Thursday's Child by Teri White Page A

that Gar should call her Ruth. “Mr. Epstein, he just dotes on my tea cakes,” she said, returning to a large bowl of dough, which she started to knead vigorously.
    Gar was perched on a wooden stool, balancing the cup of coffee she had served him. “What about Beau?” he asked. “Does he like the tea cakes, too?”
    She smiled. “You ever see a teenage boy who didn’t inhale every bit of food put in front of him?” She patted the dough. “Beau eats everything.”
    The coffee was very good. Epstein certainly was well taken care of, both at work and at home. No wonder he’d lived so long. “What is Beau like?”
    Ruth didn’t take the question lightly. She poked and punched at the dough and thought about it for several moments. “Beau is a good boy,” she said finally. “Real polite, in a sort of old-fashioned way. His poor folks did a nice job of bringing him up, even if they did live down there in the jungle.”
    â€œThere seems to be a ‘but’ coming up here pretty soon,” Gar said.
    â€œWell.” She paused, frowning. “Beau hasn’t been happy here. I know he misses his momma and papa, but there’s more to it than that. He’s like a sad little duck out of water. This is a real different kind of life from what he was used to.”
    â€œAnd how about the relationship between Beau and his grandfather?”
    Again she thought. “Mr. Epstein is happy to have the boy here,” she said, “although he isn’t one to show his emotions much. Which is too bad, because I think what Beau needs and what he wants is for somebody to grab him in a big hug and let him know he’s cared about.” She smiled a little. “Course, I guess you could say the same thing about everybody, right?”
    He nodded. “But you don’t think Beau is liable to get that from his grandfather?”
    She sighed deeply. “Mr. Epstein loves the boy, I know that. But he’s a proud man. Stubborn and set in his ways. I never met Jonathan, his son, but I do know that Mr. Epstein was very hurt by the way it went between them.” She hesitated, loyalty to her employer seeming to war with her desire to help him find Beau. That desire to help won out. “The sad thing is, he can’t see that maybe he was to blame some, too. Far as Mr. Epstein can see, he didn’t do anything wrong with the way he raised up Jonathan.”
    â€œSo he’s doing the same thing with Beau?”
    â€œPretty much, I think, yessir.” She began to roll the dough. “Mr. Epstein is a wonderful man in so many ways. He gives a whole lot of money to good causes. But he is also a man who has a lot of power. Men like that sometimes can’t see that the power it takes to be rich and important outside doesn’t work when they try to act the same way at home.” She slapped the dough. “And Mr. Epstein, he was thinking that this boy would be like having his son back. You can’t make one child take the place of another.”
    â€œNo,” Gar agreed. “You can’t.” Even if they’d had six kids, it wouldn’t have made the pain any less when one vanished.
    Ruth glanced at him. “One more thing about Beau.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œHe is a lot like some innocent little lamb. Smart like anything when it comes to school classes, but real ignorant about the world. He seems a whole lot younger than he is sometimes.”
    Gar digested this. “That’s too bad,” he said.
    Ruth nodded. “If he’s out there in this city,” she murmured, “being an innocent child is no good.”
    He couldn’t argue with that.
    Derek Thorn must have spent hours each day polishing the brass buttons on his trim blue blazer. Each and every button gleamed like a miniature golden sun. And no doubt whatever time he had left from that chore was spent having his steel-gray