“No, I didn’t think something like this could have prevented what happened to her, or stop what happens to thousands of other kids. It just got me thinking how her life could have been different if she’d had something in her life that lifted her up instead of constantly tearing her down. If going somewhere and being around people and activities that made her feel good about herself could have . . . you know, changed how she ended up.” Boone angled around, more facing me than turned away. “I couldn’t save Wren or the other Wrens out there from what happened to them, but I guess I was hoping to even the scales. I wasn’t ignorant enough to believe I could erase the past with fresh cinnamon rolls and soccer games. I was just trying to make a difference in their here and now, and maybe give them a leg up when it came to their futures.”
I couldn’t keep looking at him saying what he was saying without welling up, so I looked away. I still welled up, but at least he couldn’t tell. “You wanted to be a force for good.”
Boone exhaled. “I think it had more to do with not wanting to be a force for evil. There’s enough of those already.”
I continued to stare down the wall, dabbing at the corners of my eyes like I was trying to pluck out an eyelash that had fallen into my eye. “So are you going to show me around? Or are we going to keep discussing forces of good and evil in the entryway?”
A chuckle vibrated deep in Boone’s chest. “Come on. Let’s get this over with before the police show up and charge me with breaking and entering in addition to vehicular theft.”
“I’d get charged as an accomplice.”
“Yeah, right. Your dad would tell the sheriff I kidnapped you, so I guess you could just add a third charge to my arrest.” When Boone passed me, he grabbed my hand and led me down the hallway.
Instead of allowing him to let me go when we got to wherever we were going, I knit my fingers through his and held on tightly.
“This is the dining room and kitchen,” Boone announced as we stepped into a large room at the end of the hall. From the way the inside had been framed and redesigned, once a person was inside, they never would have known they were in a church.
“The most important room in any place, right?” I smiled at the dozen or so tables staggered around the room. They were all round, some lower to the ground than others, and in one of the corners was a pretend kitchen complete with an army of dolls and stuffed animals still propped into chairs and high chairs at their own table.
Boone caught me staring at it. “Yeah, I just couldn’t find a way to tear it all down and tape it into boxes. I’m an idiot for leaving it all behind for the bank to own now too, but I think I’m deluding myself into believing someone else will step in, buy it, and keep things exactly the way they were, Tinkerbell and Winnie the Pooh dining side-by-side included.” Boone motioned at the table full of eclectic guests.
“So what would you do in this room?” I asked, milling around and peeking into the kitchen area. It was a large, well-equipped commercial-grade kitchen from the looks of it. “I mean, other than the obvious.”
Boone smiled at me. “If by obvious you mean we used to see how many marshmallows a kid could stuff in their mouth and still say chubby bunny, and wind up with more fruit smashed into the floor than in the jars when we’d teach them how to make jam, and we’d hold award ceremonies for who was the most brave when it came to trying new foods resembling a healthy, leafy kind of nature.” Boone rubbed at a handprint on the stainless-steel countertop with the cuff of his sleeve. “A few of the more unobvious things we used to do in here included prepping, preparing, serving, and eating meals.”
I rolled my eyes at his smile. As difficult as it had been for him in the parking lot, now that we were inside and he was moving around the center, it was like I was with a whole different person. “How many meals did you serve on a typical day?”
He didn’t have to narrow his eyes in concentration or crease his forehead to calculate. “Seven days a week, we served breakfast and dinner, and on the weekends, we also served lunch, so in total we were doing close to fifteen hundred meals a week. More in the summer when the kids were home from school.”
My eyebrows lifted—I hadn’t guessed half that many. “We’re talking hot dogs, pizza boats, French fries, and canned vegetables, right? Think school lunch a rung or two better?”
Boone’s gaze searched the kitchen, seeing something that was invisible to my eyes. “My goal wasn’t to give them what they expected. What everyone else thought they deserved. Food-bank quality meats and soggy peas from a can was not the environment I wanted to create here.”
“So you went with frozen peas instead?” I tried to calculate how many pounds of frozen peas a person would go through weekly trying to keep up with fifteen hundred meals.