Page 11 of Her Hidden Smile

The nurses let me have Dad’s jacket in the room with me. It was covered in plastic, but it was in a spot where I could always see it. It was after Aunt Marge told me she and Uncle Phil were going to take me back to Des Moines, Iowa to live that she picked up Dad’s jacket. She told me she was going to have it repaired before I was transferred to a hospital in Iowa. I screamed at her. I don’t know who was more shocked, her or me. It was the first time I had said anything since the first day I’d been admitted to the burn unit in Nashville. At that point, I’d been there four weeks.

It was a year later that I found out that they were the only people who would agree to be my guardians if Mom and Dad died.

Other people from Jasper Creek came to visit me. Some from school, but I hated that. Even my two best friends Harriet and Jenny came, but I couldn’t stand for them to see me either covered in gauze or with my burned flesh uncovered to supposedly help me heal. I hated seeing the horrified look on their faces.

Other people who knew my mom and dad came too. But somehow seeing them was even worse. They acted like Mom and Dad would have. People like Ms. Pearl and Mrs. Draper. I couldn’t even look at them when they came to see me, so they stopped coming.

But there was one little person who got through to me. Maybe because I always thought that she would be how my grandmother would be if I had one. So, she was the one person who it didn’t hurt to see. She could make me feel better. It was Little Grandma Magill. She came with her daughter and granddaughter. I couldn’t handle it until Lettie and Patty left. When it was just me and Little Grandma, she brushed back my singed hair and held my hand. I cried. She described heaven to me and I cried harder. She promised me that’s where my mama and daddy were.

She promised.

When she held my hand, the burns on my hip and leg didn’t hurt as bad. I never spoke to her, but she knew what to say to me.

After six weeks in Nashville, they said I could be transferred to the burn center in Iowa City, a two-hour drive from Des Moines. Uncle Phil had already left. Aunt Marge explained he was an important executive at an insurance company. I didn’t care. She said that she was a financial planner, and she was doing her job from the hotel in Nashville. She made it sound like it was a hardship. I wanted to tell her to go home, but the words stuck in my throat, so like normal, I just turned my head and looked at the wall.

The last time Little Grandma Magill came to visit, we both cried. I finally spoke to her, and I begged her to let me stay with her. She explained it couldn’t happen. She explained that Aunt Marge and Uncle Phil were fine people who lived in a big house and would take good care of me.

“But what about the farm?” I whispered. “What about the trees? They’re our babies.”

“The people of Jasper Creek will figure out something. I promise.”

I was still thinking of Millie when I got to the barn. I saw that it was even more organized than my brother Malik’s garage. Damn, I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. She even had built-in cabinets. Who had that in a barn?

Is that a Stanley tool chest?

I went closer to check it out. It was. And not just any old tool chest, it was their top of the line. When I opened it up, I saw it was fully loaded. Hell, somebody could rebuild an entire car engine with that set of tools. But if they had, they sure as hell had cleaned them up good. These babies were pristine.

I looked over at the ladder wall. It couldn’t be called anything else. She had eight. No wait. She had ten ladders and two cherry-pickers.

What the hell?

The outside of the house looked almost brand new while the barn didn’t. But inside, it was kitted out with nothing but the best equipment. Irving told me he was still taking a large amount of the profit, and he was planning on paying me far too much for a couple of day's work. Millie must come from money; it was the only thing that made sense.

She had two top-of-the-line cherry pickers. As a matter of fact, I’d only worked with a mobile elevating platform picker on one job. Normally, you’d need a truck to haul them around. I jumped inside the cab and there was no sign of the keys. I checked out the other picker, same thing. I’d have to go back to Millie sooner than I promised.

I’d wanted to get a feel for operating one. I really didn’t want one of the kids operating one of these things. We could have a liability issue. Speaking of which, I needed to talk to the teacher and make sure that the kids had all signed a waiver. The last thing that Millie needed was some kind of lawsuit. Hell, maybe she already had a waiver written up.

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket.

“Hello?”

I smiled. She sounded like a different woman. It was as if having the barrier of the phone between us allowed her to be more confident.

I like it.

“Hi, Miss Millie, it’s Renzo. I have a couple of questions. First, do you have the keys to the cherry pickers?”

“Yes.” I waited for her to continue. “Come on by, and I’ll give it to you. Is there anything else you need?” she asked. Yep, this was definitely a different woman.

“I’m going to ask the professor if she had the kids sign any kind of waiver to come work here for the next day or two. But I wondered if you had some kind of worker’s liability form that you had people sign when they worked for you.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.” Again, I waited for her to keep talking. “That’s a really good point, Renzo. Thank you.” I could almost hear a smile in her voice, and if it wasn’t a smile, I at least heard gratitude. “I should have thought about it. I have a liability waiver that I used once. Let me get that updated so they can sign it. Usually Irv takes care of it because the workers work for him.”

“That makes sense. Remember, I should too.”

“You should what?” I heard the confusion in her voice.

“I should sign the waiver, too.”