The old man came closer, studied her face, and said, “Yes, ma’am, I was. Come on—let’s not stand here where people can notice. My place is just around the corner, and I’ve got something important to tell you.”
Feeling this might be her last real chance to learn anything, Eleanor nodded and followed him. They turned into a quiet residential street and stopped at a small but tidy wood-frame house with old shutters and a sagging fence. He opened the gate and waved her inside.
A few minutes later they were seated at a round table on an enclosed porch cluttered with books, tools, and coffee cans full of nails. As he poured strong tea into mismatched mugs with hands that trembled from age, he said, “Folks around here call me Fred. I worked at that children’s home most of my life—maintenance, repairs, whatever needed doing.”
He pushed a plate of store-bought cookies toward her and went on. “Retired a while back, but I still stop in now and then. Hard habit to break. I help the kids with little projects, fix things, that sort of thing. You’re Eleanor, right? The woman that boy was trying to reach?”
Eleanor nearly dropped her mug. “Yes. But how do you know any of this?” Fred raised a hand. “One thing at a time. Let me tell it straight so it makes sense.”
He took a sip of tea and began. “I’m the one who told Joey what little I knew. He’s a good kid. Polite. Bright. Not hard to care about. He was about two years old when county child services brought him to the home. Here’s how that happened.”
Fred frowned, reaching back through memory. “They found him locked in an apartment with an elderly woman who lived alone. Neighbors heard a little boy crying for hours and finally called the police. Officers forced the door, and then child services got involved.”
He shook his head. “The boy was hungry, sitting on the floor crying. The woman was lying on the bed. At first they thought she was asleep. She wasn’t. She’d died sometime during the night. Heart, most likely. The police called me because I knew her.”
