Page 75 of Sheltering You

“Just try it,” Derrick said. “If you don’t like it, I’ll make you something else.”

“It looks squishy.”

Derrick ate his bite and swallowed. “Tastes squishy too.” He winked.

Rabie put a single macaroni on his fork and tasted it with his tongue.

Derrick looked down so the kid wouldn’t see his smile.

When he glanced up, Rabie had eaten the bite. “Well?”

“It is okay.”

Apparently, good enough to eat because Rabie scooped up a generous amount and shoved it in his mouth.

They ate and talked about school and soccer—Derrick had played for a couple of years as a kid, so they had that in common. When they’d polished off the meal, Derrick found a package of peanut butter cookies in the pantry and plopped it on the table. “Since you ate all your vegetables…”

Rabie’s eyes rounded. He shoved his hand into the package and came out with three.

He reminded Derrick so much of himself as a kid.

He bit a cookie, enjoying the crunchy sweetness. When he’d polished it off, he said, “What do you think about your brother, Dari?”

Rabie wiped crumbs from his lips with the back of his hand. “He is fun. He sends me puzzles and tells me they will make me smart.”

“You’re already pretty smart,” Derrick said, “but I bet they help with thinking skills.”

Shrugging, Rabie ate another cookie.

“Do you see him very much?”

“Not in a while.” Rabie spoke with food in his mouth, then swallowed. “We talk on the phone. He tells me all the things we’ll do together when we live with him.”

“Do you want to live with him?”

At that, Rabie gazed out the window. His little face, so open a moment before, clouded. “I want to live with him, and I want to live with Basma, but Basma does not want to live with him.” He faced Derrick again. “But she does not know. She is only a…” His words trailed.

“A woman?” Derrick guessed.

He shrugged.

“She has a brain,” Derrick said, “just like you do. Why do you think she doesn’t want to live with him?”

“She says he’s not kind, but he’s always been kind to me.”

“Hmm. Is Basma a bad judge of character?”

By the way the kid blinked and then narrowed his eyes, he didn’t understand what Derrick was asking.

“Is she good at choosing friends? Does she usually like good people and dislike bad people?”

“She likes my friends, and they are nice.”

Such a simple way of seeing the world. It made Derrick want to smile, but he kept his expression neutral. “Does she lie to you a lot?”

He sat back, clearly affronted. “She does not lie to me.”

“So why don’t you trust her judgment about Dari? She’s older, and she knows him better than you do. Maybe she knows something you don’t know.”