The Call of Bravery. Janice Johnson Kay

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      Lia Woods. That was her name. Was Lia Hispanic? Only partly, he thought, given the delicious pale cream of her skin where it wasn’t tanned, as her face and forearms were. And her eyes were a remarkable color.

      “Lia,” he said politely.

      “This is Sorrel,” she said, “my foster daughter.”

      The girl was pretty, in an unfinished way. Skinny but also buxom. She had her arms crossed over her breasts as if she was trying to hide them. Blond hair was pixy-short, her eyes blue and bottomless, her mouth pouty. Blushing, she mumbled, “Hello,” but Conall had the impression she hadn’t decided how she felt about their presence.

      They stood in a foyer from which a staircase rose to the second floor. The television was on in a room to his right. He could see the flickering screen from here. To the left seemed to be a dining room; a high chair was visible at one end of a long table.

      Lia crossed her arms, looking from one to the other of them. “You understand that I have a number of foster children.”

      “Yes.”

      Both nodded.

      “The two little ones are currently asleep. Chances are you won’t see much of them. Julia is a baby, and Arturo a toddler.” She pronounced Julia the Spanish way.

      They both nodded again. Sorrel watched them without expression.

      “Let me take you on a quick tour and introduce you to the other kids.” Lia led the way into the living room, where two boys sat on the sofa watching TV.

      The room was set up to be kid-friendly, the furniture big, comfortable, sturdy. The coffee table had rounded corners. Bookcases protected their contents with paneled doors on the bottom and glass-fronted ones on top. Some baby paraphernalia sat around, but Conall didn’t see much in the way of toys. Did she let the kids watch television all day?

      “Walker,” she said in a gentle voice. “Brendan. Would you please pause your movie?”

      One of them fumbled for the remote. Then they both gazed at the men. They had to be the two saddest looking kids he’d ever seen. Grief and hopelessness clung to them like the scent of tobacco on a smoker. Their eyes held…nothing. Not even interest.

      They were trying damned hard to shut down all emotional content. He recognized the process, having gone through it. He didn’t know whether to wish them well with it, or hope someone, or something, intervened.

      His child specialist was staring at them with something akin to horror and was being useless. Somebody had to say something.

      Apparently, that would be him. “Walker. Brendan. My name is Conall. This is Jeff.”

      After a significant pause, one of the boys recalled his manners enough to say, “Hi.”

      “I know we’ll be seeing you around,” Conall said awkwardly.

      The same boy nodded. He was the older of the two, Con realized, although they looked so much alike they had to be brothers.

      Lia guided the two men out of the living room. Behind them the movie resumed.

      She hustled them through the dining room and showed them the kitchen.

      “I serve the kids three meals a day and can include you in any or all of those,” she told them. “If you’d rather make your own breakfasts or lunches, just let me know in advance and help yourself to anything you can find.”

      She didn’t say whether those meals would be sugary cereals and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Right this minute, Conall didn’t care. He kept his voice low. “What’s with the boys?”

      Her glance was cool. “Their mother died five days ago. She had adult-onset leukemia. Six weeks ago, she was healthy. She went downhill really fast.”

      “They don’t have other family?” Jeff asked.

      “No. The boys barely remember their father, who abandoned them a long time ago. If there are grandparents or other relatives on that side, no one knows anything about them. The boys’ mother grew up in foster care.”

      “So now they will, too.” Conall wasn’t naive; in his line of work, he didn’t deal much with kids, but sometimes there were ones living in houses where he made busts. He’d undoubtedly been responsible for sending some into foster care himself. He’d never had to live with any of those children before, though.

      “Yes,” she said. “Unless they’re fortunate enough to be adopted.”

      He didn’t have to read her tone to know how unlikely that was, especially with the boys as withdrawn as they were. And being a pair besides. Or would they end up separated? That was an idea that he instinctively rebelled against.

      He and Henderson both were quiet as she showed them a home office on the ground floor, and opened the door to a large bathroom and, at the back of the house, a glassed-in porch that was now a laundry slash mud room.

      “You can do your own laundry, or toss your clothes in the hamper and I’ll add them to any loads I put in.”

      They nodded acknowledgement.

      Upstairs was another bathroom and bedrooms. Hers, one with a closed door that was apparently where the little kids slept, a room shared by the boys, and a smaller one that was obviously the teenager’s. It was little larger than a walk-in closet; maybe originally intended to be a sewing room or nursery?

      “Sorrel understands that the attic is off-limits,” Lia said, her tone pleasant but steel underlying it. The teenager looked sulky but ducked into her bedroom as Lia led the way to the door at the end of the hall. Like all the others in the house, it had an old-fashioned brass knob. It also had an ancient keyed lock with no key in it.

      Behind it was a staircase steep enough Conall wouldn’t have wanted to navigate it after a few beers. Lia’s hips swayed seductively at his eye level as she preceded him up.

      Don’t look.

      He couldn’t not.

      It was a relief to have her stand aside at the top, where a huge open space was poorly lit by only four, smallish dormer windows. The dormers would allow them to stand upright in front of the windows, but the men especially would have to duck their heads in much of the rest of the space.

      “Yesterday I washed those windows on the inside.” Lia sounded apologetic. “I can’t even get my hose to squirt that high on the outside.”

      The two light fixtures up here didn’t do much to illuminate the attic, especially around the edges where the ceiling sloped sharply down. As in many old houses, it was cluttered with unwanted pieces of furniture, piles of cardboard boxes filled with who knew what, more modern plastic tubs stacked closer to the top of the staircase, and a few oddities and antiques. A naked female clothing mannequin with a bald head stared vacuously at them. Conall saw an old treadle sewing machine cheek by jowl with a gigantic plastic duck.

      Lia’s gaze had followed his. “I think the duck rode on a Fourth of July float every year until my uncle died.”

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