost two hours.  Eventually Marissa took the kids down to the break room to see if they could scrounge up lunch, while Gary reminded Miguel for the umpteenth time about putting the photographs of the snow sculptures in the paper.

"The guy hangs out at Luigi's Bistro--it's just down from the park.  If Jeff isn't around, someone there ought to know where to find him.  You can run these tomorrow, right?"

"It's do-able," Miguel told him.  "Though I don't know why it matters to you."  He draped an arm over the back of the bench on which he sat, shaking his head at Gary, who stood, tapping the back of one hand against the other as he watched the activity around them.  "Gary Hobson, patron of artists and rescuer of--"

Gary pivoted, pinning Miguel with a glare and a two-fingered point.  "I already told you, you keep my name out of this."

Miguel held up one hand.  "Yeah, yeah, I got it, Clark Kent.  But one of these days...no more Mr. Nice Guy.  You're just lucky the real story here is that dude Linares, and even he's just the tip of the iceberg.  And I have the exclusive.  No one in the press room's gonna believe this, man, this is gonna be great..."

Gary didn't listen to the rest of the photographer's crowing.  It wasn't scandals he cared about.  He scanned the bullpen again, and located the only person in uniform who wasn't questioning suspects or victims.  "Hey, Miguel--Civilian Aid, that means they aid civilians, right?"

"Not exactly, Hobson.  They're civilians who--"  But Gary was already headed toward the woman who sat idly tapping at her computer.

It took a little talking on Gary's part, a little flirting on Miguel's part, and, finally, one look at Bernardo, beaming and bouncing back into the bullpen with a carton of milk and a bag of chips, to convince the Aide to track Luis Savaria through DMV records.  By the time Inez was done, they had an address and a phone number.  There really was an Uncle Luis--and an Aunt Maria.  They'd been married that summer and moved twice, ending up in Wilmett, so it was no wonder Lucy hadn't been able to find him in the phone book.

After a long, involved conversation with her brother-in-law, Inez handed the phone to Lucy, who listened a great deal and said very little.  But when she hung up, she was smiling, albeit dazedly.  She hugged her mother and walked over to where Gary and Marissa were standing.  "He wants us.  He sounds like my papa and he said...he said he wants us to stay with him for a while.  In his house."  Her eyes were bright with tears and  wonder.

"Of course he wants you," Marissa told her.  "You're his family."

Lucy didn't seem to have a reply for that, but when Gary smiled at her, trying to second what Marissa had said, she grinned back, and he saw the same happy light in her face that had been there when she'd described El Salvador.  He knew what it meant.

Lucy was going home.
 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
 

Gary was at the bar sipping coffee, reading the Sun-Times, and thinking the place was entirely too quiet, when Marissa arrived the next morning, Reilly leading the way.  A swirl of cold air accompanied them; Gary had a cup of coffee waiting when Marissa slid onto the stool next to his.

"So, what's on tap for today?" she asked without preamble.  "Any world crises to avert?"

"I hope not."  Gary picked up the paper again, scanning headlines back into the Metro section.  "I was thinking along the lines of something closer to home."

"Good."  She took a sip of the coffee, tilted her head to one side.  "I got a phone call this morning, from Maria Savaria.  I know we only met them for a couple minutes, Gary, but I like them.  I think they're just what those kids need.  Luis seems so relieved to have them here--I guess when he heard about his brother's death, he went to Missouri to try to find Inez, but she'd already moved on.  He's been trying to track them down for months.  And his wife loves those kids already; I can hear it in her voice."

Gary leaned against the back of his stool, one elbow on the bar.  The reunion at the police station had happened so quickly that he hadn't had time to form much of an impression, but one or two images remained in his mind.  "Yesterday Lucy looked at her like she was some kind of movie star or something--totally in awe.  Why'd she call you?  Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine.  They called because they're coming back into the city today.  Inez needs to talk to some of the people down at the immigration office, and then Maria's taking her shopping.  She asked if they could leave the kids with us."

"So much for not getting involved," Gary said with a wry shake of his head.

