“So,” he said, hoping to drag the boy’s attention away from his fascination with the siren, “what’s your name?”
The kid returned his gaze with a solemn expression. “I’m not supposed to tell it to strangers,” he said automatically, as if the lesson had been drilled into him.
Sean hated to contradict such wise parental advice, but he also wanted to know to whom the kid belonged and why he was wandering around the scene of a fire all alone. “Normally I’d agree with that,” he assured the boy. “But it’s okay to tell me. I’m Sean, a fireman. Police officers and firefighters are good guys. You can always come to us when you’re in trouble.”
“But I’m not in trouble,” he responded reasonably, his stubborn expression never wavering. “Besides, Mommy said never to tell anyone unless she said it was okay.”
Sean bit back a sigh. He couldn’t very well argue with that. “Okay then, where is your mom?”
The kid shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Sean’s blood ran cold. Instantly he was six years old again, standing outside a school waiting for his mom after his first day of first grade. She had never come. In fact, that was the day she and Sean’s father had disappeared from Boston and from his life. Soon afterward, he and two of his brothers were sent into foster care, separated forever. Only recently had Sean been found by his older brother, Ryan. To this day, he had no idea what had become of his younger brother, Michael, or of the twins, who’d apparently vanished with his parents.
Forcing himself back to the present, Sean looked into the boy’s big brown eyes, searching for some sign of the sort of panic he’d experienced on that terrible day, but there was none. The kid looked perfectly comfortable with the fact that his mom was nowhere around.
Pushing aside his own knee-jerk reaction to the situation, he asked, “Where do you live?”
“I used to live there,” the boy said matter-of-factly, pointing toward the scorched Victorian.
Dear God in heaven, was it possible that this child’s mother was still inside? Had they missed her? Sean’s thoughts scrambled. No way. They had searched every room methodically for any sign of victims of the fire that had started at midafternoon and raged for two hours before being brought under control. He’d gone through the two third-floor apartments himself. His partner had gone through the second floor. Another team had searched the first floor.
“Was your mom home when the fire started?” Sean asked, keeping his tone mild. The last thing he wanted to do was scare the boy.
“Don’t think so. I stay with Ruby when I get home from school. She lives over there.” He pointed to a similar Victorian behind them. “Sometimes Mommy doesn’t get home till really, really late. Then she takes me home and tucks me in, even if I’m already asleep.”
The kid kept inadvertently pushing one of Sean’s hot buttons. Another wave of anger washed through him. How could any mother leave a kid like this in the care of strangers while she cavorted around town half the night? What sort of irresponsible woman was she? If there was any one thing that could send Sean’s usually placid temper skyrocketing, it was a negligent parent. He did his best to stay out of situations where he might run into one. The last time he’d worked a fire set by a kid playing with matches while his parents were out, he’d lost it. They’d had to drag Sean away from the boy’s father when the man had finally shown up, swearing he’d only been away from the house for a few minutes. Sean had really wanted to beat some sense into him. A few minutes was a lifetime to a kid intent on mischief.
“Is Ruby around now?” Sean asked, managing to avoid giving any hint about his increasingly low opinion of the boy’s mother. He even managed to keep his tone neutral.
The boy bobbed his head and pointed down the street. “Ruby doesn’t have a phone, ’cause it costs too much. She went to the store on the corner to call Mom and tell her what happened. I went with her, but then I came back to see the truck.”
Great! Just great, Sean thought. The baby-sitter had let the kid run off alone, too. He had half a mind to put in a call to Social Services on the spot. The only thing stopping him was his own lousy experience in the system. Plenty of kids were well served by foster care, but he hadn’t been one of them, not until the last family had taken him in when he was almost ten.
The Forresters had been kind and patient and determined to prove to him that he was a kid worthy of being loved. They had almost made up for his having had his real parents walk out on him and two of his brothers. The Forresters had made up for some of the too-busy foster parents who hadn’t had the time or the skills necessary to reassure a scared kid who was fearful that every adult in his life was going to leave and never come back. Foster care, by its very temporary nature, only fed that insecurity.
Since this child, despite wandering around on his own, showed no other apparent signs of neglect, Sean decided to check things out a bit more before taking a drastic step that could change the boy’s life forever. He looked the kid in the eye. “So, how about I call you Mikey? I had a kid brother named Mike a long time ago. You remind me of him. He was pretty adventurous, too.”
“That’s not my name,” the boy said.
Sean waited as the kid hesitated, clearly weighing parental cautions against current circumstances.
