She nodded against my chest and sighed. “I’d like that.”
“Okay. For now, I don’t want you to worry about what you heard okay? March is a long way away and next week we’ll talk about it. It’s all going to be okay; you’ll see.”
We bumped over the side street alongside Crossroads and pulled right up to the door. I shuffled the sleepy crew off the bus and helped them shed their boots and jackets, reminding them along the way not to just toss them in a heap, but hang them on the hooks where they belonged.
“Can we go skating again next week, Miss Maisy?” Noah asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his fists.
I laughed, his sour mood from earlier today all but forgotten. I bet Noah was going to set his cousin straight the minute he saw him again. “Let me talk to Eve, but I don’t see why not.”
“Can Mr. Jackson and the man with the flames skate with us again?”
“I’m sure Jackson can, I’m not so sure about Priest though. If I see him, I’ll ask. Okay?”
Noah grinned. “Okay,” he said right before he took off at a run chasing after Leo.
Once the kids settled into activities with a few of the other staff members, I went in search of Mrs. Rutledge for a few answers.
I just hope she had the ones I wanted to hear. Not that I would tell Rylee because when it came down to it, I couldn’t imagine any conversation where the words Rylee overheard were innocent.
I found Mrs. Rutledge standing by the tall windows of her office facing out onto the snow-covered gardens we used each year to teach the kids about responsibility and good nutrition. Turns out kids had a whole lot more interest in eating veggies and fruits if they had a hand in planting, growing, and harvesting them.
Now I had to wonder if the raised beds we’d put in three years ago, all funded through our derby team, had seen their last harvest and we just hadn’t known it at the time.
I knocked on her open door. “Mrs. Rutledge, do you have a minute?”
She told me to call her Rita a million times, but it just seemed weird when she’d been the director at Crossroads from my own days here. Looking at her now, with the forlorn expression on her tired face, her eyes heavy with worry, I wanted to call her by her first name. I wanted the kinship she offered when she’d torn down that barrier.
Especially when her face told me everything I needed to know, and the news wasn’t good.
We were in this together…and our ship was sinking.
“Come on in, Maisy. I expected to see you,” she said as she turned and leaned on the windowsill, her hands curling over the wood.
“Then it’s true?”
“I spotted Rylee outside my door at an unfortunate moment. The minute Rylee overheard me, I knew I’d screwed up and if she was going to say anything, it would be to you.” She slumped even more at the admission. “That little girl adores you. You’re the first person who’s managed to earn her trust again.”
I waited her out and didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything past the ache throbbing in my chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, scrubbing a hand down her weary face.
“What happened?”
“Budget cuts. Assholes who only see dollars, not hearts. If we don’t have a waiting list to get into the program, we’re not worth funding. All of the above maybe. I don’t know. The official word is budget cuts and without an infusion of cash, the program isn’t worth saving.”
My skin grew hot as anger streaked through me with how callously faceless suits could discard children. The same people who’d used the success of this program as a feather in their conceited little caps for years at church, brunches, and during their golf game, as though they had a hand in what we built here when we’re the ones who did the real work. “Fuck that shit.”
Rita’s lips twitched and she shook her head, but tears welled in her eyes. “Fuck that shit is right.”
My past, my present, the memories made, the ones I thought would come to be, they tried to slip away with the news, destined to become fond recollections and lost connections if I didn’t do something, but fuck if I knew how to fix this.
I walked over and wrapped my arms around the woman who’d been one of the constants in my life since my mom died. “What can I do?”
She clung to me, her sniffles just making the situation more real. “Unless we find the money to fund the program to the tune of fifty thousand a year, I just don’t see a way to turn this around.”
I let her go, snatched a tissue from her desk, and handed it to her. “Will you lose your job?”
“No. There are other community programs they’ll have me focus on. Basically, they’ll shuffle me off to the same place they shuffle the money. Bastards. They’ll make me handle budgets using the same cash they’re taking from my program without one worry for the kids they’ll hurt by shutting us down.”
“How long do we have?”
“The end of March. I may be able to get them to stretch it a month, but after that…we’re done. They want to use the rest of this year’s funds to change over to whatever the hell they intend to do. The kids will go into a few after-school programs, but during the summer—I just don’t even want to think about it. They rely so heavily on us then, between the meals, summer school needs for those who are behind, escaping troubled homes. We know there are more than a few of those.”
A throb started in the front of my skull as I struggled to hold back tears of frustration. I hated crying and I knew I had one little girl
