He was just heading out running again with his wagon when he ran into Stacey coming home from work. She was just pulling into the long dirt driveway.
He tried to get away before she could stop him, but she powered down her car window and called his name.
“Stewie!”
He stopped, because he couldn’t think of a way to avoid it.
“What?” he called without looking over his shoulder.
“Where on earth are you going? You have school.”
“Sylvia is throwing out all Marilyn’s stuff. I have to hurry up and go get it before the garbagemen come.”
“I thought she just wanted one pair of shoes.”
“Well, she asked me to bring her the one pair of shoes. But I’m thinking she doesn’t want the rest thrown away.”
He waited, still not looking over his shoulder at her. He could hear the engine of her car humming softly.
A moment later he saw a shadow fall over him. He looked up to see that she had gotten out of her car and was standing right behind him.
“I know you think I do too much for her,” Stewie said quietly. “But it’s all her stuff. I can’t just let it all get thrown away. How bad would you feel if somebody threw away all your stuff?”
“And what about school?”
“We never really do very much on that last half day. Ever. We mostly say goodbye, and the teachers have us get up and say if we’re going to do anything special over the summer like if our family is going on a vacation or something. And I never have anything to say. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
Then he felt guilty, because he knew what he’d just said would hurt Stacey’s feelings. And he’d more or less done it on purpose, because he desperately wanted her to say he didn’t have to go.
For a time, no one spoke. Nothing moved. Even her shadow held perfectly still.
Then he saw and heard her sigh.
“Okay,” she said. “You go do that. I’ll call them and tell them I gave you permission to be absent today.”
He thanked her, but they were breathy, barely audible words thrown over his shoulder. Because he was already running.
He left her belongings in neat piles on his bedroom floor and padded into the kitchen to use the phone.
The house was blissfully quiet. Stacey was asleep, and Theo had gone off to the last half day of school.
He would have to talk fast, because it was a toll call. Stacey would hate seeing that when the phone bill came in.
He unfolded the scrap of paper on which he’d written Marilyn’s new address and phone number, and then carefully dialed, his heart hammering.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Stewie?” she said in place of hello.
She sounded desperate, and he caught her desperation like a contagious disease. It made him feel downright panicky.
“Yes, it’s me,” he said, sounding breathless to his own ears.
“Did you get the money?”
“No, it’s not there. It’s not in the shoes. It’s not in any of your things. She threw away all your stuff. She took it all out to the curb, and it’s garbage day. I got there just in time. I got the shoes back, but they didn’t have those soles inside like you said they would, and there was no money. I brought all your stuff back here in my wagon. Partly because I figured you’d want it sometime, but mostly because I figured you were wrong about where you hid it. But I went through everything. I went through everything, Marilyn,” he said again. It felt as though his desperation was trying to claw its way up and out through his throat. “It’s just not here. Where else could you have hidden it? Maybe it’s still in the house? Like under the mattress or something?”
He waited for her to answer, but heard only silence on the line. It stretched out into a truly painful length of time.
“Oh dear God,” he heard her breathe quietly into the phone. “I’m going to jail.”
“No!” Stewie shouted. Louder than he had meant to. “No, it doesn’t have to be that way. Just tell me where else you could have hidden it.”
“Stewie,” she said. And she sounded more defeated than he had ever heard her sound—than he had ever heard anybody sound. “Wake up. It’s over. It was in the shoes. Don’t you get it? She stole it. By the time she dug everything out of my closet and carried it down to the street, she would have seen that there was something hidden in the shoes. It was only a good hiding place because they were all the way in the back of my closet, where I never figured she would go. It’s over. The money’s gone.”
The line fell silent again. It struck Stewie, during that silence, that the call was costing Stacey too much. Maybe when the bill came in, he would volunteer to pay it out of his egg money.
When he spoke again, it was without forethought. He hadn’t known he was about to speak. He especially hadn’t predicted what he’d been about to say.
“I’ll make her give it back,” he said.
“I don’t think you can,” Marilyn said. “Seeing as you’re just a little boy and all. And I can’t ask you to. It wouldn’t be right to ask it of you.”
“I’ll make her give it back,” he said again.
“You can ask her for it back. It would certainly mean the world to me if you asked her and that was enough. But I don’t want you doing more than that.”
“I’ll make her give it back,” he said for a third time.
His voice sounded steadier the third time. As if he was somehow sure he actually could.
When he got back to Sylvia’s house, she was just pulling into the long, steep driveway. She had Izzy with her, which made sense. She had no one to leave her home with anymore.
He wondered how she would go to work now, but he had neither the time nor the attention to wonder long, not to mention arrive at any conclusion. His heart was pounding, and he had to do something the likes of which he had never done before. He had to be brave, even as he knew in his hammering heart he was anything but. He had to do something he couldn’t do, and be something he knew he was not.
He ran up the driveway and stepped in front of her car.
She slammed on the brakes and lurched to a halt just a foot or two in front of his belt buckle.
She powered down her window and leaned out, frowning at him.
“What the hell are you doing? You could’ve been killed!”
He opened his mouth to speak, and that’s when it hit him. Beyond and behind everything he was consciously paying attention to, a realization dawned.
This was not her car.
This car was much nicer than the one he had always seen her driving. It was a deep midnight blue, and still had some numbers pasted onto the windshield, the way cars do when they sit in dealers’ lots. A couple of numbers seemed to have been scraped off, and Stewie wasn’t sure if the remaining numbers represented the model year, or the price, or both.
“You got a new car?” he asked her, ignoring her earlier complaints.
“It’s not new. It’s a used car. It’s almost six years old.”
“But you just went out and got a better car.”
“So? What’s it to you?”
“You really did steal the money.”
She pulled her head back inside the car and powered up the window. Then she revved the engine to let Stewie know it was time to jump out of the way.
It startled him, so he did.
The minute she could get by him, she drove into her own garage, closing the automatic garage door behind her.
“I’m going to tell the police!” he shouted, pounding on the closed garage door. “I’m going to have them come arrest you. I’ll tell them you stole!”
All he heard was the click of the door that separated the garage from the laundry room.
He ran around to the front door and pounded until his fist hurt. Then he took to leaning on the doorbell instead.
She never answered.
Chapter Eighteen
My Power
Marilyn
When she walked to the administrative office the next morning, it was of her own volition. She figured it would go over better that way—if she sought them out. If she didn’t wait until they came after her.
She rapped on the door, and was inordinately relieved to hear Boris’s deep, booming bass of a voice in reply.