To Have Vs. To Hold

by MJ Rodgers

  “Barely twelve. An incredibly beautiful, needy innocent. It was a heady combination and an absolutely irresistible one to Jacob. To protect my family, I knew I had to do something.”

  “What did you do, Esther?”

  “While Jacob was at work one day, I called up one of the couples who had seen Patrice and wanted her so badly. I told them to come get her.”

  “How did Patrice feel about that?” Whitney asked

  “When she met the couple and saw how they fawned over her, she seemed very happy and eager to go. I was floored. I thought she would be upset to leave Jacob, she seemed so attached to him. I didn’t understand her, you see. If only I had, I wouldn’t have made the dreadful mistakes I did.”

  “What mistakes?” Adam prompted, finding himself eager to hear about the childhood of the woman whom he had known so well yet so little.

  “In eight weeks’ time Patrice’s foster mother returned her to me. We had never had one of our runaways returned before. Her foster mother felt very bad about it, but said she had to. Patrice was obsessive in her devotion to her foster father and seemed intent on stealing all his attention from his wife and natural daughter. Her foster mother was very uncomfortable with the situation.”

  “Patrice behaved toward him as she had toward your husband?” Adam asked.

  “Exactly. What’s more, she saw nothing wrong with her behavior. She told me she was just making sure her foster father loved her. When I asked about her foster mother and sister, Patrice told me that if they wanted his love, they should have gone after it as she had.”

  “She didn’t care what her foster mother and sister thought of her?”

  “No. Only the affection of the man of the house mattered to her.”

  “How very…odd,” Whitney said.

  “Yes. Patrice never spoke about what had driven her from her home, but it was very clear that wherever she had come from, she had been taught to play up to men and ignore women. She focused all her attention on the man of the house—whatever house she was in. I tried to talk to her about the danger she would be in if she made the wrong male her focus of her attention. I explained to her that a young girl as beautiful as she could be physically and emotionally preyed upon by the unscrupulous and unprincipled, who might choose to misinterpret her affection. I tried my best to impress upon her that she needed to learn to relate to men in a more reserved manner for her own protection.”

  “Did it make an impression?” Whitney asked.

  “She laughed at my concern. She told me she knew how to handle men much better than I ever would. And the way she said it sent a chill down my spine, because I knew it was probably true.”

  “At twelve years old,” Whitney mused, shaking her head. Adam heard the sadness in her voice and saw it reflected in her face, as well.

  “I knew she would need many years of therapy to work her way through these harmful attitudes and behavior. Yet the harder I tried to get through to her, to make her understand this, the more she ignored me. I felt so incredibly helpless. And every day she stayed in my home, I had to watch her stealing all my husband’s attention. I confess to you that although I said nothing to Jacob, I was about to admit defeat, call the authorities and let others deal with her.”

  “But you didn’t,” Whitney said.

  Esther sighed. “No, thank God, it never came to that.”

  “How did you finally solve the problem?” Adam asked.

  “I didn’t. One day it solved itself, quite by accident.”

  “What happened, Esther?” Whitney inquired.

  “I spilled milk on the kitchen floor while getting lunch for the kids and slipped in it, falling and breaking my wrist. I lay on the floor in terrible pain, trying not to cry out for fear of alarming the children.”

  Whitney said nothing but she rested her hand on Esther’s arm. Esther returned the gesture with a small smile.

  “My clumsiness proved to have a silver lining,” she continued. “Suddenly there was Patrice leaning down to me. Out of all the children, she was the one who immediately came to my rescue. She helped me to a chair, got me some hot tea to drink, called Jacob and told him what happened. I was amazed at her presence of mind, her concern.

  “Jacob came home and took me to the hospital for X rays. It was a bad break. It took nearly three months to heal. And every day it was Patrice who helped me to get around. She became my hands, seeing to the needs of the other children. She was so gentle and sweet to me—as angelic as her smile—displaying a side of her character I never dreamed existed.”

  “What made her change that way?” Adam asked.

  “I think it was my weakness. I know that seems strange, but I think the fact that I needed help made her feel powerful, just like she felt when she wrapped men around her finger. Patrice liked to feel needed. It made her feel in control.”

  “What happened after your wrist healed?” Adam asked, fascinated to learn these things about Patrice and wondering how much more there was to know.

  “I took my cue from her treatment of me while I was ill and never again assumed the mother or teacher role with her. I asked her advice. She liked the power of giving her opinion. I tried to make her feel needed in every way possible. We became friends.”

  “You must have been her first female friend,” Whitney said.

  “Yes. I began to have hope for her. I found a foster family who was already raising one of our runaways. I spoke to the mother—a lovely woman who I knew would understand how to make Patrice feel needed. I warned both parents that Patrice had difficulty understanding that love was more than the outward manifestation of affection. When I placed Patrice with them, I continued to see her thrice weekly in therapy to make sure things were going well.”

  “Were they?” Adam asked.

  “Patrice was getting better at displaying more appropriate behavior toward her own sex. But she still needed the adoration of every man she met. Still, she came a long way in those years she spent with her foster family.”

