Authors: Bettye Griffin
His lips turned upward, and she realized the smile originated at her
unintentional reference to ‘his’ room. It took so little to make him happy, she thought with a twinge of her heartstrings.
When Hilton arrived she immediately took his hand and led him to where Marcus sat. “Hilton, this is Marcus. Marcus, this is Mr. White.”
The pair shook hands, and then Marcus asked, “Should I go upstairs now?”
She nodded, embarrassed.
“Cute kid,” Hilton said after Marcus was gone. “Are you baby sitting?”
“Sort of. I’m afraid Marcus is in some trouble.” They sat on the couch and she explained.
“So you’re saying a killer might be after that kid?” he asked, frown lines appearing on his forehead.
“It’s a possibility
—”
“And you’re keeping him here with you? Are you crazy?” His voice became louder with each word.
She cast a nervous glance at the stairs. “Hilton, please lower your voice.”
“All right. But I don’t like this, Ava. You’re not equipped to protect anyone. If anything you’re endangering your own safety. Why didn’t you just call the police?”
“Because I don’t want Marcus’s name in it.”
“Call them anonymously. Hell, I’ll call them if you want. Let them pick up this Goodyear person for questioning. Chances are he didn’t even do it. With these people you never know. It’s a dirty business, and they usually have a lot of enemies.”
“Would you really do that, Hilton?”
“Of course. I don’t want you in any danger.” He gestured toward the second floor with his chin. “What’s your connection with Marcus, anyway?”
Ava bit her lower lip before replying. She hoped Hilton wouldn’t think she was crazy for her interest in a child who was a stranger to her, a kid whom she’d intercepted during a purse-snatching. As she had with her sister, she explained that he’d been hanging around her salon, leaving out the part about the robbery attempt.
Upon hearing he
r story he shook his head and chuckled. “You couldn’t just sign up as a Big Sister if you wanted to help disadvantaged kids?”
“Hilton, he’s not a bad boy, really. He’s from a poor family
—he won’t tell me where he lives, but I’m pretty sure it’s here in Palmdale somewhere and not in Nile Beach. His mother’s not around, and he never mentioned a father. He’s practically obsessed with money.”
Hilton frowned again. “Do you know who he lives with?”
“His grandparents, some cousins…maybe an aunt; I’m not sure. The household is apparently so crowded there wasn’t even room for a Christmas tree. He was so disappointed to see that I didn’t have one. He spent Christmas Day with me. I saw him out wandering, and I ended up bringing him over to my brother’s for Christmas dinner.”
“Have you known him long?”
“No. Actually, I met him the same day I met you.” Ava decided to tell Hilton the truth. “He had just made off with this woman’s purse, and I stopped him by accident when he ran into me.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He waved her off when she opened her mouth to protest. “I know, I know, he’s good at heart. But what about school?”
“The kids are out all this week.”
“That’s right; they won’t go back ‘til after New Year’s. Still, you have to be at work. Do you really think it’s a good idea to leave him here alone all day?”
“No, but what choice do I have? He’s supposed to be keeping a low profile, remember? I’ve got a TV and a sofa in the back room at Beginnings, but it’s awfully close to the site of all the trouble. Someone might see him.”
Hilton startled Ava by calling out Marcus’
s name. “Come down a minute,” he said when the boy appeared at the top landing.
“I was just talking with Ava,” Hilton said. “She tells me you’re going to spend the rest of Christmas vacation with her.”
Marcus nodded, his gaze intent on Hilton. Ava knew the hustler in him was trying to stay one step ahead and figure out where this was heading. For that matter, so was she.
“Well, I have a little business where I build furniture and do other things for people. I could use someone to help me out, you know, hand me things
, stuff like that. I can pay, say twenty-five dollars for the week. Are you interested?”
The boy’s eyes opened wide. “Twenty-five dollars for handing you stuff? Yeah, I’d like that!”
“All right. I’ll pick you up here at nine tomorrow morning.”
They did a high-five, and then Marcus bounded back up the stairs.
