in the company of a trio of chirping new arrivals.
"No, I haven't," Maya hissed back, removing school backpacks and tucking them into their appropriate lockers.
As the children raced to the workroom, she straightened with a hand to her aching back. "Cleo's social worker arrived to check on Matty's environment and to verify I'm not passed out on drugs or otherwise behaving down to her opinion of me. It's not the very best time of my life to get pregnant."
It had been downright stupid, as a matter of fact. She'd known better than to trust Stephen. Next time, she was taking the pill. Next time? She'd be old and gray before she trusted another man that way again.
Selene clucked sympathetically. "You had no way of knowing your sister would get put away. Did you tell the worker pretty stories?"
Maya brightened. "I did. Stephen is now a respectable musician who travels a lot in his line of work. His income is sometimes erratic, but we're expecting a large royalty check soon, only I don't think Matty's ready to move from his familiar environment yet. Did I do good?"
"You did good, girl. I can tell you spent time in the system. Did she buy that?"
Maya shrugged and jerked a ribbon from her jumper pocket to tie back her tangle of curls. "She's not happy that Matty doesn't have a male authority figure, and she thinks I should put my teaching certificate to more respectable use. I might know the system, but I never fit in it, I'm afraid."
"That's all right. We've got a good thing here and we'll make a mint when we franchise it in a few years. You just hold on till then."
Maya whistled the refrain from "The Impossible Dream" in reply and wandered back to the children.
A few hours later, sitting at the kitchen table with Matty muttering about Big Macs while grudgingly chomping a soy burger, Maya stared at her list of figures and sighed inwardly. She could never break even. Not in a thousand million years. She'd never been any good with money because she'd never had any, and Cleo's finances gave new meaning to the word bankrupt.
"Maya, can I have new sneakers?" Matty asked through a mouth full of burger.
She didn't bother to correct his grammar. "Can" was actually the operative word here. Considering their budget, new sneakers weren't within the realm of possibility. "What's wrong with the old ones?" she asked, running the numbers through her old college hand calculator again. Maybe she hadn't hit the right keys.
"They got holes in the bottom. Miss Kidd says I need new ones. Dick got some with lights on them."
Maya heard the plea and resisted the usual lecture on how poor people couldn't buy what other kids had. She'd heard those lectures from countless foster parents growing up. The speech might be logical but it didn't fulfill a child's need to belong. Besides, they weren't poor. She refused to adopt that mentality.
Ashamed she hadn't noticed the condition of his shoes, Maya ruffled his dark hair. "We'll go to the store after kindergarten tomorrow. Want me to paint smiley faces on your old ones? I bet Dick doesn't have smiley faces."
Matty gave her one of his rare shy smiles. "Can I have dragons instead? Shelly has smiley faces."
"Fire-breathing dragons coming up," she agreed. She might not be good with numbers, but she could wield a mean paint brush.
She tucked the memory of Matty's smile into her aching heart as she watched him toddle off to bed. Once upon a time, her practical older sister had been the only buffer between an imaginative little girl and a harsh, cold world of strangers. How could the sister she'd known turn to the escape of drugs and leave her beautiful little boy behind?
Worse yet, what would happen when the system spewed Cleo into the world again, still damaged and helpless and incapable of taking care of herself, much less a child?
The mantle of responsibility didn't fit well on Maya's shoulders, but she wrapped it around her anyway as she glared at the damning numbers on the sheet of paper. They blamed well had to turn the Impossible Dream into reality.
The alternative was starvation and living on the street.
* * *
Beneath a beautiful Carolina-blue sky, Maya stared at the double wooden doors marking the entrance to the restaurant known only as Holm's. She had no choice. She'd called the Axell Holm listed in the book and hadn't even reached voice mail. She'd walked Matty