Authors: Brenda Minton
“That we do,” Morgan agreed grimly, striding after her. Chester fell in behind him.
“Wait for me!” Hypatia called, springing after them.
Morgan paused only long enough to see her through the front door. The coupe had already turned onto the street and was heading west.
“She's getting away,” Hypatia complained, trotting across the porch and down the steps.
“I may know where's she's going,” Morgan said, leaving it to Chester to put his aunt into the passenger seat of the BMW. “At least I think we should start looking at the mission. You'll have to take another vehicle, Chester.”
“No problem, sir.”
Hypatia filled him in on the Worth situation as he drove, trying mightily to keep the coupe in sight, without success. It chilled him to the bone to think of Simone running away from home when she was barely even old enough to drive a car. Only God knew how she'd managed to keep body and soul together in the intervening years. He wanted to shake her and hold her at the same time, and his greatest fear was that she would take off again, just disappear from all their lives.
To think that she was Chester Worth's niece and his own cousin Phillip's sister-in-law and living right under their noses for two whole months, thanks to him, amazed him. No wonder she hadn't wanted to move into Chatam House and wouldn't let Chester drive her around town. She was afraid of being found out. The mystery was why Chester hadn't recognized her on sight. Morgan supposed she had changed. What the passing years and maturity hadn't done, the cancer probably had. But why was she intent on hiding her identity?
A lump began to grow in the center of Morgan's chest, a great black mass of fear and doubt. What had she done that she couldn't bear for her family to know about? He wasn't sure that he wanted to know himself, yet he couldn't deny the relief he felt when he saw the coupe in the parking lot at the mission.
“Dad's car isn't here, so she probably locked the door behind her,” he said. “I'll go see, and if it's locked, I'll try around back.”
“You don't think she'll let us in?” Hypatia asked as he exited the vehicle.
“No, I don't. Wait here for Chester. If I can't get in, I'll call Dad to come down.”
Her lips set in a grim line, Hypatia nodded. Morgan jogged up the concrete steps to the front door and tried the knob. Locked tight, just as expected. Shaking his head at Hypatia, he went down the steps and loped around the building to the back, where a deck had been built behind a chain-link fence next to the rail yard. He took the back steps in one long stride and crept across the deck to the door there. It thankfully yielded to the touch.
Letting out a breath of relief, he walked inside, finding only gloom at first. The long interior hallway that neatly bisected the building into two unequal sides definitely could use more lighting. He walked along the polished concrete floor, feeling the heavy silence, toward the main rooms. Then he heard it, a soft female voice coming from behind a simple door.
“It's all right. Don't cry.”
A sniff, then, “No. No, it's not. I promised to take care of you, and I've messed up everything.”
Morgan tilted his head, recognizing Simone's voice. He didn't know who was with her, but whoever she was, he suspected that she was the reason for the food theft and perhaps for much else. Reaching out, he quietly turned the knob and let the door swing open on a small, stringently clean, plainly furnished room.
Inside was a twin bed with a small shelf and lamp fixed to the wall next to it. He could see a tiny bathroom, a cubbyhole for hanging clothes with a single drawer beneath it and a braided rug on the floor. Posters of outdoor scenes with Bible verses printed on them had been mounted on the walls, but that was it for decoration. Simone and Rina sat side by side on the rumpled bed.
Simone immediately came to her feet, taking up a spot between him and the girl, trying to block his viewâbut not, however, before he had seen what she would have hidden. The oversize sweater that Rina normally wore hung from the rod in the cubbyhole, leaving her clad in a form-fitting tank top that exposed all too clearly the swollen belly of a very pregnant teenager.
Everything clicked into place: Rina's stubborn refusals to ride anything requiring restraints at the amusement park, the oversize clothes, her apparent girth despite her tiny hands and feet, the many trips to the bathroom. This, undoubtedly, was one of the two emergency rooms reserved for Child Protective Services to use when they couldn't immediately place a foster child who had come unexpectedly into their care through the mission. He saw as well the faded bruises on Rina's throat, arms and face. What he didn't already know, he simply asked of Simone, his heart already swelling with pride and understanding.
“How long have you been hiding her and from whom?”
