Free Reason To Believe by Kathleen Eagle Page B

had no answers anymore. No way to steer her daughter on the right, the correct, the safe and proper course.
    And Anna's father, damn him, was looking to Clara for an answer, too. Or an invitation. Is it okay if I buy us a little more time?
    From the backseat Anna seized the moment. "Turn right at the Golden Arches, Dad. C'mon, I haven't had anything to eat today."
    "Yeah, well, wonder why." Ben glanced out the window as he signaled for the turn she'd suggested.
    "We can take the food home," Clara said quietly, feeling strangely relieved.
    Anna and Ben ordered their usual favorites, but Clara wanted nothing more than hot tea. She knew her stomach wouldn't tolerate anything else. Not when she'd worked so hard to build an ark to save herself and her daughter, and it had started listing again. One damn rocky shoal after another. She hated it when things went so badly awry that she couldn't fend off that awful little-girl-lost feeling. She hadn't been able to fend it off the day the police had called her to come to the station.
    She'd cursed her exiled husband's hands for not being on the steering wheel that day, of all days. Hers had felt shaky. They hadn't looked shaky. But beneath her orderly surface, chaos reigned. The words on the sign in front of that building would never again look quite the same to her. Police... God, the police had arrested her child...
     
    Anna was waiting, chin in hands, elbows planted on the long white table, when Clara was ushered into the barren, windowless room. Her dark eyes met her mother's immediately, but they betrayed nothing. No guilt or remorse. No fear or confusion. Nothing but here I am.
    And here Clara was, every inch of her Anna's mother. She took a deep breath and spoke quietly. "Is this true, Anna? Did you take something from a store without paying?" She couldn't quite say the word shoplift. She didn't want to imagine her daughter actually doing the deed.
    Anna glanced at the female officer sitting across the table from her, then at the young man in street clothes sitting at the far end.
    "You've made a mistake," Clara said to the woman in uniform. "Anna wouldn't—"
    "I made the mistake, Mom. By getting caught."
    "Oh, Anna." It was all Clara could say, and even that much came hard. The man who'd brought her to the room wheeled a chair in her direction, and she melted into it like snow hit by a March wind. She barely heard the introductions. The younger man was from Dalton's security. Clara would have taken him for a high school kid, and if he'd approached her daughter on the street, she would have kept strict maternal vigilance. He looked greasy.
    He was writing up an incident report on Anna's crime. "Native American?" he asked without looking up from his clipboard. A brown wad of chew peeked over his fat lower lip. He glanced up, and Anna gave a curt nod. He put a check mark on his report.
    "What does that have to do with it?" Clara asked, a mental red light suddenly galvanizing her.
    She and Anna both grimaced as the security man spat into a paper cup.
    He curled his forefinger and carefully wiped his lower lip with his knuckle. "These are just routine questions I gotta ask. You the biological mother?"
    "Is that on there, too?" Clara demanded, her voice gaining defensive strength. "Is there a space marked 'biological mother'?"
    "Legal parent, then?"
    "Yes." Looking the man in the eye, Clara straightened slowly, gaining her full, regal stature like Phoenix rising. She enunciated each syllable purposefully. "I am Anna's mother in every way, shape, and form."
    "That's all I gotta know." The little man shrank back from his report once he'd marked the box. "See, she's a minor."
    "I realize that. And she's not a criminal. She's never done... anything like this—"
    "Before, yeah, I know. Your first name?"
     
    And so it had gone. Clara had recovered her poise in defense of her daughter. There was something about the bits of chew stuck between the security officer's teeth that had taken