22. Not Enough

NOT ENOUGH

The boy usually had a dozen questions stored up when I finished speaking, but just like the day before, he left my room without a word. I could feel his anger, not with the Nazis or with unfairness but with me. With Father, he hadn't seen it coming. But with Mother, he had. And if a twelve-year-old boy had, shouldn't I have? Shouldn't I have done more to help her?

Maya-Jade had invited him to come over again and watch another Fornax Force and eat pizza, but he begged off and went home to his aunt and his uncle.

And there, as he pushed the rubber chicken and rice around his plate, he asked his aunt where his mother was.

His aunt and uncle looked at each other, surprised, for this was the first time in months he'd mentioned her.

"I don't know," his aunt said.

"Yeah you do! You must. You're just not telling me."

His aunt frowned at his tone and replied, "When Allie doesn't want to be found, she finds a way not to be found." She looked at him and away again. "She's been like this her whole life. You of all people should know that." Her words were gruff but her tone was almost gentle.

"How should I of all people know that?"

"Really?" His aunt's sigh was somewhere between exasperated and tender, the most motherly sound she'd ever made to him. "Tell me, Alex, how many times did you move? How many times did she make you change schools?"

"I dunno," he said, even though he knew precisely. They'd moved fourteen times that he could remember. He'd gone to twelve different schools. But saying that out loud always made the grown-ups look at him like he was defective, and like his mom was a bad mom. He'd betrayed her, by accident, but still. He now understood that he had not done enough to protect her. He would not make that mistake again.