By Cynthia Gaw
A fictional, Resurrection Story for St. Matthew.
Prologue
A smiling Clare Foster stood under the oaken arch of her front doorway shaking the hand of the social worker.
“You really have made this a smooth procedure, Sylvia. It has only been three and a half months since we first met you and filled out the first form. Isn’t it providential that we should meet the first Sunday on Placer Corporate? We met right when we needed you.”
“The uncomplicated nature of your backgrounds made it easy on me. I just can’t thank you enough, Clare. We have so few applicants in relation to our needs, especially in the foster to adopt program. And so many of the applicants we do have barely pass our process. I must admit that I seldom have such positive feelings about a family as I do with yours. It is so encouraging to me to add proven parents to our placement list. Please, give my thanks and regards to your husband. I doubt if it will be long before you hear from me.”
Chapter 1
Isaiah Lopez slapped the top of his alarm clock and tucked his arm back under the warm, wool blanket Gran had given him for Christmas last year; then she had died from a stroke in January. After that, he had come from Del Paso Heights to live with this stranger who was his mother. Seven o’clock, and he needed to be at Nimitz Elementary by eight.
He dreaded getting up because he dreaded seeing his mother. Two nights ago, after his father had been released from jail, he had brought his mother the white powder. Isy knew that the bag held more than usual, so it would last longer than usual. Yesterday when he left for school, she was too weird to talk to. And she wasn’t better when he came home from school. He had found a half bag of tortilla chips in the cupboard to eat for dinner.
They lived in a one-car garage converted into a two-room apartment. When he first moved-in, he had shared the front room with his twin brothers, Adam and Egon. But they had gotten in trouble and were now at a place called Sacramento County Juvenile Hall.
Isaiah looked around the room. What his mother called the “kitchenette” was about two feet of cracked Formica counter, a filthy sink, a grimy microwave, and a tiny refrigerator. The only furniture was a television sitting on a milk crate and three broken down old sofas, one for each boy to sleep on.
The television had not been turned on since Adam and Egon got in trouble. That was the only good thing about the twins leaving. He hated hearing the television blare in the evenings because it made him ache for Gran. She had always read to him after dinner and homework. She was such a good reader, and she always seemed to know what books he would like. She had taken him to the library every Friday after school. He remembered her sweet, warm presence and her deep soothing voice. When the weather was fine, they would sit together on the porch-swing, and he would snuggle up under her arm to listen. When it was cold, they would sit in front of the fireplace on her green velvet couch with clean white doilies on the arms. Gran had a coffee table for them to put their cocoa on. Gran had taught him to read, but she had not stopped reading aloud to him even after he could read by himself. Isy knew she had loved reading together as much as he did.
Gran said that Mom had got in with the wrong crowd in high school, so that he was always to choose his friends carefully. Isy promised he would. Gran said Mom’s friends were not the sort of people who he should be around. Isy was to live with Gran, so he need not be with them. Isy had once asked Gran why Mom didn’t just live with them too. But Gran simply replied, “No, that won’t do; you are always to live with me.” But then Gran had died, and there was nobody but Mom to live with. Isy now thought he understood what Gran meant; living with Mom was an ugly emptiness.
Isy felt very hungry, so he got up from the sofa to find something to eat. Two days ago Mom had given him a frozen burrito that she had put in the microwave. He hadn’t really liked it, so he hadn’t finished it. There was the rest of it in the frig, where the milk should have been, sitting in some crunched up aluminum foil. The beans and ragged tortilla were cold and crusty, but it took away the pain in his stomach.
Isy had slept in his clothes, so he didn’t have to get dressed. But he had to pee. The little bathroom was off Mom’s room. When he arrived at her door, he stopped, afraid. He was afraid of the white powder that Dad had given her; it made Mom weird and sick. But he opened the door and walked past her lying on the bed. She was lying too still. She didn’t wake up. Isy pulled down his jeans and sat on the toilet to think.
