Finders Keepers Read Online Free PDF

head. “You have green eyes and shiny black hair.”
    “But you have blue eyes and brown hair. Mrs. Henderson said we get our eyes and our hair color from our parents, so I think we’re going to have to find us a daddy.”
    This leap of logic was so typical of Nick that Liz merely sighed and stroked his arm. She never fully understood the way his brain worked, and clearly his orphanage years had left the child with some interesting mental wiring. She’d found that if she listened hard, she could usually make sense of his thought processes.
    “I need a daddy with green eyes and black hair,” Nick explained, “so I’ll look like my parent.”
    “Well, sweetheart, the color of your eyes and hair came from the woman in Romania who carried you in her tummy until you were born. And you were shaped by God into my very special son. Most of you is just like me.”
    He pondered, swinging his skinny legs that didn’t quite reach the floor. “I think that man who was at Grace’s house on Easter would make a good daddy for me. He has green eyes and black hair.”
    Elizabeth reflected on Zachary Chalmers, whose auction had cleaned out the mansion a week before and who hadn’t been seen in Ambleside since. “That man was a stranger,” she declared, hoping this would brand him an undesirable.
    “It doesn’t matter, Mommy. You see, I have to get a paper and draw a tree on it for my teacher. And then I’m supposed to write down my mommy and daddy, and then my grandma and grandpa, and then write the color of everybody’s eyes and hair. So if we could get that man to be our daddy, I could draw my tree the right way.”
    Second-grade genetics studies. Great, Elizabeth thought, just great.
    “I’ll help you draw your family tree, Nick,” she said. “We’ll make it so it shows how special you are.”
    Nick was still swinging his legs. “I liked that man we saw at Grace’s house. He was tall, and he talked really nice. He would be a good daddy for me.”
    “Because he has green eyes? Nick, it takes much more than that to be a good parent. I’m your mommy because I love you, and I take care of you every day. God gave you to me.”
    “But you could share me with a daddy. Magunnery has a daddy.”
    “Montgomery’s mommy is married.”
    “You could get married.”
    “I could, but I haven’t found the right man.”
    “What about the man at Grace’s house?”
    Elizabeth let out a breath. Nick had a tendency to get stuck on an idea and not let it go. He would turn it one way and then another until he had worked it out in his mind. In the process, he could just about drive his mother up a wall.
    “Elizabeth?” Boompah ambled around the corner of the house and waved at the pair on the porch swing. “Here are some little cakes for you to serve with your tea at the shop tomorrow. I put them in the cart where I keep the bent cans and the old bread for two days. Nobody bought. So, I was thinking of Elizabeth. Maybe my little Nikolai would like to eat some, too.”
    Elizabeth and Nick got up and went to meet Boompah as he presented the bag of stale cakes with a little bow. In a personal quest to make up for Nick’s years of malnourishment, the old man regularly donated odds and ends from his grocery store—torn boxes of cereal, dented cans, day-old bread, slightly wilted vegetables.
    “Thank you, Boompah,” she said, giving the old man’s leathery cheek a kiss. “You’re so sweet to think of us.”
    “I better to tell you something,” he murmured, speaking low. “That man came back to town today. The nephew of Grace Chalmers. He rented an apartment here, do you know? Go down Walnut Street, turn right, left, right again, and there it is. Looking over the river. He bought a lot of groceries, let me tell you. I think he likes to cook on the barbecue grill—you know, steaks, chicken, hamburgers. He bought charcoal, that’s why I think I’m right about the barbecue.” Boompah winked and tapped his forehead.
    “I