  “Was Feldon the name of her foster parents?” Adam asked.

  “No.”

  “Who was the family who reared her?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Justice, but that is not a confidence I can share.”

  “How did she come to the Rubin house?”

  “That also involves another whose identity I must keep confidential.”

  “Can you at least tell me if Patrice Feldon was her real name?”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “Patrice left me a birth certificate under the name of Patrice Dulcinea Feldon, Dr. Rubin. It was a phony.”

  “That’s because we could never find her real one. Jacob made that birth certificate for Patrice.”

  “How do you know that Patrice Dulcinea Feldon was her real name and August 2, 1964, was her real birth date?”

  “Because she told us her name and the date of her birth when she first came to us at twelve.”

  “And the names of her parents that appear on the birth record?”

  “Those are made-up names. Patrice could never give us the names of her real parents.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was…beyond her ability.”

  “Why did you supply her with a birth certificate?”

  “There’s a ritual each youngster who comes to us here at the Rubin house goes through. No matter what name we give them through their growing years to protect them, when they reach their majority at eighteen and know their abusive legal parents or guardians no longer have dominion over them, they have the option to send for their real birth certificates and take a G.E.D. test using their real name.”

  “So they can reclaim their real names?” Whitney guessed.

  “Yes. They use the results of the G.E.D. test in lieu of a high-school diploma to establish an educational record they can rely on to start them at a job or college.”

  “Patrice took a G.E.D. test using the birth certificate you made for her in the name of Feldon?” Adam asked.

&n
bsp; “And did quite well on it, too. I was certain she’d go on to college when she left her foster home at eighteen.”

  “Do you prohibit your runaways from talking about their experiences at the Rubin house when they leave?” Adam inquired.

  “No. Our graduates are discreet, of course. But they have shared the specifics of their upbringing at the Rubin house with their spouses. Some of the best foster parents we subsequently obtained were once the runaways we took care of here.”

  “Why didn’t Patrice ever tell me about you and your husband?” Adam asked.

  “I’m not surprised she didn’t, Mr. Justice. Patrice was always very secretive. Whatever the home environment she left, she never once spoke of it, not in the entire six years she was in therapy with me. When I asked her, she would tell me she couldn’t remember.”

  “Do you think she had amnesia?”

  “No. I’m sure she remembered. Her statement about knowing how to handle men told me that. She only said she didn’t remember because she didn’t want to talk about it. That’s the way it is with some of our children.”

  “Why is that?” Whitney asked.

  “They have to learn to see themselves as wonderful, worthwhile human beings, deserving of care, attention, praise and love—the real kind, not the false attention some were made to think was real. Many children can’t redefine themselves in a healthy way if they are made to dwell on how they were treated before. I believe Patrice was one of these.”

  “Did you ever hear from her after she left?” Adam inquired.

  “Oh, yes. She sent Christmas cards every year. She never put a return address on her cards, though, so I couldn’t write back. That was typical of her secretive streak. When her cards stopped coming seven years ago, I thought she simply had no time because she had become so focused on her new life. It happens. Jacob and I generally see it as a good sign. I never realized that in Patrice’s case it was because she was dead.”

  Esther paused after that statement, her eyes becoming sad as she looked down at her hands.

  Adam was aware of the large room filling with quiet. He had a sudden image of Patrice as a young girl standing in this room, walking over to a sofa, sitting down. She was looking at him with that angelic smile on her face—the one that radiated the knowledge and power of her incredible beauty.

  “Esther, you’re still taking in runaways, aren’t you?” Whitney asked.

  Whitney’s question extinguished the ghostly vision from Adam’s mind and sharply refocused his attention on Esther’s face.

  “That’s why you’re afraid of accepting the money Patrice has left you,” Whitney went on. “You’re afraid if it gets out about what you’re doing here, the authorities will stop you from continuing.”

  Esther nodded. “For the most part social-services workers are good-hearted souls. Over the years, we’ve worked with them to return runaways to their homes when it was the right thing to do. When it wasn’t the right thing to do, those social workers have turned a blind eye to us, just like our policeman, Patrick, did. But if what we’re doing becomes public-as it most surely would with the receipt of this money—these good people would no longer be able to pretend we aren’t here, doing what we’re doing. They’d have to close us down.”

  “Esther, don’t worry,” Whitney assured as she took both the woman’s hands into hers. “Mr. Justice and I won’t let that happen. We’ll think of some way to protect you and the kids.”

  “MR. JUSTICE AND I WON’T let that happen?” Adam repeated as they drove away from the Rubin house.

  “Well, what was I supposed to say, Adam? ‘Sorry, Esther. After twenty-seven years and all you and your husband have sacrificed, you’re just going to have to close your doors to the kids who need you so badly?’“

  “It may be what she’ll have to do,” Adam said. “We have to report what we’ve learned about the Rubins to Commissioner Snowe. Legally we have no power to keep the beneficiaries’ names out of the court records when this probate comes to trial.”

  “I don’t accept that, Adam. We’re two smart attorneys. We should be able to think of something. Esther and Jacob are wonderful people, the kind who truly make a difference in this world. They take youngsters with no future and see that they get one. All they’re asking is to be left alone so they can continue.”

