Banana Split (13 page)

His chewing slowed, and he looked up at her. “How do you know his name?”

Sadie felt her cheeks flush. “I, uh, talked to the police this morning.” But she didn’t think they had actually told her his name. She hurried to continue. “Have you talked to him since his mother was found?”

Mr. Olie’s wide shoulders went up as he took a deep breath, then he put his fork and knife on the edge of his plate and glared at her until Sadie felt herself shrinking beneath his gaze. He’d softened during his monologue, but his anger was back now. It was all Sadie could do not to excuse herself and flee for home.

“What do you want from me? I can’t give you peace about Noelani, and I can’t give you hope for Charlie’s future. He’s a ward of the state now, and he very likely is highly traumatized by all of this because I promised him—
promised
him—that he and his mother would be a family.” He paused long enough for his words to sink in. “I can’t make you feel better about what happened to you or to Noelani. She was an addict, but I thought she had it in her to beat the statistics. I believed her when she said she would do anything to get her son back. I was wrong.”

“What if it wasn’t an overdose?” Sadie said. “The police said the toxicology reports were—”

“It was drugs,” he cut in. “I spoke to her the day before she took off. She’d petitioned for more visitation hours, and the judge had awarded them so I gave her a call. She turned the conversation to her frustrations with the apartment requirements we put on her: no roommates, certain areas were off limits, biweekly home visits for the first month. The waiting list for low-income housing was two years long, and she couldn’t afford much. She argued that we were making it too hard on her, said we didn’t really want them together. I got sharp with her—we’d just doubled her visitation hours, after all—but she hung up on me. I had a meeting with her and my supervisor the next Thursday for a drug test and to see where she was at with her housing situation. I hoped she’d be calmer by then. I got a call Wednesday night that she hadn’t shown up for her weekly visitation with Charlie. I made some calls over the next couple of days, which is how I realized she’d been missing for almost a week.”

“And you thought she’d gone back to the drug scene.”

“Parents who want their kids back don’t let anything get in their way. Her frustration was building, and she was seeing that this wasn’t going to be easy—and it wouldn’t get easier. That she hit her limit and went back to the drugs she’d been using since she was thirteen years old isn’t a stretch. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times. She knew she had a screening on Thursday. Failing it would be failing everything. She’d lose every bit of progress she’d made.”

Sadie blinked. She wanted to make her point again that there was nothing conclusive, but the way he said it made the explanation about drugs sound so plausible. He had far more experience with this type of thing than she did, and so did the police. Who was she to question their judgment of the situation?

Mr. Olie shrugged, resigned. “I’ve been a social worker for almost thirty years. I’ve tried to make a difference, but with the rise of hard drugs on the islands, the bureaucracy which has me doing more paperwork than face-to-face meetings with my clients, and the disintegration of overall values of people has worn me out. How can I swim against a current like that? Why do I put myself in the middle of helpless situations? The fact is that I thought I was helping Noelani, and I didn’t help her after all. I certainly didn’t help Charlie.”

“I think you helped her,” Sadie said, keeping her voice soft and, she hoped, nonthreatening. “Charlie saw his mother clean before she died. Maybe it doesn’t seem like much compared to what he lost, but one day he’ll have that to reflect on. One day he’ll know she was trying.”

“She’d been clean before,” Mr. Olie said. “For up to a year one time, but she never lasted, and while it was nice for Charlie to see his mom clean, one day he’ll also know they found marijuana in her stuff. He’ll know that the one thing she had to do to get him back was stay clean and she couldn’t do it. He’ll know it wasn’t worth it for her.”

“But she
was
clean,” Sadie insisted. “For a while. Charlie has good memories of that—certainly that has to count for something.”

“It won’t be enough,” Mr. Olie said, shaking his head. “It never is.”

There was something in his statement that held a question.

“Sometimes it is, isn’t it? You’ve done this for so many years—don’t you see successes too?”

He immediately looked away, confirming that Sadie had hit a nerve.

“Doesn’t Charlie still have a chance? Isn’t there hope for him?”

Mr. Olie sat back in his chair, glaring at her as he crossed his arms over his expansive chest. “What do you want from me?” he asked again. For the first time since they’d met, Sadie could see how broken he was. It hadn’t been his anger she felt after all. He felt like a failure, he felt used up, but there was something in the look he gave her that said he was also looking for hope of his own.

Chapter 13

I don’t know what I want from you,” Sadie finally admitted once she realized that, despite all the reasons for him not to, he’d made himself vulnerable to her. She looked at the table and considered her options, and then looked up, ready to make herself vulnerable too. “Charlie found me,” she admitted, her words cramming together as though in a hurry to get out before she changed her mind. “Yesterday. He showed up at my condo in Puhi with this list of questions about his mother.” She pulled the list out of her shoulder bag and placed the folded paper on the table between them. “I was going to call the police, but I left him alone and when I came back, he was gone.”

Mr. Olie glanced at the paper, his thick eyebrows pulled together, but didn’t reach for it.

She wondered if he was afraid to read it, afraid of becoming emotionally involved in whatever the list contained. Sadie couldn’t blame him. She’d read it, and she couldn’t let go of it now.