"Don't look at me."  Marissa settled both elbows on the polished wood of the bar, smiling to herself as she cradled the warm mug in her hands.  "Apparently it was Lucy's idea."
 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
 

Early that afternoon, returning from a run-in with a postal carrier and an enraged dachshund, Gary found Marissa and their charges ensconced in the office.  While Marissa worked at the computer, Lucy sat on the sofa, reading to Bernardo from an oversized picture book.  Cat was curled up in her lap.  Both children wore clothes that actually fit them, Gary saw with relief--warm sweaters and jeans and shiny new tennis shoes.

Whether Bernardo was getting much from the story was unclear.  He sat on the floor, back against the sofa, coloring in an empty ledger.  The tale involved two children trying to save England from an infestation of dragons, and it sounded kind of old-fashioned to Gary.  He stood in the doorway listening for a few minutes before anyone noticed his presence.  Lucy had paused to show her brother one of the illustrations, and when she looked up from the book and saw Gary, she broke into a shy smile.  Bernardo waved a green crayon.  "Hola, Gary!"

"Hola," he told the group in general.  He hung up his parka and headed for his desk.

"Everything okay?" Marissa asked.

He glanced down at the tiny toothmarks in the toe of his left boot, but decided they really weren't worth mentioning.  "Yup.  No blood shed, and Mr. Swanson's gonna get his Social Security check."

"Good."

Lucy resumed reading, and Gary plopped into his swivel chair, shaking his head at the mail and paper work that was already waiting for him.  It was amazing how fast the stuff accumulated.  Kind of like snow on a January night.

"Can you sign the payroll checks?"  Marissa was entering figures from the Braille bank statements.  "They're on your desk, left hand side."

"Sure."  But Gary had swiveled his chair so he could see the kids, and for the moment the checks went unsigned.

"A whole flight of green dragons rose from the field," Lucy read, "and sprawled away across the sky.  The children could hear the rattle of wings as they flew.

"'Oh, I want to go home,' said Effie."  Showing the next illustration, Lucy snorted.  "What a baby."  But she flushed when Gary cleared his throat.

Bernardo put down his green crayon and peered at the drawing.  "Dat's dragon?"

"That's a dragon," Lucy said, her neat braids bobbing as she nodded and returned to the text.  "'Don't be silly,' said Harry.  'People who are going to be their country's deliverers never scream and say they want to go home.'"

Bernardo frowned.

"'And are we,' asked Effie--'deliverers, I mean?'

"'You'll see,' said her brother, and on they went."  Lucy stopped again, looking down; her own brother was poking her in the knee with his crayon.

"Lucy, what's dat?"

"What's what?"

"De-deliv-sers."

"Deliverers.  It's--"  Lucy's brow furrowed.  "Marissa, what does it mean, exactly?"

Marissa didn't miss a beat, and Gary realized that she'd been listening in, too.  "A deliverer is--well, it's someone who saves someone else.  Like...like Moses in the Bible.  Do you know about Moses?"

Lucy nodded.  "He saved the people from the Pharaoh.  And like Abraham Lincoln and the slaves.  You got it, Nardo?  A deliverer is a person who saves other people."

Bernardo's eyes lit up with understanding as he grinned at Gary, then at his sister.  "Lucy!"

"Hmm?"  She was busy trying to find her place again.

"No, Lucy."  He poked her again with his crayon.  "Lucy--you deliver."

Lucy's face twisted into a scowl.  "Don't be silly.  Moses saved the Israelites--that means a lot of people."  She traced a circle in the air with one hand, as if to lasso the tribes of Israel, then pointed at the book.  "And Effie and Harry want to save all of England from the dragons."

"Sí.  You saved me."

"'Nardo, don't be--"

"He's right, Lucy," Gary told her quietly.

Lucy stared at him for a minute with all the exasperation she could muster, but he refused to back down.  From her lap, Cat blinked sleepy, wise eyes.  Finally, she sighed and looked back down at the book.  " When they came to St. George's Church they found the door open and they walked right in..."  Her brow was still furrowed, but there was a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.  Bernardo's nod as he picked up a blue crayon was satisfied.

