Her mother, in robe and slippers, came running out. “Kimberly! What are you shouting about?”
“Where is Travis?” she demanded as she fought back tears.
“Will you calm down? They probably just overslept.”
“No! Something is wrong.”
Her mother hesitated, then tried the knob. The door opened. There was no one inside, and no sign that anyone had been there.
“Stay here,” her mother said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”
She hurried to the front of the house, but Mrs. Merritt’s car wasn’t there. It was too early to disturb Bertrand, but she was too concerned about Lucy and her son to let that stop her from going inside.
Bertrand was asleep on the sofa—proving what everyone suspected, that he didn’t climb the stairs to go to bed. He came awake instantly, always glad for a good gossip. “Honey,” he said, “they tore out of here at two this morning. I was sound asleep and Lucy woke me. She wanted to know if she could buy that old sewing machine.”
“I hope you gave it to her.”
>
“Nearly. I charged her only fifty dollars.”
Mrs. Aldredge grimaced. “Where did they go? Why did they leave in the middle of the night?”
“All Lucy would tell me is that someone called to say her husband was returning and she needed to leave. She said she had to get there before he did.”
“But where? I want to call her to see if she’s all right.”
“She asked us to please not contact her.” He lowered his voice. “She said that no one must know that she and Travis were here.”
“That sounds very bad.” Mrs. Aldredge sat down on the couch, then jumped up. “Heavens! Kim is going to be heartbroken. I dread telling her. She’ll be devastated. She adores that boy.”
“He was a sweet one,” Bertrand agreed. “Skin like porcelain. I do hope he keeps it, and doesn’t let the sun ruin it. I think my good complexion comes from a lifelong belief in staying out of the sun.”
Mrs. Aldredge was frowning as she went to Kim to tell her that her friend was gone and it was likely that she’d never see him again.
Kim took it better than her mother thought she would. There were no tantrums and no tears—at least not that anyone saw. But it was weeks before Kim was herself again.
Her mother took her into Williamsburg to purchase an expensive frame for the only photo she had of Travis. Kim and he were standing by their bikes, both of them dirty and smiling hugely. Just before Mrs. Aldredge clicked the shutter, Travis put his arm around Kim’s shoulders, and she clasped his waist. It was a sweet portrait of childhood and it looked good in the frame Kim chose. She put it on the table by her bed so she could see it just before she fell asleep and when she awoke every morning.
It was a month after Travis and his mother left that Kim brought down the house. The family was just sitting down to dinner when Reede, her older brother, asked what she was going to do with the bike Travis had left behind.
“Nothing,” Kim said. “I can’t do anything because of Travis’s bastard father.”
Everyone came to a halt.
“What did you say?” Mrs. Aldredge asked in a whisper of disbelief.
“His bas—”
“I heard you,” her mother said. “I will not have an eight-year-old using that kind of language in my house. Go to your room this instant!”
“But, Mom,” Kim said, bewildered and already close to tears, “that’s what you always call him.”
Her mother didn’t say a word, just pointed, and Kim left the table. She barely had the door to her room closed before she heard her parents burst into laughter.
Kim picked up Travis’s picture and looked at it. “If you were here now I’d teach you a dirty word.”
Sighing, she stretched out on her bed and waited for her dad to be sent to “talk” to her—and to slip her some food. He was the sweet one while her mother did the discipline. Kim thought it was very unfair that she was being punished for repeating something she’d heard her mother say several times.