Page 30 of Second Story

Luke Lawson closes the scrapbook.

He also comes to a decision.

“Then you better stay so we can find a way together.”

I soarat what sounds like an offer. Then I plummet as soon as Noah leaves the library to post my envelope for me in that time capsule and the headmaster reminds me of a condition.

“Do you remember what I asked you for, Isaac?”

Honesty.

“If there’s anything else you need to tell me, it’s now or never.”

Less than a week since our first meeting, what had felt impossible to admit spills out. “You need to know that Mum was arrested for possession and intent to supply Class A drugs. A lot of them. So many, she wasn’t bailed and is still being held on pre-trial remand. I’ve given up trying to find out why she’s been locked up way beyond the usual limit.”

Fuck knows a legal aid lawyer had no clear answers. I pull the scrapbook across the table to me and find a calendar that Lenny crosses through daily, and I keep speaking even though this chokes me.

“The maximum sentence is life.” My mouth is so dry it’s hard to keep speaking. “The minimum is seven years. Even if time served and time off for good behaviour cuts it in half, that’s a long time for Lenny to keep missing his mum, Mr. Lawson.”

“Luke, please. And it’s a long time for you to miss yours too,” he says softly.

I can’t answer.

Moments like these are the worst. I’m blindsided with no warning, and I didn’t imagine Joe being here to fill my silence but that’s who gives me a chance to get my shit together by saying, “Looks like you’ve kept yourself busy.” His feet find mine under the table and squeeze. “Like that library on wheels of yours.”

“Library on wheels?” Luke asks.

That’s so much easier to answer, a story with an actual happy ending. “The mobile library work I mentioned on my applicationis actually a community project.” I aim this at Joe. “That was down to you too.”

“Me?”

“You,” I confirm. “Because you said that Mum could keep telling Lenny bedtime stories if she wrote one by email. I had to find somewhere to print out each chapter to stick in here.” I flip to a page holding snippets of a story she’s spent a whole year writing. “I did that at a library, and that’s where a librarian saved me again.”

Joe looks as if he wants to ask when I needed saving a first time. The padre speaks before he can.

“How?”

“By running storytelling sessions for kids with parents in prison.”

“You went to them?”

“Every week last summer. Lenny got to meet kids like him. I got to meet other families like mine.” I cough around my throat thickening. “Too many of them. Pretty soon, I made a network.” I’ve pictured Joe’s face more than I should have since he walked away from me and Lenny. Today is the first time I can’t read his expression. “Then I put together a proposal for six months’ funding for my own community project. Bought a van. And six months later, it’s on its last legs, but it did the job.”

“Of?” Luke asks.

“Of getting books to kids dislocated from a parent. Of telling stories with them. For them. Supporting them right where they need it. I’d keep going if I could find more funding, and if it wasn’t for?—”

“Lenny,” Joe says, and I nod across the table at him.

“What about this?” Luke has found a flyer I wouldn’t have shared the first time I was here. Now I watch Joe take it, and saying this is easy.

“Joe left this with me to show Mum. It’s about a project that specialises in helping people like her understand how come their homes got invaded.”

That’s a polite term for dealers feathering their own nests by targeting softhearted people who don’t have extended family to defend them.

“She’s been busy as well, researching. Because she says she didn’t see it coming. Any of it. Had no idea what happened in her own home so quickly, and she can’t let anyone ever…” I use the phrase Mum always flinches while saying. “She can’t let anyone ever love-bomb their way between her and Lenny ever again.”

“Or between you,” the headmaster murmurs again, as if I’m a kid like my little brother.

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