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“Hey, little man. What big adventure are you off to today? Going to break into a few more houses?”
“Go! Go! Go!” Ian shouted back.
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Shouting seems to be the only volume he has these days.”
He stood and smiled at her. “You guys always seem to be on the go.”
“Yep. That’s us. Busy, busy, busy.”
He looked at her. Then at the duffels. Then at the street. He rubbed his jaw, the stubble there making a faint scratching noise that went straight through her. She squared her shoulders.
“Yeah. I should get back to work.”
Work. Whoa. Wait. What was it that lady had told her on the phone? He was here setting up a cleaning business. She could clean.
“You’re hiring?”
He gave her a look. A half smile. “Yeah, but...”
“Can I apply? I don’t have any experience other than cleaning my own house. But I’m a fast learner. And I’m not afraid of hard work—”
“Mickie,” he said, cutting off her babble.
“What?”
“We are an all-male cleaning company. That’s our gimmick. Good-looking guys cleaning your house.”
“Oh.” She was too disappointed to say anything else.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Nothing ventured and all. Well, I should get going.”
She could feel him watching her as she navigated down the sidewalk to the street. All male. Weren’t there, like, discrimination laws about stuff like that? She tried to get angry about it but she couldn’t seem to think around the echoes of the scrape of his fingers against the stubble. Her own fingers twitched on the stroller handles. She’d like to run a finger over that stubble.
“Oh, for the love of Pete. Stop it,” she said to herself. She took a deep breath, held her eyes shut for a second and told herself to let it go. You’ve got way bigger things to think about. Shut it down.
“Momma?” Ian was staring up at her with that curious look in his eyes. Down the street, there was the traffic, always the sound of people coming and going, on their way to work, to school, off to keep the world running. She needed to get back to being a part of that. But why, exactly?
Oh, yeah. Money. Bills. Being the grown-up.
She laughed and leaned over to look down into Ian’s dark eyes. “Your momma is crazy, baby man, you know this?”
“Go! Go! Go!”
Yeah, we’re going. Going and going and going. I hope we get there eventually.
* * *
ANOTHER DAY PASSED, and there she was again. That was the thing about living right next door to someone. Sometimes, they blended into the background. Other times...hmm. Well, Josh was still figuring that out.
He watched as Mickie pushed the stroller down the sidewalk. Yesterday he’d been about to tell her that he had a washer-dryer combo in his apartment but her back-off vibe had been so strong he thought it best to wait. Besides, he had two more applicants coming in for Cleaning Crew interviews and then he had to do three actual cleanings this afternoon by himself. One of the Charleston guys, Aaron, was coming down two days a week to help with the heavy days, but he needed to get some local, full-time help—and fast. He couldn’t keep up with the cleanings and the processing of all the new clients for too much longer. Not all on his own, at least.
He pulled up the next interview’s application. Problem was, most of the guys were thinking the job was a shortcut to getting laid. Sadie had warned him that there would be ten crap applications for every one good possibility. And, as well, there were the applications that frankly startled him. One of the guys had finished law school. Another cited boatloads of business management experience. He wondered what their stories were there. As much as he understood the need to work, he also had to take the business into consideration. You wanted someone who’d stay with the company long enough to at least get good at it. Employee turnover was expensive. That was why Sadie invested so much in providing a quality work environment for her people. Hire the right people and then treat them right. That’s return on investment.
His phone vibrated on the tabletop. Speaking of... “Hey, boss,” he answered.
“I’m sending you a present,” Sadie said.
“Oh?”
“Indeed. It should be there in a few minutes.”
He glanced at the front door. “Care to enlighten me any further?”
“Nope.”
She ended the call and he stared at the phone. “Huh.” Who was this woman with Sadie’s voice and what had she done with Sadie? Or, rather, what had Wyatt Anderson done to his hard-as-nails boss? Wyatt. He wondered how he was doing these days. That had been a time, finding out who he was and what he was up to. But he’d made things right, and Josh had to give him credit for that. He returned to the applications.
Not five minutes later, he rose to answer a knock on his front door. It was a pretty distinct knock. Firm, confident. An I’m-here-to-get-it-done kind of knock. Josh knew who owned that knock. “DeShawn!”
“Josh,” he said. The two of them bumped fists before DeShawn said, “Come on, man, give it up,” and went in for the hug. Just a quick old-friends-who-share-a-story kind of hug. They were good like that.
