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“Nothing. I have everything well in hand. You go on over there and sit with Jasper and Rhys, and I’ll have a stack ready for both of you in a jiffy.”
As Tony approached the table, he watched as Rhys put his hand over Jasper’s, stopping the boy from taking another bite.
“Slow down, Jasper. Chew what’s in your mouth and swallow first. Otherwise, you’re likely to choke,” he cautioned.
Jasper nodded. “Okay,” he said, the word muffled once more by his mouthful of pancakes.
“Here we are,” Aunt Berta said as she placed two more plates on the table, one for him and one for Rhys. She turned back to the stove, then returned with another plate loaded down with crisp bacon.
Jasper’s eyes widened. “Could I have a piece of bacon, please?”
Aunt Berta picked up a fork and speared three pieces to put on Jasper’s plate. “You can have as many slices as you want.”
“Really?” Jasper picked up the first piece, consuming it so fast, Tony wondered if he’d swallowed it whole.
“Now there’s a good lad,” Aunt Berta said, patting Jasper on the head. “Nice to see a boy enjoying his breakfast. Not picking at it like young Billy.”
Billy was one of Tony’s second cousins, and the finickiest kid he’d ever met. The family joked that Billy must have been switched at birth because if there was one thing the Morettis loved more than hockey, it was food.
“Is Mommy going to eat?” Jasper asked, eyeballing the bacon plate that was dwindling, now that he and Rhys had helped themselves to several slices.
“Your mom is asleep,” Rhys said. “I don’t think she got much rest last night.”
Jasper put another bite of pancakes in his mouth, but this one was smaller. He appeared to have hit his limit on breakfast after four Mickey Mouse pancakes and three pieces of bacon. Tony wondered if it was a bad idea to let him stuff himself so full. While he had several cousins with kids about Jasper’s age, he didn’t spend a lot of time with them, and he certainly didn’t pay much attention to their eating habits.
“She stayed up to turn the heat on when I got cold,” Jasper explained.
“I see. Do you and your mommy spend the night in the car a lot?” Rhys asked.
Jasper shook his head. “No. Last night was the first time we went car camping.”
“Where do you usually sleep?” Tony asked, aware they were more likely to get truthful answers from Jasper than Jess.
Jasper shrugged. “Depends. We used to sleep in our apartment until Mr. Robertson put a letter on our door and said we couldn’t stay there anymore. Then we started sleeping on Miss Debbie’s couch, but now we can’t stay there on account of the bad man.”
“Bad man?” Tony asked.
“He’s Miss Debbie’s brother-law,” Jasper said, mislabeling the title. “He got out of jail and he’s not very nice. He said some mean things to Mommy.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Bad words. About her butt,” before adding, “I…I didn’t like him. He was scary.” The slight tremble in his voice gave away his fear—and suddenly Tony understood Jasper’s question in the car about whether or not he and Rhys were bad men.
“So you don’t sleep there anymore?” Rhys asked.
Jasper shook his head. “No. We stayed with a couple more people, on their couches, but they said we couldn’t keep doing that. And we couldn’t ask to stay with Miss Brenda, on account she doesn’t want to babysit me anymore. And we can’t go back to that one shelter ’cause there was a mean woman there. Mommy said she took some drugs and they made her say a lot of bad words, just like the bad man who tried to steal Mommy’s bag with all our stuff in it. She wouldn’t give it to him and he knocked her down, and then some other guys came over and they made the bad man run away.”
Tony felt sick as he listened to Jasper retell stories of things he was too young to have experienced. “You stay in the shelter a lot?”
“Just the one time. We tried to go to the nice one last night, but they didn’t have any beds, so Mommy said we could go car camping. She made me a cocoon, like a butterfly, and put all our clothes on me. And we had camp food.”
“Camp food?” Rhys asked.
“Peanut butter crackers. But Mommy didn’t have any because she was still stuffed from lunch, couldn’t eat another bite.”
Under normal circumstances, Tony might have found humor in the small boy parroting back what were clearly his mother’s words. As it was, he suspected Jess gave up her food to ensure Jasper wouldn’t go to sleep hungry. Just as she’d made certain he would be warm at the expense of her own comfort. Those things would be admirable…if her actions hadn’t been so damned dangerous.
He exchanged glances with Rhys, aware that his friend had come to the same conclusion. Jess and Jasper had absolutely no business staying in the homeless shelters.
“Sounds like you’ve had quite the adventure,” Aunt Berta said carefully.
Tony had been aware of her quiet presence by the stove, knew she’d been hanging on Jasper’s every word. He glanced in her direction, and it was as if he was looking in a mirror. He felt every bit of the determination he saw etched on his aunt’s face. Aunt Berta had found a new cause—and it was Jess and Jasper.
