Page 13 of Her Summer Hope

The children, all except for Emmie, were watching the drama in front of them like a tennis match.

“You could send us to live in a boxcar!” Jackson volunteered seriously, raising his hand.

“What?” Madison asked, momentarily sidetracked.

“We could take Emmie and go live in a boxcar in the woods. Of course, you’d have to come to feed her because she can’t eat bread…” he said frowning.

“We read The Boxcar Children last night,” Ellie explained, her finger holding her place in her tattered and much-loved copy of Little Women.

“Madison Lane, are you telling me that you can’t cook?” Helen asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“Of course I can cook, but I highly doubt they want to eat macaroni and cheese or pancakes with mouse ears for supper!” she said, exasperated.

“Oh, come on. You cooked for Rob! How hard can it be? Just quadruple the recipes,” she said, waving off Madison’s objections. “Look at that pay. You won’t find that good a deal anywhere else around here for the hours they’re wanting.”

“What about the education? They want a culinary degree and experience. I don’t have either, not formally.”

Helen’s face turned calculating and serious. “Madison, this is your children we are talking about. If you don’t want to lose their home, then you are going to have to get over your scruples.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Lie,” Helen said quietly. “Lie and do a damned good job of it and hope they don’t check your references until you’ve got that money saved up.”

“Miss Helen said damn!” James said, snickering.

Madison looked at the other kids, who were staring with wide eyes.

“Don’t say damn,” she told James, worried about him picking up the foul language, but more worried about her predicament.

It would go against everything she believed in and valued to lie. It would go against her morals and her vows to raise her children right, to raise them to be honest and have integrity…to be everything that their father had turned out not to be.

She couldn’t do it.

“I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t lie. I’ll find something else.”

She gathered the kids up, thinking of the seventy-three dollars that now rested in her account after buying a loaf of bread, some lunchmeat, a bag of apples, a gallon of milk, toilet paper, diapers, and putting a quarter of a tank of gas in her car.

“I hear Mickey D’s is hiring!” Helen called out before the door closed.

Madison gritted her teeth. She loved Helen, but sometimes the woman could be downright obnoxious. She buried the paper in her purse and shifted Emmie’s carrier to the other hand.

Chapter Four

Kyle

Kyle was starting to wish that he was back in Afghanistan…or at least Djibouti—anywhere but here.

The others were still looking at the pot of chili on the stove, and the echoes of their groans and muttered curses had yet to dissipate. Despite threats, bribes, and intimidation, he couldn’t get any of the others to even attempt to cook anything for the evening meal.

This weekend it was going to be even worse.

“That’s it. I’m calling,” Evans said, pulling out his cell phone.

“We can’t serve pizza every night,” Kyle snapped. “They come here to recover and be healthy, not eat their weight in carbs and cardboard.”

“There’s no cardboard in pizza,” John said, scandalized.

“Look it up,” Kyle dared, raising an eyebrow.

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