Neither Gary nor Marissa got much work done as they listened to Lucy read about how the children found the controls to England's weather and used the cold and rain to rid the country of the pestilence of dragons.  It was kind of a silly story, but listening to Lucy tell it made up for that.  There was something captivating about her voice, Gary thought; it had a rhythm and music of its own.  Bernardo colored furiously the whole time, stopping only when Lucy read:

"So then they turned on the hail--only half on, for fear of breaking people's windows--and after a while there were no more dragons to be seen moving.  Then the children knew that they were indeed the deliverers of their country."

"Yes.  Bueno, Lucy."  Bernardo punctuated his pronouncement by clapping both hands down on the ledger.

"But it's not done yet."

"Delivers.  Dragons are all gone."

"Deliverers."

"Sí."  Bernardo handed Lucy one of the sheets he'd colored, then took another one over to Gary, who blinked in surprise at the picture--a man standing next to a Ferris Wheel, the man taller than the ride, with a blue coat and stocking cap.  He risked a glance at Lucy.  Surprise, pleasure, and embarrassment were all written on her face.  She held a drawing of a stick girl with long black hair standing triumphantly atop a mass of green, its triangular yellow wings identifying it as a dragon.

"De-liv-er-ERS," Bernardo declared with an emphatic nod for each syllable.

He had one more piece of paper in his hand, and he took a step toward Marissa's desk, but then he turned back and held the paper out to Gary, shrugging helplessly.  That kid could say more with one expressive shoulder lift than most people could with a paragraph.

"Hmmm..."  Gary's eyes narrowed in solemn reflection.  The third drawing had Marissa standing next to a bright yellow stick Reilly, with a roly-poly boy in a blue sweatshirt riding on the dog's back.  "Did you press hard with the crayon?" he asked in a stage whisper, pantomiming the motion.  Bernardo nodded, his face equally serious.  "Well, that's easy then.  You give it to Marissa, and she can feel the crayon lines,"--again, Gary demonstrated--"and you can tell her what it is, and about the colors."

Breaking into a relieved grin, Bernardo trotted over to Marissa, who made a huge fuss over the picture.  Lucy finished the book in silence, closed it, and frowned at the cover and her drawing.

"What's up?" Gary asked her, turning his chair around to face her directly.  "Didn't like the ending after all?"

"It wasn't fair."  Lucy pursed her lips.  "They saved their whole country from the dragons, and nobody ever knew it was them, except their parents."

"Hmm."  Gary rested an elbow on the arm of his chair, chin in his hand.  "What did their parents do?"

She set the book aside and stroked Cat from head to tail, staring down at the orange and ginger pattern of its fur.  "Their mother sent them to bed and their father complained that they didn't save him a little dragon for his collection."

"It's rough being the good guy sometimes," Gary admitted, wondering what this was really about.  "It doesn't mean that they did the wrong thing, though, does it?"

"And they know," Marissa contributed; Gary glanced gratefully over his shoulder at his friend, who was holding Bernardo in her lap.  "They know what they did, and they can always be proud of that.  That's what really matters."

"I guess so."  Lucy traced the outline of the girl in the picture Bernardo had drawn for her.

All of this was hitting a bit close to home, giving Gary a mild case of the willies.  Maybe the kids needed some grounding as well.

"Hey," he asked, "you want a Coke or something?"

Lucy blinked up at him.  "Really?"

"Sure.  Just tell whoever's out at the bar that I said it was okay."

"Me, too!"  Bernardo jumped from Marissa's lap to join his sister.  Apparently Coke was a word he knew.  Lucy still had his drawing in her hand as they walked out the door.

A few minutes passed while Gary picked up a pen, but didn't get to the checks.  Instead he stared at Cat, draped over the edge of the sofa in boneless relaxation.

"What is it?" Marissa asked.

"What?"

"Oh, come on, Gary, I can hear your brain whirring all the way over here.  What's on your mind?"

Gary tapped the pen against the stack of checks.  It was almost scary to put what he'd been thinking about all day into words.  "Marissa, do you think she's--that Lucy is--well, that she's next?"

"Next?"

"To get the paper."

For the first time in his life, Gary was graced with the picture of a speechless Marissa Clark.  Her posture, her hair, everything about her looked as unruffled as ever, but she couldn't respond.  Her lips started to form one of the "W" questions, but no sound came out.