Isy’s best friend, David, from Ms. Jordan’s fourth-grade told Isy that he was a foster-kid. “What’s a foster-kid?” Isy asked.
David said, “It means I don’t have anybody to live with; so the government gives some strangers money, so the strangers let me live with them. Foster parents like their own kids better, but at least I have a place to stay.”
Last week their friend Brent had come to school with a black eye. Before class, Ms. Jordan had asked him how he got the black eye. Brent said, “I got up in the night to pee and didn’t turn on the light; I banged into the door.” At recess, David, who had experience with foster families asked Brent what really happened. Brent said he hadn’t stayed out of his foster father’s way when he was drunk. There on the toilet, Isy firmly decided that he would not become a foster-kid.
Isy remembered Gran, so he brushed his teeth and combed his hair before he walked out into Mom’s room again. He ventured over to her battered bedside table. A plastic lid from a Folger’s coffee can contained a burned out candle stub. Next to that sat a metal spoon with some burned-on brown stuff. Mom’s plastic cylinder with the needle sticking out one end had some more of the brown residue left inside. Next to all these things, Isy saw the bag Dad had brought. And it was empty; Mom had used the all the white powder last night. Isy touched his Mom’s arm, and it was cold. Mom had used too much white powder.
Isy walked out of Mom’s room and picked up his backpack from beside his sofa. Only his slightly wrinkled, but accurately completed, homework paper lay inside. Isy shook out and rolled up the wool blanket Gran had given him. He stuffed it into his backpack, slid his arms into the straps, and left for Nimitz Elementary.
At 8:05 Ms. Jordan took attendance. When she said, “Isaiah Lopez,” Isy said, “present.” He knew the video cam in the corner would catch this answer and give him plenty of time to avoid being a foster-kid.
As he headed out to the playground for recess, he grabbed his backpack from its hook. Halfway down the hall he passed the library. He paused before the open door and looked into his sanctuary. In the far corner nestled the leather bean-bag chair in front of the stacks of biographies, stories of people with hard lives who turned out to do great things. He knew the selves across from the bean-bag chair held the whole set of The Boxcar Children. Although they were too easy for him, he had read them over and over. Isy peeked around the corner to the desk, and there, as usual, stood Mrs. Lucas. She knew what stories he would like almost as well as Gran. She smiled at him. She really liked him coming in everyday after school to read. Isy loved her kindness, help, and welcome. Ms. Jordan gave him textbooks to read so he would pencil-in the right little circles in the spring. Mrs. Lucas fed his need for stories. Tears streamed down his face as he turned away from the library.
At the farthest end of the playground, next to the ten-foot chain-link fence grew the great oak. This was where kids left if they were leaving early. The video cam didn’t pick up in the narrow gap between the tree and the fence. Isy’s Nikes fit easily into the galvanized wire diamonds; he was up and over in under a minute. Ms. Jordan would notice he didn’t come back from recess, but she wouldn’t say anything because the school would get his state money for that day, the Friday before Thanksgiving vacation. Nobody would miss him for nine days. He would not be a foster-kid.
Isy streaked down the alley for two blocks before coming out on MacArthur Street. He followed MacArthur until he arrived at the major intersection of MacArthur and Raley Blvd. He sat down on the bench at the bus stop. He studied the schedules. He learned that in five minutes a bus called Placer Commuter would come. He didn’t know what “Placer” meant, but he knew a “commuter” was a person who worked in Sacramento but did not live there. Isy needed to get away from Parker Homes and all of Sacramento. He also learned from the sign that one had to pay three dollars to ride the bus, and that no change was given. In his pocket he had all his money, three one-dollar bills, two quarters, a dime, four nickels, and twelve pennies. Isy removed all three bills and rolled them into his sweaty hand.
When the bus came, Isy climbed aboard with two men and a woman who had come from the administration building for McClellan Airport. As he stuffed his bills into the fare box, the driver caught his eye. “How old are you?” he barked suspiciously.
