The Soldier's Secret Child

He was glad he could help his friend, sinner though Gerry had been. Charlie needed a reliable father figure, and Lacey needed to maintain her illusions about her husband. It would serve no purpose for her to find out the truth now; it would only hurt her.

Lacey frowned. “I was looking to take in another boarder. I was thinking of maybe somebody who worked the three-to-eleven shift at the pretzel factory. They could come home and sleep, and they wouldn’t be bothered by my working on the house at all hours.”

“That makes sense,” he said, relieved. “That would be better.”

“But the thing is,” she said slowly, “I haven’t found anyone, even though I’ve been advertising for a couple of weeks. If you wanted to...”

Anxiety clawed at him from inside. How was he supposed to handle this? He could throttle Gerry for putting him into this situation. “I... There are some complications. I need to give this some thought.” He knew he was being cryptic, but he needed time to figure it all out.

Unfortunately, Nonna wasn’t one to accept anything cryptic from her grandchildren. “What complications? What’s going on?”

Vito stood, then sat back down again. Nonna was going to have to know about Charlie soon enough. Lacey, too, along with everyone else in town. It would seem weirder if he tried to hide it now. “The thing is,” he said, “I’m not alone. I have someone with me.”

“Girlfriend? Wife?” Lacey sounded extremely curious.

Nonna, on the other hand, looked disappointed. “You would never get married without letting your nonna know,” she said, reaching up to pinch his cheek, and then pulling her hand back, looking apologetic. It took him a minute to realize that she’d hesitated because of his scars.

“One of my finished rooms is a double,” Lacey said thoughtfully. “But I don’t know what your...friend...would think of the mess and the noise.”

This was going off the rails. “It’s not a girlfriend or wife,” he said.

“Then who?” Nonna smacked his arm in a way that reminded him of when he’d been small and misbehaving. “If not a woman, then who?”

Vito drew in a breath. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve recently become certified as a foster parent.”

Both women stared at him with wide, surprised eyes.

“So I’d be bringing along my eight-year-old foster son.”

He was saved from further explanation by a crash, followed by the sound of shattering glass and running feet.

Chapter Two (#u3d5901b1-f0bb-5520-b0ed-d7e852b905df)

Lacey raced out of Nonna’s bedroom, leaving Vito to reassure the older woman. A quick scan of the hall revealed the breakage: her ceramic rooster lay in pieces on the floor.

One of the kids, probably; they were all sugared up on wedding cake and running around. She hurried to get a broom and dustpan, not wanting any of the remaining wedding guests to injure themselves. As she dropped the colorful pieces into the trash, she felt a moment’s regret.

More important than the untimely demise of her admittedly tacky rooster, she wondered about Vito fostering a child. That, she hadn’t expected.

“Miss Lacey!” It was little Mindy, Sam Hinton’s daughter. “I saw who did that!”

“Did you? Stay back,” she warned as she checked the area for any remaining ceramic pieces.

“Yes,” Mindy said, “and he’s hiding under the front porch right now!”

Behind her, Lacey heard Vito coming out of Nonna’s bedroom, then pausing to talk some more, and a suspicion of who the young criminal might be came over her. “I’ll go talk to him,” she said. “It wasn’t Xavier, was it?”

“No. It was a kid I don’t know. Is he going to get in trouble?”

“I don’t think so, honey. Not too much trouble, anyway. Why don’t you go tell your dad what happened?”

“Yeah! He’s gotta know!” As Mindy rushed off to her important task, Lacey walked out of the house and stood on the porch, looking around. The remaining guests were in the side yard, talking and laughing, so no one seemed to notice her.

She went down the steps and around to the side of the house where there was an opening in the latticework; she knew because she’d had to crawl under there when she’d first found Mrs. Whiskers, hiding with a couple of kittens. When she squatted down, she heard a little sniffling sound that touched her heart. Moving aside the branches of a lilac bush, breathing in the sweet fragrance of the fading purple flowers, she spoke into the darkness. “It’s okay. I didn’t like that rooster much, anyway.”

There was silence, and then a stirring, but no voice. From the other side of the yard, she could hear conversations and laughter. But this shaded spot felt private.

“I remember one time I broke my grandma’s favorite lamp,” she said conversationally, settling into a sitting position on the cool grass. “I ran and hid in an apple tree.”

“Did they find you?” a boy’s voice asked. Not a familiar voice. Since she knew every kid at the wedding, her suspicion that the culprit was Vito’s new foster son increased. “Yes, they found me. My brother told them where I was.”

“Did you get in trouble?”

“I sure did.” She remembered her grandma’s reprimand, her father chiming in, her own teary apology.

“Did they hit you?” the boy asked, his voice low.

The plaintive question squeezed Lacey’s heart. “No, I just got scolded a lot. And I had to give my grandma my allowance to help pay for a new lamp.”

“I don’t get an allowance. Did you...” There was a pause, a sniffle. “Did you have to go live somewhere else after that?”

Lacey’s eyes widened as she put it all together. Vito had said he’d recently become certified as a foster parent. So this must be a new arrangement. It would make all the sense in the world that a boy who’d just been placed with a new foster father would feel insecure about whether he’d be allowed to stay.

But why had Vito, a single man with issues of his own, taken on this new challenge? “No, I didn’t have to go live somewhere else,” she said firmly, “and what’s more, no kind adult would send a kid away for breaking a silly old lamp. Or a silly old rooster, either.”

Branches rustled behind her, and then Vito came around the edge of the bushes. “There you are! What happened? Is everything okay?”

She pointed toward the latticed area where the boy was hiding, giving Vito a meaningful look. “I think the person who accidentally—” she emphasized the word “—broke the rooster is worried he’ll get sent away.”

“What?” Vito’s thick dark eyebrows came down as understanding dawned in his eyes. He squatted beside her. “Charlie, is that you? Kids don’t get sent away for stuff like that.”

There was another shuffling under the porch, and then a head came into view. Messy, light brown hair, a sprinkling of freckles, worried-looking eyes. “But they might get sent away if they were keeping their dad from having a place to live.”

Oh. The boy must have heard Vito say he couldn’t live here because of having a foster son.

“We’ll find a place to live,” Vito said. “Come on out.”

The boy looked at him steadily and didn’t move.

“Charlie! I mean it!”

Lacey put a hand on Vito’s arm. “Hey, Charlie,” she said softly. “I grew up next door to this guy. I was three years younger and a lot smaller, and I did some annoying things. And he never, ever hit me.” She felt Vito’s arm tense beneath hers and squeezed. “And he wouldn’t hurt you, either. Right, Vito?” She looked over at him.

His mouth twisted. “That’s right.” He went forward on one knee and held out a hand to the boy. “Come on out. We talked about this. Remember, I look meaner than I really am.”

The boy hesitated, then crawled out without taking Vito’s hand. Instead, he scuttled over to the other side of Lacey and crouched.

Vito drew in a breath and blew it out. His brow furrowed. “You’re going to need to apologize to Miss Lacey, here, and then we’ll find out how you can make up for what you did.”