Free The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald

now, to be.
    She began again.
    “If I kept Henry,” she said, “you’d still be able to see him, and no one would ever have to know he was your grandson.”
    Dr. Gardner, truly taken aback, sat upright and moved away startled, as if from a sudden shock or flame.
    “You?” he said.
    “No one,” Martha said, her voice gruff with too much emotion. “No one could be a better mother to this little boy. I know it.”
    Dr. Gardner lit a cigar, keeping his silver lighter at the tip and puffing emphatically. Then he snapped the lighter shut and waved away the little bit of smoke he had made. He pulled an ashtray near and then tapped the cigar against it needlessly.
    Powerless, Martha waited, the balance of her life encompassed somewhere in this man’s mind, the child both hers and a Wilkes-Barre family’s, his future both known to her and forever lost.
    “I don’t see how that’s possible,” Dr. Gardner finally said.
    “Why not?”
    “Well, for one thing, because I think it’s patently unfair to the young lad. How could you want him raised in a practice house—however expertly by you—when he could have his very own family, and two parents, two young, healthy, well-educated parents?”
    “And for another?” Martha asked, her heart in a kind of cramp.
    “Well, for another, Mrs. Gaines, Qui procul ab oculis, procul a limite cordis.”
    “I’m sorry, Dr. Gardner. I don’t know Latin.”
    “Out of sight, out of mind,” he said.
    Henry, a yard or so away from Dr. Gardner, stumbled a bit and fell against his knees, where he scrunched down, whether in glee or embarrassment, it was hard to tell. Then he looked up, nearly triumphant, into the president’s face.
    “Tell a joke,” he said and then collapsed into peals of laughter.
    TWO DAYS LATER, Martha walked down the aisles of the orphanage nursery, looking through the prison-bar slats of the cribs, which, at this time of the afternoon, were throwing harsh striped shadows onto the backs and sides of the sleeping babies.
    Staring at a multicolored glass mobile that hung in the window, Martha mused that, if the colors of her life before Henry had been all pastels and beiges, they were now bright blues, greens, and reds. Reds especially, Martha thought. She saw Henry’s cheeks, his fire truck, his fire hat, his rubber ball, his favorite crayon, his lips, his Christmas sweater. The ketchup he called chup and the strawberries he called stawba, and the toy stop sign that he somehow preferred to the toy cars.
    She knew, as she had never known anything in her life, that she would never be able to let him go.
    HIS FAVORITE GAME WAS Where’s Henry? There were several ways to play it. You could hide yourself under a napkin, or behind your hands, or you could put a napkin over Henry’s head and pretend he had disappeared.
    Henry didn’t seem to have a preference. He loved the game, no matter how it was played, and no matter who was playing it.
    “Where’s Henry?”
    Giggles, squeals.
    “There he is! Peekaboo!”
    Giggles, squeals.
    “Again!”
    “Where’s Henry?”
    Giggles, squeals.
    And on it could go, for a very long time.
    What was in those beautiful green eyes, Martha believed, was not only need, but hope. She told herself for the first time that to disappoint either one of those might break someone’s spirit, and to disappoint both might break his heart.
    The day that Martha decided to take Henry was the day that he began crying when Grace hid under the napkin too long, and then walked out of the room. She was intending it, no doubt, as a joke—just an extended peekaboo for maximum effect. But she stayed out of the room too long, and Henry started screaming, just as he had that fall day when he had looked up to find Ruby instead of Ethel.
    “Gray! Gray! Gray! Gray!”
    Martha was simply past the point where her feelings about Henry could be disciplined by science—or perhaps by anything. It no longer mattered why Henry was crying. Henry was