Isy was the tallest kid in his class, so he confidently replied, “I’m twelve, Sir.” Gran had taught him how to speak politely; Adam and Egan had taught him how to lie expertly.
“Where you going, kid?” Isy remembered a faraway stop listed on the bus schedule sign; “I’m going to Loomis, Sir. I’m staying with my father for the Thanksgiving Vacation. He’ll pick me up at the bus stop.”
“Shouldn’t you still be in school?” he queried back.
“It’s parent teacher conferences; we had a half day. My Mom’s at my class now.” It felt good to say that. Isy always wished he had the sort of mom who went to parent-teacher conferences.
Following a moment’s hesitation, the driver jerked his head toward the back of the bus. Isy started down the aisle as he surveyed the other passengers. Then he realized his narrow escape. Not one other kid was on the bus, and everybody was dressed up. Several of the men wore suits and ties. But Isy relaxed; no tatts, no baseball caps, no Norteños or Sureños, no danger. He would not need to worry about getting jumped after he got off the bus. He was already safer. Isy sat on the right side of the bus, so he could see all the signs. The air hissed as the door closed, and the bus began to pull out into a southbound lane on Raley Blvd.
Almost immediately Isy saw a sign featuring a red and blue symbol with “80” inside. Below the symbol it said “East” and “Reno.” Isy knew the 80 was the road people took to go far away, but he had never been on it. Gran had no car, and Mom had no car or license. But they didn’t stay on the 80 long. The driver got off the freeway at Watt Ave. and stopped at bus stop near a parking lot. One man in a suit and a woman in a skirt got off. Then the driver crossed the street, went up the on ramp, and they merged east on the 80 again.
It was a half hour before the driver exited the freeway again. Isy saw a sign that read “Taylor Pacific” in a city called Roseville. The bus stop was in a huge parking lot next to an amusement park called Sunsplash, and almost everybody got off here. Isy remembered only two more stops were listed on the bus sign, the one where he must get off called “Loomis,” and the last stop called “Auburn.” They reentered the flow of traffic on the 80 and almost immediately they were out of city. After a while they passed a town called Rocklin, but Isy could only see wooded hills from the bus window. In another five minutes he saw a sign that said “Horseshoe Bar” and “Loomis.” Isy felt the tension rise. He would need to satisfy the bus driver, who would be watching.
The driver pulled off the 80 at “Horseshoe Bar” and into a big parking lot in front of a large supermarket. As the bus slowed to a stop, Isy noticed a middle-aged man come out of the market pushing a cart filled with many bags of groceries. Isy rose from his seat, grabbed his backpack, and whisked past the driver saying, “There’s my dad.”
Isy made a beeline for the man with the groceries and asked him for directions to the library. As the bus driver pulled away, he saw Isy helping the stranger transfer brown bags into the back of his brown Toyota Highlander. When the bus was out of sight, Isy thanked the man for directions and headed down Horseshoe Bar toward the library.
In a few blocks he saw a sign pointing down a side street that said, “Public Library.” Isy turned, and a block later found himself in front of a large timbered, modern building with many windows. Near the front door and next to a book drop, Isy spied what he desperately needed, a drinking fountain. He drank long and deep and then with satisfaction pushed through the doors. In the far left corner he discovered the children’s section. He located the last stack of fiction and followed it most of the way down. In the “W’s” he fixed on Gertrude Chandler Warner and removed volume one of The Boxcar Children. He read for an hour, until he had the courage to continue. It would be great to have a big brother like Henry, but Isy was glad that Adam and Egan were locked up and behind him. If he had little kids along like Violet and Benny, how would he feed them? He used the restroom in the library and then left in search of another kind of food.
