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  If Amy hadn’t been up to her neck in painting, she would have been quite curious as to what was going on, but she had too much to do to think of anything but getting the murals on the walls.

  It was after the sketches were up and all that was needed was days of fill-in work that she was sitting with Doreen and Max, eating the pasta salad and crab cakes Charles had made for lunch, when two little girls came in with papers and handed them to Jason.

  “What is he doing?” Amy asked.

  “Homework,” Doreen said.

  “What do you mean, homework?”

  Doreen waited until she’d finished chewing. “He’s Mr. Homework. He helps the kids out with their schoolwork.”

  “Doreen, so help me, if you make me beg you for every piece of information . . .”

  “I think it started as a joke. At the pet store. No, at the barbershop. Yeah, that’s it. The men had nothing to do on a Saturday, so they started complaining that they didn’t understand their kids’ homework, so somebody said that if Jason really wanted to help Abernathy, he’d make the kids smart.”

  “So?” Amy asked, narrowing her eyes at Doreen. “How could Jason make the kids smarter?”

  “I don’t know, but the board of education says that our kids are a lot smarter now.”

  Amy wanted to ask more questions, since she didn’t understand anything from what Doreen had said, but she had a feeling she wasn’t going to get much more information from this conversation. Amy turned to her son. “So how are you doing in there? Can I see what you’re painting?”

  Max had his mouth full, but he gave a smile and shook his head no.

  “Please,” Amy said. “Can’t I just have a peek?”

  Nearly giggling, Max kept shaking his head no. This was a daily conversation, and Amy went to great lengths to think up persuasions and promises to try to get Max to let her inside the room. But he never came close to relenting.

  It was the next day, when David came to the library to view the progress of the murals, that Amy managed to get David off into a corner. “What is this Mr. Homework stuff I’ve heard about?”

  “Mildred didn’t tell you?” David asked. “I would have thought she’d have told you everything and then some.”

  “Actually, I’m beginning to think that no one has told me anything.”

  “I know the feeling well. My brother has an open door to any child in Abernathy who needs help with his homework.”

  When Amy just looked at him, David continued. “It started as a joke. People in Abernathy were suspicious of Jason’s motives for helping rebuild the town, and—”

  “Why? He’s a hometown boy.”

  David took a moment before he answered. “I think you should ask Jason about that one. Let’s just say that they were a little concerned that he had some devious, underlying reason for what he was doing. So one day some men were talking and—”

  “Gossiping in the barbershop.”

  David smiled. “Exactly. They said that if Jason wanted to do some good, he could help the kids with their homework.”

  “And?”

  “And he did.”

  Amy looked at David. “What is it that you’re holding back?”

  “Would you believe, love for my brother? Jason had Cherry look into the test scores of Abernathy’s children, and I can tell you that they were appalling. A town that’s had as many out-of-work people as Abernathy has, has depression for dinner each night. Jason knew that it would do no good to give a pep talk to the people that they should help the kids with their schoolwork, so he hired tutors.”

  Turning, David looked at his brother’s broad back as he helped Raphael with a painting. “My brother didn’t hire dry, scholarly professors. No, he hired out-of-work actors and dancers and writers and retired sea captains and doctors and—” Pausing, he grinned at Amy. “Jason hired a lot of people with a lot of knowledge who wanted to share that knowledge. They came here and worked at the schools for three months. And afterward, quite a few of those people decided to stay here.”

  Amy was silent for a moment as she digested this information. “And he helps the children with their homework?”

  “Yes. Jason said that I’d given him the idea. I’d said that there were ‘other children.’ ” David’s voice lowered. “I was talking to him about there being children other than Max.”

  “I see,” Amy said, but she wasn’t sure that she did see.

  It was after that conversation that she began to watch Jason more closely. Over the past two years, when she’d been in New York trying to make her own way, she’d built up an image of this man in her head. She’d read all the articles about his philanthropy and she’d applied that to her own situation in which Jason had spent a lot of money on her and her child. She had concluded that Jason and his money were one and the same.

  But giving of money and giving of yourself to help children understand long division were two different things.

  It was after her talk with David that Amy quit trying to entice Jason. Instead, she tried to see him as he really was and not as she’d thought he was based on a few press articles and what she assumed he was like. As secretly as she could, she began to watch him.

  For one thing, he complained all the time about how much everything was costing him, but she never once saw him turn down any bill. By snooping through some papers he left lying about, she found out that he owned the local mortgage company and that he had given low-interest loans to most of the businesses and several farms in the surrounding area.

  Amy also saw that the formidable Cherry Parker seemed to have changed toward him.

  As nonchalantly as she could manage, as though it meant nothing to her, Amy said to Cherry, “Is it just me or has he changed?”

  “From black to white,” Cherry said, then walked away.

  One Saturday morning, Jason wasn’t in the library and Amy found him at the school grounds playing basketball with half a dozen boys who made Raphael look like an upstanding citizen. “So how many boys like you has Jason taken on?” she asked Raphael later that day.

  Raphael grinned at her. “Lots. We used to have a gang, but . . .” He trailed off, then went back to painting. “He thinks he can get me some more work like this,” Raphael said softly. “He thinks I have talent.”

  “You do,” Amy said, then wondered if Jason planned to paint the inside of every building he owned just to give these gangsters a job.

  When Jason returned from playing basketball, Amy looked up at him. He was wearing gray sweatpants that were dirty, sweat-soaked, and torn. And she’d never seen any human sexier than he was at that moment.

  For a moment Jason looked at her, and Amy turned away in embarrassment, but not before Jason gave her a knowing grin.

  “Hey!” Raphael yelled because Amy had just drawn a camel’s face on a princess’s body.

  “Sorry,” Amy murmured and refused to turn back around to look at Jason.

  Just a few more days, she thought, and a thrill of excitement went through her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE NIGHT BEFORE THE OPENING OF THE LIBRARY, ALL OF them except Doreen and Max were working in the library until three A.M.

  “That’s it,” Jason said, and looked up at the others. “Tell me, do I look as bad as the lot of you?” he asked, his voice hoarse from talking so much in an attempt to answer the thousands of questions fired at him that day.

  They all looked around. The library was as finished as it was ever going to be.

  “You look worse than we do,” Amy said, deadpan. “What do you think, Raphael?” After six weeks of daily contact, they had come to know each other well, and Amy marveled that she had ever been afraid of him. And Raphael had proven to be quite talented, both in art and in organization.

  “Worse than me,” Raphael said, “but then old men always look bad.”

  “Old?” Jason said. “I’ll give you old,” he said, then made a leap for the young man, but Raphael side-stepped, and Jason went down hard