Authors: Cassandra Cole
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ben sat at the kitchen table sipping a cup of hot coffee, watching Belinda unpack the groceries. It had been a long time since he was this near a woman. And what a woman she was.
He figured she was probably twenty-five or so, with a curvy figure that made his fingers tingle and a face that would have made the Mona Lisa jealous.
She had long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. They looked like a cat’s eyes, so light they were almost gray.
On their way in, she had taken a minute to tell Mrs. Campbell who he was and asked her to take Ari next door for a little while.
“That boy’s a bad seed,” Mrs. Campbell said as she took Ari’s hand. “Your mama told me about him. He’s killed people, you know. You be careful!”
“I will, Mrs. Campbell. I promise.”
“If you don’t come over in an hour, I’m calling the police.”
“Please don’t,” Belinda said, giving her shoulder a reassuring pat. “Just watch Ari for me. I’ll be fine.”
Back in the kitchen, Ben toasted her with his coffee cup. “This could be the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had,” he said with a smile. He drained the cup and set it gently on the table. “I appreciate the hospitality.”
“They don’t have Keurigs in prison,” Belinda asked with a grin.
He laughed. It was a pleasant sound, coming from someone who looked as if they hadn’t laughed in a long time. “They don’t have anything in prison.”
He looked around the kitchen and noticed one wall covered in framed photos. He narrowed his eyes to study them. He saw his father, who had put on weight and aged considerably since he’d been gone. There were pictures of Belinda and the toddler, and an older woman who looked Indian; Belinda’s mother, maybe.
“So,” he said, sounding a bit apprehensive. “What time will my father be home?”
Belinda finished stocking the pantry and moved to sit down across the table from him. “Ben, your father is here,” she said quietly. She bit at her lip and let her eyes go toward the ceiling. “He’s upstairs in his room right now.”
Ben frowned, not understanding. “Oh, I thought you said…”
“I know, I did say he wasn’t here,” she said, holding up a hand to slow him down. “I need to talk to you first, before you talk to Abraham.”
He gave her a wary look. “Talk to me about what?”
She struggled to find the words. “There’s something you should know about your dad and what’s been going on while you were away.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said loudly. He slapped his hands on the table and gave her a comical look. “Holy shit, are you kidding me? Are you his wife? Is that his kid? Holy shit!”
Belinda shook her head and blinked at him. “What? No…”
He shook his head and laughed. “Nice catch, lady, lonely old rich guy, hot young girl.”
“Your father’s not rich,” she said defensively. “Wait, are you calling me hot?”
He closed one eye and shook a finger at her. “Let me guess, he found you listed on some website. Which one? Sugarbabies.com?”
Belinda felt her face flush as the anger bubbled over. “Hey, fuck you, asshole!”
“Fuck me?” he said incredulously. “No lady, FUCK YOU!”
He pushed himself up from the table, turning over the chair he’d been sitting in. He was suddenly very tall and very scary. He started toward the door that led to the stairs. “I’ll find him myself.”
“DAMMIT, BRIAN, STOP!”
The scream halted him in his tracks. He turned and looked at her, but didn’t move from the doorway. Belinda took a deep breath and a few seconds to compose herself.
“I am not Abraham’s wife.”
“Then tell me who you are,” he said, crossing his big arms over his chest. “And tell me what the hell you’re doing in my dad’s house.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I’m sorry I was such an asshole,” Ben said quietly, meaning it. He picked up the empty coffee cup and held it between his hands. He stared into it like he was reading tea leaves.
“It’s OK,” Belinda said, calm now. “Can I get you another coffee?”
“No, I’ve had enough,” he said. He set the cup aside and put his hands in his lap. He stared down at them as he spoke. “So your mom and my dad were married a year or two after I went away.”
“Right.”
“And your mom passed away a couple of years ago.’
She took a breath and held it. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking up at her. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around this.” He gave her an apologetic smile. He was handsome again. “I had no idea I had a stepsister.”
“And a niece,” Belinda said.
He nodded with his eyebrows up. “And dad was diagnosed when?”
“It’s been a couple of years now,” Belinda said. “He’s getting progressively worse.”
“How long until… you know.”
She inhaled and held it. Letting it out slowly, she sounded very tired. “Could be a year, could be five years. There’s no way to know for sure.”
He studied her face for a moment. “I have to ask. Why are you still here?”
She frowned at him. “I don’t understand. Why would you ask me that?”
He shrugged. “You said you had a nursing degree, but you’re not working. Why put your life on hold to take care of him? Why not put him in a facility or something?”
“Because he’s my father,” Belinda said.
“He’s your stepfather,” Ben corrected.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are we really going to start arguing again?”
He held up his hands. “No, I don’t want to argue. I’m just trying to understand. That’s all.”
