Any Minute (34 page)

“Well,” Jane said, obviously hurt at the criticism. “I don’t know why you always expect so much.”

Each time Sarah checked
www.nannyrating.com
, she learned that Mrs. Pavik was taking Kate on trips to the park and other daily escapades. When Sarah returned home each night, she found the dishes washed, the carpet vacuumed, and the living room tidy. Kate’s laundry was always done, and there was never a shortage of anything in the cupboards. From both the nanny-rating reports and evidence at the house, Sarah felt confident that Mrs. Pavik kept Kate fed, entertained, and bathed.

Every night before Sarah went to bed she plumped the cushions on the couch and straightened the afghan. The night after she’d taken her mother for a manicure, Sarah picked up one of the pillows, fluffed it, and was just about to arrange it to her liking when something caught her eye. At first glance, she saw it was a plastic ID holder from someone’s billfold. Sarah didn’t mean to pry. But she thumbed through it, already guessing its owner. This must have fallen out of Sophia Pavik’s purse while she was taking care of Kate. In it Sarah found Mrs. Pavik’s work visa and her U.S. driver’s license. As she hurried to the phone to let the nanny know she’d found her important documents, the sleeve flipped open.

A photograph stared up at Sarah, a picture of a little girl with dark hair and dark eyes. Sarah’s heart missed a beat. She’d seen pictures of this child before, but she couldn’t quite remember where. In the corner of the plastic, Mrs. Pavik had stuck this note.

I
LOVE YOU
, M
OMI
. E
LENA

No. It couldn’t be.

Sarah sat down hard at the kitchen table while memories flooded her mind.

Mrs. Pavik had a daughter named Elena! A little girl who lived somewhere on the other side of the globe, a child who really did write notes like this!

Sarah stared at the child’s beautiful little face. She berated herself. She ought to have asked Mrs. Pavik about her situation the day she’d gotten out of the hospital. Was Kate’s nanny saving to bring her own child to Chicago? Because if she was, if that much was true, then there were other things that must be real too.

Sarah had assumed that the memories running through her mind came from some kind of offbeat dream—the kind people must have when they go through something traumatic.

But what if the whole thing wasn’t an illusion? What if Wingtip really was an angel for the Cubs? What if God really had let me spend time with my grandmother?

Even though she’d been shown pieces of her own life, even though she’d thought she was dreaming, what if it had really been the Heavenly Father letting her look at herself through his eyes?

What if God really loved her as much as Annie said he did? What if the things about her mother were true? What if Tom Roscoe was as devious as it appeared when God gave her a good look at him?

That night after she phoned Sophia Pavik to let her know her documents and photos were safe, Sarah lay awake trying to figure things out. She stared at the stripe of moonlight where it seeped beneath the bedroom curtain. She lay on her half of the mattress, staring at the ridges and valleys of the man who slept as far on the other side of the bed as he could, turned away from her.

By the time the night had dissolved against the lozenge of a rising sun, Sarah could only come up with one answer. There was only one place she knew to go to find out if what she was thinking could possibly be true.

The traffic along LaSalle Street moved slower than a crawl. With the black trash bag slung over one shoulder, Sarah jaywalked. She darted in front of a taxi, giving the driver a nod of thanks for not running her down. She froze between two lanes, waiting for a garbage truck to rumble past before she bolted across another lane.

She’d filled the garbage bag with an assortment of clothes from her closet. She’d thrown in several good-sized leather purses, four or five pairs of shoes that she thought would go a long way toward keeping someone’s feet warm, two jackets, a blouse or two, and several sweaters that still had tags. Hopefully the women who came to the clothing bin would all find something they could use.

The Windy City awakened to life around her. Steam rose from manhole covers. A street sweeper had just trundled past, leaving ribbons of water behind its huge wheel broom. A delivery truck honked in an alley. A man passed, shaking open the latest edition of
The Chicago Tribune
, trailing the scent of fresh newsprint behind him.

Sarah stood beside the clothing bin and looked around. Now that she’d arrived, she began to feel foolish. She yanked open the heavy metal door and began to slide her donations inside the receptacle.

In the back of her mind she was thinking,
Maybe I should have let Mitchell do this. Maybe he would have stood a better chance.
But she didn’t dare run the risk of disappointing her son if she was wrong.

She was halfway through when she heard wheels squeaking behind her. Sarah turned to find a woman pushing a shopping cart.

“You going to put that sweater into that bin?” the woman asked.

Sarah nodded.