His stomach was cramping painfully. Gran always said, “Time for a square meal,” even though she always served it to him on a round plate. On her stove, Gran made him things like mashed potatoes, fried chicken, and green beans. Mom didn’t remember things like meals, but sometimes she had Hot Pockets in her miniature freezer. Isy suddenly remembered Gran’s warm, fragrant meatloaf and started to cry. Nobody was near enough to notice, and he remembered Gran’s injunction, “Come on, Isaiah, pull yourself together.” So he did.
In less than a block he came to an intersection that he instinctively knew was the center of the tiny town. Across the street he saw a sign on a drive-in that said, “Taylor’s Burgers.” Most of the tables were outside, but Isy could still smell the freshly grilled hamburgers and the french fries. On the wall near the door, he saw a large menu board. He reached into his pocket and withdrew its entire contents and counted, ninety-two cents. The cheapest thing on the menu was a small order of fries for one dollar and thirty-nine cents, so he waited outside the patio area and watched. Most people were eating all their food then wadding up their trash, putting it in the white paper bag their food came in, and throwing the bag in the trash bin by the patio gate as they left. But then he saw two old ladies at the corner table chatting more than eating. He remembered that Gran could seldom finish her fries, and she always let him have the rest. Shortly, he sensed they were about to leave. He could still see fries in both their cardboard trays. They put the half-filled trays into the white bag, wadded up their burger papers and stuffed them in the bag. One lady picked up the bag and rolled the top closed. They picked up their plastic glasses of iced tea. As they exited through the gate, the one with the bag laid it on top of the trash in the almost-full bin. Isy watched for the right time and casually walked past the bin, snatching the old ladies’ white bag as he did so. Down the street and out of sight of the drive-in, he opened the bag and hungrily started munching fries. Within two minutes his stomach no longer hurt.
He now came to the second of the two traffic lights in Loomis, where he turned left on King Road. This area was purely residential. He hiked past single family homes until he turned right on Humphrey Road, wondering where it would lead him. He soon learned from a sign that it led to a town called Penryn. But no town was to be seen. This was just what he wanted; for if anyone wanting to put him in foster care would have asked the bus driver, he would have told that Isy got off the bus in Loomis. He could not stay in Loomis.
He was now quite out in the country. Cars stopped driving by. Isy had never been to a farm, but he thought of the houses he passed as “farmhouses.” He had often seen farms in picture books Gran got from the library. Some of these places had horses and barns. He thought about the parents who mowed these big lawns and picked up the trash. He felt certain that none of them used white powder. He saw a tire hanging from a tree by a thick rope. He had to fight the impulse to go play on it. He imagined that the child who did play on it never had to worry about Norteños or Sureños. He imagined that Gran would like the tire-swing owner’s parents and would let him play with the tire-swing owner. Gran would not say about them, “I’m sorry, Isaiah, they aren’t the right sort.” Gran hated saying such things, but she didn’t want him going to kids’ houses whose parents used white powders “or,” as she said, “worse.” Now he wished he hadn’t gotten impatient with her for not letting him play with so many kids; now he understood why. He had begun to understand why from the first day he went to live with his Mom. He had cried the first time he realized that Gran would not have approved of him playing with Adam and Egan. They used to go out at night and break into people’s houses and steal things. One night the police caught them, and that is why they were taken to Sacramento County Juvenile Hall. Gran would not want him to live there, and he didn’t want to either. But where would he live? What would he eat?
He didn’t know, but he kept walking. Gran had often said, “Isaiah, sometimes we just have to keep moving and trust to providence.” Isy wondered what providence was, but it was comforting to think he could trust in anything. So he trudged on, trusting to whatever providence was.
The deserted road began to go steadily uphill, and soon the farms looked different. Many of the places now had rows and rows of trees like the one Gran had in her garden, trees that grew a small orange that was easy to peel. Gran called them mandarins. Isy loved them; and he knew if he smelled one, he’d deeply remember Gran’s garden. He’d be able to see in his mind’s eye her wrinkled and bony fingers peeling a mandarin. She would start at the top near the stem and stick her thumb in with the nail side down, between the juicy flesh and the outer peel; then she’d tear off the top piece of peel, stem and all. The delicious, fresh scent would waft out, and the hardest part was over. Then Gran would hand the mandarin to him and say, “Isaiah, the job is begun; you take from here.” Gran liked doing the hardest part for him.