Ava sat back, staring at Hilton in wonder. “That was a real sweet thing to do,” she said.
“He seems like an okay kid. I figure this will keep him out of trouble and also maybe teach him a few things.”
He chuckled. “I guess if I’m not careful I’ll start imagining it’s my own son working with me.
She didn’t reply.
Her own imagination tended to run rampant when she baby-sat her nieces and nephews, her goddaughter Shayla before Vicky relocated, and of course it had done the same with Marcus when he’d spent Christmas night. She always thought that entertaining the fantasy of a child left in her care actually being hers was simply a hazard of being childless. It hadn’t occurred to her that a parent separated from their child might do the same.
“You’ve really bonded with Marcus,” Hilton was saying. “I hope you like Max as much.”
“I’m sure I will.” Even as she spoke Ava doubted there would be a connection between herself and Hilton’s son. She felt something special about Marcus. Regardless of her daydreams of “what if,” she never lost sight of the fact that Shayla was Vicky’s child and her nieces and nephews belonged to her brother and sister, and Max was certain to fall into that same category. Marcus was different. She dealt with him exclusively, not with a custodial parent as a go-between. Even after she met his grandparents tomorrow she was sure she’d feel the same. She had no idea what kind of kid Maxwell White was. In his eagerness to do his best for the boy under difficult circumstances, Hilton might have inadvertently turned him into a brat.
“I’m trying to get him down for Easter
,” Hilton continued. “His mother’s planning on going away herself, but she’s resisting my taking him.”
“Why should she resist him spending a week with you? She has him all the time. Besides, if she’s going away it sounds like it’ll work out perfect.”
“You say that because you’re a rational person. Janelle, on the other hand, is not. She’s been angry since the last time we were in court and the judge agreed with me that she was getting too large a chunk of my paycheck. I didn’t mind at the time—Max was in daycare, and that ran nearly two hundred a week—but since he started school he’s only there a few hours a week, and I felt an adjustment was in order. The judge agreed, and nearly sliced the monthly support nearly in half.”
“That seems reasonable. Otherwise she’d be making money on the deal.”
“Are you kidding? This woman could teach a course of how to turn having a baby into a highly profitable enterprise. To give you an example, I had paid for Max to attend the best daycare in town, but years later I found out she’d left him with a neighbor for half the amount and was pocketing the difference. Here I thought I was providing for my son, but instead I’m paying his mother’s car note.”
“Oh, how awful!”
“Yeah, well, them’s the breaks, as they say. When I went to my lawyer about it, he said it would be a waste of time to pursue it in the courts. He said the judge would say she wasn’t required to provide anyone with an account of how she spends the money. If you ask me the whole system is a crock. She’s getting a substantial tax-free income for a specific purpose, but there’s no accountability of how she spends it. If she wants to haul me into court all she has to do is go to Family Services at no expense to her, while I’ve paid a small fortune in legal fees because I have to hire counsel.
“
I’m not heartless, Ava,” he continued. “I know there are plenty of good women out there who are only interested in taking the very best care of their children, as well as men who ignore their responsibilities and make it necessary for the courts to get involved in the first place, but it’s awfully easy for a woman to take advantage. I can’t help wonder how many of them have gotten their noses out of joint over some silly stuff, like their ex marrying someone else, and used the system as a means to get even. And how many good brothers are being taken to the cleaners. Everybody can’t affo—” He broke off and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. “Come on, walk me out.”
When they were standing he put an arm around her shoulder and together they walked to the door. “Look at me,” he said, shaking his head and frowning. “I came by to assure you that I’m fine after
acting all out of it Friday night and to promise you that I won’t be all sullen on New Year’s, and then what do I do? I get right back on the same tiresome subject of my troubles with my son’s mother.” He sighed. “That wasn’t right, and I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Everyone needs someone to talk to, and I’m glad
…I’m glad you chose me.”
His grip tightened around her shoulder. Ava Maxwell was one special lady, he thought. So caring, so willing to help, to lend an ear, and to put her own safety on the line in order to protect a child.