“You think I could have a look at it before you do?”

“Which one is it you like?” Sarah was holding one in each hand.

“The red one. I think the red one’s real pretty.”

Ordinarily Sarah wouldn’t have done this. And even if she had done it, she would have pitched the sweater toward the woman in fear and hurried away. But today something larger and stronger than herself took over. She unfolded the sweater and held it up to the homeless woman’s shoulders. She cocked her head and examined the effect as thoroughly as if she were a salesgirl in a fancy Magnificent Mile store. “You look very pretty,” Sarah said.

“I think it suits you.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “And it’s a good color for your eyes. It makes them sparkle.”

If the red yarn of the sweater didn’t make the woman’s eyes light up, then the compliment surely did.

“You really think so?”

“Yes, I do.”

The woman had slipped the sweater on over her head and made it halfway up the block with Sarah smiling after her before Sarah remembered what she’d come for. “Wait!” she called out. “I’ve got something to ask you.”

“What?”

“There’s a man who comes to this bin sometimes. He looks for wingtip oxfords; those are the ones he likes best. People call him Wingtip. He’s bald but has pieces of hair sticking out all over his head.”

The woman shook her head. “Doesn’t sound familiar at all.”

“He asks people if they’re lost and says he’ll show them to the ‘L’ station if they give him a little money.”

“There’s about fifty of them that do that.”

“Are there?” Sarah asked, losing hope.

“Yeah.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

“Yeah.”

After the woman ambled along, Sarah didn’t know what else to do. She emptied the rest of her clothing donation into the bin. She stood on the curb for a long time, watching people pass. She was about to give up when she heard a small snort behind her and turned toward the sound.

She hadn’t noticed the deep window well in the building behind her. A man slept there with a dirty canvas jacket shoved beneath his head for a pillow. Here was one of the most odd, telling pictures Sarah had ever seen. The window well, where the man slept hidden from view on limestone bricks as cold and gray as spent cinders, opened upon the display for a dazzling high-end furniture store. A gold brocade couch with overstuffed cushions stood empty between two blazing cut-crystal lamps. A chandelier overhead emitted light and warmth like a tantalizing joke.

This radiant, golden world waited on the other side of the glass—enticing, unreachable. The man had slept on a cold ledge of stone while a sofa of splendid style stood in plain view.

A tight knot formed in Sarah’s throat. She’d found him! She touched the slope of the man’s shoulder, which seemed familiar. “Wingtip?” she whispered.

He didn’t move.

“Wingtip? Is it you?”

The man sputtered and snorted. He squinted into the morning light as he rolled toward the street and readjusted the jacket beneath his ear.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her heart plummeting with disappointment. “I thought you were someone else. I’m looking for a friend down here, and I thought you were—”

The street bum sat up and blinked at her anyway.

When he realized he wasn’t the friend she was looking for, he looked just as disappointed as Sarah.

“Hey,” she said. “Are you hungry this morning?”

“You bet I’m hungry.”

“I’ll buy you something to eat, if you’d like. Maybe eggs. Hash browns. You want coffee? I’ll get you some coffee.”

“I’d rather have hot chocolate with whipped cream on top.”

She nodded. “Maybe not at the top of the healthy list, but I will get you whatever you want.”

“Would you talk to me?” he asked. “Do you want to hear about my family and my life? I haven’t had anybody to talk to in a long, long time.”

“I want to hear it all.”

“I’m really hungry and awfully tired of eating other people’s leftovers out of the garbage. Having somebody to talk to is better than a meal, you know.” He grinned wildly as he stood up and poked an arm inside his tattered jacket. “I get lonely out here on the streets. Being cold and hungry is bad, but being lonely is the worst.”

Sarah stood in the center of the cavernous room, the board dark and silent, its black surface reflecting the paper-littered floor. It was the late-afternoon lull at the Chicago Board of Trade. It had been another stormy day in the pits. Sarah lifted her headphones from where they’d been horseshoed around her neck and began twisting the cable around them.

The text message came on Sarah’s phone at five minutes to five: Cornish meeting at 6:30. Drake Hotel lobby. I told them you’d be there. T.

Mitchell’s Cub Scout pack was having its annual blue-and-gold banquet tonight. Sarah had helped him make place cards for each member of his family, including Kate.

Although Sarah had started to learn that God controlled time, she also knew that her time with her children wasn’t infinite. Sarah stared at the screen, contemplating Tom’s message before she hit Delete.
Oh, Father
, she asked.
Help. This is such new territory for me.