"Yeah, I know," he told her, vaguely satisfied at the reaction.  About time someone else around here got weirded out.

"Why--why do you say that?" Marissa finally asked.  Her eyes were still huge.

He traded the pen for a large paper clip, unbending it and twisting it into a spiral around the tip of his little finger.  "It kinda makes sense--I mean, if Lucius Snow really was the guy at that pond, and then I hauled Lucy out..."  He sighed.  "I just hope I haven't, you know, put the whammy on her or something."

"The whammy?"  Marissa's face relaxed into a smile.  "I don't think that's in your hands Gary."  There was a thoughtful pause that told him she was taking him seriously, then she murmured, "She certainly has the heart for it, though."

"But she's just a kid, with her whole life in front of her."

"So were you, once.  And it hasn't turned out so badly, has it?"

"But--"

"Gary!  Gary!"  Bernardo dashed into the office and grabbed Gary by the hand, trying to pull him out of the chair, jumping up and down.  "Come--come--"  The kid was so excited he could hardly breathe.  "'Rissa, too!"

"Okay, buddy, it's all right.  We're coming."  Bernardo was now pulling on Marissa's arm, and Gary stepped over to help her up.

"What's going on?"

"I have no idea."

Bernardo dragged them to the front windows, where Lucy was already peering through the mottled glass.  "What's up?" Gary asked, but she pushed him toward the foyer.

"We have to go outside and see."

"Coats first."  Marissa was already headed back toward the office to get hers.  She returned within seconds, handing Bernardo's coat to Gary, and the handful of customers in the bar paused in their conversations to smile at the sight of the owner trying to stuff an overexcited, bouncy four-year-old into a bright yellow parka.  The boy ran to the front door and back three times in the time it took Lucy and Gary to get into their own coats.

"Okay."  Gary held doors as they pushed through the foyer and into the cold, bright day.  "What's the big--oh."

All the snow drifts and plow piles were gone from Franklin Street.  They'd been drafted into use for an elaborate sculpture that bore the unmistakable mark of its artist, who stood just off the curb, beaming, with his friends.

"Jeff?"

"Hey, Gary.  I wasn't quite done yet, I mean, I still need to get some water on it to make sure it doesn't fall apart, but--you like it?"

"Well."  Gary stepped off the curb to join him, shaking his head, not quite believing what he was seeing.  "People are going to have to walk in the street to get around it, but--well, yeah, of course I like it, it's just--why?"

Luke and Rob laughed; even Trini, who looked a little more bright-eyed than she had the day before, smiled at Gary.  Lucy and Bernardo had led Marissa over to the structure, and the three were exploring it with their hands.  Jeff watched them for a moment, pride radiating from the tips of his spiky hair to the toes of his boots.  Finally, he pulled a rolled-up newspaper, the current day's edition of the Sun-Times, from his back pocket.

"Because of this.  Man, I couldn't have asked for better publicity."  He held up the familiar photos for Gary to see, and Gary pasted a surprised look on his face.  "I've already got a call from a gallery that wants to sponsor a show, can you believe that?  Anyway, the guy who did the story, he told me you sent him--then he told me what happened yesterday with the kids and their mom, and I thought--well, I didn't have any other way to--you know."  He waved his hand at his creation.

"I think I do."  Gary was still overwhelmed.

"Gary?" Marissa called.  "What exactly is this?"

Jeff followed him over to join Marissa and the kids, while the others watched from the curb.  "Well, this--this is a giant hand," Gary told her, guiding her own fingers over the contours of the sculpture.  "It's kinda sticking out of the sidewalk, like this."  He positioned Marissa's hand, palm up, fingers curling in a little.

"What's it holding?"

Gary pulled her hand closer and let her touch the delicate object perched in the palm.  "You tell me."

"El pájaro!  Bird!"  Bernardo couldn't keep quiet any longer.  He jumped up and down, flapping his arms.

"It is a bird."  Marissa broke into a smile as she touched the outlines of wings and a beak.  "What kind of bird is it?"

