“No, but you’re the kindest person I know, Nik. That matters. Kindness, understanding, an openness, and forgiveness. Heart. Don’t ever forget that…” a quiet voice said from the hospital bed.
Annie hurried to her side. She’d been in and out for days. And not always lucid. “Iz—”
“Hey, Ann.” Izzie blinked up at her. “You look terrible.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Izzie looked around. “403.”
“Yep. It’s starting to get a reputation.” Every time someone Annie knew from the hospital was hurt or ill, they were ending up in room 403. The Cursed Nurse’s room. Annie suspected Wanda was putting them there on purpose.
Wanda liked to perpetuate the myth of the Cursed Nurse—a young woman who had supposedly been murdered in the room when the building had first been constructed—over a hundred years ago. Annie wasn’t a believer in ghosts—far from it.
But she’d spent enough time in this room as a patient now not to be so sure.
Sometimes it felt like someone was in there with you at night.
“I’m really starting to believe this room is cursed…” Izzie said a few more things, but she was tiring. Before long, she was out again.
But this was the first day she’d been able to have some sort of lucid conversation.
Annie looked at Nikkie Jean as hope finally started to overtake the fear. “I think she’s going to be ok.”
39
Turner checked the address once more. The contact for the neighborhood rep he’d been given for the Boethe Street area revealed a small 1920s bungalow, with peeling green paint and a neat row of flowers leading up the walk. There was still plywood covering the windows three weeks past the storm, but it was obvious the house was occupied. There were children’s yard toys neatly placed on one end of the porch. A family lived here. From the toys, he suspected it was a young family, at that. Probably without many resources, or they wouldn’t be on Boethe Street.
He winced. He didn’t have a clue how to make what he was about to say easier. For anyone.
The city council wasn’t budging. They’d already gotten approval from the state to push the eminent domain ruling through the court. And the offers he had been told to deliver weren’t that much more than they’d been before. Ten percent wasn’t much. Not when the original offers were so ridiculously low to begin with.
It hadn’t exactly been a priority for the council. Not now.
Nothing Turner could do was going to save this little house. Or the four houses on each side to it.
It was one little block of houses. That was it. Five. He’d been able to save twenty-three of the thirty-two that were originally slated for demolition. More than half. But that wasn’t going to matter to the five that were going. Most of the block had suffered damage in the storm, as well. Four of those original houses had been completely demolished in the storm, just to make everything worse.
The condemnations stood.
There was nothing Turner could do to change things.
Housing values were so low now, even worse in this area because of the storm, that the city council was now clinging to their offers stronger than ever. Turner’s words hadn’t made even a bit of difference.
He stepped up on the porch and knocked. His driver and car were reflected in the glass of the door window. They looked ridiculously out of place.
Turner pulled at the neck of his shirt. What was he supposed to say to these people? “Sorry. The house you’ve worked your whole life to pay for? The city is taking it to make room for apartments and retailers and office buildings. You know, to replace the ones the storm some of you were hurt in damaged? You’re more than welcome to have first dibs on the apartments. And don’t worry, we’re prepared to offer you a twelve percent discount on rent, as well.”
The door swung open. A young girl stood in the door, around the age of eighteen or twenty or so. Pretty, with curly brown hair and green eyes and freckles everywhere. She eyed him from behind plastic-rimmed glasses. Then she turned and called over her shoulder. “Ann! I think this one’s for you.”
Turner straightened when the girl stepped aside. And then he saw her. Another woman was there. A smaller one. With lighter brown hair and big, blue eyes.
She had a toddler asleep on her shoulder. Two other young boys peered around a kitchen island at him.
Shock had him dropping his hand to his side. “Annie.”
“Mayor Barratt.” She passed the child in her arms to the younger girl. “Can you take him to his bed? I…”
“I’ve got it. I’ll finish the boys’ lunch before I go. You…try to get some rest. Don’t overdo it.”
There was concern in the younger girl’s voice. Turner studied Annie. She seemed ok, but it had only been about a month since the tornado. How long did it take a person to heal from being impaled? He wasn’t exactly certain.
She stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind her. “How can I help you today, Mayor Barratt?’’
“First, call me Turner.” He didn’t want her seeing him as the mayor. That just added a barrier he didn’t want between them. Once this was all over, the storms, the condemnations, everything—he didn’t want her seeing him as his position. Not her. “How is Izzie doing?”
“I doubt you’re here to ask about Izzie. But she’s doing better. They think she’ll go home as soon as next week.”
Turner nodded. That was good. He’d try to slip by the hospital again and visit for a while if he got the chance. “I’ll swing by in the next day or two. Play checkers or something with her. Last time, she sank my battleship and cackled while she did it. I…have news. About the evictions.”
“It’s not good. I know that. Our committee’s attorney has disappeared, I think. Taking our retainer with him.” She stepped to the porch rail. Slim, pretty hands gripped the wood tightly. “I paid off this house three weeks before my sixteenth birthday.”
