Taking a Chance. Janice Johnson Kay

tossed out, as if the tidbit were trivial, “did I mention that Helen has a daughter?”

      She hadn’t.

      Anxiety cramped anew in Jo’s breast. How much more had Kathleen not thought to mention?

      “No,” Jo said. “How old?”

      “Ginny is six. She’s just started first grade.”

      Oh, hell, Jo thought in acute dismay. A teenager had sounded okay; she’d be hanging out with friends most of the time, anyway, wouldn’t she? Jo didn’t remember being home much herself when she was fifteen and sixteen. But a six-year-old was another story. She’d be watching Disney movies on the TV and bringing friends home after school so that they could shriek and chase each other around. She’d interrupt at the dinner table, ask nosy questions and pop into Jo’s bedroom, her private sanctum, without the courtesy of a knock.

      Jo didn’t want to have children herself, which made the idea of living with one unsettling.

      Struggling to remember the details of their agreement that would let her move out if she hated living here, Jo almost bumped into Kathleen, who had stopped in the doorway of the small, back room she’d called the den.

      Jo peered around her.

      A woman who looked about thirty sat at the desk, staring at an open phone book in front of her. A gray sweatshirt hung on her, and the one vibrant note in the room, her auburn hair, was bundled in a careless knot, as if it were an inconvenience instead of a vanity. A thin, pale child leaned against her. When she saw Jo and Kathleen in the doorway, she ducked behind her mother in apparent panic before peeking around her shoulder to stare with wide eyes. The woman didn’t even look up.

      “Helen,” Kathleen said, in a voice that had become notably gentler, “I’d like you to meet our new housemate. Jo Dubray, this is Helen Schaefer and her daughter, Ginny.”

      Helen lifted her head, but slowly, as if it ached. Her gaze took a minute to focus on Jo. The smile looked genuine but wan. “Oh, hi. I’m glad you’re here.”

      Ginny hid behind her mother.

      “Nice to meet you,” Jo said insincerely.

      On the way up the stairs, she whispered, “Why’s the girl so scared of people?”

      Kathleen touched a finger to her lips. “Ssh. I’ll tell you about it in a minute.”

      Jo felt sick to her stomach. What had possessed her to think this was a good idea? For the same monthly rent, surely she could have found a room somewhere that, however tiny, would have been hers alone.

      Companionship, she had told herself. Instant friends, even, in this new city.

      Oh, God. Instead she was going to be living with a perky Princess Grace look-alike who was in serious denial, an anorexic teenager, a sad woman and a first-grader whose huge, vivid eyes showed secret terrors.

      In the large bedroom that looked down on the overgrown backyard, Jo set her suitcase on the floor and said firmly, “Tell me.”

      Kathleen hesitated, then sat in the overstuffed, flowered armchair beside the dormer window. “Helen is really very nice, and Ginny won’t be any trouble. Poor thing, she’s as quiet as a mouse.”

      “What,” Jo asked, with a grimness she failed to hide, “is wrong with her?”

      “Ginny?”

      “Both of them.”

      “Helen was widowed recently. About three months ago.” Kathleen made a face. “I felt sorry for her. But I should have consulted you.”

      “It’s your house.” A fact that Jo had thought wouldn’t matter. All for one, one for all. That’s what she’d imagined.

      Echoing the absurd, visionary sentiment, Kathleen said plaintively, “But I want us to live together as equals. All of us.” She sighed and looked down at her hands, fine-boned and as elegant as the rest of her. “I didn’t really want us to take on a child. For one thing, we don’t have another bedroom, unless we make over the den for her. For the time being, she’s sharing with her mother. The thing is…” Troubled lines creased her forehead, and at last she said with a faint, twisted smile, “I suppose I…identified with her. In a way we don’t have anything in common, because as far as I can tell, Helen loved her husband, and he died instead of deciding…” She stopped, apparently choosing not to say what her ex-husband had decided. “But we’re alike in that we both suddenly find ourselves on our own, with the horrifying knowledge that we have no real job skills and are rather lacking in everyday competence. Do you know, the last job I held was in college, when I waited tables at the sub?”

      Shocked, Jo asked, “What have you been doing?”

      “Being a wife.” Kathleen met Jo’s eyes, her expression stark. “Putting on charity luncheons. Entertaining. Being a wealthy businessman’s prop.” Her laugh was brittle. “Sad, isn’t it? I’m half a century out of date.”

      Jo could think of a million things to say, starting with: How did you let yourself be used like that? But they didn’t know each other well enough for her to be so tactless.

      “Helen,” she said instead. “Is she always so…withdrawn?”

      “No. Oh, no. She was nerving herself to call her attorney, who hasn’t been doing what he should be. He was their attorney—Ben’s, really, and now she’s thinking she shouldn’t have left so much in his hands, but she’s having a hard time being assertive enough to insist on more control, or to fire him.”

      Being assertive had never been hard for Jo, who had difficulty imagining turmoil or timidity over something as simple as firing an incompetent lawyer.

      “Is her little girl always like that?” she asked.

      Kathleen hesitated. “She’s very quiet,” she said at last. “I don’t think she’ll bother you.”

      The expression in those big, sad eyes would bother Jo, but she only nodded.

      “Emma…” Her question—questions—died unspoken in the face of Kathleen’s blandly inquiring expression.

      “She’s trying to take Ginny under her wing, but that poor child is very shy.” Kathleen’s brow crinkled. “I worry about how she’s doing in school. At home, she doesn’t want to be away from her mother even for a second. She stands out in the hall when Helen goes in the bathroom.”

      An image of the little girl just waiting, a small insubstantial presence with that haunted gaze fixed on the closed door, flickered through Jo’s mind. She almost shivered. Ginny reminded her of a kid in a horror film, she couldn’t remember which. The kid had probably turned out to be a ghost. No, what Ginny reminded Jo of was herself, in the year after her mother had died.

      Kathleen shook her head and then smiled with the brilliance of a hundred-watt bulb. “Well. Can I help you carry stuff in?”

      Tempted to snatch up her suitcase and flee, Jo ran through her options and came up with no viable one. It might not be so bad. She could stay for a few days, a week, see how it went. Maybe Helen wasn’t as lost in grief as she seemed. Maybe the little girl was just painfully shy. Maybe Emma…

      Here, Jo stuttered to a stop. Maybe Emma would sit down at the table and tuck into the spaghetti tonight? Maybe she was recovering from a debilitating illness and not anorexic at all? Feeling a surprising sting of sadness for the girl with the sweet smile and fragile body, Jo couldn’t believe any optimistic possibility.

      But maybe living here would work. At least long enough to find something else.

      “Thanks,” she said. “I have a bunch of boxes.”

      Kathleen stood. “Then let’s go get them.”

      EMMA DIDN’T EAT dinner. She’d nibbled so much while she was cooking, she felt stuffed, she said. Her mother didn’t argue, although Jo thought she saw