“Okay, thanks. We’ll just wait.”
But before they’ve sat down, they hear the receptionist greet Andy in the hall. He ducks in the doorway, smiling, huge, pony-tailed, dressed like a cleaned-up rodeo man in jeans and boots. Which is fine with Taylor. She prefers bull riding to social-worker interviews any day of the week.
“I’m Andy. Glad to meet you, Miz Greer. Turtle.” His handshake is punctuated by a large turquoise ring on his index finger. When they sit, Turtle finds her way into Taylor’s lap. Taylor hugs Turtle to her, trying not to look as off-center as she feels.
He leans forward on his elbows and just looks at Turtle for quite a while, smiling, until she has finished examining the floor, the doorknob, and the ceiling, and looks at Andy Rainbelt. He has kind, deep-set eyes under arched eyebrows.
“So tell me about your family, Turtle.”
“I don’t have one.”
Taylor earnestly wished she were not alive.
“Well, who do you live with, then?”
“I live with my mom. And I have a grandma. I used to have Jax, too, back when we lived in a good house.”
“Sounds like a family to me.”
“And Barbie. She used to live with us. Barbie and all her clothes.”
“Now, is she a real person or a doll?”
Turtle glances up at Taylor, who nearly laughs in spite of the dire circumstances. “She’s both,” Taylor answers for her.
“She was a friend. Kind of clothes-oriented.”
“What kind of things do you do for fun at your house?”
he asks.
“Barbie played with me sometimes when Mom was at work,” Turtle explains. “We made stuff. And clothes. She always ate Cheese Doritos and then went and throwed up in the bathroom.”
“What? She did that?” Taylor feels ambushed. “I never knew that. Every time she ate?”
“I think every time.”
“So that was her secret!” Taylor looks at Andy Rainbelt, feeling as if she might as well throw up too. “I guess we must sound like a pretty weird family.”
“All families are weird,” he says. “My job is to see which ones are good places for kids.”
“Barbie is out of our lives, completely. I know it sounds bad that Turtle was exposed to that. I don’t know what to tell you. She baby-sat for a while, while I was trying to get started in a new job. But she’s gone.”
“She took all our money,” Turtle adds helpfully. “The guy that catches gooses had to take our electricity because we didn’t pay.”
Taylor knows her face must look like the cow in the corral who finally comprehends the slaughterhouse concept. “I was working full-time,” she explains. “But somehow there just still wasn’t enough money. It’s probably hard for her to remember, but we had a pretty good life before all this happened.”
Andy looks patient. “Listen, I hear everything in this office.
I’m not grading you on what you say. I’m watching, more than listening, to tell you the truth. What I see is this little girl in your lap, looking pretty content there.”
Taylor holds her so close she feels her own heart pounding against Turtle’s slender, knobbed spine, “It’s real hard on her to have to be separated from me. I just want to tell you that, for your records.”
“I understand,” he says.
“No, I mean it’s terrible. Not like other kids. Sometimes Turtle lies in the bathtub with a blanket over her head for hours and hours, if she thinks I’m mad at her.” She squeezes Turtle harder into her arms. “She went through some bad stuff when she was a baby, before I got her, and we’re still kind of making up for lost time.”
“Is that right, Turtle?”
Turtle is silent. Taylor waits for some awful new revelation, until it dawns on her that her daughter may be suffocating.
She relaxes her hold, and Turtle breathes.
“Yeah,” she says. “The bad one wasn’t Pop-pop.”
“She just met Mr. Stillwater. I mean, met him again. Her grandfather. I guess she’s started remembering stuff from when she was little.”
Andy has a way of looking Turtle in the eye that doesn’t frighten her. Taylor is amazed. A giant who can make himself small. “Some tough times back then, huh?” he asks her.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s okay to remember. Scares you though, sometimes, doesn’t it?”
Turtle shrugs.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you now.”