“Then Lady Shay it is.” He turned his attention to me, which was helpful, as my mind had started to wander back down Memory Shame. “We’ll be through in a couple minutes.”
“Oh, we’re not here to see you,” I said breezily. “Shayla’s hungry.”
“No, I’m not.”
“What?”
“I’m not hungwy anymoh.” She tried to push out of my arms and it was all I could do to keep her from running out onto the court. “I want to play,” she protested.
I wasn’t amused. “We came in here to get you some oranges,” I whispered into her ear, loudly enough to be heard over the noise of shoes and dribbling.
“I want to play!”
Scott leaned in to say, “She’s welcome to go out there. The guys won’t hurt her.”
“They’ll trample her!”
“I promise they won’t.”
“Let me down!” This from Shayla, who was fighting me so hard that I was starting to sweat. If I was going to sweat, I was certainly standing in the right place, but sweat was my enemy anywhere.
Scott blew his whistle and Shayla snapped her head around, scared motionless by the sound. “Lady on the court, guys!” He took Shayla out of my arms and set her on the ground. Handing her a ball, he winked at her and said, “Go get ’em, tiger.”
She ran out onto the court, smiling at the faces around her, and the army of teenage boys parted like the Red Sea. One of them pointed toward the basket and told her to throw. The ball only went a couple of feet, but another player, a student I had in English class, snatched it up and rolled it back to her.
“What’s her name, Coach?” It was the team captain asking, and I recognized him as Kenny, a muscular player who also had a reputation for being a gentleman and an all-round good guy.
“Lady Shay! Treat her like one!”
Kenny picked her up by the waist and ran with her to the basket. She dunked the ball like a pro and beamed as a cheer went up from the players. It wasn’t long before they were all involved in a quirky game of basketball, with Shayla riding high on their shoulders, up and down the court, answering to Lady Shay and living one of the highlights of her short life.
“She’s a natural,” Scott said.
“She was a hungry natural two minutes ago. I promise.”
“Guess she changed her mind.”
“They won’t drop her, will they?”
“They know the rules. ‘You break it, you pay for it.’”
“That’s comforting.” There was a silence. “Kenny seems nice.”
“He’s a class act.”
“He’s got a way with kids.”
“I think it goes both ways. Shayla has a way with strangers.”
“No kidding. You should see her and the landlady cozying up.”
I let out a startled yelp when I looked over to find Shayla hanging from the rim with her little hands, then letting go and dropping into the arms beneath her. “Shayla!” It was instinctive. As instinctive as the need I had to get out there and rescue her. But Scott’s hand on my arm halted me midstride.
“She’s fine,” he said.
And looking out onto the court, I could see he spoke the truth. Shayla was off down the court again, perched on Kenny’s shoulders, her ball resting on his head, a glowing smile on her face and her eyes riveted on the approaching basket. She giggled and squealed and dunked the ball again.
“And I’m supposed to get her to bed after this?”
“Have you ever been to Sausenburg?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly, which was his modus operandi.
I rolled my eyes—but that took them off Shayla for too long, so I decided to stop that for now.
“It’s the ruins of a castle,” he continued, unfazed. “Just above Sitzenkirch. Shayla would love it.”
Sitzenkirch was a tiny village about five minutes from Kandern, where the elementary school had found a home. I had been there once, just to see what it looked like, but I hadn’t seen any ruins.
I didn’t answer Scott. I’d learned that answers led to conversations, and conversations that didn’t have the Johnsons’ house as a punctuation mark gave me the heebie-jeebies.
Scott blew his whistle again. “Okay, guys! Outta here!”
Every head on the floor except Shayla’s snapped around to look at the clock.
“But, Coach, we still have ten—”
“Pack it up!”
The players clearly weren’t used to aborted practices. They looked at each other, mumbled, then shuffled off the court. Kenny deposited Shayla at my feet, a ball still in her hands, then went back out to gather the