"Any kind you want it to be."  Jeff shrugged.  "I just put the first thing that came into my head there.  I didn't really think it out that much."

Yeah, right.  Gary shot him a raised eyebrow, and caught the kid flushing behind his rainbow scarf.

"It's a robin," Lucy declared.  She'd walked all the way around the sculpture twice, and her eyes were shining.

"Bobin?" asked Bernardo.

"No."  Marissa straightened up and squeezed Gary's hand.  "No, it's a sparrow."

"Sparrow, robin, pterodactyl--who cares, man, it's cold out here!"  Luke stood just behind Jeff, bouncing on his toes.  "I'm freezing my--uh--"  He realized that Lucy was watching him.  "--my toes off," he finished lamely.

Gary regarded the collection of people around him--different ages, different colors, different pasts, different futures--and yet, somehow, right now they all belonged together.  He nodded at the front door.  "Well, don't stand out here freezing, c'mon inside."

Half an hour later, he and Marissa were filling a tray with mugs of hot chocolate and glasses of soda, wine, and beer, when one of the bartenders motioned him aside.

"Uh, I don't know if this is such a good idea, Mr. H."  He pointed at the ragtag group of artists, who had discovered a swing version of "Rock This Town" on the jukebox and were now dancing around the pool table on the raised platform at the opposite end of the room.  "The other customers might not like it very much."

Gary watched Luke, the new self-appointed Poet Laureate of McGinty's, lift Bernardo onto the pool table; Jeff spun Lucy off her feet.  "Well, the other customers don't have to dance if they don't want to."

"Miss Clark..."  The bartender turned his plea to Marissa.

She listened for a moment to the bouncy music, to the animated voices, and to Bernardo's hysterical giggles rising over all of it.  "They stay," she said firmly, her tone leaving no room for argument.  Defeated, the bartender went back to his station.  "The place hasn't been this lively since Patrick left," Marissa added.

"Hey, Miss Clark."  Gary nudged her with his elbow.  "You wanna dance?"  Marissa chuckled at his attempt to imitate their employee's whiny tone, then nodded, and they threaded their way through groups of slightly bemused sports fans, who could only watch, not hear, the college basketball game on the television.

It wasn't long before the dance had descended into happy chaos; they twirled and stumbled into each other, bumped into tables, mashed toes--and no one seemed to mind at all.  Finally, out of breath, Gary leaned back against the pool table, pulling his partner out of harm's way as Jeff went flailing by, eyes closed, arms waving like a belly dancer.  "You sure know how to show a girl a good time," Marissa laughed.  "I had no idea you knew how to jitterbug."

"I don't.  It's just a good thing you wore heavy shoes today."

Luke spun Lucy around once more, and deposited her on the pool table behind Gary.  Dizzy and gasping for breath, she grabbed Gary's shoulder, then pointed to the corner.  "Oh no!"

"What is it?" asked Marissa.

Gary shook his head.  "You're not gonna believe this."

Cat had wandered over to investigate the mayhem, and Bernardo, ever the animal lover, had scooped it up.  Now holding it under the front paws, the little boy jigged around the impromptu dance floor, swinging the cat from side to side in time to the music.

"Nardo--" Lucy began, but Gary shook his head.

"It's okay," he said with a grin.  After three and a half years, he could read those green eyes from across the room.  "I don't think Cat minds at all."

In fact, Cat was still putting up with it a little while later when Inez, Maria, and Luis walked into bar.  "Mama!" Lucy called happily, waving her nearly-empty glass of soda from her perch on the pool table, then jumping down to drag her family to the party.  There was a bit of relief, Gary thought, on Inez's face, as if she hadn't been quite sure her children wouldn't disappear on her again.

Marissa had been right about Maria.  She convulsed with laughter, black curls bobbing madly, when she saw Bernardo dancing with Cat.  It wasn't long before Lucy was introducing her mother and aunt to everyone there.  Gary was clearing empty glasses from the pool table and describing the scene to Marissa when Luis Savaria approached him.

"Mr. Hobson--"

"I told you yesterday, it's Gary."

