Melody opened her eyes, ready to fire away. But there was something terrible there.
“Willow,” she said softly.
Willow shook her head and waved her hand dismissively. “I’m fine,” she said. “Disregard this.”
Melody looked away and felt a wave of guilt prickle her scalp and rest in the pit of her stomach. “I didn’t mean—”
“Of course not,” Willow said. She blotted her face with her hands and made an effort to smile. “Melody,” she said, her voice dropping a notch. “He’s a tough kid. You don’t know what he’s been through. You don’t know what he’ll—”
“I know that. I know it.”
“I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I know you don’t.” Melody studied her hands. Her face folded with the weight of her thought, and when she started again her voice was small. “I want him, Willow. I don’t know if that’s enough. But I’m asking you to let him start over. Let him start fresh, start now, and be welcome here.”
“Melody,” Willow murmured. “He has a mother.”
“She let go of him.”
“She lost him,” Willow said sharply.
“All right! But it amounts to the same thing for Wrecker, doesn’t it?” Melody struggled with her voice. There was a word for what she planned to do, but it would take fearlessness to use it. She was consumed with fear. Still, she brought her hands together and said, her words barely more than a squeak, “I’m his mother now.”
“You’re what?” Willow laughed.
Melody turned to face Willow directly. She might never have the guts to be able to say it again, and she needed Willow to hear.
“That woman? She had him, she raised him—but she let go of him. And the only way he’s going to make it through is if there’s somebody who stands up and says, I’m all in. I’m not just looking after you, I’m for you. You’re mine.” She hesitated. “From here on out? He’s my son.” There was a long pause. Melody could hear her own teeth rattle as she shivered. She knew Willow thought she was making a big mistake, and maybe she was. But she was making it, and she would go on making it with every breath she had.
Willow’s fingers were awkward as she buttoned her sweater. She kept her head down. “I see,” she said, nodding, studying something on the ground beneath her. Her voice was muted and she worked her jaw as though trying to exorcise an old pain. A shadow covered her face, but did not obscure the grief that stumbled across it. What happened to you, Willow? Melody almost asked.
But she did not. And when Willow raised her head again, it was the friend Melody knew; the Willow who could do anything, who conveyed flint and grace and attitude in every move she made. “Okay,” Willow said. She cleared her throat and willed her voice to come out smoother. “All right, then. I’ll help you however I can.”
Melody, wary, waited for the but.
Willow gazed at her tenderly. She nodded once more, and then she stepped into the night.
CHAPTER FIVE
And then Wrecker was eight. He climbed atop a stack of produce crates in the back room of the Mercantile and ate dried apricots one sticky fruit at a time. He was waiting for Melody to finish work. The knees of his jeans were white with wear but as yet unbreached, and he was wearing red Keds whose rubber heels bounced impatiently off the wooden sides of the crates. It was always One more thing, Wrecker, just let me finish this and Are you ready? Where’s your jacket?—and then someone else would poke his head through the stockroom door and call her name. Wrecker tapped his head against the wall behind him to the beat of the song on the radio. He sat chewing and tapping and bouncing his sneaker against the crate when DF Al the stock boy burst in.
“Sport!” Al said. He could make his face physically larger with his expressions, as though his skin had a special expansiveness that spread his hairline back and his ears farther to the sides. He stopped, stared diffusely, listened for the tune. Then he picked up a head of celery and played air guitar, mouthing the words.
Wrecker liked Al. Al walked with verve and carried food. “I have apricots,” Wrecker told him. He extended a sticky hand with two flat fruits. “Want to trade?” The apricots looked like dried ears. Wrecker would not have thought of this on his own, but Al