“You did?” He wanted to ask about that, and about the three little boys inside. He’d known she had children. Amorphously. His cousin had mentioned them, but Turner had never seen them. Never put the idea of her as a mother together with the beautiful woman he wanted to get to know better. He’d never been interested in a woman with children before. Not that it would have mattered, it had just never happened for him.
Of course, none of the women he’d ever been attracted to had been like Annie, either. Or had felt quite like this. Even a month after the storm.
“Yes. I did. My mother has never had a job. After my father…left…I worked. To pay the bills. The mortgage. To buy food. Two jobs, after school and on weekends. I didn’t have my first official day off until I started at Finley Creek Gen as a nurse. Then, my mother kicked me out. And I left this house for a while.”
She’d said the words bluntly. Turner was still trying to comprehend it. When he’d been a teenager, his main concern had been baseball. And girls. Lots of pretty girls. “What?”
“I was twenty-one and considered an adult. Her public assistance was in jeopardy, having me here with a salary. So I had to go.”
He couldn’t imagine it. Not at all.
“It was your house.” Her home. How could a mother do that to her child? “She couldn’t just throw you out.”
“But it was in her name. She made sure I had no claim to it. Out of spite. I didn’t move back, didn’t have contact with her until the boys needed me six months later. Iz and I shared an apartment back then. Happily. But this is my house now. The boys’ house. Josie’s. I made sure of it, when I moved home. It’s in my name now. No one else. If anything ever happens to me, it goes to my children and my sister and Iz.”
And she would be the one to lose when it was taken from her. Because property values had dropped thirty percent in the last ten years.
And now, thanks to the storm, available homes were even less available than they had been before. Especially for the cash amount the city was prepared to offer.
He couldn’t protect
her from that, no matter how much he wanted to.
“Damn it, Annie, I’m sorry. I’ve tried. For weeks, I’ve tried.” He had. It might not have had his full attention, but he hadn’t forgotten why she’d come to him in the first place. Today was just the first day he’d had to address it.
“I’m going to lose my home, aren’t I?” Blue eyes stared straight into his soul.
He nodded. “I was able to save all but five of the original thirty-two. But yours, and the two on each side, and the two on the sides of those. The city won’t budge. This block…this is where they are going to build. And all behind you.” Vacant fields, and one small house almost directly behind Annie, were all that separated her house from the larger Main Street behind them.
“So you saved the ones across the road? The Hendersons?”
He looked. The houses there were slightly bigger, neater, a little newer. And they’d taken the least damage. He could see why the council had voted to keep them and not the ones on Annie’s side of the street. If he had just seen everything on paper, it would have made sense to him too. But every time he’d seen the papers, he’d thought of the woman who had been so brave in his arms when the storm had nearly destroyed them both.
“It was the absolute best I could do. I am so sorry.”
She nodded. A look of defeat was in her eyes. “I’ll have to find a place to rent. When? And when will the money come? I can’t afford to move without it. Not with being off work for a month right now.”
She bent down and pulled a weed from a pot at her feet. Then her hand tightened around the rail once more. Turner looked around her small yard again, trying to see it through the eyes of a woman who’d lived there for more than a dozen years.
To Annie, it was home.
There was a porch swing on the opposite end of the porch. She’d painted it pumpkin orange. It should have been unwelcoming and tacky, but he wanted to sit on it with her. Sit on it, talk with her, cuddle with her, while her kids played in the yard with the mountain of toys that were on that porch.
But he knew that would never happen.
“Sit down. We can talk.” Let me help you make this right. There were children in the house. Children she was responsible for. He didn’t know anything about them; not their names, their ages, or how they’d ended up with her. Or what she planned for them. “Tell me about the boys inside. I remember you saying something about children at the hospital. Are they your younger brothers?”
He didn’t even know how old she was. That struck him. He truly didn’t know that much about the woman next to him. But he wanted to. There wasn’t anything he wanted more right then.
He wanted to know Annie.
“No. They are my foster sons, for now. Their mother was my mother’s close friend. My mother took them in when she died in a car accident almost two years ago. My mother took them in for the check each month, Turner. Three little boys their ages—Syrus was a baby—meant a decent check each month. At least, for my mother.” He heard the quiet bitterness and wondered at it. “But she couldn’t handle children, so she…asked…me to move home. To help take care of them. I am their mother now. I’m going to be adopting them soon. If—if I can find appropriate housing. And childcare. If the adoption is granted.”
“It’s in jeopardy?” They were giving her a lump sum of cash for what the house appraised for. Turner wasn’t the real estate guru in his family—that was his cousin Powell—but he didn’t think this small, older house would be worth a huge amount. It would be cash she could use as her fresh start. She had a good job as a nurse. But it would no doubt not be easy with three small children to raise on her own. “What about one of the apartments when they’re built?”
“Have you looked at the numbers for these new apartments, Turner? I have. Even with a discounted rate, it’s half a month’s salary for me. I can’t afford it—even if they popped up overnight, right next door. They’re meant for lawyers and doctors and business owners—people like you and Allen Jacobson—not nurses with three children to raise and student loans to pay off, like me.”
“What about housing assistance?” He’d never looked into assistance. He’d never had to. But there had to be something out there to help her—and the four other families he’d failed.
