“Fresh. Whenever we could get them. Homemade. Whenever we could. Fruit that was more than just a brown banana or a bruised apple.” Boone moved out of the kitchen into the dining room, his smile still in place. “You should have seen the kids’ faces when we served kiwi for the first time. Half of them tried eating it like an apple, fuzzy brown skin and all, and the other half wouldn’t dare take a bite until they’d watched someone else do it first.” Boone’s laugh echoed through the large empty room. “I wanted them to know that there was more to life than everyone else’s hand-me-downs and second bests. I wanted them to realize that they were worthy of the good stuff in life, even if that lesson was subtly passed to them in the form of a glass of milk that had been poured from a carton instead of powder mixed into water.”
I followed him into the dining room, wanting to say so much. Wanting to gush and praise and condone and compliment him until I was blue in the face. I wanted him to know that even though I knew in his eyes he failed because he’d lost the center, he’d succeeded.
“How many people did you have working at any one time?” I asked, instead of going with the gushing thing.
“There were usually three people working the kitchen at any time and a few more helping with the activities we had going on throughout the day, so usually five to eight people depending on the time and day.”
Boone slid a chair back under a table as he headed out of the dining room. The tour was moving on, and based upon what I’d already seen, I couldn’t wait to see the rest.
“Is that including you?” I asked as I came up beside him.
“That’s including me.”
“What sort of schedule did you have?” I asked as he opened the first door we came to in the hall. This room didn’t have as many windows as the kitchen had, so it was a bit darker. I was hesitant to enter, but when he went in, I followed.
“If the center was open, I was working. That was my schedule.” From the way his voice wasn’t echoing as much as it had in the kitchen, I guessed this room was half the size of the dining room.
“What were the center’s hours?”
Boone’s footsteps moved around the room, then fresh light cut into it. And then more as he lifted the shutters covering the windows. “Monday through Friday, we were open six in the morning to nine at night. On the weekends, we opened an hour later and stayed open an hour later.”
“You were open fifteen hours a day?” I moved about the room more comfortably, letting my eyes adjust to the light. “Seven days a week?”
“Yes and yes.”
“So your work weeks were a breezy one-hundred-and-some-change hours?”
Boone settled against one of the window wells and looked around the room. Now that my eyes had adjusted, I saw it was a kind of library. Rows of bookcases had been shoved against walls, all of them brimming over with books, and in the center of the room, a bunch of beanbags and colorful floor rugs had been laid out.
“That sounds about right,” Boone answered.
“When did you sleep?” I paused when I came up beside a tie-dyed beanbag that still had Anne of Green Gables propped open on it.
“Whenever I wasn’t working,” he said, lifting his shoulders. “Sometimes by the time I’d finish with the cleaning and the bookwork and the ordering, I’d be too bushed to make it back to my place, so I’d just come in here, snuggle up, and lights out.” Boone eyed one of the larger beanbags that had clearly seen its share of use.
I shook my head, baffled. The Boone I’d loved could have done no wrong in my eyes, but the Boone of today . . . he was something else. Someone who had made so much of his life. Someone who had beaten the odds and chosen to put good into the world when it was so much easier to go with the other option.
“You’re a saint,” I said, turning around slowly.
“No one gets to be a saint without first being a sinner.” Boone shoved off of the window well, heading for the door. “Funny thing, isn’t it?”
I crouched beside the beanbag with the book. I was tempted to pick up the book and put it away, but at the last moment, I stopped. I stood, turned around, and left the room just the way it was—ready for the young person who’d left the book there to come back and finish reading it.
“In this room, we mostly did arts and crafts.” Boone carried on down the hall, opening doors as he passed them. “And this one, which was a coat closet when this place was a functioning church, was my office.” He glanced at me when I peeked my head inside the cramped space. “I couldn’t stretch my arms behind me without banging my hands into the wall.”
“I’m surprised you could turn around at all in here.” I crinkled my nose when I estimated that while the space was on the longish side, it couldn’t have been any wider than three, maybe four feet.
Boone laughed, grabbing my shoulders and steering me away from the coat closet of an office. “But what I’m really excited to show you is what’s just outside.”
“The sports fields?” I asked as I let him lead me through a different room that looked to have a bunch of educational materials before he threw open a door that led outside. “Those are great, Boone. They look really well-kempt, and I love the bleachers you have lining the baseball field.”
“The fields are great,” he said, guiding me down a few stairs before steering me in the opposite direction of the fields. “But this is what you’re going to think is really great.”