By every measure that December, he would also die there. Then the phone rang. It was the second Tuesday of December, and he had just come in from a job patching a shed roof over on the Henderson place.
His hands were still cold. The phone on the wall was the old kind, the cord kinked from 30 years of being stretched between counter and table. And when he picked it up, he knew the voice before the caller finished the first sentence.
Margaret Owens had been his wife’s friend before she had been anyone’s case worker. She had sat in his kitchen during Carol’s last spring, brought a casserole, stayed an hour after the plate was washed.Budgeting tools
She did not call for pleasantries. That was part of why he trusted her. “Thomas,” she said, and he could hear in the single word that she had not slept. “I need a favor I have no right to ask.” He set the coffee pot down without pouring.
She told him about three girls, a mother 5 days dead in a car on the wrong side of a county road, a father not seen in 2 years, somewhere between a bottle and a bench in Nashville.
Two foster homes already refused “complex psychological profile,” the file said, which meant the oldest would not speak to strangers. The middle one had bitten an intake worker, and the little one had stopped eating for 3 days.
A third family had opened its door, but only for the youngest, only for Wren. “How old?” Thomas asked. “12, 9, and 6.” He closed his eyes. “If I cannot place them together by tomorrow morning, I have to split them.Child adoption services
Three counties, three different intake offices. The older two go into a group home by Friday.” He did not answer. Somewhere in the kitchen, the clock above the stove made the small tick it had been making through every hour of Carol’s illness.
“I know what I’m asking,” Margaret said. “I know your house. I know what this year has been for you. I would not be calling if I had anywhere else on Earth to call.” He let the silence stretch because he did not trust his voice yet.Dad humor gifts
When it came, it came flat and honest, the way he always spoke when he was afraid. “Margaret, I have never raised a child. I do not know what shampoo girls use.
