Phoebe looked out the window. It was a sunny day and the big colonial house stood out against the brilliant blue sky. In the distance, she could see a pasture with a couple of horses. The whole setting was peaceful and so foreign to a girl who’d grown up in some of DC’s worst slums. What would it be like to wake up to green grass and trees?
She was scheduled to enter a group home in six weeks and after she aged out she would be on her own. There would be no education for her. There would be a fast food restaurant job if she was lucky enough to find a place to live. There would be years and years of trying to get by. There would likely come a time when she was desperate enough to try a little of what her mother had in order to get a moment’s respite from how shitty life was. She would be in and out of prison until she finally took too much and found the place where all junkies went.
Wasn’t anything worth trying if it meant a shot at getting out of this life?
“You said his name was Franklin?” Like the turtle. When she’d been younger, she’d read the Franklin books. Even when her mother had been alive, she’d hidden in books. She’d taught herself to read at the age of four, and one of the moms in the tenement they’d lived in had been a kindergarten teacher and lent Phoebe books. Franklin. Arthur. The Berenstain Bears. It was stupid, but the fact that this man’s name was comforting helped to calm her.
“Yes. Franklin Grant. His family has been in Virginia for two hundred years, but he’s the last of his line. I don’t know why, but he never married.” She looked at Phoebe. “Do you want to stay or go?”
Phoebe got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. Everything she owned in the world was in her satchel. Three T-shirts, four pairs of socks, a complete days of the week underwear set, though technically she was wearing Sunday on a Monday since she didn’t get to do laundry very often, two pairs of threadbare jeans, a tube of lip balm she’d stolen from a pharmacy, and twelve dollars and fifty-two cents she kept in a plastic Hello Kitty wallet she’d gotten one year at Christmas. Everything else had been lost or stolen.
The door to the big house opened and two boys stepped out.
Alicia’s door shut and she was suddenly beside Phoebe. “It’s your call. If you want to leave, I’ll take you back.”
But she wouldn’t take her in. She’d known that dream was done long ago. Alicia had three kids of her own. There was no room for Phoebe there. There seemed to be no place for her anywhere, but that house in front of her had a whole lot of rooms.
“I’ll meet him. Who are they?” She was watching as the two young men walked toward her.
“That must be Grant’s sons. He adopted them both. The word is they both tested incredibly high on their IQ tests and had some extra skills. I think one of them was a shooting champion. The other had a history as a hacker. I know everyone was surprised a boy with an arrest record managed to get adopted.”
She’d avoided being arrested. Mostly. The one time she’d gotten caught, she helped the cops with a worse crime that had been committed in the same area. Detective Bates had happily expunged her record when she’d given him a serial rapist on a silver platter. Sometimes cops couldn’t see patterns to save their lives. Phoebe saw them. She’d stood in his office and looked up at the wall of data he’d accumulated on the man and all the lines were there. He’d simply had them in the wrong places. She’d fixed it and now the man was serving seventy-five years and she had a friend to call when she got caught shoplifting.
Life was all about making use of the materials around. She’d learned that long ago, too.
“Hi.” Both boys were dressed in slacks and button downs, but the one who greeted her had pitch-black hair and the prettiest eyes she’d ever seen. He was slightly taller than his brother, who she barely looked at because her eyes couldn’t seem to move off him.
“Hi.” Yeah, that sounded stupid and breathy and girlie.
“Are you Phoebe?” Dreamy Eyes asked.
She managed to nod. What the hell was wrong with her?
“Well, I’m James. It’s nice to meet you. Dad’s been talking about you a lot. Why don’t you come up and meet him? He’s in his office. If you decide to stay, I will warn you, he’s made meatloaf for dinner. About once a week he gets it into his head that he can cook. He can’t. It’s awful, but we order pizza and then tomorrow Maria is back. Maria can actually cook.”
James. Oh, James. He made her heart pound. He made her breath threaten to stop.
“I am here, too, you know.” The second boy rolled his green eyes and chuckled.
She was being a bitch. She turned to the other boy. He was cute, too, but he didn’t make her drool the way James did. “Hi.” She thrust out her hand. Dumbass. Only adults did that. There was nothing to do but power through. “I’m Phoebe.”
He gave her a grin and shook her hand. He really was cute, with golden brown hair and a ready smile. “I’m Tennessee, but you can call me Ten. Come on now. Stop making love eyes at Jamie here and let’s get a move on.”
“I’m not.” She felt her whole body flush with embarrassment.