“Hi, Rosamund.” Piper rose and greeted the woman. “Thanks for coming over. This is our new neighbor, Kiersten. She’s had an ... eventful ... evening.”
“Can I help with anything?” Rosamund asked.
“Actually, would you mind ordering some pizza?” Piper asked. “And then maybe come outside and join us?”
Rosamund looked surprised. Perhaps she’d been hoping for a more dramatic mission ... battling a grease fire in the kitchen or performing the Heimlich maneuver.
“Sure.” Rosamund nodded. “I can do that.”
“I’m gonna stay here with Kiersten until the situation is resolved. But my girls haven’t eaten dinner yet, and Kiersten’s kids are probably hungry too,” Piper explained.
Kiersten could read the desire to be helpful and the desire to know what the heck was going on wrestling across Rosamund’s face. “But is everything—”
“Everything is fine,” Piper assured her. “It’s a long story.” Then she gestured at her own three girls standing at the edge of the driveway, looking worried and at the boys clustered on the porch. “But the police are on their way,” she said, lowering her voice, “so if you could take all these kids out in the backyard and keep them occupied with pizza, that would help a lot.”
Rosamund opened her mouth, then closed it again, obviously making a heroic effort not to ask more questions. Instead, she nodded and waved her phone in the air. “C’mon, kids. Tell me what kind of pizza you want.”
Piper glanced at Kiersten as the crowd of kids surged into the backyard. “Do you want to go inside?” Piper asked.
She shook her head vehemently. “No.”
Her arms and legs felt heavy, as though sand filled every pore. She wasn’t sure she could walk inside even if she wanted to.
And she didn’t want to. She needed to see the patrol car the moment it appeared. And she wanted Johnny to see his mother the moment the police car pulled into the driveway.
They sat in silence for a few moments as Kiersten tried to absorb the terror and relief of the last twenty minutes. Slowly, the numbness paralyzing her mind and body gave way, and the horror of what she’d done flooded through her again.
“I left my son at a truck stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.” How could she havedonesuch a thing? “I am a terrible, terrible,terriblemother.”
Piper shot her a sideways glance and flashed a wry smile. “But you remembered to bring the other three home.”
Kiersten looked at her neighbor for a long moment. She found no judgment in Piper’s brown eyes, just compassion. For a split second, her anxiety retreated, like the moon passing behind a cloud. Then a bubble of laughter rose up from somewhere deep in her gut. She tried to hold it back.
You remembered to bring the other three home.
She snorted. She chuckled. Then the dam broke and a torrent of hysterical laughter washed over her body. She laughed so hard she cried, shoulders silently heaving, until the gush subsided into a sort of hiccup-sob.
“This is impossible,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“What’s impossible?” Piper asked.
“Raising four boys in a place where I have no friends and no family to help me and a husband who travels all the time. Luke is dyslexic and flunking all his classes and got into a fight. Matthew has Little League shoulder and no friends. And on the rare occasions when I actually see my husband, we don’t talk, we discusslogistics. My family is falling apart. And do you know what I think the solution is?”
“What?”
“Driving.” Kiersten gave a bitter laugh. “Driving to Sports. Activities. Practices. Games. I seem to think that my children exist tobe coached. Tutored.Driven.It’s all I do. It’s all we ever do. Drive to school. Drive to practice. Drive to games. And to what end?”
The corner of Piper’s mouth twisted in a rueful half smile. “At least you’re driving your kidstosomething that might lead to a college scholarship someday. I’m driving to Irish dance.”
Kiersten had heard of this, but they didn’t have Irish dance in her part of rural Minnesota. They had ice fishing. And hockey. Scandinavian culture didn’t seem to lend itself to the more exuberant forms of self-expression, like dancing.
“What is Irish dance exactly?” Kiersten asked.
Piper sighed. “It’s an extremely complex, highly technical, and very entertaining form of dancing. And you do it all without moving your arms.”
Kiersten worked to keep her expression neutral. That did sound a little ... impractical. But she wouldn’t say that out loud to this incredibly wonderful neighbor who had just orchestrated the return of her lost and found son.
Instead she nodded, as though this made perfect sense. “Okay.”