“Shut the hell up. Are you my present? I thought you were heading to the army.”
DeShawn had been a part of Sadie’s Crew in Charleston almost as long as they’d been the Crew. His laid-back, amiable personality had made him a client favorite. His attention to detail and ability to hustle had made him a Sadie favorite.
“I am, but I’m not insane. I’m not doing basic and officer training in Georgia in the summer. I’m yours, full-time, until the end of September.”
“Hallelujah.” Josh pulled DeShawn in for another one-armed, back-smacking hug. “This is perfect. I’ve reached a tipping point here.”
“Just tell me what you need.”
The two men sat at the dining room table that passed as Josh’s office. “I’ve got twenty clients, fifteen of which are weekly cleans. I have Aaron coming up on the weeks we’ve got all twenty due. I’m doing the every-other-week cleans by myself but it’s not leaving me enough time to screen applicants quickly enough. And I’m getting behind on my client interviews.”
“Okay. You hired anyone yet?”
“I’ve got two I think are going to do well. I don’t know how I’m going to train them.”
DeShawn leaned back. “I guess this is where I come in. Run me through the clients and I can start training as soon as they are hired.”
“Ah, man, I gotta thank Sadie. This solves all my problems. I’ll get these guys on the payroll. You can take one, I’ll take the other. That’ll free me up for interviews. I don’t know how Sadie did all this.”
“She had you. Now you got me.”
* * *
JOSH ENDED THE day feeling much less stressed than he had been that morning. He’d gotten the two best applicants hired. He and DeShawn had gone through the cleanings in half the time it would have taken him if he’d done it alone. Finally, some of the crushing anxiety lifted off him. He could almost see it float up into the air and pop like a bubble. Boom, done. Maybe he wouldn’t screw this up entirely. Maybe he could make this as successful as the Charleston location. He scrolled to the picture of Sadie scrunching up her nose at him on his phone and tapped the call icon.
“Did you like your present?”
“Yes. Thank you. It was perfect. I really appreciate you sending him my way.”
“Not a problem. You needed help. Your client base is growing, Josh. I can see it. A little more every day. This is happening, for real. You’re making it happen.”
“Yeah, it’s been crazy. I don’t know how you did it.”
“Easy. I had you, Josh. Don’t forget that. I didn’t build this alone. You were with me from the beginning. And it took us a year to reach the level you’ve reached in a month. Don’t be afraid to slow your client acceptance until you’ve got the employees trained to handle it. You are right on budget.”
“Except I’m not making a profit yet.”
“We didn’t expect that you would be. The losses aren’t crazy, though.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You know,” she said, and then laughed. The confident, caring laugh of someone who’d made it work, and was happy to help others do the same. “I actually have no idea. Lena told me. She said it’s good and not to worry. So I don’t worry. And I don’t want you to worry, either. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Well, if Princess Lena says it’s okay,” Josh said and let out a laugh of his own. It wasn’t quite laced with that same full-bodied confidence, but more of a laugh that said, “Okay, I’m getting there, but damn if I know how it’s happening.”
“Will you two give it a rest already?”
Josh laughed again. That sounded like the old Sadie and hearing that brought back the old Josh. Funny how that happened. The thing was, he didn’t really have a problem with Lena. She was Sadie’s best friend and accountant. He liked her well enough to have her manage his money. She hadn’t made him quite as rich as she’d made Sadie—hey, she’s the boss—but he was happy with his nest egg. The bickering was done more out of habit that any real animosity.
When he’d first met Sadie, she and Lena had been friends for several years. Josh was like the new baby in the family that takes the attention away from the middle child. Lena did not like sharing Sadie with him in the beginning, but they’d reached a détente of sorts over the years.
“I have something important to ask you,” Sadie said.
“What’s that?” Her pause was long enough to send a thread of worry winding through his gut. “Sades? Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just don’t want to cry. But, okay. Here goes. Will you give me away at the wedding?”
“Give you away?” He echoed the words, stunned.
“Yeah, you know. Walk me down the aisle?” Her voice dropped and wavered with the tears she didn’t want to shed. “If Abuelito was still alive, I’d ask him. You know you’re the brother of my heart, Josh. There’s no one else.”
“Of course,” he said. He looked around the room and for a second, everything felt strange, unfamiliar. Wait, what was happening here? He shook his head and brought his attention back to the phone.
