The owner of the house, Lester Boggs, wanted Verna—meaning Arthur—to pay three grand to clean up the place. But Arthur was holding out. He had enough trouble with every relative he had hitting him up for money. Just yesterday his mother’s third cousin by marriage had called and asked for twenty grand.
Even this long after he’d received the settlement, it still shocked him that people truly believed that if they just had X amount of money they’d be happy. At first, Arthur had yelled at them. “I’ve lost the use of my legs. You’re healthy and you have a loving family, but you’re the onecrying?”
It hadn’t done any good. Within four months of the money being deposited in his bank account, his relatives had labeled him selfish. Uncaring about his own family. That not one of them had visited him in the hospital or helped with his rehabilitation didn’t seem to matter to them. Their demands had made him bitter and lonely.
He stopped at the corner of Verna’s house and looked both ways. No one was around. He liked to slip through the back so nosy old Mary Ellerbee across the road wouldn’t see him. She was like a mother and grandmother to Verna and her daughter. Always baking things for them, knitting useless little things. She would spend whole afternoons at their house, chatting with Verna for hours. And she was endlessly curious about their lives.
But then, poor Verna didn’t have many friends in Lachlan. Actually, only him and Mary that he knew about. There might be some other men, but he didn’t like to think about them. When you got down to it, he liked to think of Verna and Cheryl as his family. The one he never got to have.
When everything seemed to be clear, he leaned on his canes and started toward the back door. To his right were the remains of an old thrasher, something Boggs refused to move until Arthur paid him to do so. Farther away was what used to be a barbecue pit. Left over from the six college boys who’d rented the house for a couple of months. They’d dug the deep pit, cooked their hog, then hadn’t bothered to fill in the hole.
Because Arthur was thinking so hard about other things, he didn’t see Cheryl until he almost ran into her. He always tried to stay away from her. After all, what could he say to a kid who dressed like an adult? “How was work today? The traffic was bad, wasn’t it?” She didn’t look like someone you could ask, “Did you do your arithmetic homework?”
Cheryl was leaning over the concrete steps at the back of the house and throwing up her guts.
Arthur tried to leave unnoticed, but he didn’t make it.
“Oh, Mr. Niederman,” she said. “Sorry, I—” She couldn’t finish but collapsed on the step.
He thought she was such an old child, a woman-child, really. So adult, so unflustered by anything. But right now she was just a girl wearing what looked to be her mother’s clothes. Her usually perfect hair was messy and scraggly. When she looked at him, there was such misery in her eyes that he wanted to grab his canes and take off running.
He was pretty sure he knew what was causing her to vomit. She was about to pop out of the front of her blouse and four days ago he’d seen her nearly faint. Lord! Yet another pregnant teenager.
In an instant, Arthur could see his life ending. Verna wouldn’t stay in Lachlan. She’d take her wayward daughter and leave town forever. Arthur would bealone.
The horrible thought made him practically fall backward to sit on the steps beside Cheryl. She wasn’t the only one who was depressed. Side by side, they were two glum-looking people. “What now?” he whispered.
“I’ll get married,” she said.
He turned to look at her. Ah, to be that young! There was no doubt in her voice that the boy would marry her and there’d be a happy-ever-after. “You’re a bit young, aren’t you?”
“I guess not,” she said in a way that almost made him smile.
“So he’ll take responsibility, that sort of thing?”
“Oh, yes. He’s like that.”
Again, there was that certainty. “What did your mother say?”
Cheryl’s pale skin looked bleached. “She knows nothing.”
“Verna must have some suspicions. When she met the boy—”
“No!” Cheryl took a breath. “I couldn’t introduce her to him. To anybody. Never.”
“You’ve kept all of this secret? In a town like Lachlan?”
“It hasn’t been easy. I’ve—” She put her hands over her face. “Oh, Mr. Niederman, it’s been awful. I’ve had to lie and sneak and hide. Lots of hiding! But if Mom had found out I had a boyfriend, she would have ruined everything.”
Arthur’s eyes were wide. His housekeeper was one of the town’s biggest gossips, yet he’d never heard a hint of the Morris girl with any male. Suddenly, he realized what Cheryl was saying. Her mother would “do” something? And young Cheryl was having to keep it all secret? “How old is this guy?”
“Not much older,” she whispered. She was looking at him with eyes filled with tears.
Arthur wanted to run away. He fumbled for his canes but one had fallen to the ground. He did not want to be involved in some scandal that would make little Lachlan a national laughingstock. Teen pregnant by...what? A man in his twenties? Thirties? Forties? Married with kids?
“I better go. Tell your mother I’ll call her.”
Cheryl clamped both hands on his forearm, her perfect pink nails cutting into his skin. “I want you to tell Mom for me. Find out how crazy she’ll be when I tell her that I’m going to get married very soon. Tell her I’ll stay here in Lachlan and I’ll get a good job at a local TV station. A job like she used to have. I will not be throwing my life away.”