“This is hard; I wish Gran was here,” thought Isy.
Now the mandarins were everywhere, on both sides of the narrow country road that went relentlessly up. The road was no longer blacktop, but gravel. When he had turned onto it, a sign had said “No Outlet.” But he been on this road a long time. Isy struggled to lift up his back foot and put it in front of him. It was getting late. He had no place where he had a right to sit or lay down. He knew the blisters on his hurting feet were beginning to bleed. If a car did come by and see him lying beside the road, he would surely become a foster-kid. He must find a hiding place where he could lay down. Isy stopped and looked at the road climbing ahead. It did not go much farther. He could see now that there was one driveway more on the right, and then a few hundred yards farther on, the road ended at a gated driveway.
When he came to the next driveway, he saw that it too had a gate, but the gate was open. The gate was hinged on stone pillars. To the right and left of the stone pillars ran, what Gran called, a hog wire fence. At first he thought there was nothing but mandarins inside the fence, but then he noticed, far up the drive, a two-story house. It had lots of windows, and on the second story a balcony ran the whole width of the house. Isy imagined standing on that balcony and looking out over the whole valley, all the way down to Loomis. Nobody was in sight; Isy felt completely alone. The house looked friendly, and Isy walked through the gate.
Instead of continuing up the drive, Isy followed along the hog wire fence past several rows of mandarin trees. He came to a place where a mandarin tree grew right up against the hog wire, and scrub oaks grew thickly against the other side of the fence. It was a perfect hiding place. As he stopped to slip out of his backpack, he froze with fright.
A huge dog was running straight for him. He was the same kind of dog that had gotten out of the police car with K-9 written on the side. Isy knew, because Adam and Egan had told him, that these dogs were trained to sniff out drugs. They were called bloodhounds. Adam and Egan weren’t afraid of much, but they were afraid of bloodhounds. Isy had watched from his window as the police dog pulled the policeman holding his leash directly to Tito’s stash of white powder. You couldn’t hide from Bloodhounds; they would sniff you out. When Tito had yelled at the dog, the dog had turned on Tito. The dog crouched as the hair along his back lifted. The dog’s lips had wrinkled back to show his gritting teeth. Isy could hear the menacing growl from across the street. The police officer had then intervened with a barked command, but Isy imagined Tito being eaten alive if he had not. No wonder Adam and Egan were afraid of these dogs.
Frightened into immobility, Isy stood perfectly still. Approaching at full speed, the dog leaped at the last gallop. His paws landed on Isy’s shoulders, knocking him down on his back and knocking the breath from his body. But instead of biting, the dog began licking Isy’s face. The hair was not up along his spine, and his tail was wagging. The dog was friendly; he wanted to play. Isy shuddered with relief and adrenaline.
As he came to himself, he began petting the dog’s flank and fondling his long, silky ears. Isy now had a living friend, his only friend in the world. Isy thought of throwing sticks for the dog or wrestling with him, but his exhaustion suddenly descended with irresistible power. The sun had set. Isy dropped to his knees, finished pulling the wool blanket from his backpack, and crawled in under the mandarin tree. As he settled himself into the last fold of blanket, the dog snuggled in beside him. Isy felt warm and secure for the first time in weeks, and immediately dropped into a deep, sound sleep.
The next morning, Isy awakened to a call. A man’s deep voice came from a long way off, from the direction of the house, shouting, “Thompson…Thompson….Here boy…Come, Thompson.” The dog woke up and slithered out from under the mandarin tree. He ran toward the voice. Isy felt devastated; he lost his only friend. But now the man was closer, and Isy could hear the man talking to the dog. “What’s up with you, Thompson? Where were you last night? What were you doing, Boy? We woke up late this morning, with no young hound to slobber in our faces. What ARE you up to?”