He wasn’t sure why the request had hit him like it had. It was no secret that neither he nor Sadie had any real family. They were both products of the foster-care system and had been turned out on the streets at eighteen. Sadie’s half brother had found her and she was slowly building a relationship with him. But Josh was her brother of choice. Just as he thought of her as his sister. His big sister. His fingers played over the keys of his laptop and a file opened.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.” He forced a laugh. “It’s just so grown-up. Real. Family stuff. Things we thought we’d never have.”
“I know,” she whispered. “It’s a good thing, little brother. Our family is growing. Getting stronger. And you’ll always be my brother. Always.”
His throat closed painfully. “Always.”
After he ended the call, he opened the file. His little sister. The one he’d lost. She’d been adopted away from him. At two, she was young enough, cute enough and not as scarred by their ordeal as he was. The file was pathetically small. Lists of reunification websites. His own notes. Names of social workers he’d spoken to over the years. Random bits of memory. The memories of a five-year-old.
Her name was Kim. He’d called her Kimmie. Her birthday was in the summer. Her hair was dark and curly, same as his. But he couldn’t remember what color her eyes were. Strange the things he could remember, the things that he couldn’t. Memory was the strangest thing ever, the way certain things would just be there, for no reason, and other things he couldn’t find in his head no matter how hard he searched for them. She had called him “Yoss.” He remembered that.
He clicked open another file and stared at the artist’s sketch. He looked at the picture of his memory of his sister and tried to remember. Really remember. Was this truly how she looked? Or was it just some phantom his mind had created over the years? He closed the files. Put his hand to his chin and rubbed, trying to sort it all out.
He opened a browser on his laptop and pulled up his post on the adoption-reunion website. Nothing. Same as the last three years. Next, he scanned through the new posts hoping to find anything that might give him some hope. Nothing.
He leaned back in the chair. Spun his phone around in a circle. He had a new idea, one that had just occurred to him. Spying? Investigating. Who did he know who did that? Mmm-hmm. That was the thing. He did have an ally in this search, didn’t he? Do it. Before you talk yourself out of it. A moment later, he was pacing around the small kitchen and scrolling through contact numbers.
“Wyatt Anderson.”
Resisting the urge to claim an accidental butt dial, Josh leaned against the counter. “Hey, it’s Josh. I’ve got a question for you.”
“All right.”
Wyatt sounded surprised. Probably because he was used to dealing with Sadie, who never asked anyone for anything. And if Josh was being honest with himself, he didn’t, either. He had to force the words out.
“I have a younger sister. We went into foster care together. She was adopted and I never saw her again. Can you help me find her?”
It hurt worse than he thought it would. Saying it out loud. Sadie knew. But Sadie was different. She understood. He paced around the kitchen, unable to stand still. His heart rate picked up but there was a light feeling filling his chest. It took him a moment to figure it out. He was excited. Hopeful. Things he hadn’t felt in quite a while.
“Wow. Okay. Just hold on. Let me grab a pen. All right,” Wyatt said. “Tell me everything you know. Adoptions are hard because family court records are sealed but I can check it out. See what I can come up with.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate it. Whatever your normal rate is...”
“Shut up, Josh. You’re family. Now tell me everything you remember.”
After going over the details he knew, he tried to return to what he was supposed to be doing. Cleaning Crew work. Now that he had DeShawn, he could start to move forward. Get the two new guys trained. More clients. Then more guys. He worked out a schedule for the coming week and as he did, he heard a thump and a wail through the thin walls of the duplex. Ian must have wiped out.
He heard Mickie’s voice. Not the words but the smooth, lilting tones of comfort. It was a nice sound. He regretted the job thing. She was clearly in a bad spot. No job, no car and a baby. But he admired her grit. She wasn’t complaining or whining. She was just moving forward, doing the best she could.
Wait. The laundry thing.
Mickie had Ian in her arms when she opened the door. He clung to her neck and waist like a little barnacle. “Sorry, did his crying bother you?”
“What? No. I mean I heard it but that’s not why I came over. Is he okay?”
“Tried to climb the kitchen counter and learned a lesson in gravitational pull. What’s up?”
She shifted the baby on her hip and he peeked at Josh. He pointed to his forehead. It was sporting a red spot. “Owie.”
“I see that. You’ll be okay. You’re a tough guy.”
“Tuh?”
Josh flexed his arm, making the bicep pop. “Strong.”
“Stong?”
