With Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

the next room, where her daughter, a tall girl of perhaps seventeen, presided with an immense dignity over sandwiches and pitchers of drink.
    "Have you eaten, Kate? Jules? There're vegetarian burritos; I hope that is all right. I use adzuki beans. Jennifer, this is Kate. Show her where things are, would you? Tami, I know you need to leave, but I must clarify something. When Tom junior was talking about the dog, was he saying--"
    Although Kate was no more hungry than she had been thirsty when offered the Coke upstairs, she ate two of the superb fat burritos, which were everything their fragrance had advertised, and refused a third only at the thought of the already-straining waistband of her trousers.
    "Do you have a child here, Kate?" asked the woman whom Rosa had addressed as Jennifer.
    "Sorry? Oh, no. No, I don't have any children. I'm a friend of Jules, the girl over there. She lives upstairs. Do you know how much longer --"
    She was interrupted by a rapid escalation of shrieks from the next room, at which point Jennifer was suddenly just not there, only her plate teetering on the edge of the sink. Kate rescued it, and was relieved when she saw that the furious quarrel at the children's table was the signal for a mass departure. Twenty minutes of potty visiting and prying toys from clenched fists later, Kate was finally alone with Rosa Hidalgo.
    "Whew!
Madre
, I need a cup of coffee. How about you?"
    Kate thought a slug of bourbon more like it, but she accepted the lesser drug with thanks. It was real coffee, from a press-filter machine, thick and gritty and exactly right.
    "I thought at first you were running a nursery in here."
    "Twenty three-and-a-half-year-olds, it sounds more like the monkey house in the zoo. Every six months, they come here in the mornings for a week." She paused, reviewing the syntax of the sentence. "Twice a year, I have them here, every morning for a week."
    "Must seem quiet when the week is over," Kate commented.
    "
Madre
, my ears, they sing. Next February will be the last time. I wonder if I will miss them."
    "You said it was for a thesis?""
    "Yes, I am tracing the development of gender characteristics, which boys play with toy cars and which girls prefer dolls, comparing them with the results of a number of other researchers doing similar studies. I have been following this group since they had one year."
    "Since they were one year old, Mama," corrected her daughter, clearing dishes in the background.
    "Since they were one year old. Thank you, Angel. My English suffers after one of these sessions," she remarked to Kate, her pronunciation more precise than ever. "It is a symptom of stress. Angel, go and get your suit on; we , will go for a swim. You, too, Julia. Leave those dishes; we'll do them later. Now" - she turned to Kate when the door had closed behind the girls - "you will please tell me what problem you are helping Julia with, what is troubling her, and why she did not go to her computer class today."
    "I think you're aware that Jules made a friend in the park this summer, a homeless boy." Rosa Hidalgo nodded. "Well, he's disappeared, and she's concerned. She came to ask me to look into it. I'm with the police department," she added. "In San Francisco. I work with her mother's ... boyfriend."
    "Alonzo Hawkin, yes. And you live in San Francisco?" Kate nodded. "I see. And she went during school hours that I might not know."
    "She thought you'd worry."
    "She was correct. Why do the bright ones always do such awesomely stupid things?" The shake of her head was the gesture of an experienced mother rather than that of a trained psychologist. "What will you do, about the boy?"
    "There isn't much I can do, to tell you the truth. Talk to the local sheriff's department, put his description out over the wire if he doesn't show up in a few days, see if he's shown up in L.A. or Tucson."
    "That does not sound very hopeful."
    "Juvenile runaways are nearly impossible to trace. I haven't said anything