Caleb’s mother has been arrested after testing positive for crystal methamphetamine. The boy isn’t exactly processing it well. What’s worse, he’ll be taken into custody by Child Protective Services in less than an hour. Becca hears all of this while standing in the doorway to Joanne’s office. She is looking for a safe place to set these four bags of leftover Halloween candy, but Joanne and Dean won’t stop talking at her.
“Maybe you could play with him for a while until the woman from CPS gets here?” Joanne asks Becca.
But, she thinks, but wait this can’t be right because I haven’t even taken off my pea coat.
“. . . sneaking around and lushing out, probably, with her old set.”
“Dean, she doesn’t look well. Becca?”
“She’ll be fine. Where’s Abigail?”
“How should I know?”
Becca drops the candy atop the deranged paperscape of Joanne’s desk. She shrugs the pea coat from her shoulders and hugs it into a bundle.
“I’m fine.”
“There you have it.” Dean looks fit to be tied. “Is Abigail coming in?”
Joanne yawps!, her entire face tautening into a Phyllis Diller grimace.
“She’s your colleague, Dean . . .”
“Friend.”
“So can your friend be here inside thirty minutes?”
“I need a phone,” he says, storming out.
Joanne relaxes.
“I don’t know why he won’t just go in there and talk to the boy himself.”
“Dean speaks Choctaw?”
“I’m sure of it.”
Becca fishes through her purse for the five-thousand-dollar check. “I found the money to pay Abigail.”
“Wow, really? How? Where?”
She’s drowning and this coat is her only hope. Becca’s clutching it like a life raft. “Does it even matter now?”
“You’re only partially right, Becca, to think that. Things do get more complicated after today. Any access to Caleb will have to be approved through the state-appointed guardian. And we’ll need Willa’s explicit permission. Prison doesn’t take away your parental rights. But these are just speed bumps. The money was the real hurdle.”
Becca shuffles from Joanne’s office in search of Caleb.
They play Candyland in the conference room so no one will be watching. But no matter how hard she tries Becca can’t find a graceful way to let him win. She defers at first, skipping whole turns or tiles, but Caleb is too attuned to her every move and won’t have it. After being on the receiving end of one too many mute little frowns Becca stops sandbagging and plays the game for keeps. Guess he’d rather earn the defeat than be given the win and who wouldn’t? She beats him five times in a row before the woman from CPS arrives and for several days after Caleb has vanished through that door Becca can still feel the tug of him, going.