"...yeah. If that's okay."

"Sure. I guess it's better than sitting."

There's a more expensive but honestly uglier Presbyterian church a few blocks down, and very plain white Catholic chapel that proclaims itself the center for Japanese Catholics in Los Angeles, and a nondenominational Protestant church that doesn't seem to have a proper ceiling and instead just has a bunch of pipes running under a lot of unfinished wood. 

Eventually they hit a Catholic Church with a sign that says "Our Lady Queen Of Angels", which at least looks like whoever built it had some concept of what they were going for at the time:

"Yes this is good," he says contentedly. "Thank you."

And he goes in.

Zana turns the volume on her Gameboy all the way down because playing a Gameboy in church feels kind of wrong. She keeps playing it anyway, though.

Normally Connor would pray but it actually is kind of uncomfortable trying to pray in a Catholic church. Maybe he'll pray that the Catholics are delivered from the error of their ways and come to true saving faith in Jesus Christ.

He walks around looking at the ceiling and mending his clasped hands and singing a praise song because he doesn't actually want to talk to God right now because he is pretty sure that the reason God is not being helpful is that he is being badly behaved and is planning to be even more badly behaved and isn't sorry at all. That seems like exactly the sort of thing that makes you not worthy of aid and so on. 

His hands heal up a lot slower than they would've at home.

Eventually Connor announces that it is time to go home. It's very important that they're home before dark, and it stands to reason that they're going to have to spend an hour on the bus again.

He is unable to heal his hands at all on the bus because he cannot concentrate. 

Then Karen will notice them when she gets home. She will not comment but she will be sad.

"Bought you some fabric and thread today. I'm sorry I forgot yesterday." She would kind of like to comment that she would have gotten it last night if he'd reminded her, but she's not going to because maybe he forgot or was scared and she is not going to say things that she thinks sound like guilting people for forgetting or being scared.

"Oooh, thank you. Do you have a needle? If you do not I can make one but it is a little tricky."

"I think we do somewhere. You're sure you can use it without pricking yourself?" Is that an insensitive thing to say to a small child who has obviously damaged their hands today somehow. Probably intentionally. She has no idea how to deal with self-harming babies.

"We climbed a fence to look at the river," he says. "I have lots of practice at embroidery but I did not have any practice at climbing fences."

This is - not obviously false but at this point she mostly does not trust this child to report on his situation remotely accurately. Also that's actually kind of concerning. If Connor was with them they were probably not in grave danger but it's still actually kind of concerning.

"You guys went to look at the river?"

"I was hoping we could talk to the river Maia but they did not seem to be listening."

"What's a river Maia? Can I see your hands for a second?"

Hands! They are partway healed he just didn't get to the part where the new skin grows in under the scab.

"River Maiar are Maiar whose Maia thing is a river. Most rivers have one."

"I don't know what a Maia is. - I think you don't need a bandaid, but if you get hurt again you should tell me so we can put a bandaid on and help it heal faster, OK?"

"It'll be better soon I just couldn't concentrate on the bus. I can fix it before I start the embroidery if you'd like."

" - just focus on whatever you want, OK?"

"My mother makes me fix scrapes before I go play again because she says it's a good way to learn carefulness."

"Carefulness is good, but I think the embroidery might be even better for you right now. If you can do embroidery with hurt hands without making them worse."

"I can probably do both at the same time. My favorite flowers are not very tricky."

"OK! Have fun."

Eventually she serves dinner and lets everyone know that Connor and Zana's grandparents have been persuaded to pick them up the day after tomorrow. (It involved a lot of persuading. Her dignity is pretty upset about everything but she is not going to tell anyone this.) All of the nice daycares she's looked at have waiting lists, and the nice summer daycamps wanted people to register at the beginning of the summer, but there's a church-run summer day camp a ways away that's willing to accept new kids on no notice.

"I haven't actually seen the church, but at least it might be better than being cooped up in the apartment by yourself? And if you hate it you don't have to go back."

"That sounds definitely better than being cooped up in the apartment by myself," says Maitimo. He does not say that he had no intention of cooperating with that anyway. 

"OK then. We can drop you off the day after tomorrow. Ideally if we're going to spy on Wolfram & Hart we do that soon, but if we don't want retaliation then we probably want to at least wait until Connor and Zana are out of LA? So... two days from now. At the earliest."