Josh Foster decided to look around. Last week he had finished his cultivation for the year by making several passes through his orchard with his spring tooth drag harrow. The ground was soft and smooth. As he approached his gate, he noticed footprints heading along his fence and into his trees. He dropped to a knee to inspect a footprint closely. Hmm, he thought, “a child and alone…and still there, but not wanting to be seen.” All he said to the dog was, “Come on, Thompson, time for breakfast.” A few minutes later, Isy saw them pass the only section of the drive visible to him through the trees, heading up toward the house.
When the man and dog entered the kitchen through the side door, Josh Foster said, “Hon, I think we may be having reluctant company. Can you make an extra breakfast burrito as bait?”
“Sure,” she replied, “I’ve got plenty. Who’s coming?”
“Nobody is coming here, but I think I’ll send some take-out with Thompson.”
Clare looked at her husband quizzically, tore off a large piece of aluminum foil and laid it on her granite counter. From her oven she pulled a large, steaming flour tortilla and laid it on the foil. She grabbed a serving spoon and retrieved a small hill of scrambled eggs, transferring them to the center of the tortilla. Then she sprinkled some freshly grated cheese on the warm eggs, arranged three slices of crisp bacon, and topped the whole with a generous dollop of her homemade salsa. She tucked in the edges of the tortilla, and rolled the lot into a tight cylinder. She sealed the burrito snuggly with the foil, then asked, “What now?”
“We’ll employ the Thompson Take-Out Service,” he explained. While these preparations were going on, Thompson had wolfed down the dry dog food in his dish. Josh took a brown lunch bag from the pantry shelf and put the burrito in it. He made three folds with the top of the bag, and then called Thompson over. He placed the folded bag-top in Thompson’s mouth and commanded, “This is NOT for you, Thompson, take it to your new friend.” Josh opened the side door and motioned the dog out.
Closing the door, he asked his wife, “Could we eat breakfast on the upstairs deck? I’d like to see through my binoculars what happens?”
“Sure, why not? I’ll be up with our burritos in just a sec.”
Five minutes later, sitting in their Adirondack chairs on the upper deck, with coffee and burritos on the table between them, Josh said from behind his binoculars, “It’s a boy, obviously famished. I’d say about nine-years-old, but lean and tall for his age, brown curly hair. He’s having quite a conversation with Thompson. It’s clear he thinks the hound is one special hound.”
Down in the orchard beside the hiding tree, Isy said to the dog, “I’ll call you Thompson, now, since I know that’s your name. But while you were gone, I thought that if I ever saw you again, I’d call you Providence. My Gran told me to trust to providence, and I trusted you. You kept me safe and warm last night, and then you brought me the best burrito I’ve ever had. But I’ve got to get away from here today. Your owner might see me in the daylight, and I can’t hide in the tree all day. You stay; I’ll come back tonight after dark. I hope you’ll come back and keep me company.”
Thompson gave a promising “wulf.”
After putting his backpack and blanket in a tidy pile under the tree, Isy crept along the fence and slunk out the gate. But Thompson did not stay. He followed Isy. When Josh saw the boy and dog a few hundred yards down the road, he picked up his phone, tapped a contact, and then tapped speaker phone, so Clare could hear the conversation.
“Placer County Sheriff, Deputy Rex,” came a gruff voice.
“Hi, Rex. This is Josh Foster. Are you on patrol this morning?”
“Yes, I am, Judge. I’m driving down English Colony with Deputy Peters just past the school as we speak. You need something?”
“I do have some favors, Deputy. I’d like you to continue down English Colony, and then turn right on Butler and head up toward my place. I expect you’ll come across my dog, Thompson. Now Thompson isn’t traveling alone, but his companion will likely be hidden near to hand. Just tell Thompson to take you to his friend. He’s a boy about nine, brown hair, bedraggled. He hasn’t done anybody any harm that I know of, but I’m going to ask you two more favors. If he needs a social worker, assign his case to Sylvia Bancroft. Got that?”
