Part 3 — What Junie Carried
I put Junie in the front seat of my car, took the back roads, and called the York police non-emergency line from a gas station lot. The officer who arrived was the same one who had saluted at Logan Elementary corner. His name was Sergeant Ortiz, and he listened to every word with his hat in his hand.
The gray sedan did follow us for a few blocks. Sergeant Ortiz ran the plate while I sat there. The man was Phil Kessler, the former boyfriend of Junies mother, who had a restraining order against him that he had been ignoring for a year.
Gus finally told me the rest in the station hallway, ashamed, with his hands in his pockets. Dad had asked him months earlier to help find a safe place for Junie, because her mother was in a treatment program in Harrisburg and had no one to look after the girl. Gus had been scared of Phil and had been too embarrassed to say so.
So when he nodded to the man at the cemetery, it was not a signal. It was fear. He had been trying to keep Phil from following the child to me. He hissed at me to leave because he was afraid he would make everything worse.
The key on the paper tag opened a lockbox at Susquehanna Federal on George Street. Sergeant Ortiz and a caseworker came with me. Inside was a manila folder in Dads careful block letters.
It held a signed guardianship nomination from Junies mother, notarized in April, naming my father as guardian, and naming me, Celeste, as the successor if anything happened to him. Dad had written me a letter, too, that began, Celeste, I am sorry to make you carry this.
He also kept a log. For three years he had walked Junie across the street every morning and recorded every day she arrived in a clean coat. A crossing guard sees every child twice a day, and my father saw this one clearly.
Phil Kessler was arrested that afternoon for violating the protective order and for following a minor. A judge extended the order for five years. He was not allowed within a thousand feet of the school or of our house.
The family court approved the guardianship papers in eleven days. Junie came to live with me and my husband, who laughed and cried in the same breath when he saw her red scarf, because we had bought a second one the same week.
Gus wrote a check for the cost of the court fees and then sat at my kitchen table and did not say anything for an hour. At last he said, Dad would not have been embarrassed of me for being afraid. He would have asked me to call you sooner. I told him that was exactly right.
Her mother completed the program in the spring and now sees Junie every Sunday under the caseworkers plan. She is steady, and kind, and grateful.
On the first day of school the next year, Junie asked to walk the last block alone. When she reached the corner, a new crossing guard in an orange vest held up a repainted stop sign and smiled. Junie waved with her whole arm, and the traffic stopped for her.