* * *
“He beat her,” Simone said, looking at Rina, now clad once more in the gargantuan sweater that she hid beneath. “He tried to make her get an abortion, and when that didn't work, he beat her to try to make her lose the baby.”
“What a horrible thing,” Hypatia remarked.
Simone nodded and went on. “Her family can't take her in, and she doesn't dare go to a local shelter for fear he'll find her. She doesn't have money to go anywhere else. All I could think to do was hide her here.”
“And try to feed her,” Morgan surmised, glancing at Chester, who had the grace to blush.
“You might have come to me,” Hypatia said kindly, but Simone shook her head, willing back the tears.
“I couldn't do that,” she whispered, “not after all you've already done, not after my ownâ” she swallowed hard and forced out the word “âdeception. But I suppose what I've done was worse.”
Hypatia clucked her tongue and patted Simone's shoulder. “Perhaps you didn't use the best judgment, but you did what you thought was best. As for the other, well, you left out a few things, but we'll get to them.”
That was very much what Simone feared. Glumly, she nodded.
“Now,” Hypatia said briskly, addressing herself to Rina, “as for you, young lady, we can certainly accommodate you at Chatam House for as long as you need.”
“Huh?” Rina looked up, as wide-eyed as a deer caught in headlights.
“You'll be safe and comfortable there, I promise you,” Hypatia went on, “and you won't have to hide. My nephew Asher is an attorney, and he will see that you and your child are legally protected.”
Rina looked appalled. “Ma'am, I can't afford no attorney.”
Hypatia waved that away as inconsequential. “You leave that to the Chatams.”
“But, ma'amâ”
“It's miss,” Chester interrupted, not unkindly. “Miss Chatam will take care of everything, don't you fear.” He reached down to help the girl to her feet. “You come along now. We can fix you up a nice place in the carriage house.”
Simone instantly saw red. Outraged on Rina's behalf, she spoke without thinking. “Are you saying she's not good enough to stay in the mansion, Uncle Chester?”
He recoiled as if she'd slapped him. “Not at all. I only thought she might be uncomfortable in theâ”
“Mansion!” Rina squawked, drawing back. “I ain't going to no
mansion.
What would I do in a fancy place? I'd rather stay here.”
“No, no, it's not like that,” Simone assured her. “It's...” Gilded, filled with priceless antiques, enormous. Even she felt overawed and out of place there, despite the kindness of the Chatams. She slipped an arm around the girl's quaking shoulders. “It's all right, truly, but if you'll be more comfortable in the carriage house, that's fine.”
Morgan stepped in then and set things to right. “Rina, you go with Chester. He will get you settled in wherever you're most comfortable. Simone will check on you soon.”
Simone nodded encouragingly, and Rina let Chester lead her from the room, but then, just before they slipped through the door, Simone had to speak up. “Uncle Chester, please, about Carissa. Don't call her. Not yet.”
He made an exasperated sound, nodded and led Rina from the room. Simone tried to feel relief. At least Rina and her baby would be safe and well cared for by the Chatams. She had no doubt that they would help the girl establish herself somehow. Rina had spoken lately of giving the baby up for adoption, and perhaps that was for the best. So many deserving couples who could not conceive yearned for children to love. She turned off that thought, telling herself that she had bigger problems to face just now, imminent ones.
Hypatia turned to Simone and asked what she had been dreading, what she knew was coming.
“Why don't you want your sister to know you're here?”
Simone gulped down the big doughy knot in her throat and tried to get in a breath so she could explain. “I thought I would come home to my father.” Tears welled, tears to which she was not entitled, and she bowed her head to hide them. “He was a good man, my dad. For a while, I was too ashamed to come back and face him, but during my illness I was led to true salvation by a hospital chaplain, and I thought... I
hoped
that if I confessed everything to my dad, he would forgive me and gradually the rest of the family would forgive me, too.”
“I'm sure that's true,” Hypatia told her. “What I know of your father leads me to believe that he would have forgiven wholeheartedly.”
Simone smiled in bittersweet confirmation. “But it's too late for that. Too late for everything. And I just have to go on from here somehow, have to do the best I can with what I have left. Isn't that what God expects of me, Miss Hypatia?” she asked. “He spared my life. The rest I deserve. Shouldn't I do the best I can with what He's left me?”
