The Late Child Read Free

apartment had wall-to-wall carpet; he had an impulse to go spread some paper towels before he steered Harmony inside, but her feet were cut already, she might cut an artery or something if he didn’t get her off the sidewalk quick.
    â€œIs it PMS or what?” he asked—surely some freak accident had occurred in Harmony’s head; Jimmy had no idea what the accident might involve.
    â€œPMS—my daughter’s dead!” Harmony said, stopping suddenly: out of the corner of her eye she saw the school bus round the corner; in only a second or two it would be stopping in front of the apartment, to let Eddie out. Eddie was five—he was a preschooler—and it would be a big embarrassment to him if his little friends saw his mother kicking pieces of paper around the yard and cutting her feet to pieces in the process. She couldn’t be a crazed mother, even if the terrible words in the letter were true. She had to think of Eddie—if the words were true, if Pepper was dead, then Eddie was the one person left that she absolutely
had
to think about.
    â€œJimmy, would you just get me the broom and the dustpan, real quick?” Harmony said. “I need to sweep this glass up before Eddie gets off the bus.”
    Jimmy was only too glad to grab the broom and the dustpan; he immediately started sweeping up the broken glass himself. In his haste he forgot what Harmony had just said, until he looked up and saw that her cheeks were now wet with tears. Jimmy had never met Harmony’s daughter, he had no idea what she was like and now he never would, because she was dead.
    Just then Harmony saw the red lights flashing, as the school bus pulled up to the little gate in front of their apartment building. She dried her cheeks as best she could. She caught a brief glimpse of Eddie as he came down the steps of the school bus, butthen, for a moment, all she could see of him were the golden curls on the top of his head. Eddie was just the height of the little gate that led into the yard; then, there he was, a big smile on his face as he burst through the gate and came racing toward his mother, just as he did on every normal day.
    â€œEddie, don’t run please, there’s glass on the sidewalk—somebody broke a glass,” Harmony said; but Eddie didn’t heed her, he loved to run into his mother’s arms at the end of a day of preschool.
    â€œMom, I drew a lion,” Eddie said, and then he gave an almost perfect
grrrrr
sound, just the sound a little lion might make, as he flung himself into his mother’s arms.
    Harmony hugged her son tight—really tight. Just for a moment, kneeling on the glass-strewn sidewalk, her sunny five-year-old in her arms, she was able to kid herself, to pretend that it was still a normal day.

2.
    â€œMom, you need a Band-Aid,” Eddie said, when he saw the blood on his mother’s feet. He wasn’t too concerned, though. He himself often needed Band-Aids—fortunately there was a big box full of them, in the bathroom. One of his mom’s toes was allover blood, though.
    â€œI think it might take
five
Band-Aids!” Eddie said, when he noticed that his mother was crying. “Can we still have the macaroni and cheese?”
    Harmony remembered that she had promised Eddie macaroni and cheese for dinner—it was his favorite meal. Fortunately she had made it to the supermarket the day before and had plenty of macaroni and cheese. She picked Eddie up—he looked so cute, with his little book bag that mainly had coloring books in it. Jimmy Bangor, meanwhile, was frantically trying to spread paper towels to protect the carpet when she carried Eddie in.
    â€œWait, hon, wait, you’re bleeding,” Jimmy said, but Harmony didn’t wait, she went right to the kitchen and got out the macaroni and cheese. Long ago her friend Gary, a man who knew as much about life and death as anyone in Las Vegas—maybe as much as anyone,