  “You don’t have to sell me, Whitney.”

  “I’m glad. I confess that I did have a few uncertain moments back there when I wondered if you were going to turn them in.”

  “As beneficiaries of Patrice’s estate, the Rubins are my clients. I am not in the habit of ‘turning in’ my clients. Besides, I suspect they need to help those children as much as those children need to be helped. You realize it was not wise for you to have become so friendly with Esther Rubin.”

  “What are you talking about?” Whitney asked, surprised.

  “You may find yourself representing blood heirs with interests directly opposed to the Rubins’ on this matter.”

  “Just because I may end up representing another’s interests doesn’t mean I can’t respect and admire the Rubins.”

  “But you know their secret. You could use that information as leverage to further your own clients’ positions.”

  “Just a minute here. Are you suggesting I would blackmail the Rubins? Adam, how could you imagine I would do such a thing?”

  He looked directly at her. For the first time Whitney saw a hint of something behind the cool look in Adam Justice’s eyes—something warm and very blue. And then he smiled.

  It was a small smile, but it changed his face so much. He suddenly looked younger and much less foreboding—and so damn devastatingly gorgeous—it took her breath away. A warmth began to rush through her body. His voice was at its deepest, smoothest.

  “Actually I was having trouble imagining you doing such a thing, Whitney. But I had to bring it up to be sure. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t address all pertinent issues affecting my clients.”

  As Adam looked back at the road, Whitney swallowed and shook her head, trying her best to get her breath back.

  “That’s not what is going on here, Adam. You like what the Rubins are doing and you want to help. You don’t fool me one bit.”

  “I wasn’t aware I was trying to fool you, Whitney.”

  “No, I suppose not. But all that stiff formality you’re encased in can be very misleading, Adam Justice, and I’m convinced you use it to your fullest advantage.”

  He said nothing in direct response. But as she watched his profile, the edge of his lip turned up. There was so much she wanted to know about him—so much that made her curious.

  “Adam, how did you get that scar on your neck?”

  The edge of his lip immediately fell back into its straight line. “A small accident.”

  “It doesn’t look that small.”

  He said nothing in response.

  “Was it long ago?”

  “Yes.”

  She waited for some elaboration, but there was none. “You’re not going to tell me about it, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Not even if I agree to tell you about my tattoo in return?”

  “You have a tattoo?”

  “We have a deal?”

  “No.”

  Despite his disclaimer, Whitney could see that the edge of his lip was rising again. She turned her attention back to the road, reminding herself that she’d promised herself that she’d remain nonchalant about her attraction to this man.

  “We could petition Commissioner Snowe to see if she would be amenable to conducting this probate behind closed doors, Whitney. That way it might be possible to keep the names of the beneficiaries from becoming common knowledge.”

  “Do you think she’ll go for that?”

  “Not without more-compelling grounds.”

  “Then why did you bring it up?”

  “Because we’re two smart attorneys. We should be able to think of more-compelling grounds if we pu
t our minds to it.”

  Whitney chuckled. “And there’s another thing you do well.”

  “Which is?”

  “Use my own words back at me.”

  He turned and smiled at her again, and she sighed, not nonchalantly at all.

  The car phone rang. Adam picked it up. Whitney listened in on his half of the conversation.

  “Yes, I’ve been out of cellular range conducting interviews,” Adam said. “Who’s there?”

  Adam’s part of the conversation disintegrated into nothing more than a few affirmative responses.

  When he finally hung up, Whitney was ready with her question. “What’s going on?”

  “The Justice Inc. offices have been swamped this morning by newspeople and would-be blood heirs to the Patrice Feldon estate.”

  “So it’s started already. Well, Commissioner Snowe warned us. I’d best get a fax off to the press notifying them that I’m the G.A.L. for the unknown heirs. That will get them off your firm’s back. Looks like I’ll be spending the next few days in the office interviewing the claimants.”

  “My secretary has shortened your time somewhat. He asked them to put down the full name and birth date of the Patrice Feldon they claimed to be related to. Only one could. He told the others to go home.”

  “What did he tell the one who could?”

  “He’s waiting in my office. If you wish to speak to him in confidence, a room will be made available for you.”

  “You’ve included me in your conversations with the beneficiaries—I intend to include you in my conversations with claimants. If he’s a legitimate blood relation to Patrice, I’m sure we both want to see that he gets what is fair. I’m surprised you didn’t understand that about me by now.”

  “I did. But I received the impression a little while ago that you would rather I not admit such personal knowledge about you.”

  “So what are you doing now?”

  The side of his mouth curled upward. “Displaying admirable sensitivity.”

  Whitney laughed.

  “CHAD BISTER,” the man said in a voice that boomed as he held his hand out to Adam.

  Bister was in his late thirties, nearly six-four, with the athletic build of a football player accentuated by a formfitting T-shirt and tight jeans. He had a deep tan, a bushy mustache, wavy blond hair, hazel eyes and the kind of smile a man wore when he knew he possessed the physical strength to break another man in half.