“Child, I do not know what you're saying,” Hypatia admitted.
“The contempt of my family,” Simone gritted out, “childlessness, being alone, I deserve that. But shouldn't I do the best I can with what's left to me? Isn't that what God expects of me? That's all I'm trying to do. That's all I want to do.”
“Why on earth would you think yourself deserving of contempt?” Morgan asked. “You're not making sense.”
Simone carefully wrapped her arms around herself, feeling as brittle and insubstantial as spun glass now that the time for full disclosure had come. “Don't you see?” she asked mechanically. “I am Rina. I was her. Not even seventeen and pregnant. Only I wasn't smart enough to run from my boyfriend. He beat me until my baby died.”
Chapter Ten
H
er legs collapsed unexpectedly. Fortunately, Simone stood close enough to the bed to land on its edge. Hypatia yelped, but Morgan reached her first. She held him off with stiff arms, knowing that if he touched her, she'd give way to the grief that she had buried for so long. It hovered around her now, ready to pounce like a ravenous animal. She had miscarried a tiny baby and had it swept away like so much garbage with no doctor or medical personnel of any kind ever attending her.
“That was just the beginning,” she forged on, her vision narrowing to a foggy pinprick. “He kept me in that same room for weeks, and he told me that he owed money to some men and I had to work it off for him.” She closed her eyes, feeling dizzy. “I was such an idiot. I thought he was helping the other girls there. I didn't know they were prostitutes until he told me.”
She heard Hypatia's gasp then, and her vision snapped back into focus. There it was, the revulsion and horror, everything she'd expected to see, everything she'd always felt.
“I was fortunate,” she went on woodenly. “The police came before the men did. They arrested me with the others, but I didn't care. He'd gotten me a fake ID.” She laughed harshly. “I thought that was
so
cool. At least my record is under the wrong name, and the cops didn't know how young I was, so my family didn't have to know how low I'd sunk. I lived on the street and ate out of garbage cans until after my seventeenth birthday so they wouldn't know.”
“Oh, Simone,” Hypatia said, “your father would have been happy to have you home under any circumstances.”
“I realize that now,” she admitted, “now that it's too late. But what of my mother?”
Hypatia blanched and looked away.
“I see you've met my mother,” Simone said wryly, “and you must know my sister quite well, too.”
“I like to think so.”
“Responsible, upright, persistent and hardworking, honest to a fault, makes do without complaining, never puts a foot wrong?”
Hypatia smiled. “She is.”
“If you were her, wouldn't you resent me?” Simone asked.
Hypatia opened her mouth, blinked and sighed.
“She has children now and a happy marriage,” Simone went on. “What could I possibly add to her life but regret and shame? She can't want that.”
“You're her sister,” Hypatia said simply.
“Not for a long time,” Simone murmured, sinking down onto the bed. “Just let me rest a little while please.”
A hand skated beneath her bangs to cover her forehead, and she heard Morgan say, “She's as cold and clammy as a fish.”
That was exactly how she felt, Simone thought, curling into a ball, like a fish out of water. She wanted to sleep and never wake up again. Tears leaked from her shuttered eyes.
“I'm taking her to Brooks,” Morgan stated.
It sounded to Simone as if she was at the bottom of a deep well.
“Lyla Simone,” Hypatia called down to her, “Morgan will look after you, dear.”
Morgan,
she thought. What would she do, where would she go, how would she survive without Morgan, she wondered, and how soon would she have to find out?
* * *
“Obviously she's been skipping meals,” Morgan pointed out.
Brooks shot him a speaking glance. A blind man could tell that she'd lost weight recently, but Morgan had felt that someone should clearly state the cause. Thursday was a half day at the clinic, but Brooks had met them there, and Morgan was extremely grateful. Not grateful enough, however, to take the hint and leave the examining room when Brooks glanced pointedly at the door and nodded in that direction.
“Don't even try it,” Morgan told him, folding his arms.
Brooks looked to Simone, but she just shrugged, so Morgan stayed put.
“As I told you over the phone, she's cold to the touch but seems to be perspiring, and her pulse is rapid.”
