“Hello.”
“Miss Richards, I’m sorry to call you on Thanksgiving night, but Mrs. Ginny Hunter was in an accident, and she said you should be notified.”
Kendra blew out a long breath, rested her elbow on the desk, and said, “Now what?”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am.”
“Oh, sorry. Where is she and who are you?”
“I’m head nurse on this ward at Freedmen’s Hospital. She said you’d take care of the bill.”
“How is she, and what happened to her?”
“According to the report I have, she was riding with someone who was speeding up Georgia Avenue at seventy miles an hour and totaled the car, crashing it against a wall. In the crash, Mrs. Hunter got a sprained left wrist.”
“I see. Who was driving that car?”
“She says that a man named Dunner was driving it, but he can’t speak for himself. He was thrown outside of the car, and she jumped out before the police came. The police think she was driving, because they found Dunner’s watch on the floor by the front passenger’s seat.”
Kendra didn’t doubt the police evaluation of the situation. It was just like Ginny to break the law—as she’d done if she was driving—and put the blame for the accident on someone else. “What is the situation with the man named Dunner?”
“He was thoroughly banged up, and he’s just regained consciousness. We expect he’ll survive.”
“Thank God, he’s alive.” She gave the nurse her uncle’s number. “Call this man. He may be able to help. I don’t have any money.” She had barely enough to meet her expenses and buy what she needed for her trip to Europe. Further, she did not believe that her mother had no health insurance; Ginny was too afraid of death to neglect a way of circumventing it. And she wouldn’t miss an opportunity to make Kendra feel guilty and spend money on her sprained wrist. She was not being unfair, just clearheaded.
“But she gave
your
name,” the nurse said.
Kendra bristled at that. “So what! I can give Michael Jordan’s name, though he doesn’t know I exist. In a similar situation, would you argue that he should be responsible for me on the strength of my having given you his name?”
“Somebody has to pay this bill.”
“Sure, and I imagine it’s a sizeable one, since hospitals are known to gouge so skillfully that they’re even able to get blood out of a turnip.”
Kendra hung up, refocused, and, within an hour, wrote a paper on women in front of the TV cameras. But the night was not to be hers. When the phone rang again, she knew someone was calling her about Ginny. Maybe her papa was right when he advised her to move from Washington as soon as she graduated.
She couldn’t see the caller’s ID. “Hello.”
“Kendra, this is your uncle Ed. Did you get a call about Ginny tonight?”
“Yes, sir. A little over an hour ago. I told the nurse to call you. I don’t have money for a hospital bill, Uncle Ed.”
“I’m sure you don’t. Here’s the problem. Ginny is on probation for driving an uninsured car with a suspended license. She was clearly driving this car, because the old man’s daughter swears that he doesn’t know how to drive, has never attempted to, and has never owned a car.”
“So who’s car was that?”
“It was a rented car.”
“Both of them were thrown clear of the wreckage, because they didn’t have their seat belts fastened, so Ginny thinks she can swear she wasn’t driving and get away with it, but she can’t.”
“I know. The man’s watch fell in front of the front passenger seat.”
“Right. And she’ll discover that her fingerprints are on the steering wheel, but the man’s prints are not. She could have killed someone. That car was going seventy-some miles an hour on a city street.”
“What will we do?”
“I put up ten thousand dollars for her bail last time, and I’ll never get it back. I’m not poor, but I plan to be able to say that years from now. Ginny is like an addicted gambler, and if you support a gambler’s habit, you’ll soon be as destitute as the gambler. I’ve finished.”
“But doesn’t that mean she’ll go to jail?”
“Kendra, I have three children to feed, clothe, house and send to college. Should I mortgage my children’s future for a woman who doesn’t give a damn what happens to anybody but her? Should I?”
“But Uncle Ed—”
“If you want to let her ruin your life, I can’t stop you, but I’m not going to tear my family apart on account of Ginny, and that’s final. Half of what I have legally belongs to Dot, and she doesn’t want to hear the name ‘Ginny’ again. Further, I don’t blame her. We’ve given Ginny enough of our money.”
Uncertain as to what to do next, Kendra let her mind drift back over the fourteen years since she had reached legal age and got her first job—summer work at the Hot Shoppes. Ginny badly needed a hundred dollars of her first paycheck—one hundred and fifty dollars for two weeks—swore she would repay it in a couple of days, and still hadn’t repaid it or the thousands of dollars she had borrowed subsequently.
Kendra telephoned her father and informed him of her mother’s latest caper and subsequent predicament.
