Page 44 of The Love Scam
“Bullshit!” He was delighted and didn’t care who knew it. Every damned day with Delaney was interesting—fun, even! “So you help kids get off the streets? Well, duh, obviously… I mean, do you do that all over, or just in Italy?”
“No, I don’t get them off the streets,” she answered with peculiar emphasis, like that’d be thelastthing she’d do, like he was an idiot for even thinking it, much less asking. “They get themselves off the streets. Sometimes I can help. That’s it. That’s all it is.”
“Why do you always downplay?” Lillith asked, doing her best eight-going-on-thirty impersonation. “Mama did the same thing. Like helping people was a secret no one should ever find out.”
Well, sunshine, given that your mom’s idea of helping peoplewas thievery followed by blackmail, it’s no wonder she didn’t like talking about it.
“It probably goes back to their eventful childhoods,” Rake explained to Lillith.
“Boy, that phrase really stuck with you, huh?”
“Oh yeah. Mostly because I thought Blake and I had eventful childhoods. Comparably speaking, ours was a walk in the park.”
“Yes. Even when you were poor, you had more than I ever did.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Delaney looked shocked. “I— Jeez. I can’t believe I said that.”
“I’m not offended,” he rushed to assure her. “Really. It’s fine.”
“Thanks, but I was more alarmed about being indiscreet than offending you. You should’ve been a bartender—I always tell you more than I mean to.”
He found that incredibly touching. Top Five Compliments Of All Time touching. Praise of any sort, he was discovering, meant a lot coming from Delaney. It could even be argued that she was a steadying, mature influence on him.
Naw.
“Come on, you impoverished jackass, your phone’s in here.”
There we go.
“Nice try,” he said, taking Lillith’s hand again and following Delaney off the sidewalk and up the steps to the FedEx service station, “but I can’t be distracted that easily.”
“I’ll buy you some gelato on the way back to the hotel.”
“Cantaloupe, please! Two scoops. No, wait… chocolate. No—hazelnut with a strawberry chaser.”
“I can pay,” Lillith piped up.
“I’ve got it,” Delaney said reassuringly.
“Dammit! Don’t distract me, either of you, I want to talk about the cool thing that just happened. So you and Donna helped kids, but only sometimes, and you don’t want it romanticized even one time.”
“No. Donna didn’t—she left us years ago, when she found out she was pregnant. We only saw her a couple of times after that.”
“Oh.”
At the short silence, Delaney elaborated. “Nothing against your mom. She just wanted a different life; she wantedyouto be different. No shame in that, and we respected her wishes. Though there were some pretty bitchy email chains before the end of it all.…”
“She told me she had to run to stop running.” Lillith shook her head. “I didn’t get it. I still don’t.”
“The point,” Delaney continued kindly, “is that she loved you even before you were born, and wanted you to have a wonderful life. And she needed to make that happen on her own. But she always knew how to reach us. I think she thought of us as an emergency escape hatch. Only…”
“Only it didn’t work, because she’s”—Rake glanced down at Lillith—“gone.”
“Don’t do that,” Lillith said sharply, pulling her hand out of Rake’s grasp. “She’s not at the store. She’s dead. She’s not coming back. Ever. It’s not anerrand.”
“Sorry. You’re right, of course.” Rake figured it might be time to shift a bit. “So, Delaney, what about the others? Teresa and Elena and Sofia? Do they help you with this side of it, too? Not just baskets at Easter and stockings at Christmas?”
Delaney looked at him and sighed, doubtless seeing hisfirm resolve, how he would be unmoving in the face of this latest mystery, how he was unwavering and—
“You’re just gonna bug me and bug me until I answer, arentcha?”
