Jo Leigh - Little Girl Found

“I want to go, too.”

“I’ll only be gone a few minutes. Why don’t you show Mr. McCabe your special blanket?”

Megan nodded, and Hailey wasn’t sure it was a good thing. The girl was a scrapper. Always had been. She sometimes had a tendency to throw a dramatic tantrum when she didn’t get her way, although the episodes were short-lived. To see her acquiesce so soon, and so stoically, told Hailey a lot. This little one was going to need a great deal of attention and a great deal of understanding.

“I’ll be back,” she said, turning to Jack. “I’ll bring some food.”

“I’ll help,” he said, leaning down to retrieve his cane.

“No, that’s okay. You need to be here with Megan.” Before he could argue, Hailey unlocked the apartment door and went outside. It was still chilly. She would put on a jacket before she returned.

As she walked toward her apartment, she felt nervous, as if someone was watching her. When she looked at the parking lot below, no one seemed to be there, although there were several unfamiliar cars in the lot. She shook the feeling off as understandable paranoia, but she walked faster and didn’t feel better until she was inside her place. She bolted the door behind her. The feeling didn’t completely disappear, and she understood right then that her own personal bubble of invulnerability had been shattered this morning. She wondered it she’d ever get it back again.

“THIS IS GARFIELD and he’s the dog. And these are the bees, the mommy and daddy and baby, see?”

Jack nodded, feeling awkward and inept as he listened to Megan talk about her blanket. She continued to point out all the significant pictures—the little girl who was all alone, the eyes, the letters and numbers and the great big heart. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him, but then he couldn’t remember ever thinking about a quilt before. Megan certainly took it seriously, though. After each explanation, she waited for his nod and only then moved to the next.

So he kept nodding when there was a pause, but he wasn’t thinking about the big bus or the bumblebee family. His thoughts were on the girl and her situation. She was an orphan, and even though Hailey wanted to keep her, the state still had control over her future. Unfortunately the state was a notoriously bad parent.

It would probably be better for the kid to stick with Hailey, but if she did that and a relative showed up, there’d be big trouble. Who knows how attached Megan would become to Hailey? Then she’d have lost her parents and her guardian, and that wouldn’t be something she could easily recover from. He’d seen that too many times to have any doubts. Kids taken from bad families, put into foster homes, then shuffled to another and another. Those kids didn’t, as a rule, fare well. They ended up coming back home, only by then the parent state was usually in the form of a penitentiary.

At least she was a girl. Girls generally adjusted better than boys.

“…daddy?”

He heard the word and realized she’d asked him something. “What?”

“Do you know my daddy?”

Shoot. He’d hoped to avoid this. What was he supposed to say? Where the hell was Hailey? “Uh, yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

“Hailey says he went to heaven to see my mommy.”

Dammit, where was she? How long could getting some food take? “Yeah, uh, well…Hailey’s pretty smart.”

“Does she baby-sit you, too?”

He smiled. “Not exactly.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “People don’t come back from heaven.”

He probably needed to say something else. Something reassuring. She looked up at him with those big blue eyes, just staring. Waiting. But he didn’t have a clue. She might as well have been one of those bumblebees on the quilt for all he knew how to talk to her. He’d never been around kids, not like Megan, at least. He’d know what to say if she’d just tagged a building or sold drugs on the schoolyard. But this? He was way out of his league.

He blinked, but she didn’t. She didn’t move. “You want to watch some television?” he asked desperately.

She nodded, but did he detect a note of disappointment in her eyes? Had he already failed?

“I like Reading Rainbow,” she said in a small voice. “And sometimes I watch Barney.”

“Barney,” he repeated, wishing he knew what she was talking about. “Sure you don’t like to watch football?”

She shrugged.

“It’s fun, trust me,” he said, turning toward the television. The remote was on the TV table, and he switched on the set, grateful for the distraction. He clicked until he hit the Dolphins’ game. Then he went to his chair and sank into it, grateful to be off his feet.

Megan came up next to him. “I’ve seen this game before at my house.”

“Yeah? Well, good. Greatest game ever invented.”

“My daddy says football is for jerks. He says the quarterboy doesn’t know shit from shinola.”

Jack jerked his gaze to Megan. “Pardon me?”

She sighed. “He says football is for jerks—”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you. Maybe we’ll look for this Barney show, after all.”

“Okay,” she said.

He flipped the channel and the next and the next until finally he found some cartoons. It wasn’t Barney, but it wasn’t football, either.

She moved closer to him, then before he could do a thing, she climbed into his lap and settled back. She adjusted her doll under her arm and put her thumb in her mouth.

It was the damndest thing.

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