“Good,” Susan said with a happy smile as she signed the necessary forms on the director’s desk. A few minutes later, Alex was hurrying after her out into the sunshine, doing his best to keep up.
Their first stop was a large shopping center. They spent a long time in different stores and finally bought him a pair of good jeans and a soft plaid shirt. When Susan looked at his old worn-out sneakers, she took him by the hand and led him straight into a shoe store. Finding something that worked took time, since his feet were different sizes.
Alex was mortified by all the attention from the sales staff and wished he could disappear. But Susan handled it with quiet tact. Pulling him a little aside, she said, “It’s okay, sweetheart. Right after the event, we’re going to an orthopedic specialist and getting you fitted for proper shoes.”
She crouched down in front of him and tied the laces on the temporary pair they had found. “One shoe will have a built-up sole, and that should level things out. You’ll walk much more comfortably, and most people probably won’t notice a thing.”
After that they stopped at a barbershop, where he got a neat haircut, and only then did they head to the Chandlers’ home to pick up Annie. For the first time in his life, Alex stepped not into another institutional building, but into a real family home. He had never been a guest in an ordinary, comfortable household before.
The smell hit him first: something baking, clean laundry, and the warm, lived-in scent of a place where people belonged to one another. He walked quietly into the bright living room and sat carefully on the edge of the couch, taking everything in. In one corner stood a large aquarium full of brilliantly colored fish.
Alex had only seen fish like that on TV in the common room at the children’s home. And by the window, in another glass tank, sat a real turtle, stretching its wrinkled neck and staring at the boy with beadlike eyes….
