Markie didn’t wait for elaboration. She knew it wasn’t coming. “Ronda?” she asked. “Bruce?”
Her neighbor smiled patiently, waiting for Markie to reach the obvious conclusion, which she did, that neither of them could handle something like this. A moment passed, and Mrs. Saint continued to smile, and to wait, while Markie worked out in her head a list of reasons why she couldn’t agree to what the woman was asking. Letting Jesse take the girl out for an hour or two to collect candy was fine, but having her back to the house until one or two in the morning? That crossed a deep, thick line of intimacy, and while that line might be blurred to the point of erasure on the other side of the fence, it was still as solid as ever on Markie’s side.
Markie struggled to think of a version of “I don’t want to get involved” that wouldn’t make her look like a selfish jerk. She could think of nothing, and Mrs. Saint smiled on, waiting for the answer she wanted, the answer she knew she was going to get. Of course Markie would do it. She had no choice. She was an eight-year-old child’s only chance at being able to celebrate Halloween. The Frenchwoman had her, and she knew it.
“Fine,” Markie said. “She can come here after. But Patty needs to come get her as early as possible. Lola can start out sleeping in the guest room. I hate to make a little girl get up in the middle of the night on a school night, but she hardly knows me. She’s never been in the house, even. And then there’s the dog, and I . . .”
Mrs. Saint clapped her hands twice, interrupting Markie’s rambling. She had found Lola a trick-or-treat partner and a place to stay until her mother was “finished.” The other details didn’t matter to her.
“Merci! C’est formidable!”
She turned to leave but swung back around a moment later, a finger in the air. “We will skip homework on Monday and have this instead for Chessie’s job. Lola will eat dinner early. Chessie could join her if he likes—”
“He’ll eat here,” Markie said.
She had been firm about this with Jesse. The odd underbaked cookie or burned cupcake at Mrs. Saint’s kitchen table was fine, but she drew the line at his staying to join the others in a bowl of soup or a plate of spaghetti in her formal dining room. In her view, snacks made him nothing more than the neighbor kid who was helping out for a little while. Dinner made him a Defective.
“Ronda will help her into her costume,” Mrs. Saint continued. “Chessie will get her by five fifteen. He must have her home by seven fifteen. She will tell you she has no bedtime, but you are to make her go by eight. I have a toothbrush and pajamas for her. I will bring over. Also a timer for her tooth brushing, so she will do it long enough. Otherwise, all that candy . . .” She shuddered.
Markie let an exasperated breath escape. She was the one who had signed on as Lola’s keeper, she was the one who would actually be there, and it was her house, yet the bossy old woman was barking out orders as though their roles were reversed!
“I’m sure we’ll figure it all out,” she said. “I’ve managed to get my own child through a dozen Halloweens, and he’s still with us, as are all his teeth.”
“And you will insist on a bath before bed,” Mrs. Saint went on. “Her mother does not require it often enough, and—”
“A bath?” Markie laughed, throwing her head back dramatically to emphasize the lunacy of the suggestion. “I’ve met the child once! And Jesse certainly won’t be—”
Mrs. Saint chuckled softly as though Markie were a whining child not to be taken seriously, and Markie was tempted to take the woman out at the knees with a crutch.
“She’s been taking baths on her own for years,” Mrs. Saint said. “But she will do it if only it is insisted. So you must point her the way and tell her to go.”
The hell I will! Markie wanted to scream.
The old woman turned to leave a second time, and again she turned back, her finger aloft.
What now? Markie thought. An approved list of bedtime stories, in French?
“But you must listen for the water filling,” Mrs. Saint said. “Or she might only sit in the bathroom for ten minutes. Tell her you will be gathering the wet towel after, and that will be the trick. You can also say you will help her comb out her tangles. She will not let you, but it will remind her you will be noticing if her hair is wet.”
Markie tried to distract herself from her irritation by taking note of the fact that, clearly, Lola must have spent a certain number of nights at the neighbor’s house. Normally, this sort of information caused her to stop everything as she tried (despite countless promises to herself that she would not do this) to piece it into the mysterious puzzle of life on the other side of the fence. But her annoyance drowned out her curiosity—Mrs. Saint could hint that Lola was her secret granddaughter, for all Markie cared, and it still wouldn’t smooth the creases she could feel on her forehead or stop her teeth from grinding.
For the third time, the old woman turned for home, and this time Markie wasn’t going to be there to hear what she came up with next. She took a big step backward, away from the door, and balancing her weight on her crutches, she used her uninjured leg to push the door shut. The force of her kick almost knocked her backward, and although she recovered her balance, she decided that a fall onto the hardwoods would have been a fair price to pay to hear the satisfying wham! the door made when it closed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Markie set a bowl of candy in the tiny foyer and turned on the outdoor lights while Jesse went next door to collect Lola. The lights and candy were solely for Lola’s benefit, as was the jack-o’-lantern outside the front door. One of Jesse’s “jobs” on Sunday was helping Lola carve pumpkins for Mrs. Saint’s house, and Ronda had bought enough for them to make one for the bungalow. Once the kids had set off around the corner to trick-or-treat, Markie planned to shut off the lights and hide in her room until a few minutes before their return. She would dump half the candy in the bathroom garbage to make it look like she had given it away.
“We’re here!” Jesse called from the side door, and the tone of his voice alerted Markie that she should be prepared when she saw them.
Her jaw dropped anyway. Her son stood in the family room beside a three-foot-tall call girl carrying a plastic pumpkin. Lola wore a bright-pink bikini top that was at least two sizes too small, and a very tight mauve-satin skirt that ended halfway between her knees and hips. Between her bikini top and skirt was a foot of bare stomach, and on her feet were women’s-size high heels, the same bright pink as the top.