That was why he’d offered to bring Marcus to work with him. Who knew what type of trouble that kid had gotten himself into, and he didn’t want Ava caught in the middle of it. Marcus being with him would keep Ava out of danger. He couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to her.
Suddenly he could stand it no more, and in a quick motion he pulled her to him and claimed her mouth, kissing her with a hunger that had long been buried. She returned his passion, reaching her arms behind him to press her palms urgently into his back. The kiss was like the soldering heat that joins metals, and the intensity of it confused him. “Ava,” he whispered when their lips broke apart and they stood holding each other. He felt her tremble when he said her name. Just as abruptly as he’d reached out for her he now released her, and without another word, turned and
stepped out into the winter night.
Chapter
9
H
ilton whistled to himself during the short drive home, his thoughts only of Ava. How refreshing to meet a woman without an agenda. Moving to Palmdale was probably the smartest thing he’d done. He’d given his hometown of Augusta forty-one years, and the only good thing to come out of it was Maxwell. Every woman he’d been interested in was either cultivating a relationship with him for attempted financial gain or had good intentions promptly clouded by dollar signs once they learned he was one of the heirs to the Tucker insurance fortune.
At first he’d thought Janelle S
anders was different when he met her eight years ago. She didn’t behave like the others, who took less-than-subtle actions like asking him to go shopping with them and then standing back at the cashier to let him pick up the tab, throwing broad hints about how much they wanted a new stereo, a computer or just plain asking him outright to buy them expensive big-ticket items. Janelle was a bookkeeper for a manufacturing corporation who was taking night classes to get a degree in accounting. She didn’t mention his grandfather’s estate, and Hilton thought that perhaps she didn’t know. He also thought he might have found Ms. Right, and he wasn’t the only one. His father and stepmother liked her, and so did his brother.
They’d been seeing each other nearly a year
—long enough for him to consider that perhaps she was Ms. Right—when Janelle began complaining about how the college she attended at night and on Saturdays had raised their tuition rates, making it harder for her to pay for more than one class per semester. Naturally he had wanted to help her out, and offered to.
That was how it began. It was deftly handled, with theatrical sighs
usually punctuating her remarks about how difficult it was to get ahead. There was always some new problem that kept her from progressing: a hefty rent increase, an unexpected emergency room visit, a costly speeding ticket…after a while he found himself wondering how she had survived without all those fifties he handed her. He conceded that maybe she wasn’t so different after all, just less obvious about it, and consequently began spending less and less time with her, planning to let it fizzle out where they could go their separate ways.
Six weeks later she informed him she was pregnant, and suddenly fizzling out was no longer an option. They would be bound
financially until their child graduated from college, and emotionally for the rest of their lives.
Time had done nothing to diminish his initial misgivings about the prospect. Janelle had been furious at him for petitioning the court to lower his support payments in keeping with his pension when he retired, at which time his attorney had argued that Maxwell no longer attended day care full time, which was the single largest expense associated with his care. “How am I supposed to pay my rent?”
she had screamed at him through the telephone wires.
“What I give you is child support, not alimony,” was his calm reply. “It certainly covers the difference between what you would pay for a one-bedroom apartment for yourself and the two bedrooms you need to have because of Max. You’re responsible for keeping a roof over your own head, and I guess you’ll pay your rent the same way you’d pay it if you
hadn’t given birth to my child.”
His response was met with the slamming down of the telephone in his ear.
By that time Hilton’s thoughts of his son’s mother usually concluded with a silent prayer of thanks that she’d refused to marry him, since in hindsight he knew it would have been a costly disaster. Evidently she thought having his baby was sufficient to get her rent paid for the next twenty-two years. Perhaps it was his simple lifestyle that prompted her to turn him down. If he spent lavishly she probably would have married him in an instant, and then after a respectable period, say three-years or so, filed for divorce and convinced the judge that he owed it to her to continue to support her in the manner in which she had become accustomed. It would have been part of her carefully mapped out and executed plan, since it had become so painfully obvious she didn’t love him.
