It was time to get a status report from Jesse about how his Levin repayment plan was going. He had been keeping a tally in his room, and for the first few weeks, he reported his totals to Markie with great pride every Sunday before walking the week’s wages up to the pharmacy and handing it to Mr. Levin. But he had gotten out of the reporting habit (though he had never skipped a Sunday’s restitution trip to the pharmacy), and she couldn’t recall the last figure he’d reported.
With any luck, he was close enough that with a small contribution from her, he could pay Mr. Levin in full that afternoon and retire from Mrs. Saint’s employ, effective immediately. That would free him up to spend his afternoons tiring out the dog, allowing Markie to rehabilitate her numbers and avoid choosing between location 642 in the cube prairie and unemployment.
“Close to three hundred,” Jesse said, flopping onto the family room floor a few hours later, Angel on top of him.
The corners of her mouth drooped. He wasn’t even halfway there.
“What’s wrong?” he said, reading her body language. “Did Mr. Levin say something to you? Or to Frédéric, or Mrs. Saint? Does he think I’m too slow?”
He looked so concerned, this boy who was trying so hard to right his wrongs, that she felt guilty for having asked about it. “Nothing’s wrong,” she lied. “I just . . . my ankle’s bothering me.”
“You want me to get your pain meds?” he asked. She shook her head no, and he told her to let him know if she changed her mind. “Hey,” he said, switching gears, “can you get full-size Hershey bars for Halloween?”
“You mean to hand out? At the door?”
He laughed. “Why do you sound so horrified? You are planning to hand out candy, right? We do it every year.”
They used to do it every year, but she considered it very much a “Before” activity, and this was “After.” The idea of spending an entire evening opening the front door to all their neighbors and their children, most of whom she had managed to avoid meeting, did not fit with her “After” strategy—not nearly as well as turning off the outdoor lights and watching TV in her darkened bedroom.
“Anyway,” she said, “I’m on to you with the full-size Hershey bars. Do not bribe that girl with candy to finish her homework.” Avoidance, deflection. One didn’t stay married to Kyle Bryant for twenty years without learning a few tricks.
“Not as a bribe,” he said. “She’s planning to go trick-or-treating with Frédéric, because her mom’s, I don’t know, working or going out or something. I just thought it would be cool if she could get her favorite thing from our place.”
“That’s nice of you,” she said. “Hey, maybe when you’ve paid back Mr. Levin and you’re done working for Mrs. Saint, you and Lola should celebrate the end of tutoring with a Hershey bar party.”
“Right,” he said, but he didn’t say it convincingly, and he hesitated first.
Not five minutes after Jesse left to take Angel and Lola for their afternoon walk, there was a knock at the back door. Markie, working in the dining room, leaned back in her chair to get a view of the door and spotted the Frenchwoman standing on the other side. Surveying the files spread on the table before her, she sighed. She had less than an hour before the four-legged distraction returned home, and she couldn’t afford to waste a moment of it.
“I have a favor,” Mrs. Saint said when Markie opened the door. “And considering you, it is a big one. Maybe not so big for Chessie, though. So I am hoping.”
“What favor?”
“Frédéric was going to take Lola around for Halloween. Tricking and treating, you know. But I have some appointments at the hospital on Monday. And now they tell me to plan to stay overnight—”
“Oh no!” Markie said. “I hope it’s nothing serious!”
Mrs. Saint clucked and tapped her chest with two fingers. “Once you get past sixty, it seems they want you to think everything is serious. But it will all be fine. And I keep telling Frédéric there is no need for him to stay over, too.”
“In the hospital?”
“He insists to wait there. It is ridiculous. This I have told him many times. But on some things, he cannot be swayed.”
What things? Markie wanted to ask. Surely there couldn’t be more than one or two subjects on which Frédéric had the final say between them. “Is he even allowed to stay the night?” she asked instead.
“He will stay,” Mrs. Saint said, and Markie, knowing it was as much of an answer as she was going to get, didn’t push. “So,” the old woman continued, “someone needs to take Lola out with her costume. And I thought Chessie.”
Markie considered this. Technically, Jesse was supposed to be grounded if he wasn’t working, and she wasn’t inclined to make an exception. On the other hand, trick-or-treating with a second grader was hardly a night out. Plus, it was for a good cause. Two good causes: she would make him take Angel along.
“I can ask him,” she said. “If he’s willing to do it, it’s fine with me. Or you can ask, when they get back with the dog.”
“He will say yes,” Mrs. Saint said. “I know this. He is very good with her. He will want to help.”
She gave a brief, tight smile, and Markie couldn’t decide if she should be angry or proud. Was the old woman being smug because she believed Jesse would do whatever she asked of him, or was she simply expressing that he was a kind-enough boy that he would want to help Lola?
“He’s a good kid,” Markie said, deciding to go with the latter interpretation. She eased the door an inch toward closed. “So if that’s everything . . .”
“But she will need to stay at your house after, you see,” Mrs. Saint said, ignoring the moving door. “This is the favor from you. Patty can get her only late. One in the morning. Two, even. When Frédéric takes her, she stays overnight at my house. Which you can. Or if you would rather, her mother can come to gather her when she is finished.”
“Finished what?” Markie asked casually, hoping to catch her off guard.
But Mrs. Saint only smiled in a “Nice try” way and said nothing.
Markie felt the familiar sensation of heat in her cheeks. She hadn’t liked secrecy when she was married to Kyle, and she didn’t like it now. “Can’t Patty cancel her plans, just for one night? It’s Halloween! What could she possibly have lined up that can’t be rescheduled for the sake of her daughter?”
Mrs. Saint flattened her lips into a line. “I couldn’t say.”
Markie rested her head on the open door and exhaled slowly. She wanted to point out the unreasonableness of the woman refusing to share information about Patty even when she was standing in Markie’s doorway, asking for her help with Patty’s daughter. Pointing out the lack of fairness in the situation wouldn’t make a difference, though.
“What about Carol?”
“Och, no!” Mrs. Saint said. “Not on Halloween!”