WHEN FRANKLIN ARRIVED, I walked Jimmy down to the car just to make sure Franklin was in good enough condition to drive the kids to school and speak to the principal. Franklin was gray from stress and lack of sleep but he looked coherent.
Mikie and Norene sat in the back, Mikie in her Girl Scout uniform and Norene wearing pink. She grinned at me through missing teeth, and waved. Keith sat between them looking protective, angry, and tired.
Jonathan seemed grim. It looked like he knew what happened as well.
“I promise,” Franklin said as I leaned on his open car window. “I won’t do anything stupid. I’ll stay within the law.”
He said that almost reverentially, not as a way of condemning me. I believed him. He was still taking night school classes to finish up a law degree that he desperately wanted. He believed it would bring more money to his family, and it probably would.
He wasn’t going to jeopardize it. Althea wouldn’t let him.
She had probably talked to him all last night.
Of course, she had sent me to do the job her husband couldn’t do. He probably hadn’t even thought of it. Which was good. One of us needed to follow existing Chicago law, even if the police and city government didn’t apply it in Bronzeville much.
“I’m going to stop in to see the principal just before school ends,” I said. “It wouldn’t hurt to hear complaints from two different parents. Besides, I’m driving the kids to the after-school program today.”
“I’ll make sure everyone gets there, Uncle Bill,” Jonathan said fiercely.
He went to the nearby high school. He’d have to walk back to the kids’ school in the cold, and he’d have to be on time.
Franklin glared, about to say something, but I spoke first.
“Tomorrow maybe,” I said. “I want to find out a few things first. Let me be protective today, all right?”
Jonathan looked away.
Franklin patted me on the arm. “Thank you,” he said.
Obviously he had been worried about that too.
Jimmy slid in beside Norene and pulled one of her pigtails, not hard, just a gentle tug. She stuck her tongue out at him.
My heart twisted. I was glad Franklin was driving the girls to school this morning. I wasn’t certain I could have. Not and kept my temper with the principal.
“Keep me posted on Lacey, all right?” I asked quietly.
“Will do,” Franklin said.
I backed away as he rolled up the window. Then I made my way to the sidewalk as they drove off.
I’d never quite felt like this before, terrified, and yet forcing myself to remain in place. I felt helpless. The kids had to go to school, and at the moment, the only school available was even more dangerous than I had realized.
I wanted those girls out of it. I wanted Jimmy out of it.
But I knew that they had to make their own way in the world eventually, and it would never be an easy path for any of us. No matter what Martin had said about kids being judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, that was still a dream. Those kids had one strike against them just because of their skin color. Then they were relegated to schools in terrible neighborhoods.
If I could afford to move, I would. Laura had suggested that we list her apartment as Jimmy’s home address. Schools near Lake Shore Drive were spectacular. I had thought it cheating before. I had also thought it charity.
I was rethinking those assumptions right now.
But for this week, I needed to send my brilliant adopted son to school. Not that the adoption was legal. I wasn’t sure how to do that with the false names we were living under. I didn’t dare use my old lawyer in Memphis, Shelby Bowler, on this, because I didn’t want anyone to know where Jimmy Bailey was, let alone that he was still alive.
Jimmy had seen the man who murdered Martin, and it hadn’t been James Earl Ray. I saved Jimmy from being forced into a Memphis cop car that day, a car I thought he might
never get out of, and we had fled Memphis, vowing not to look back.
But I did have to take care of the legal niceties. If Jimmy was going to get into Yale, then we needed everything done properly well before that, just in case.
Maybe now was the time.
Maybe now was the time to reevaluate the way I was doing everything.
I was freezing. The car was long gone.
I turned around and went inside.
I had a lot of phone calls to make.