It had wounded his ego as well as his heart to realize he had been used by someone he had cared about. Hilton was determined that
Janelle would never see a penny more of his money other than what he was required to give her, especially after he learned of her deception regarding Max’s daycare. For that reason he had incorporated Husband for Hire, so its profits would not be part of his personal income. Max was his priority. In addition to providing the boy’s health insurance, he had opened a trust account in his name at a brokerage firm, as well as a college fund.
Hilton had inherited seven figures from his grandfather, but he refused to let it change his lifestyle. The money wasn’t important for the things that really counted. It hadn’t been able to save his mother from an early death. It had made him a target of gold diggers, and subsequently alone in the early years of middle age. He wanted Max to have the thing that mattered the most, a sense of family.
It pained Hilton to the depths of his soul to know he had failed to provide this. He would not fail again. The next serious relationship he had would be with a woman who cared about
him,
not about his money…the way Ava seemed to.
Of course, she had no idea of his wealth. That was another advantage of getting out of Augusta. The possibility certainly existed that her attitude toward him might change once she learned the truth…but it seemed unlikely. He could tell that from her kindness toward little Marcus.
It was way too early to be sure, but Hilton couldn’t help thinking that in Ava he had found a true treasure…
*****
“Well, hello there. It’s Catherine.”
“Catherine! I was going to call you.” Ava took a deep breath
and gripped the receiver a little tighter. “I wanted to explain about Hilton. He told me he called you to get my number when he was out of town.”
“That’s why I called. I’m not upset. You won fair and square, as they say. Hilton tried to sound casual when he asked for your number, but I got the impression he’s crazy about you. I won’t lie to you, Ava, I was real disappointed when he told me why he was calling. It felt like someone had stuck a big,
thick needle smack dab in the middle of my ego.”
“I’m sorry, Catherine. You told me how you felt. But it’s not like I planned for it to happen.
I didn’t go after him or anything. My car broke down on my way home from your party, and he stopped to help me. Things kind of progressed from there.”
“I
t happens sometimes. It’s probably just as well. One day we had lunch together, and he was telling me about his son and about how he didn’t want him to be an only child. That sent off an alarm in my head. It’s not like I’m in menopause or anything, but I’m forty-three, and getting pregnant isn’t going to be as easy as it was when I had Erica. At least you’ve still got time left, but you’d better get moving. You’re not all that far behind me, but you’re young enough where it’ll be easier for you than it’ll be for me…provided things advance that far, of course. I’ve got to run, Ava. I’ll see you New Year’s Day.”
“All right. Thanks for calling, Catherine.” A
s Ava lowered the receiver, a lump rose in her throat. All the hope she’d allowed to accumulate in the past few days evaporated like water sprinkled on grass on a summer afternoon. Hilton may already have a son, but he wanted another child. She could do nothing to make his wish come true. Didn’t he deserve to know that? Or should she risk being dropped, like Linda Carson, or worst of all, having to see that same stricken look in Hilton’s eyes as she’d seen in her ex-husband’s so many years ago, the look that had shattered her feeling of self-worth, the look she’d run away from then and was still running away from now?
*****
Ava hastily scribbled a note for Marcus and left it on the bathroom sink. In the privacy of her bedroom she had a hushed telephone conversation with Hilton, asking him not to come for Marcus until nine-thirty because she was going to meet with his grandparents.
The supermarket opened at eight, and she wanted to be there before they opened the doors, to see if she could pick out Marcus’
s grandparents. She had initially agreed that Marcus could come along if he waited in the car, but she wanted to talk to his family members without having to worry about him alone outside, crouching in the back seat of her car lest someone see him, so she slipped out before he awakened, leaving a note with strict instructions that he was not to answer the door under any circumstances.
She parked in front and studied the patrons who already stood waiting for the doors to open. Most of them were elderly. Even many of the employees who
entered through a special entrance appeared to be over fifty-five.
In her side view mirror she caught sight of a brown-skinned couple who appeared to be in late middle age slowly approaching on foot, the man ambulating with the assistance of a cane. They were the first African-Americans she saw, and surely they were the people she sought.