“He took all the cash from my wallet, but I don’t want to get him in trouble. I haven’t told the police because I’m afraid they’ll take him out of his foster home—that happened to a foster family I know in Colorado—so I came to you instead. The police don’t seem to be actively investigating his mother’s death, and I don’t think Charlie believes his mom is really dead, and I’m just . . . I don’t know what I want or what I’m looking for except that it feels like something isn’t right, and maybe if I can answer these questions for Charlie I can help make it a little less wrong.”

She stopped for a breath, but when she opened her mouth to continue she realized she’d already said too much. Mr. Olie was looking at her as though she were something confusing, something untrustworthy, and Sadie felt her heart racing at having allowed herself to become so vulnerable. She snatched the list back and shoved it in her bag, wondering if this was how Charlie had felt when she’d told him she had no answers for him. And hadn’t Mr. Olie already made it clear that he’d made up his mind about Noelani? He didn’t
want
to believe anything different.

“I’m sorry I interrupted your lunch,” she said quickly as she stood and tried to keep her back straight. She knew she should look him in the eye, leave a strong impression, but she didn’t feel strong anymore and so she kept her eyes on the floor. She felt ridiculous. “Sorry,” she mumbled again as she stepped away from the table.

She gripped the strap of her bag that hung across her chest and hurried toward the street, wondering why she’d come at all. She needed to get back home. She had to wind around some other buildings before she got to the sidewalk, but once there, she realized she’d lost her bearings. Where was she? Where was the nearest bus stop? She dug in her bag for the bus schedule, then checked her watch to see that she had twenty minutes until the next bus came to the Rice Shopping Center stop where she’d originally gotten off. Could she hold on to her sanity for twenty minutes? Wait, then she’d have the bus ride and the walk home—she’d have to hold on to her sanity a little longer. And she didn’t know where the Rice stop was from here.

Her hands started to shake, and she swallowed again. She started walking, looking for a landmark that would tell her how to get back to the bus stop. She felt as though everyone were wondering who she was and what she was doing. She had to look as out of place as she felt right now. What if Mr. Olie went to the police with what she’d told him? She hadn’t emphasized that Charlie was away from his foster home the way she should have. Would Mr. Olie follow up on it? Should she go to the police now that Mr. Olie hadn’t responded the way she’d expected he would? She’d been so sure contacting him was the best choice.

She reached the corner of the block and turned in a slow circle, trying to figure out where she was and holding back frustrated tears. She had no business trying to do any of this.

An awning a few blocks down the street looked like it might be familiar, but as Sadie stepped off the curb, a dark truck pulled in front of her. She stepped back quickly, gasping at what felt like a close call even though she was at least four feet away from any real danger.

The passenger side window rolled down, and Mr. Olie leaned across the seat. “Where you headed?”

“Puhi,” she said after a moment. Lifting up the bus schedule, she added, “I got turned around and don’t know where my stop is.”

He pulled the door release and pushed it open. “Maybe we have a little more to say to one another.”

Sadie looked at the open door, questioning whether or not she was safe, but realized she didn’t feel any safer on the streets of Lihue. And she was too tired and overwhelmed to turn down a helping hand. She sat down in the passenger seat and pulled the door shut with a snap.

“Thank you,” she said sheepishly, feeling like a child.

He nodded, then checked his blind spot before pulling into traffic, giving the two-fingered “shaka” wave to another car that let him in. Sadie tried to relax, but kept clenching the strap of her bag nervously. She waited for Mr. Olie to start the conversation, but he didn’t. Maybe he was taking his time because he was sorting out his own thoughts.

“There’s a stop,” Sadie said, recognizing one she’d passed on her way into town.

“I’ll drop you off in Puhi,” he said.

“Oh. Okay.” She tried not to admit to feeling a little freaked out, but she
was
a little freaked out.

“What’s your name?” he asked as he pulled onto the Kaumualii Highway toward Puhi.

“Sadie Hoffmiller,” she said, not remembering whether she’d introduced herself at the restaurant. Before Kaua’i she would have been certain she had—she was always well mannered—but so many things had fallen by the wayside lately.

“Where are you staying?”

“The Coral Coast Condos.”

“On Valley Street?”

Sadie turned to look at him. “You know it?”

“Kaua’i is not a big island, and I’ve visited homes in every neighborhood at some time or another.”

“Oh,” Sadie said, shifting uncomfortably. “Do you live in Lihue?”

“I’ll check in on Charlie,” Mr. Olie said instead of answering her question. “How much money did he take?”

“Not quite a hundred dollars.”

“Do you want it back?”

“No,” she said quickly, thrilled to know Mr. Olie was going to do something to help her. “I don’t care about that; I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

He was looking forward, still burdened and tired, but thoughtful too. “Before Charlie was removed from his mother’s care, he was on his own a lot, and sometimes she didn’t buy food. He’s continued to struggle with the impulse to steal and hoard since being in foster care. It’s something we’re working on, but I would rather use this as a means to find him better help than getting the police involved. If you’re not planning on pressing charges, I think I can get this worked out without having to risk him being sent to detention—which is the next step if this ends up on his record. He already ran once, and it’s only because he’s in one of my best homes that they allowed him back.”

“Thank you for checking on him,” Sadie said. “I feel awful for what he’s been through.”

“I do too,” he said. “He doesn’t deserve the life he’s been handed.”