Free Homesick Creek by Diane Hammond

wooden puzzles with only one piece missing, a plastic pork chop, plastic slices of bread, plastic peas, and a wedge of a plastic banana cream pie.
    Anita switched on the television, grateful that the cable was still hooked up. Their bill had to be at least twenty days past due, and the cable company would be cutting them off anytime now. She turned to
60 Minutes
. She loved Morley Safer, thought he was the most gentle-looking man she’d ever seen, not like that Mike Wallace, who kept punching questions at people until they either said what he wanted them to or looked like liars, one or the other. She thought Morley Safer probably treated his wife real nice, brought home flowers for her, or gave her diamond earrings as a surprise. Anita had always wanted a pair of diamond studs the size of raisins, sparkling away so everyone could see. She’d bought a pair of zircon earrings at a flea market once, but they hadn’t fooled anyone, and then one of them dropped down the drain in the kitchen sink.
    “Honey, do you have Head Start in the morning?” Anita asked Crystal. She’d forgotten to check with Doreen. Doreen worked in the hospital laundry part-time.
    Crystal shrugged, busy with the school bus.
    “Well, we’ll ask when Mommy calls.”
    Meanwhile, Diane Sawyer was interviewing some crook who’d stolen money from a lot of old people by pretending he was a big-deal real estate developer. They’d caught him in Mexico, living in some fancy house with about five swimming pools and a bunch of gardeners and chefs and laundresses. The old people he’d tricked mostly lived in double-wides and trailers. On the other hand, they’d had money to invest, so Anita didn’t feel totally sorry for them, except for one old couple who sat all hunched up inside themselves in the very middle of their sofa, holding hands. Anita knew that hunch; it was the hunch of people bound for bad weather with no shelter in sight. Anita had been sitting like that off and on for years.
    The phone rang just as the old man started to cry. The old woman patted his spotted hand to reassure him. Doreen was on the line, sounding sullen.
    “I can’t get Danny out tonight,” she said. “It looks like he’s going to have to stay overnight.”
    To Anita, keeping Danny in jail for a night seemed like a good idea, and keeping him longer sounded even better. Maybe it would make him start taking his life more seriously for a change. “How’s he doing?” Anita asked, but it was mostly for form’s sake. She didn’t really care how he was doing.
    “He looks like shit, plus they’ve got this Mexican guy in with him who doesn’t speak English, and he’s been talking the whole time even though Danny can’t understand what the fuck he’s saying. Danny told him to shut up, but it didn’t make any difference.”
    “Well, it would be scary to be locked up in someone else’s language.”
    “I guess.” Doreen wasn’t interested in that, though. She said, “You and Daddy don’t have any money, do you? Bail is ten thousand dollars.”
    “Give me a break,” Anita said—as though they could even get their hands on ten dollars right now.
    “Danny’s family isn’t going to help either,” Doreen said bitterly. “He didn’t do it, you know. You’re all assuming he did, but he said he just stopped off at Bruce’s to see if he could borrow his car and next thing he knew there were a bunch of squad cars and police dogs. He said one of the policemen wrenched his arm around behind him so hard he might have torn something in his shoulder. He could sue, probably.”
    “Honey, my advice is to take a warm bubble bath, open a beer or a wine cooler if you’ve got one, and call it a night. There’s nothing anyone can do until morning anyway.”
    Doreen suddenly deflated. “Yeah, I guess. I just can’t believe this shit, you know? First they accuse him of stealing, and now this drug thing.”
    “He’s fucking up, honey,” Anita said quietly. “You better