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    “skivvy shirt,” something men in her generation kept covered. He seemed to have tattoos all over his body and
    he hadn’t shaved for days. He was working on a blue motorcycle and constantly turning the handle to make it
    sound louder. The neighbors had quit complaining, but not because he was a homeowner in the restricted
    community. If that was all he was, they would have thrown him out. But Gary Minton was still the handyman, the
    one who came in the middle of the night when the toilet overflowed and flooded the bathroom. He’d also pulled
    a child off the bottom of a swimming pool, and climbed a tree to get a terrified little boy down. All in all, the noise
    of a few motorcycles was easy to put up with.
    But he was watching Miss Edi as though trying to assess her, to see if it was all right for his daughter to be
    with her. Miss Edi turned away. Better to ask if the child should be with him.
    It was only minutes before Jocelyn returned with the chalk, and Miss Edi showed her how to draw the
    hopscotch chart on the concrete driveway, throw the rock, then follow it on one foot. She’d been delighted by
    the game.
    A few days later, when Edi opened her front door and saw the scrawny, poorly clad little girl, her blonde
    hair covering her face, sitting on her front steps and crying, she wasn’t surprised.
    “I’m sorry,” the girl said as she jumped up. “I didn’t mean to…” She didn’t seem to know what to say.
    Edi saw the corner of a plastic suitcase behind a hibiscus bush and figured the child was running away from
    home.
    That first day, Edi purposefully kept the child at her house for nearly three hours. They talked of books and
    a science project she was making at school. What Edi wanted to do was teach that father of hers a lesson; she
    wanted to make him worry. He should pay more attention to where his child was.
    While Edi walked Jocelyn back to her house, she was thinking that when the relieved parents came to the
    door, she would give them a piece of her mind. But to Edi’s shock, her father and stepmother hadn’t been aware
    that the girl had run away. Worse, when they were told, they weren’t worried or surprised. Their attitude was
    that Jocelyn did what she wanted to and they had no idea what that was.
    That night, Edi called Alex and told him the child’s situation was worse than he’d thought. “She’s extremely
    intelligent and loves learning and culture. You should have seen her face when I played Vivaldi! It’s as if
    Shakespeare were living with the town morons. Did I tell you about those two repulsive stepsisters of hers?”
    “Yes,” Alex said, “but tell me again.”
    The next weekend, as Edi hoped she would, the girl showed up on the sidewalk, trying to look as though
    she were just passing by. Edi asked the child in, then called her father and asked if she might be allowed to help
    Edi with a project she was working on. That he didn’t ask what the project was or inquire about the length of the
    stay solidified her bad impression of him. “Yeah,” her father said on the phone, “I heard about you and I know
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    where you live. Sure, Joce can stay there. If you gotta lotta books Joce’ll be happy. She’s just like her momma.”
    “Then she may stay here for the afternoon?” Edi asked, sounding even more stiff than she usually did. She
    was trying to conceal a growing dislike for the man.
    “Sure. Let her stay. We’re gonna go to a rally so we’ll be home late. Hey! You wanta keep her overnight,
    you can do that. I bet Joce’d like that.”
    “Perhaps I shall,” Edi said, then hung up.
    Jocelyn had spent the night. In fact, they enjoyed each other’s company so much that the child didn’t leave
    until Sunday evening. As she started to go, she turned back, ran to Edi, and threw her arms around her waist.
    “You are the nicest, smartest, most wonderful person