“I see,” Bert said, when she finished the story. “So Ed has finally washed his hands. I can’t tell you how to behave with regard to your mother, and I can’t protect you from her exploitation; you have to protect yourself. But if you continue to support her when she breaks the law and violates normal civility, I’ll have to distance myself from you, because it’s too painful. I won’t want to know about it.”
“I’ve been planning to try and get professional help for her, but she won’t stay out of trouble. Psychiatric social workers for the city are not going to counsel her unless she gives them her court records, and she’s not going to do that. She’s on probation right now, and if this case goes to trial and she loses, she’s had it.”
“You listen to me, Kendra. No kind of professional is going to straighten Ginny out until she sees firsthand what it means to be in jail a couple of years as punishment for her crimes. And what she did tonight was a crime. How will you feel if she kills an innocent person after you put your life in hock and bail her out of this?”
“If you put it that way, I’d feel responsible for that person’s death.”
“And you would certainly share that responsibility. Look, Kendra, I’m tired of this. If you can’t see the necessity of allowing her to pay for her crime, there’s no use talking to you. Have you told Sam about this?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you’d better, but for heaven’s sake don’t let him think you’ve been agonizing over whether to bail her out. That reminds me. Can you come to the store tomorrow around twelve-thirty? I want to talk with you, and we can have a really nice lunch in the office.”
“Yes, sir. I don’t have classes tomorrow. I’ll see you then.”
That reminds me,
he’d said. She went over the conversation, but nothing rang a bell. But she’d know what it was when she left him the next day, because it had to be what he wanted to talk with her about. Eleven-thirty and too late to call Sam. She wasn’t even sure that she wanted to.
She got ready for bed, but she didn’t feel like sleeping. Standing at her bedroom window looking out at the cold Thanksgiving night and the perfectly rounded moon hanging in the clearest and coldest-looking sky she could remember, tears splashed her cheeks. She wiped them away, impatient with what they symbolized.
That probably won’t be the last tear I shed, but I’ll be damned if he’ll ever know how much I hurt.
Chapter Twelve
Kendra dashed into her father’s store seconds before a torrent of freezing rain swept the streets of Northwest Washington. She braced her strength against the gust of wind blowing in from Dupont Circle and managed to close the door. Bert was taking an order by phone and hadn’t noticed her predicament.
“Papa, you have to do something about that door. It weighs a ton. Your canopy is elegant, but what good is it in a storm like this one?”
“Not too much,” he agreed, walking to her with arms outspread. He hugged his only child with more affection than he usually displayed. “I hope you’re hungry.”
She gazed at him with a frown. “Of course, I’m hungry, Papa. It’s lunchtime. Besides, my mouth waters when I’m anticipating your fantastic sandwiches.” Something wasn’t right. First that hug and now, this.... She realized suddenly that he was being protective.
Hmm. Wonder what this is about
.
“I’ll be in the office having lunch with Kendra,” Bert called to Gates.
Kendra hung her coat in her father’s office, pulled out his desk chair, and sat down. She looked around at the elegant room, the last thing you’d expect to see in the back of a butcher shop—away from the meat which hung in his huge basement refrigerator and was Bert Richards’s livelihood. He had covered one wall of the room with books on meat, butchering, and the preparation and cooking of meat, and also books on string instruments and music. A handwoven Turkish carpet covered much of the floor, and his desk, desk chair, coffee table, and an occasional table were of walnut wood. A loveseat in brown leather complemented the beigeand-dark-green carpet. On another wall hung two of his prize guitars, a Gibson Masterbuilt acoustic and an Epiphone Les Paul Standard electric. They hung against a sheet of green felt. If he had to discuss anything private with a customer, he did it in his office, and she knew that was his way of letting his customers know who he was.
“What did you want to talk with me about, Papa?” She said it as airily as she could and tried to push back her sense that she was about to hear something unpleasant.
“Let’s eat. I sent out for some fresh warm focaccia, and I’ve got a just-baked ham right out of the oven. I made a salad of tomato, basil, romaine lettuce, fresh mozzarella, and hearts of palm. Coffee will be ready in a minute, and we’ll feast.” He rubbed his hands together as if in anticipation of something wonderful.
What would have happened to me if he had been a different kind of father?
It was no wonder that she loved him. “You must have been Italian in your former life,” she said, as a tease.
He covered his desk with a tablecloth, set the “table,” and placed the focaccia ham sandwiches, salad, split-pea soup, and coffee on it, sat down, and said the grace. She reached out, patted her father’s hand and chided, “You didn’t tell me we were having my favorite soup.”
