NANA GOT UP OFF THE COUCH AS BREE CAME IN WITH THEIR MUGGER IN tow. She seemed to want to make a point of meeting them in the front hall on her own two feet.
“Oh now, see that?” she said, looking the girl up and down. “I’m a little embarrassed. I told my granddaughter-in-law here that you were something scary.” She pointed a crooked finger at the dusty ball cap on the girl’s head. “And you need to take that off inside the house. It’s only polite.”
The girl squinted back. “You joking, right?” she said, but Bree snatched the hat off for her.
The hair underneath looked like baby dreds at first, but it wasn’t quite that. It was regular braids that had been chopped off at some point. Maybe to look more like a boy out on the streets, Bree thought. In the close quarters of the front hall, it was obvious this one hadn’t known a shower in a long time either.
“What’s your name?” Nana asked.
The girl thrust the tan leather purse out at her. “I’m sorry, okay?” she said, not sounding very sorry at all.
Nana let the bag hang there between them. “I didn’t ask if you were sorry. I asked what your name was.”
“Ava,” she grunted out. Then she set the purse on the newel post and looked at Bree. “I said I was sorry, didn’t I? Can I go now?”
But Nana wasn’t done. She still had the floor. “Tell me something, Ava, and that’s a beautiful name, by the way. What was the first thing you were going to buy with my money?”
“Huh?”
“Huh is not a word. What I want you to tell me is why you needed to take my purse. I got knocked down for it. I think I deserve to know why.”
Bree was almost starting to feel sorry for the girl now. Ava’s face was like a stone mask, but one tear had escaped down each cheek. She scrubbed them off with her sleeve right away.
“I dunno,” she finally said.
“Well, if you don’t know, then you can’t go,” Nana told her.
The girl’s jaw dropped open. “Say what?”
“That’s what I used to tell my students,” Nana said. “I was a teacher, see, about a hundred years ago, maybe more than that. It seems to me you need some time to come up with a better answer.”
The tears were coming faster now. “I never done anything like this before!” Ava blurted. “I swear!”
“That much I can believe. She was just hanging out in the square when I found her,” Bree said.
Nana turned away from both of them and headed toward the kitchen.
“Come on, Ava. I’m going to make some tea with milk. And from the look of you, I don’t suppose you’d mind a sandwich.”
Ava didn’t move, but Bree noticed she wasn’t angling for the front door anymore, either.
“I don’t drink tea,” she said sullenly.
“You do if I make it!” Nana said, and she disappeared on the other side of the swinging kitchen door.