Luis broke into a grin that was a lot like Bernardo's, a beam of light in a roundish face, and Gary wondered if maybe this was why the kids had trusted him immediately--resemblance to the father they'd loved so much.  "Gary, then."  He held out his hand.  "I just wanted to thank you again.  Now that I know the whole story--after all those months, to have them so close and in so much trouble...It's going to take a while for them to deal with it all, but at least they'll get the chance, and I--"  His smile had faded, but his eyes were warm when he shook Gary's hand and then Marissa's, his grip strong and firm.  "If you hadn't been in that park two nights ago, I wouldn't have a family here tonight."

Gary wasn't used to being thanked, not this directly, and it made him more than a little uncomfortable.  "Well, uh, we were--"  Marissa's fingers brushed his, and she mouthed the end of the next sentence along with him.  "We were just in the right place at the right time."

"No.  You were the right people in the right place at the right time.  That makes all the difference."  Luis waited until Gary acknowledged this with a nod, the only response he really felt capable of making.  He leaned back against the railing that separated the pool area from the rest of the bar, and the three stood and watched and listened to the group that had now settled around a dining table, downing french fries with the same gusto they'd given the dance.  Lucy was too busy talking to her mother and her aunt to notice that Bernardo was stealing most of her food.

"She's going to start back to school next week, right?" Gary asked Luis.

The other man looked perplexed, and perhaps a little offended.  "Lucy?  Of course she'll go to school."

"No, it's just that--that was all she wanted.  Find her mother and go to school.  She's a special kid."  Maybe it wasn't Gary's place to say this, but he had to.  He turned so that he was looking Luis right in the eye.  "Make sure she has a chance to--to--"  It wasn't easy to say everything he wanted for a kid like Lucy, especially if...but he couldn't explain about the paper, not now anyway.  "Just make sure she has a chance."

The smile turned back on in Luis's eyes, and he nodded firmly.  "You got it."

The group of young artists had apparently settled in for the night, and showed no signs of leaving, but the Savarias got ready to go right after dinner.  Jeff spun Lucy around one more time when she said good-bye, then Gary and Marissa walked the family to the front door.

Gary was hard-pressed to deal with the tidal wave of gratitude directed at him.  Luis shook his hand again; Maria, her eyes dancing, patted his arm and called him "Our Hero".  Inez kissed both his cheeks and squeezed him almost as tight as she'd been holding her kids all evening.  Bernardo, who'd been dozing in his mother's lap, stood limp and unprotesting as Marissa zipped him into his new coat.  But he blinked awake and wrapped his arms around her neck when she hugged him, and then trotted over to shake Gary's hand, just as his uncle had done.  His solemn, owlish expression had the other adults hiding smiles behind their hands, but Gary managed to keep a straight face.

"You come back again," Gary told him seriously.  "We need some more drawings for the office."

"Gato?"

"Yeah, a portrait of the cat," he said dryly.  "That would be just about right."

But the miracle was Lucy, the same girl who'd cringed and run away from him only three nights ago.  She stood a bit away from the rest of them, watching the group that she'd help bring together with quiet satisfaction, but when Gary started fumbling for the right words to say to her, she walked right up to him and let her arms do the talking.  She wrapped them tight around his waist, so tight it took his breath away.  "Gracias ," she whispered.

Even as he hugged her back, Gary was wondering if that thanks was a bit premature.  If she got involved with the paper, who knew what could happen to her?  No matter what Marissa said, he would feel responsible.

But maybe Marissa was right; maybe this was a choice that was out of his hands.  She'd certainly been right about one other thing.  Whether he'd asked for the paper or not, it hadn't turned out so badly after all.  Maybe what he most needed to do for Lucy was to make sure she knew she could handle whatever came her way, and that she wasn't alone.

"You're a good kid," he told Lucy quietly.  She pulled back, and he put both hands on her shoulders, smiling as he looked her right in her dark, questioning eyes.  "You're a really good kid."

FINIS

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

{Note:  The story Lucy reads is The Deliverers of Their Country by Edith Nesbit.  There's a wonderful edition illustrated with watercolors by Lisbeth Zwerger, published by the Picture Book Studio in 1985.}

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Email the author:  peregrin_anna@hotmail.com
 

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