“I'm just tired,” Simone murmured.
“Are you getting plenty of rest?” Brooks asked, checking her pulse himself.
“Yes.”
“Then are you taking your supplements?”
She looked away.
“What supplements?” Morgan asked.
“I wrote a prescription for her,” Brooks said pointedly, reaching for the blood pressure cuff.
Seated on the end of the examination table, Simone leaned forward and looked down at her toes, her hands in her lap. Taking up a position directly in front of her, Morgan willed her to look at him while Brooks wrapped the cuff around her upper arm and pumped it tight with the squeeze ball in his hand.
“Pressure's a little low,” he announced after a minute or so, then he turned to the computer terminal to record his findings.
Morgan bent forward at the waist, trying to capture Simone's gaze, and pointedly asked, “Did you even fill the prescription?”
She made a face, and that was all the answer he needed.
“Honestly, Simone!” he scolded.
“Do you know how much those pills cost?” she shot back. “Nearly two weeks' pay!” She tossed a hand at Brooks, adding, “He said I'd get over the anemia eventually, anyway.”
Brooks looked around warily. “That's true,” he agreed. “I even warned her not to follow the iron-rich diet longer thanâ”
“Iron-rich diet!” Morgan interrupted hotly. “Does she look like she's been on an iron-rich diet to you?”
“When people are giving you free room and board, you don't demand special diets, too,” Simone said defensively.
Brooks spread his hands. “Have you done anything I prescribed?”
“I've been at Chatam House all this time, haven't I?”
“Well, that's something, I suppose,” Brooks said drily, but Morgan shook his head.
“I do not understand how your mind works,” he told her. “You will steal food for a pregnant friend, but you won't ask for what you need from people who are willing,
eager,
to help you. What is that? A death wish?”
“No.”
“What, then?” he demanded.
“I don't know! I just didn't want to put anyone out. I just...” She looked down.
She just thought she wasn't worth it. He didn't have to hear her say it to know it, and the very idea infuriated, appalled and broke him into little pieces inside.
“Now, you listen to me,” he told her, shaking his finger in her face. “You are going to get well. In every sense of the word, you are going to
heal
completely. No matter if I have to...” What? Tie her down and shove pills into her? Force-feed her? Open her head and pluck out every silly notion there? Love her until she believed she was worth it?
But he already loved her. He couldn't help loving her. He loved her against his own will. And it hadn't made a bit of difference. How could it?
Shaken, he ran a hand through his hair and turned on Brooks.
“What now?”
“Feed her a steak and a spinach salad,” Brooks said. “Then take her home and put her to bed. I'll send around the prescription and a diet plan tomorrow.”
“Done,” Morgan said, daring her to argue.
“You might try lightening up on the emotional drama,” Brooks added almost flippantly.
“I would if I could,” Morgan returned in kind.
“Wouldn't we all?” Simone sighed, sliding down off the table. “God knows I did everything I could to avoid it.”
And she had, he realized. She really had.
“It'll be all right,” he promised her with all sincerity, because it had to be. For once, something had to be all right for her.
Please, God,
he prayed.
He drove her straight to a little French bistro in town. There they had beef tips in a rich brown sauce, French onion soup and spinach salad, followed by strawberries Romanoff. She ate heartily and thanked him with a smile, but when they were back in the car, tears started to roll.
“I don't want to go back to Chatam House. I can't face them there. Couldn't I go back to the boardinghouse?”
“Even if they still had a room for you, which is doubtful,” he pointed out, “you know you wouldn't rest there.”
“The mission, then, just for tonight.”
He shook his head. “I don't like the idea of you being alone there, especially at night. Be honest now. Were you comfortable with the thought of Rina being there alone at night?”
Reluctantly, she shook her head.
Morgan thought a moment. He could always put her up in a motel, but that wouldn't look great if it ever came to light, and as much as he hated to admit it, he couldn't be entirely sure now that she would be there when morning came. His aunts were not the only ones with room to spare, however.
“I suppose I could call my dad.”
Simone winced. “I guess he'll have to know eventually, but...”
“Sweetheart, you're the only one condemning you. Your uncle and aunt are just...hurt and confused right now, but that will pass, if it hasn't already.”