“Abraham has been like a father to me for years,” she said without apology. “He put up with my crap when I was a wild teenager and took my side when I got pregnant with Ari. He has been there when I needed him. And when my mother got sick, Abraham retired to take care of her full time. I can’t imagine not doing the same for him.”
Ben listened quietly. She could see the muscles in his jaws flexing. The scar on his cheek pulsed. After a moment, he said, “Well, I’m glad he was always there for you, because he was never there for me.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“What happened between you?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Ancient history. Between him and me. I won’t rehash it with you.”
“I understand,” Belinda said. They heard footsteps from overhead. Abraham was stirring around his room. Belinda got to her feet and extended a hand to Ben.
“Come on,” she said. “Let me take you to your father.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Don’t be upset if he doesn’t know you,” Belinda said to Ben as they paused outside of Abraham’s bedroom door. They could hear him inside, humming a tune neither of them recognized. “It’s not personal. It’s just the disease.”
“I know,” Ben said, taking a deep breath to prepare himself for seeing his father for the first time in ten years.
Belinda added, “He has good days and bad days. Maybe this will be a good one.” She turned the knob and pushed the door open. Ben saw a withering old man sitting hunched over a desk, scribbling numbers in a ledger book.
“Abraham,” Belinda said softly. “There’s someone here to see you.”
Abraham stopped writing in the ledger and turned to look at them. Ben was horrified at how much his father had aged. He was barely recognizable.
Abraham was much thinner. His hair was thin, wispy and white. He wore the wire-rimmed glasses, but the eyes behind them were dull and void of life.
“Who are you?” Abraham asked with a frown, eyeing the large man who had just entered his office. “Are you here to pick up your taxes?”
“No, dad,” Ben said, biting his bottom lip, fighting back the tears that were welling in his eyes. He took a step closer, but stopped when Abraham quickly got to his feet and held out his arms. For a second, Ben thought his father was welcoming him home.
“I know you!” Abraham said, a smile beaming from his lips. He threw his arms around Ben and held on tight. “Where have you been?”
Ben Banner was tough as nails and twice as hard to bend. He once played an entire quarter of high school football with a fractured collarbone. He once beat a man senseless in prison with an ice pick embedded in his lower back. He once broke his hand on the jaw of a guy who was bothering a woman at a bar.
He’d been in prison for a decade and spent much of that time doing whatever was required to stay alive. Along the way he earned a reputation as the toughest son of a bitch in the clink.
He’d been in some tough spots that would have made most men break down and bawl like a baby, but not him. Ben Banner had never cried, not even as a kid, not even when he heard that his mother had died.
But as he leaned down to accept his father’s embrace and felt those frail arms go around his neck, the tears flowed like rain. Every inch of him was filled with relief that his dad remembered who he was.
For the first time in his life, he felt a surge of acceptance and love from his father. He pulled back and held Abraham at arm’s length so he could look at him in the eye. Abraham’s eyes were wet, too, but he had a broad grin on his face.
Abraham put his hands on Ben’s cheeks and said, “Abraham, my old friend. It’s so good to see you!”
Ben felt the life go out of his body when he realized that Abraham thought he was his old friend, Abraham, who had died thirty years ago.
“Abraham, it’s not Abraham,” Belinda said, moving to put a hand on Ben’s arm. It was hard as rock beneath the denim jacket. “This is Ben, your son. He’s come home.”
“Ben?” Abraham’s hands fell from Ben’s face. He took a wary step back as his eyes seemed to glaze over. “Ben? Who is Ben?”
“I’m Ben, dad… It’s me. Your son.”
Abraham’s eyes blinked rapidly and his lips moved, though no words came out. He put his hands on his forehead and started mumbling to himself. Belinda took his arm and guided him back to the chair at the desk.
“Abraham, it’s OK,” she said. “Why don’t you get back to work?”
“It is tax season,” Abraham said, lowering himself onto the chair. He opened the ledger and picked up his pen. He looked at Ben as if he’d never seen him before. He asked, “Can I help you with something? Do you need your taxes done?”
Ben slowly shook his head. He wiped away the tears, cursing himself, vowing to never cry again. He ignored Belinda’s sympathetic gaze and Abraham’s look of confusion. He turned and left the room without another word.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I’m really sorry,” Belinda said after coming downstairs and finding Ben sitting at the kitchen table. He had helped himself to a bottle of water from the fridge.
“It’s OK,” he said solemnly. “At least he gave me a hug.” He used a thumbnail to scratch the label off the bottle. “Is it always that bad?”
“Not always,” she said, sitting across from him. “Some days are better than others, but even the better days aren’t very good anymore.”
“What do the doctors say? I mean, I know nothing about Alzheimer’s. What’s the prognosis?”
Even with all her training and experience, Belinda found it hard to talk about Abraham’s condition with Ben. It was the one thing that so far had prevented her from even thinking about med school. How do you tell someone that their loved one is going to die?
