Page 52 of The Picasso Heist
“That will absolutely crush Michelle.”
“It will, yes, at first,” she says. “But in the end—”
“I don’t know if Michelle will make it to the end.”
“You’d be surprised how resilient these girls can be. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”
Trustme,I’ve lived it.“What keeps Michelle going isn’t spending Saturday afternoons with me or pizza nights,” I say. “It’s only one thing— hope. And it’s the only thing she has left. Take that away from her, and she’s lost.”
“We all want the same thing for this little girl, Halston. We want Michelle to be reunited with her mother. But without changing what caused the problem in the first place, the circumstances, there truly isn’t any hope. They can’t live in a homeless shelter. There needs to be an income, stability.”
“So it’s about money.”
“It’s about more than money, but, yes,” she says, sighing, “it’s about money. The biggest gateway drug in the world is poverty.”
Miss D is the way she is for a reason, and I know she’s not wrong.
“When’s Michelle going to be told?” I ask. “And who’s telling her?”
“It can only come from her mother. That’s why I stepped in when Michelle mentioned your meeting her.”
“I understand. I get it.”
“I know you do,” says Miss D.
“But, again, it’s not me I’m worried about.”
“I know that too.”
“What if there was another way?” I ask.
“For Michelle to hear the news?”
“No. What if Michelle didn’t have to hear the news at all?”
“I don’t follow,” she says. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Miss D smiles. I don’t blame her for thinking I’m a bit naive. I’d be thinking the same thing. I’m a lot closer to Michelle’s age than hers.
She says, maybe only to placate me, “When might you be sure?”
“That depends,” I say. “When’s her mother coming to visit?”
CHAPTER47
“HI, DADDY.”
“Hi, sweetheart.”
Technically, I’m not supposed to hug my father in the visiting room, but technically, I stopped giving a crap about that prison rule a few years ago. About six months after that, the guards finally gave up and stopped scolding me.
“How do you feel?” I ask as we sit down. My father creaks louder than our old metal foldout chairs. He’s only fifty-eight.
“Pretty good,” he says, looking away for a moment.
When I was little, maybe six or seven, my father began teaching me about tells, the things people told you without saying a word. Body language speaks volumes, he often said, you just have to pay attention. For example, people who have a hard time maintaining eye contact are probably not leveling with you.