She shook her head. “As a nurse, I make too much for assistance. No. These apartments of yours sound great in theory, but the people in this neighborhood know better. They aren’t intended for people like us. And I probably make the most of anyone in this neighborhood. I have some savings, but they had to go to attorneys’ fees to process the adoption. I had to pause that when I was injured because of lost wages and medical bills that the insurance won’t cover.”
“You were in city hall. We should be covering it.”
She sent him a look and smiled softly. One that told him she thought he was completely clueless. Hell, sometimes Turner felt exactly like that. He’d taken the mayoral position to help people in this city, and he couldn’t even help the one he truly wanted to. “And when would that be? I got the first bill two weeks ago.”
“Send it to me. I’ll pay it. The city will reimburse me from our insurance policy.” He could pay whatever bill she had times a thousand and not even sweat. He was a damned Barratt, after all. He might not be a billionaire like his cousin Houghton—billionaires were extremely rare, after all—but he would never want for anything. He had several million just sitting in a trust fund from a great-grandfather. He’d get it when he turned thirty-five, in a year. That didn’t count what he’d made in his own life, and what his parents and grandparents had given him. Even his mother’s family had been well-off. He’d inherited on his twenty-first birthday from them.
What he had received in his life, just how blessed he was, humbled him. Probably more than he had ever realized before.
His world was far different from Annie’s.
“The apartments were guaranteed to be affordable.”
“For whom? College kids sharing roommates at the university? Two-income couples? Not those on fixed incomes or with debts. I have student loans, too. Even with financial aid, I still had to pay my way. And I am so much better off than my neighbors. No. We’re all going to have problems. And we’ll need the money soon. And places to go.” Her breath hitched. Panic struck him. He was almost certain Annie was going to break down and cry right there in front of him again at any moment. Turner half felt like crying himself. Weak, maybe, but there it was. He didn’t have a clue how to fix any of this. “And somehow, I have to find childcare and find a way to be with Izzie when I can. Nobody can find Jake…”
Turner didn’t stop to think. He just acted. He slipped one hand over her shoulder and scooted her closer. Her hair tickled his chin. She smelled like…animal crackers.
Vanilla animal crackers.
Her hair was loose, and he brushed it lightly. Blue eyes looked up at him. Wet blue eyes. Eyes that implored him to fix everything as best, and as fast, as he could.
“I want to fix this for you. Tell me how. I’ll do anything I can.”
A soft smile and a shaky sight told him the truth. Annie didn’t believe him. “Why? I know this initiative works in your favor. Everyone is saying so. Even Houghton.”
“Damn Houghton and all of them. I don’t want you to lose the home you’ve worked so hard for. There has to be a way to make this work. A way for me to fix this for you.”
He’d find it. He would.
One small hand pressed against his chest. Turner covered her fingers with his. Annie was so soft, small, beautiful. “I’m not going to give up, honey. I don’t want you to, either.”
“I don’t have time to fight.” Her chin went up. “I have to get the boys settled, no matter what happens. We have a final hearing for the adoption soon. I need to find a place to live, sign a lease, pack. And I’m switching to fully dayshift so I can put the boys in daycare and be with them at night. My sister is moving into a dorm tomorrow. I’ll no longer have a babysitter if I work thirds. I ju
st...don’t have time to fight.”
“Then let me fight the battle for you.” He would. He’d move mountains for this woman. Even if he had to carry those mountains with his bare hands. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know her that well. He’d learned so much about her, pressed against her for two hours in hell. There was strength, courage, love. All was in this woman. He wanted to see more of that. Wanted to be with her.
He was a Barratt, after all. And they always knew the women they wanted. Just what to do about that wasn’t always so clear.
“I’m not so sure I can keep fighting. Five houses are better than thirty-two. Maybe the committee will be happy with that. But I have to look to the future now. My boys are counting on me.”
The look in her eyes was one he’d never forget. It was a mixture of fear, determination, hope, and pride. And it was just damned beautiful to see.
40
The Snotty Garlic had a photo of Annie right in the center for everyone to see, the day after the mayor had shown up on her tiny, toy-covered front porch. Her name was listed right there, in black and white. As was the very hospital where she worked. Talk about a complete invasion of her privacy.
Mystery Woman Identified as Nurse Impaled in the Storm. Will the Mayor Who Saved Her Now Evict Her?
Izzie waved it right in her face. “We knew it was bound to get out eventually, Ann. And it’s a good photo of you. You are so pretty. He’s bound to fall in love with you, if you let him hang around long enough. I can offer my full vote of confidence in that man. He’s awesome. You should jump him. Have some fun, at least.”
“It was taken off the FCGH brochure they made up last year. The Garlic probably doesn’t even have the legal right to use it.” She’d been in the photo, along with Jillian, Izzie, Courtney, Lacy, and Layla. A promo piece, she’d not wanted to pose for it. But Wanda had insisted that real nurses and physicians from the hospital should be represented instead of some stock photo.
Walk Through the Fire (Finley Creek Book 10) Page 12