“It’s a progressive disease with no cure,” she said, forcing the words out clinically. “The dementia will progressively get worse. He’ll forget how to speak, lose his cognitive skills, control of his bodily functions...”
“And eventually he’ll die,” Ben said, knowing the answer.
“Yes.” She reached across to pick up the empty coffee cup. “Can I get you another cup?”
“No. I think I’ve enough for one day.” Belinda didn’t know if he was talking about the coffee or the reality of the situation. It had been hard on her, being there every day to see Abraham’s slow descent, but she could only imagine how hard it was on Ben. The last time he’d seen his father, Abraham was a younger, healthy man with no indication of things to come. She was sure Ben thought that there would be time for reconciliation with his father. That would never happen now because his father would never again even know he had a son.
“So much for making amends,” Ben said. He drained the water bottle and put the cap back on.
“Is that why you came home?” Belinda asked. “To make amends.”
He thought about it for a moment. He gave a halfhearted shrug. “I guess; not that I expected much.” He rubbed his eyes. “We never really got along. I was always a disappointment to him.”
“I don’t believe that.”
He responded with a sad smile. “It’s true. We never got along. My mother said we were too much alike; both hard-headed, set in our ways, refused to compromise. When I went away to prison that was the last straw. He disowned me. The last time I saw my father I was a twenty year old kid being led away in handcuffs through that front door. He slammed the door behind me and never spoke to me again.”
“Never?”
“Never. He refused to bail me out of jail. Never came to see me in the lockup. Refused to pay for an attorney. Didn’t come to the trial. Never wrote, called or visited me in the joint.”
“What about when your mother died?”
“I found out through a cousin that I’d kept in touch with.”
“I’m so sorry,” Belinda said.
“It is what it is,” he said with a shrug. “Can’t change it now.”
He sat quietly for a few minutes, then braced his palms on the table and blew out a long breath. He said, “Well, it’s probably better if I go. I appreciate you taking care of him.”
“Wait, where are you going?” Belinda asked. She left the table to follow him into the foyer.
“I’ll head back down to the shelter; spend a couple of days there. I’ll call my parole officer to let him know that I won’t be at this address. He got me a gig on a construction crew. I’ll save up a little cash and find a place to stay.”
He reached for the door, but Belinda stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He turned to look into her eyes. “You don’t have to go. This is your home.”
He looked around the foyer. The place was alien to him. “This place has never really been my home.”
“But…”
“Look, Belinda, you seem like a sweet girl. What you’re doing for my father is far more than I would do. Knowing my father, I’m pretty sure he’d rather you have this place than me. Don’t worry. I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“But…”
“Belinda, I’m a convict. I heard what the old lady told you and she’s right. I’m a bad seed. I attract trouble like honey attracts flies. It follows me wherever I go.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she said. “You’re a good man, Ben. I can tell.”
“No, Belinda, I’m not. I’m a very bad man. Trust me, I have the scars to prove it.”
Ben opened the door to find a man standing on the porch with his finger about to ring the bell. He was a gruff looking, older guy in a bad suit wearing dark sunglasses. He was carrying a notebook and holding up an ID badge.
“Banner,” the man said. He took off the sunglasses and hooked them over the breast pocket of his jacket. “Thought I’d drop by to see how you’re doing.”
Belinda moved around Ben and gave the man an inquisitive smile. “Hi, who are you?”
“Eugene Pratt,” the man said, holding up the badge so Belinda could read his credentials. “I’m his parole officer.” He flipped the badge shut and tucked it inside his jacket. He came out with a pen and clicked it at her. “And you are?”
“I’m Ben’s sister, Belinda,” she said happily, pushing open the screen door. She gave Pratt her sweetest smile and held out a hand. “Please, Mr. Pratt, come in. Welcome to our home.”
* * *
An hour later, Belinda and Ben stood on the front porch watching Mr. Pratt get into his car and drive away; his belly full of coffee and Belinda’s homemade cheesecake.
“That went well,” Belinda said waving and smiling until he was out of sight. She turned to Ben and waited for him to agree.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, sounding apprehensive. “I appreciate everything you told him about my dad being happy to see me and how you’re thrilled to have some help with him, but for the record, you don’t ever have to lie to protect me.”
“I didn’t lie,” she said, reaching for the screen door and holding it open for him. “Your dad was happy to see you and I do need the help.”
“My dad didn’t even recognize me,” Ben said with a sigh.
“I never said that he recognized you. I said he was happy to see you. Which he was.”
Ben stuck his hands into his back pockets and gave her a smile. “So, you really want me to stay?”
“I really, really want you to stay,” Belinda said. “Now, I’m going next door to get Ari and bring her back over the meet her Uncle Ben.”
She went down the steps and turned back to him. “In the meantime, you can carry a slice of cheescake and a glass of milk up to you dad. I’m sure you two could use a little time together.”