Free Birthright by Judith Arnold Page B

this out to?” she asked.
    “Hot Shots Summer Program,” he said, amazed and pleased that he’d won her over so easily. Abraham Steele could have whipped out a checkbook and written a donation when Aaron had visited him last month, but he’d wanted to think about it awhile before deciding—and then he’d died.
    Maybe Lily knew her mind better than Abraham had known his. Or else it was that Abraham had been considering donating the bank’s money, not his own, whereas Lily had no directors or investors to answer to.
    She wrote out a check and handed it to him. He looked at it, then looked again. Ten thousand dollars. He swallowed, looked once again and found that the number hadn’t changed.
    “Um, I think you’ve put too many zeros here,” he mumbled.
    “No.”
    He lifted his gaze to meet hers. She was wearing that mystifyingly shy smile of hers, but there was a certainty in her eyes. “This says ten thousand dollars.”
    “I know what it says.”
    “Are you sure you want to give that much?”
    “I want you to hire a water-safety instructor. And another teacher so you can have more children participating. And maybe you could use the rest as seed money to carry over till next year. That way you’d have something to build on.”
    He opened his mouth and shut it. He hadn’t expected this. When he’d left Lily’s house yesterday, he figured he’d blown any chance of getting a contribution from her. He’d told her her painting was too safe, hadn’t he? And now she thought he was a brilliant art critic? Was that why she was handing him ten thousand dollars?
    “Does this summer program have a board? Because if it does, I want to be on it,” she said.
    “It didn’t have a board,” he told her, “but for ten thousand dollars, if you want a board we’ll have a board. You can be the board, all by yourself.”
    “Well, it’s just…I don’t want the money squandered.”
    “You don’t trust me, huh?” He grinned to take the sting out of the words.
    Her smile was much more reserved. “I hardly know you, Aaron, and what I know…” Her wordsdrifted off as if she was unwilling to say something rude.
    “I’m no longer the punk I was in high school,” he reminded her.
    “There was a rumor in high school that you were arrested.” She stared past him at the screen saver on his computer monitor, apparently unable to look at him when she dredged up his sordid past.
    “It wasn’t a rumor. I had a police record.”
    His candor drew her gaze back to his face. She appeared startled and dismayed, and he braced himself for the possibility that she was going to ask for her check back.
    “Vagrancy,” he told her. “Underage drinking. Possession of a controlled substance. Chronic truancy. Suspicion of shoplifting. More vagrancy.”
    “A controlled substance?” Her eyebrows pinched together in a frown.
    “Pot.”
    She nodded gravely.
    “Frank Garvey gave me some warnings and I ignored them. He arrested me a couple of times, and the judge gave me continuances and yelled at me to shape up. Finally Garvey locked me behind bars for a night. He thought it would be a good idea to scare the sh—the stuffing out of me,” Aaron said, editing himself so as not to offend her even more.
    “That was for possession of pot?”
    “Public intoxication. Beer. I was fifteen.”
    “Where in the world did you get beer?”
    Her naiveté amused him. At fifteen, she probably hadn’t had any idea of how to get beer. For him, it had been a no-brainer. “The refrigerator,” he said.
    “You just took beer from the refrigerator? Didn’t your mother say anything?”
    “No.” He let out a sigh. He used to drink beer at night while his mother was out partying. Sometimes he went out, too. His mother hadn’t noticed him missing; she certainly hadn’t noticed the missing beer. Unlike Lily, he hadn’t been blessed with parents who actually cared enough to keep tabs on him.
    “I’m sorry,” Lily said abruptly. “You must