“Yes, Judge.”
“And if you haven’t gotten him in his own home by then, I want him in my courtroom first thing Monday morning. I’ll stay on the line till I know he’s safely with you.”
“We’re turning right onto Butler now.” Then a few minutes later, the Fosters heard. “We just saw your bloodhound and caught sight of a kid hit the deck in some brush in front of Wally’s orchard wall. I’ll drop Peters off on this side of the kid, and I’ll drive past and come back from the other direction…He’s between us now… We got ‘im…Poor kid’s white as a sheet, scared to death…Don’t you and Ms. Foster worry about him; we’ll treat him gentle and update you later. I sent your dog home, and he’s heading your way.”
“Thanks a lot, Rex. Remember, he gets assigned to Sylvia Bancroft if need be.”
“We’re on it.”
Josh and Clare prayed for the unknown boy, and then spent the rest of the morning chopping and stacking wood for winter fires. As they were coming back from the barn, Josh’s phone rang.
“Josh Foster, is that you Rex?”
“Yes, Judge, just getting back with on the boy…”
“And?”
“Well, Sir, this kid has been through hell…We asked him where he lived, but it was pulling teeth to get it out of him. Finally, he gave us an address in the Parker Homes neighborhood in North Sac. We got permission to go out of district to take him home. When we pulled up to the dump of a place, the kid would not get out of the patrol car. So I left him with Peters, and went up to the door and knocked. Got no response. We dragged the kid’s mother’s phone number from him, but nobody picked up. Door wasn’t locked, so I went in. What a dive! We found the mother in the bedroom, stone dead. Coroner says it looks like she died late Thursday night of a heroin overdose. Poor kid saw her yesterday morning, and went off to school. He ditched at recess, made his way to the Placer Commuter stop at MacArthur and Raley, got off at Horseshoe Bar, and walked the whole dam way to your place. Slept last night in your orchard with Thompson.
My take is that the breakfast burrito y’all gave him this morning is the first good meal he’s had in months. Kid’s a trooper, polite and cooperative. But scared to death of going into foster care. I can’t see where else he’s headed though. Sylvia Bancroft determined he’s a flight risk, so she’s staying with him in lockdown at Juvy till she brings him into your courtroom Monday morning. She said she’d call you this afternoon. We’re on our way to a call in Newcastle. Thanks, Judge. Kid really needed us.”
“Thank you, Rex, for following through with him and updating us. Clare and I are concerned.”
Two hours later, Sylvia Bancroft called Josh and Clare Foster. All was agreed, and Sylvia’s mountain of paperwork begun.
Sunday morning Josh and Clare went to St. Matthew as usual. Before the offering, they wrote on the attendance card under “Prayer Requests.” Please pray for our family as we welcome a new son.
After church they went to Taylor’s Burgers for lunch, then home to prepare a place. As they went through the gate Clare remembered that there might be something under the tree where Isaiah had slept. She went and found his backpack and a beautiful Pendleton blanket. She brought it up to the house and washed it.
Their youngest son, Tyler, was now a Deputy DA in in Watauga County, North Carolina. He was engaged to be married in March to Sarah from back there. He only came home about once a year. They decided to give Isaiah Lopez his old room because it had the best view. They scrubbed and dusted it from top to bottom.
They put his own clean, wool blanket on the bed. They shook and cleaned Thompson’s bed, and moved it onto the floor at the foot of Isaiah’s bed. Clare said, “I wish I had fresh flowers in the garden, but nothing’s left.” So they decided on a bowl of freshly picked mandarins for the bedside table. “They’ll smell nice, at least,” she declared. Then they thought about what books to put on the shelves. Tyler had been quite a reader at nine, and they assembled a fine collection. Last of all, on the shelf opposite the head of the bed, they put the entire collection of Warner’s The Boxcar Children.