Chapter 5 - The First Real Smile
By the time Mike and I drove back to the apartment, the sun was sinking below the horizon, painting the suburban sky in shades of bruised purple and slate gray.
I sat at my kitchen table with my laptop open, surrounded by a mountain of credit bureau dispute forms, police report reference numbers, and collection agency notices that had already started arriving in my mailbox addressed to Master Jack Hawthorne.
In the living room, the TV was playing a quiet animated movie. Emily was sitting on the rug with a bowl of macaroni and cheese, gently feeding a spoonful to Jack, who was finally wearing a clean pair of pajamas that Mike had picked up from a local department store.
"You need to eat something, Sarah," Mike said, placing a warm mug of chamomile tea beside my keyboard. "You’ve been staring at those collection letters for three hours."
"I can't eat, Mike," I said, rubbing my eyes until I saw flashes of light against my eyelids. "Twenty-four thousand dollars. Collection agencies are already threatening wage garnishment on my corporate account because my address is linked to the children's temporary residency filing. If my firm finds out I'm dealing with federal fraud investigations and collection lawsuits, my position as senior auditor could be terminated for breach of financial compliance."
"Your firm isn't going to find out unless you tell them," Mike said firmly, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite me. "We fight this one step at a time. First, the fraud dispute letters go out to the credit bureaus. Second, we work with David Vance to file an emergency injunction freezing all debt collection activities against minors. Third... we take care of the kids."
As if on cue, soft footsteps padded across the hardwood floor.
Emily stood beside my chair, holding her green-plastic-dinosaur-less brother by the hand. Jack looked tired, his heavy eyelids drooping, but the terrified, hunted look in his eyes had softened just a fraction since yesterday morning.
"Aunt Sarah?" Emily asked softly.
I turned in my chair, forcing the warmest, most reassuring smile I could dredge up from the exhausted depths of my soul. "Yes, sweetie? Do you need something?"
Emily didn't ask for food or water. Instead, she reached up with both arms and held out a small, slightly squished, yellow crayon drawing on the back of a discarded grocery receipt.
On it was a crude, beautiful scribble of three stick figures—one tall, one medium, and one tiny—standing beneath a lopsided yellow sun.
"This is you," Emily said, pointing her small finger at the tall stick figure with a triangle dress. "And this is me, and Jack. We're staying in the big house now, right?"
A lump the size of a fist rose in my throat, choking off any words I tried to form.
I reached out, pulled Emily into my lap, and wrapped my arms around both her and Jack, burying my face in her tangled hair. For the first time since I found them shivering on my welcome mat at dawn yesterday, the cold, heavy armor of my corporate accountant detachment completely shattered.
I didn't care about the corporate audit anymore. I didn't care about the twenty-four thousand dollars of fraudulent debt, or Lily’s cowardly escape to Chicago, or the terrifying mountain of legal battles ahead of us.
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Emily looked up at me, her big brown eyes shining with innocent trust, and offered a shy, tentative smile—the first real smile I had seen on her face since she arrived.
"We're staying right here," I whispered, my voice thick with tears as I kissed the top of her head. "Nobody is going anywhere."
