Kit waited until Eleanor was asleep that night before rolling the grill from the shed out to the driveway. She removed the green lid and dumped in the stack of newspapers. Then she struck a match, threw it on the pile, and watched the papers burn.
Kit knew she owed her aunt the truth; it didn’t feel right to be lying to her while living under her roof, eating her food, enjoying her company. This was supposed to be a fresh start, and she didn’t see a way to move forward without coming clean to Eleanor. And she couldn’t stand the idea of her aunt finding out on her own. On the other hand, she was about three months away from having this baby. If Eleanor had a crisis of conscience and turned her in, her baby might be born in prison, or worse, taken from her. She also didn’t want to put Eleanor in the position of knowingly harboring a criminal. If anything happened to her aunt because of Kit’s mistakes, she would never forgive herself. Maybe she should leave the state. Her hair had grown over an inch since the robbery at Stokers, and she was pregnant. No one would recognize her if she started over someplace new.
But it was too late to leave. She needed Eleanor. The baby needed her. Making sure her baby had a good home was more important than having a clean conscience. She could live with the guilt. She would have to. Someday she could come out and tell Eleanor that she had stolen honest people’s money, that she’d been a party to terror. But not today.
So Kit carried the secret like a promise. She would tell Eleanor when she knew her baby would be safe. In the meantime, she worked overtime to be helpful to Eleanor. She dug trenches for a little irrigation system around the thirsty hydrangeas, welded new latches on the front gate, and, when they finally got a string of sunny days after several days of rain, Kit climbed up on top of the house to mend the roof.
“You’re mad! You’ll kill yourself and that baby, too!” Eleanor scolded her. “I can’t watch this, I’m going inside.”
Kit laughed as she scaled the ladder easily and seated herself on the roof. “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful,” she yelled after her aunt. Perched up high, going where she shouldn’t, felt as natural as sitting in a lawn chair. She had often pried open the attic window at the Machers’ and looked at the stars, the hazy lights of Houston to the east, and to the west, darkness.
Within minutes, Eleanor was back outside again, a sloshing pitcher of iced tea in one hand and in the other a telephone, the tail of its cord winding up the steps and in the front door.
“I decided I should be here ready to call 911 in case you fall.”
“Look, if the roof caves in on us from the rain, we won’t be any better off. Anyway, I feel good. I’m pregnant, not crippled.” Kit began pulling nails with the claw of her hammer and scraping the old, brittle scales to the ground.
“I’m just glad I planted that boxwood around the house,” Eleanor said. “It’ll break your fall.”
They were quiet for a bit while Kit pried up shingles and tossed them aside.
She heard Eleanor clear her throat and looked down at her aunt, who was holding a chicken in her lap and stroking its neck. Kit stopped scraping and caught her breath.
“All right,” Eleanor said, sounding stern. “I have something to say. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I get the feeling that you don’t let much in and you don’t let much out. But you’re gonna have a little one soon, and you’ve got to start things off on the right foot. If you have something to tell me, then tell me; and if you wanna know something, well, dammit, you gotta ask me. I don’t know how long I have to wait before we have an honest conversation here.”
Kit had so far successfully avoided discussing anything from her past in detail. She had said that she left a dead-end relationship in search of real family, that her time in foster care had been shitty and she didn’t want to talk about it. She had been expecting and dreading the day when her aunt would press her to say more because she did not think she could bring herself to lie to Eleanor. Why would she want to bring such ugliness into this new life? Surely it was best to keep facing forward. She could not change the past, but she could protect today. And Manny. There was no honest explanation she was willing to share. She searched for something that might satisfy Eleanor’s curiosity.
“You can tell me,” Eleanor said. “I’ve lived a long time. You can’t scare me. Whatever it is. Just let ’er rip.”
“I don’t know,” Kit said. “A lot of it is fuzzy in my memory. I don’t like to go back there if I can help it.” Eleanor stopped stroking the hen and was very still, listening.
“I remember being hungry all the time. Even when there was food enough, I was hungry. Bottomless. It was the thing that got me up in the morning. ‘What am I gonna eat today?’” She kept her eyes on the shingles. It helped to work while she talked; splitting her attention cut the pain in two. She didn’t look at her aunt, didn’t think she could keep talking if she saw her face.
“Did you have friends? Anyone you could turn to?” Eleanor asked, hopeful.
Kit thought about it. She had had Miss Rhonda. And Red. The only person from her old life who knew she’d gone to Pecan Hollow. Temporary, stand-in mothers, maybe. And, of course, there was Manny, but she could not call him a friend as she understood the word. She shook her head.
“I wasn’t very nice to people,” Kit said. “They had no reason to like me. It wears on you, being unwanted over and over. First my mother, then the social workers always trying to get me off their hands, then as soon as I was placed it was like the foster parents were just counting down the days. So, I started to act like I didn’t care if I stayed or went. And maybe I even did things that would get me sent back to the group home, just to prove how much I didn’t care, to prove I knew what I was.”
“Knew what you were?”
“Trash,” Kit said, something pooling in her chest, a great sadness at the truth of it.
Eleanor shook her head vigorously. “You are no such thing. Just because people did wrong by you doesn’t mean you’re worthless. You are a gift. To me you are.”
Kit wanted to believe her. Eleanor was tearful and seemed sincere. But when Kit was all swirled up inside like this, it was impossible to take in the good. She stretched her head to the side, her neck so tight she thought the tendons might snap.
Eleanor covered her mouth and widened her eyes, as if considering something for the first time.
“Did they beat you, dear?”
Kit laughed darkly. “Well, sure,” she said, surprised at her aunt’s innocence. “That was the easy part.”
Eleanor gasped and looked over her shoulder at nothing. When she turned her face up at Kit, her features were pinched together. “I wish you wouldn’t make light. I couldn’t feel more awful about this, I just couldn’t.”