She emerged from the car when they got a little closer. “Excuse me,” she called out to get them to stop walking. She ran the few yards that separated them. “Hi. Are you Marcus’s grandparents?”
“Yes,” the woman replied. “Oh, you must be his friend Ava.”
“Yes, I am. I’m so glad to meet you, Mr. and Mrs…” She chuckled. “I’m just realizing I don’t know your last name.”
“Hudson,” Marcus’
s grandfather replied, in a strong voice that belied his average stature.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hudson.” Ava glanced at the doors to the market, which were now open. “May I buy you breakfast? I’d like to talk
to you about Marcus.”
“Actually, we were going to have coffee and rolls
at Dunkin Donuts,” Mrs. Hudson said, cocking her head toward the restaurant across the street. “We come here every morning unless the weather’s bad. It gets us out of the house. But you don’t have to pay for ours, dear.”
“Oh, I insist. Please.”
In the restaurant, Ava went to the counter and ordered three coffees and assorted rolls, croissants and Danish pastries. She carried the tray to the table where the Hudsons sat.
“Oh, Ava, you shouldn’t have!” Mr. Hudson said while his wife clucked agreement. “My goodness, we couldn’t eat all this if we sat here all day.”
“No problem. I’m going to bring some home for Marcus to have as a treat for his breakfast. After he has his cereal and fruit, of course.”
“You seem to be as fond of Marcus as he is of you,” Mrs. Hudson remarked. “We had wanted to meet you and asked Marcus to bring you over, but he said you’re very busy at your bridal salon. He talks about you all the time. He had such a nice Christmas with you and your family.”
“All of us enjoyed having him with us.” Ava was pleased that Marcus had spoken of her to his grandparents, but wasn’t surprised that he had made an excuse to prevent her from seeing where his family lived. She wished she understood the reason for all the secrecy.
“That was very sweet of you to invite him to spend his vacation with you,” Mr. Hudson was saying. Then he shook his head. “It’s a cryin’ shame the way we’re all crammed in such a small space. It’s been six months since the fire, and we’re still waiting for placement.”
“It probably won’t be so bad once Bill and I get an apartment at the senior citizen complex,” his wife explained.
“It’ll still be awful, Eva Mae,” Mr. Hudson disagreed. “Having two less people around ain’t gonna change that. There’ll still be one adult and four children living in that one room.”
Room?
Ava thought.
“We’ve been poor all our lives, Ava,” Mrs. Hudson
explained, “but we managed, even after we had to go on disability after that car accident four years ago. Bill hurt his leg and still has problems with his balance, and my fingers haven’t worked right since they got broken. We couldn’t do factory work anymore, and we didn’t know anything else that wasn’t physical labor. Still, being burned out of our apartment is the worst thing that ever happened. At least we had an extra bedroom. We needed it, too. Both our daughters came back with their kids…” her voice trailed off and she suddenly looked embarrassed.
Her husband took up from there, his voice rough with anger. “Eva Mae and me, we tried. We taught our girls right from wrong. We took them to church. Still, they went wild when they grew up. Kids out of wedlock. Taking up with men who use them like punching bags. Using drugs. Going to prison. And if our grandchildren don’t get out of that hotel soon they’ll be headed for lifetimes of misery, all of ‘em. Marcus is only eight, but he’s out in the street all the time. I don’t know what you must think about us for letting him spend so much time with you when we haven’t even met you, but it’s hard for us to keep up with Marcus. The others will probably be running wild too by the time they’re his age.”
A bell went off in Ava’s head, and it all came together. The Hudsons lived in The Avalon, which years ago had been one of Palmdale’s leading hotels and in its state of decay was now used to house the less fortunate, including people who were left homeless due to fires. No wonder Marcus had been so impressed with her own small house. Seven people in one room! The circumstances were, as Mr. Hudson had said, a crying shame for the richest country in the world.
“So will Marcus and the others have to stay there after your new apartment comes through?” she asked.