“You're just saying that.”
He searched for a way to convince her, but she was her own best proof. “Simone, what did you do after you turned seventeen? How did you get off the street?”
She swiped at her tears with her fingertips. “Well, one of the shelters offered GED classes, so I got my high school diploma that way.”
“Then you went to college.”
“Junior college first.”
“You must have had a job.”
“Several,” she said drily.
“So you went to work and put yourself through college,” he summarized, “and all that time you kept your nose clean.”
“I didn't dare riskâ”
“You stayed out of trouble,” he interrupted firmly, “you worked, you went to school, all on your own, alone, as a teenager, without any help from anyone.”
She licked her lips. “Yes. All right.”
“And eventually you found someone and got married. He turned out to be a creep...”
“Story of my life,” she muttered.
“But at least he was a wealthy creep,” Morgan went on, and at last she smiled.
“Well, yes, there is that.”
“So now your schooling is entirely paid for.”
“And that is a blessing for which I am deeply grateful,” she said sincerely.
“Look, you've made mistakes,” he told her. “Everyone does.”
“Not like mine,” she argued.
“And you've paid for them,” he insisted. “You've overcome heartaches and obstacles that would have broken lesser women, Simone, and you have a great many accomplishments of which you should be proud. Give yourself some credit. Don't always expect the worst. You might be surprised.”
She seemed to consider that, but then she slanted a glance up at him and said, “You've never met my mother, have you?”
He chuckled. “Can't say I've had the pleasure.”
Simone smiled, but her eyes remained sad. “If you had, you might understand when I say that my apple didn't fall very far from her tree.”
“Now you're just being silly,” he told her. “You're arguing a genetics hypothesis, when I know perfectly well that I'm sitting here looking at a self-made woman if ever there was one.”
“But that's the point, Morgan,” she said gently. “I made myself a pariah in my own family.”
He shook his head. “I'll believe that when I see it.”
“I'm afraid you will,” she told him sadly.
He gusted a great sigh and shook his head at her. “So what's it to be, then?” he asked. “Do you run again, or do you stay and face the music?”
“Are those really the only two choices?” she asked, her voice an agony of hope.
“That's how I see it,” he answered forthrightly. “The thing is, if you run, you'll be alone again, but if you stay...” He held out his hand.
Gulping, she laid her palm against his. “Chatam House, then. And pray for time, I suppose.”
“Simone,” he began, curling his fingers around hers, but then he paused. “Should I go on calling you Simone?”
“I've been Simone so long now I don't know how to be Lyla anymore,” she told him.
“Simone,” he began again, “time works both ways. Give your family some time. They'll come around.”
“I hope so,” she said, “but you can't really understand, because you're a Chatam.”
Maybe you could be, too,
he thought, squeezing her hand. But no, she needed a younger man, a man with the time to be approved for adoption. It was too late for him. Like she'd said, it was just too late for some things.
“You need some rest,” he said, shifting in his seat and releasing her hand to start up the car engine. “It's been a trying day.”
The day had faded, however, until nothing of the sun could even be seen along the horizon as they drove west toward Chatam House from the bistro. Night would soon envelop the day entirely.
He got out and went around to help her out of the low-slung car. They walked up the brick path side by side and climbed the steps to the porch. Crossing that deep veranda in silence, they came to the bright yellow door that marked Chatam House as one of the sunniest places on earthâfor everyone but her, he supposed. Morgan simply opened the door and held it wide for her to walk through. She did so with marked reluctance, her hands clasped behind her. He followed her to the foot of the stairs.
“I'll bring the coupe over for you later tonight,” he promised. He'd get a buddy to help. Someone was always willing to drive his Beemer for him.
One foot on the bottom step, one hand on the gracefully curving banister, Simone closed her eyes, clearly having forgotten that they'd left the coupe at the mission. “Seems I am forever in your debt.”
“You're never in my debt,” he told her, squeezing the hand that hung at her side. “Now, get some rest.”
Nodding, she began the climb. He watched her until she turned out of sight, then he went in search of his aunts. Odelia's husband was a pharmacist by trade. Simone would have the rest, diet and prescription she needed, or someoneâeveryoneâwould answer to Morgan Chatam.