“You don’t have to know everything,” he said, with a gruffness that, to her, spelled unarticulated affection.
So he wasn’t going to discuss whatever he’d had in mind until after he finished eating his lunch. She told herself not to second-guess him, but she imagined the worst. After they finished the tasty, enjoyable meal and she sipped coffee in an absentminded way, she heard herself ask him, “Is it about Mama or Sam?”
He ran his fingers back and forth across his jaw, poured himself another cup of coffee, and said, “Both.”
She set her cup on the desk with a thud. “What do you mean,
both?
They’ve never met.”
He took her hand. “Don’t jump to any conclusions. Just hear me out.”
Bert looked at Kendra with eyes that reflected his sadness. “Sam called me minutes after he left you Thanksgiving night. I had noticed that the wonderful spark of new love that I saw between the two of you when we had that picnic was no longer there. Still, his call surprised me. From the outset, he’s had a bad reaction to Ginny’s treatment of you, because he’s protective of you, and it’s impossible to protect a person from a mother like Ginny. But when she tried to steal your pocketbook, he became intolerant of her.”
“Why didn’t he tell
me
this?”
“I asked you to hear me out, Kendra. The day it snowed, he ran into Ginny at a bar where he stopped with a man who teaches at GW. Ginny was there. She flirted with him.”
“Oh, Lord. How could she?”
“She didn’t know who he was.” He decided to let Sam tell her the rest of the story. “Sam is not responsible for Ginny’s nasty behavior. He can’t bring himself to tell you about it, but when he looks at you, he sees her, and it’s killing him. And he told me that until he can clean it out of his head with the help of your knowledge and understanding of it, he can’t go further with you.”
She was standing then, shaking with a combination of fear and fury. “I only need to know one thing. Did he sleep with her?”
“No, he didn’t. And if you make the mistake of asking him that question, I guarantee he won’t speak to you again. He detests her.”
“I see.”
“Do you? This is serious. If a man can’t hold the woman he loves without thinking of his distaste for her mother, who looks just like her, what will he do? Does he want that woman to be the grandmother of his children? In some states, grandparents may retain certain legal rights in respect to their grandchildren. And no man would want Ginny for a mother-in-law, keeping his wife—and thus his family—in constant turmoil.”
She dropped herself back into the chair. “So it’s him or Mama.”
Bert stared at her. “For goodness’ sake, don’t be ridiculous. He deserves better than a comment like that.”
“Why didn’t he tell me this? Why did he tell you?”
Bert threw up his hands. “I’m your father, so there are things I can’t be candid with you about. How did you get to be so naive? The man is frustrated. After a perfect Thanksgiving at his father’s house, you couldn’t kiss him, because he’d been cool toward you. And why had he been cool? Because of your mother. I suggest you call him, tell him you want to talk with him about his conversation with me. It’s important, and it’s urgent. Talk with him where you have absolute privacy. I suggest your place, that is, if you love him. If you don’t do this soon, you can forget Sam Hayes, and you will regret it for a long time. A woman is blessed if she has the love and caring of a man like Sam, and especially in this town where there are ten women to every eligible man.”
“Why did he talk with you rather than his own father?”
“Obviously, because he didn’t want to expose you to Jethro. If I were
his
father and he told me that, I would advise him to leave you alone. That’s why he came to me.”
She tried to digest all that her father had said. After some minutes, she took in the sadness on Bert Richards’s face and voiced her understanding of it. “You didn’t tell me everything, and what Sam has to add is going to hurt even more. But as long as she didn’t inveigle him into bed with her, I can take it.”
“My advice to you is control your temper, and do not accuse him of anything. He does not deserve that.”
“You needn’t worry, Papa. I trust him far more than I would trust her. Thanks for lunch and for trying to soften the blow. I’ll call you.”
“Let me check whether the rain has stopped.” It hadn’t, so he called a taxi for her. “I’ll meet you tonight as usual.”
She’d get to work too early, but she didn’t mind. In the meantime, she could get a lot of studying done. The pounding of rain on the taxi’s rear window made her think of sleep, but she shook off the urge to close her eyes and dialed Sam at home, for she knew he wouldn’t be at school the day after Thanksgiving.
“Hello, Kendra. How are you?” he said by way of a greeting.
“Hi, Sam. I’m on my way to work. I had lunch with Papa, and he called a taxi for me, because he couldn’t get away from the store. Sam, I need to see you and talk with you. Would you have dinner with me at my place tomorrow evening?”
