Tammy immediately squatted down to Penny’s level. “What a cool truck!” She pointed to the bright yellow bulldozer sliding to a halt by Chris’s feet. He promptly picked it up and started gnawing on it. As far as I could tell, the truck was intact. “What kind is it?”
“A bullbozer,” Penny said knowledgeably. “Bullbozers push rocks. My brother eats them, ’cause his teeth are hurting, but that’s okay ’cause it’s not a real bullbozer, it’s a pretend bullbozer.”
Tammy sat on the floor beside Penny and the two of them began an in-depth discussion about trucks while I checked to see if Chris needed a diaper change. The next thing I knew, Tammy had fixed whatever problem the truck supposedly had, and Penny was sitting in her lap holding a copy of Goodnight Moon. Once his dry diaper was in place—Chris always pees as soon as I arrive—he toddled over, too, and Tammy lifted him up to sit beside her. Before long the three of them had read the entirety of Goodnight Moon five times and were starting on a sixth.
The morning passed faster than any of my summer babysitting jobs had yet. Penny and Chris adored Tammy, and she gave them her undivided attention. When it was time for lunch, I set out extra ham and cheese so she could fix herself a sandwich, but she shook her head as I was putting down the kids’ plates.
“It wouldn’t be right,” Tammy said when I slid the bread package to her. “Anyway, I’m not hungry.”
I eyed her dubiously. “When’s the last time you ate?”
She shrugged, but the exhaustion was creeping back into her eyes. “I’m fine.”
“Come on, you’ll be doing me a favor. Mrs. O’Sullivan always says I need to put meat on my bones. If there’s extra bread gone at the end of today, she might leave me alone for a while.”
Tammy smiled, but she made herself half a sandwich and gobbled it down.
I watched her while we ate, trying to reconcile the girl in front of me with the months of letters piled in the box under my bed. Tammy wasn’t at all how I’d pictured her. There were the expensive clothes and the Malibu-Barbie-blondness, for one thing, but there were also the sunny smiles she could turn on in a split second. She’d seemed to change her entire personality as soon as she met the O’Sullivans. As though she was slipping into new skin.
From her letters, I’d been expecting a rebel. A girl who didn’t care what anyone thought of her. The Tammy sitting here now reminded me more of the popular girls at school, the ones the nuns always chose to deliver messages to the principal’s office or give tours to the new students. The girls who’d supposedly never dream of sneaking a cigarette in the bathroom or sitting in a parked car after dark with a guy.
After the kids finished lunch, I took them upstairs, read Goodnight Moon again, and tucked them in for nap time. When I came back down, Tammy was lying on the couch with her arm thrown over her eyes.
I stepped quietly into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. She’d need it when she woke up. Maybe it would help me think, too.
Tammy’s parents would never have let her come to San Francisco. Which meant she was here without their permission…if they knew she was here at all.
“Hey.” Her voice was low behind me as I switched on the coffeemaker.
I spun around, startled. She was leaning against the counter behind me, smiling faintly. Her exhaustion made her slightly curled lips look soft and warm.
“Hey,” I said. “You should take a nap, too.”
“We might not get a chance to talk once the kids wake up.” She stretched both arms over her head. The movement made her thin white T-shirt ride up, showing a brief flash of tanned stomach.
“We can talk tonight.” I turned back to fumble with the coffeemaker. “You can come home with me after Mr. O’Sullivan gets back.”
“What about your mom and your brother?”
“We don’t have to keep anything from my brother. He’ll