“Alex, wait—”
“You need to get a pen, Melanie. I have to hang up.”
Melanie had grabbed a pen next to the phone and the little note tablet her mother kept in a tidy drawer in the telephone table. Alex rattled off a Los Angeles address for an apartment on West Third and Melanie wrote it down.
“You can tell Mom and Dad I called,” Alex had said. “And tell them I am perfectly fine, okay?”
“Alex, if you could just—”
“I really do have to go. I’ll call you in California. Someday soon, I hope. It’s up to you, really, how long it takes. Bye, Mel.”
The line had gone dead.
For several long moments, Melanie had only been able to gaze at the piece of paper in her hand. As she stared at the numbers and letters, the images in blue ink seemed to transform into something more than mere scribbles on a page.
It had been almost as if the address were a directional pointing to a door cracked open just far enough to reveal light on the other side.
She’d packed her bags, waited for her parents to return so she could tell them goodbye, and then stepped toward that brightness.
17
June leaned against her kitchen counter and watched Nicky Kolander eat pieces of triangle-shaped cinnamon toast. Her grandmother had always cut her toast and sandwiches like that when she was young. June still liked the way it looked on a plate with the points meeting in the center like four kissing cousins.
It had been Eva’s idea to bring Nicky over to the house that afternoon so that Melanie could run into Santa Monica and buy a few Christmas presents for him. June, who had agreed, was peeved, though—not at Melanie but at that brother of hers, Alex.
“You telling me she still hasn’t heard a peep from this guy in a week?” she’d said to Eva.
“Nothing.”
June had shaken her head, and not for the first time in the last couple of days. She’d done the same when she’d first learned from Eva what Melanie’s so-called long-lost brother had done to her, and again yesterday when Melanie sent Eva over to the house before her usual arrival time to borrow carpet cleaner—Nicky had gotten chocolate pudding on Mrs. Gilbert’s white carpet—and then threehours later when she heard from across the yard Melanie banging on the front door to be let back in the house. Nicky had locked her out. Apparently accidentally. But still.
Melanie was clearly in over her head. And that brother was as irresponsible as he was heartless and unkind. Who abandons their child a week before Christmas, leaving him with an aunt he’s never met and without even asking her first? Who does that?
Despite her own troubles, June felt sorry for her neighbor.
Melanie had looked frazzled and nearly unrecognizable with her pretty hair pulled back under a scarf and wearing big sunglasses when she dropped Nicky off.
“He won’t bother Elwood, will he?” Melanie had asked.
“He won’t be bothered, I assure you. We’ll stay downstairs.”
Melanie had nodded and then just stood there on the welcome mat as Eva ushered Nicky into the house and then led him through the living room to June’s kitchen.
“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” June had said.
“I know he will. Eva is really good with him.”
Still she’d lingered.
“Is there something else you need, Melanie?” June had asked, supposing Melanie was again going to ask to see Elwood. She readied herself to say no.
“Maybe…Um. Did you have little brothers? Or nephews? Do you have friends with grandsons?”
“Oh. I’m afraid not.”
“All right. I just…I don’t know what little boys like.” Melanie had sounded lost and young. “I don’t know anything about how to care for little boys.”
Again, that brother!What a cad,June had wanted to say.