Was he hesitating? “Well, if you’d rather—”
“I was trying to recall whether I’ve made a commitment for tomorrow, but I think not. So, yes. I’d like that very much, and I’ll look forward to seeing you. What time?”
“Seven o’clock. I’ll be looking forward to seeing you, too, Sam.”
She hated the stilted conversation, and the distance between them that seemed to have stretched endlessly in just one day. But she knew that neither of them was going to pretend anything, and that they would speak and act true to their feelings.
“Sam, neither you nor I is capable of pretending joyful conversation, and I imagine that like me, you’re going with your feelings and not make small talk. I respect that in you. Tomorrow, I guess we’ll find out if we still have anything going for us.”
“We will, and we have, Kendra. Thank you for making this gesture. See you at seven tomorrow.”
She didn’t say good-bye, because that was not the way she wanted to terminate a conversation with him. When she got out of the taxi in front of the Howell Building, her umbrella was of little use. The rain continued, and the wind was, if anything, stronger. She dashed into the building, but not quickly enough to avoid getting wet. Inside, she shook out her umbrella, pulled off her shoes, left both in the doorman’s package room, and padded barefoot to the elevator.
“What’s the matter? Don’t I pay you enough for you to afford shoes?” Clifton Howell asked when he met her in the corridor. She had learned that, in addition to being charitable, he had a devilish sense of humor.
“You certainly do, sir, but if I buy shoes, how am I going to afford champagne?”
“Touché!” he replied without the semblance of a smile.
To her astonishment, when she stopped by the doorman later to pick up her umbrella and her wet shoes, she found beside them a pair of rain boots that were her size.
“Whose are these?” she asked the doorman.
“The boss ordered them for you, Ms. Richards. He said your shoes wouldn’t dry by midnight, and you can see that he was right. Those shoes got soaked.”
“That’s nice of him, but I don’t want him buying my shoes.”
“It wasn’t personal, ma’am. He would’ve done the same for me. I’ve been working this door for twelve years. He even bought a scooter for my son.”
“That’s different.”
“Not really. I told my six-year-old that I couldn’t afford a scooter, and the little devil called Mr. Howell and asked him to pay me more so he could have a scooter.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, ma’am. Everybody who works here has a similar story. Enjoy the boots. His wife probably picked them out.” She slipped on the green-dotted black boots and left the building with her shoes in her hands.
Kendra had no difficulty deciding what to cook. She defrosted cutlets that her father gave her and planned a menu around them. She planned to serve a gourmet meal, but she was not going to put on anything sexy. To her way of thinking, sex was the last thing they should be considering. She got her apartment in pristine order, set the table, added white candles and white roses with sprigs of baby’s breath, and regarded her handiwork.
“Not bad,” she said aloud. “I wasn’t born to wealth, but I know how to live, thanks to my father.”
Gazing at the warm colors of beige, persimmon, and avocado in her living room, the big picture windows, and the sparks shooting up the chimney, she remembered how happy she was when her father handed her the receipt for her shares in the co-op. No matter what happened this evening, she told herself that she would not let it bring her down, that she would plod on until she reached her goal, and then go on with her life. She chose an avocado-green sheath that just covered her knees and exposed very little cleavage. He couldn’t say that she was luring him.
Punctual as usual, he rang the doorbell at seven, and when she was about to open the door, she opened her right fist and saw the prints of her fingernails
. Relax, Kendra. He’s only a man!
She opened the door and gazed up at him. “Hi.”
He stared down at her for a few seconds, and then a smile barely touched his lips. “I’m about as uptight as you are. How are you?” He handed her a bunch of pink and purple calla lilies.
A gasp escaped her before she was able to control it. “Sam. These are so beautiful. Thank you so much.”
“You may imagine that buying them gave me a lot of pleasure. It meant that I at least was going to see you.” He handed her a bag. “Unless we’re going to drink the red, please put the white in the refrigerator.”
“I guess you’d better have a seat; otherwise, I’ll appear inhospitable. I’m glad you agreed to come. You look wonderful. I’ve always liked you in that navy blue suit, white shirt, and tie of assorted blue colors,” she said, embarrassed at resorting to small talk.
“I know. You once told me. That’s why I wore it.” He’d been walking beside her, but he stopped and looked directly at her, his gaze seeming to pierce her. “Kendra, if we continue this way, saying things just to stave off the silence, I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it. It’s colder in here than it is outside. I care as much for you as I ever did.”