South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [36]
When Paul came back, he turned a CD on low in his kitchen and the Latin, salsa-y music drifted out. He always acted cheerful enough, but nonetheless there were times when she thought he was sad, or thoughtful, and she associated this music with that now. She wondered what he was thinking about.
“What do I do?” she whispered to him across the pass-through when he’d put his apron on. Greyson sat at a table with a place mat and crayons, coloring.
Paul was dicing onions, pushing every now and then with the back of his wrist at the glasses that made him look scholarly and a bit owlish.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back, seeming to be mocking her a little.
“No, really.”
He glanced at Greyson, smiled at him, went back to chopping. “She’ll show Up sooner or later.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring. And if she doesn’t?”
“Take him home with you if she’s not back when you’re done.”
“What?”
“You can’t leave him here, I’m sorry.”
Madeline gave him a dirty look. “He’s absolutely no trouble, I promise.”
“I know, he really isn’t. But no one’s coming on after you tonight, and I have too much going on to be responsible.” He waved his knife, indicating the tables, the kitchen, the oven, everything. “Otherwise, I’d say let him stay.”
Madeline fidgeted a moment, but couldn’t think of anything to do but go on being slightly disagreeable and put Upon. “Well, where is she? She said forty minutes.”
Paul shrugged. “Welcome to McAllaster.”
“Does she, like, just do this?”
“She does.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Not really. It’s working for her, isn’t it? She got me the other day, same way she got you. Not that I minded. He really is a good kid.”
Greyson had looked Up and was watching them with sharp, Unwavering intelligence. Madeline gave him a big smile. He gazed at her for a moment without returning the smile before he went back to his coloring.
“Oh, God.”
“Really, you might as well take him home with you, your old ladies will get a kick out of him. I’ll tell Randi where you are.”
“She drops him off with whoever’ll take him. That’s great. I’m surprised social services doesn’t get after her.”
He paused to look at her, then looked back down at his chopping. She could tell her comment had irritated him. “Greyson’s fine. Randi’ll be back, don’t worry. She’s just young. Too young to have a kid, maybe, but there you go. It’s a done deal, might as well cope with it.”
“I don’t want to cope with it, it’s not my problem. I don’t want—” A kid. The responsibility. Anything to do with Randi Hopkins, who rings way too many bells. Madeline didn’t say any of this, one, because it didn’t reflect well on her and, two, because Greyson was looking at her again, and she knew that he knew what she was thinking.
“Nice,” Paul said.
“She’s very irresponsible.”
Paul never looked Up from his chopping. “Not really. She loves Grey. And you’re hardly an ax murderer.”
“I could be. She doesn’t know.”
“You’re looking after Arbutus, for God’s sake. You radiate safeness.”
“Well, it still seems wrong to me,” Madeline said, annoyed.
“Cheer Up,” he said, impersonally. “Take him home with you, give the old ladies a treat. Randi will be around to pick him Up, I promise. And if you really can’t, well, he can stay here. I’ll figure it out.”
At five o’clock Greyson and Madeline walked home, from Avenue C to Main, then down Edsel to Lake to Bessel. Somewhere across town a dog barked. Madeline could hear the lake crashing into shore. A seagull keened. It was sneaking Up on her, but this remote outpost was starting to seem normal to her. She remembered how it looked from on top of the hill that first morning: a tiny clearing in a vast wilderness of trees, Lake Superior spread out before it like the sea. Without that oceanlike horizon she’d feel claustrophobic, climb the walls. But with it—despite her frequent loneliness and