Covenant Child

by Terri Blackstock

  I’m sending pictures of the playhouse, and the close-up of the wall is the one that we painted. Can’t you just picture twin three-year-olds with paintbrushes? And you can see where we made a mess of the brush strokes. Daddy left it just like it was. He didn’t have much choice, because he died just days after we painted it.

  It’s weird how Amanda’s waited all these years for us. She’s never forgotten us, and she’s always expected us to come back someday. In one room, she has gifts she bought us every birthday and every Christmas . . . the ones she didn’t send. I opened mine today, and let me tell you, it was like no Christmas I’ve ever seen. I was overwhelmed at all of it. Yours are still in there,wrapped nice and neat, waiting for you.

  She has a room decorated for you, too. It’s a lot like mine, only different. I think you’ll love it if you ever come.

  She wants me to get my diploma, so she’s hired me a tutor to help me get my GED. Then she says I’ll go to college. She said I could take tennis lessons and learn to drive, and she’s going to train me in the company. Next week I’m going to start working there in the afternoons, filing and stuff. She wants me to get good at the little things in the company, so I can someday be trusted with the big things. I’m nervous about it, but she says it will be fine.

  It’s not too late for you to come, Kara. She’s still waiting for you every day, hoping that you’ll call. All you have to do is punch one button on that phone.

  If you came soon, you’d be here for the big reception party Amanda is throwing for me in a few weeks. Of course, it would be for us if you were here. We’ve been shopping for cocktail dresses. I feel like Cinderella with her godmother. If you could just see some of these dresses. And I have this lady coming every day to work with me on manners and all. I don’t want to embarrass myself or Amanda at the party, so I’m working really hard.

  I know this won’t be easy. It’ll be hard work to catch up on my education, since our Barton education wasn’t much to write home about. But I’m willing to work hard. I want to please her and make her proud. And I want everything she has planned for me, because I just know it’s for my own good.

  It’s kind of weird being an heiress, though. She says that our name makes us targets for all sorts of problems. She has a bodyguard who takes me everywhere I go. He doubles as my chauffeur. Can you imagine me riding around in a limo, with my own chauf-feur/ bodyguard?

  Amanda gets tears in her eyes every time she talks about you, and I do, too. We can’t understand why you could choose to live there, struggling every day, having nothing, working so hard, with Eloise and Deke treating you like you’re trash. It’s not the life for you, Kara. You could have all this with me. It breaks my heart that you refuse.

  Why would you hold out for some crazy lawsuit when it’s all yours, anyway?

  Please come and at least see what you’re missing. You’ll understand that your suspicions are all wrong. We’re waiting for you, Kara.

  I love you,

  Lizzie

  I have to admit that I was jealous when I first read that letter. I sat there against that stump, reading the words over and over, and trying to imagine the things she described. I wondered if I was a fool, if I was just cutting off my hand to spite my face, as Eloise always said.

  But it was too good to be true, and I knew from experience that things like that never panned out. It was like when you got a letter in the mail that said you’d won some giant sweepstakes—“Kara Holbrooke is the Winner Of Twenty Million Dollars”—only when you read the small print, you see that it also says, “if her name is drawn in our impossible drawing in which the odds of winning are four hundred million to one,” or something like that. I figured that Amanda was still baiting Lizzie . . . or baiting me. That she had to make it look good for a while so that I would come, and then she could make her move.

  And I started thinking about all the stuff Lizzie was having to do, and I didn’t feel so jealous anymore. Teachers and tutors and lessons and rules No, none of that was for me. You could say what you wanted about Eloise and Deke, but they had never had all that many rules. I’d been doing basically what I wanted for so long that I wasn’t about to get locked up in a bunch of dos and don’ts now.

  Besides, my appointment with the lawyer was just a few days away, and I had high hopes for that. Even though Eloise and Deke were furious at Lizzie for leaving the way she did, they were bending over backwards to be nice to me. They were as excited as I was about the appointment, and I knew they wouldn’t be if there was any chance we would lose.

  I folded the letter up in my pocket and told myself that I was doing just fine without Lizzie, and I almost started to feel sorry for her. I hated to think how devastated she would be when she found out I’d been right all along.

  But I knew that when that happened, she would be back. It was just a matter of time.

  THIRTY

  You might say I fell for Rudy Singer because I grieved over Lizzie, but the truth is I would have anyway. I noticed him the minute he came into the SOS just a couple of days after my first letter from Lizzie. He looked cleaner-cut than the guys around Barton, and he said he’d just taken a job as a dealer at the casino in Vicksburg, but had decided to live in Barton because his grandmother died and left him a house there.

  It wasn’t like I fell for every new guy who came on the scene. New guys were coming and going all the time at the SOS since we were a popular stop-off for every trucker on Highway 49. A lot of times they were married, but you couldn’t tell it the way they hounded me. And it wasn’t just the transient married ones who came after me, either. Even the married guys from Barton occasionally tried to get me into the back room.

  Sometimes I went, just because I liked their attention. And it depended on when they tried. If I was in a flirtatious mood, there was no telling what I’d do.

  But that day I really was kind of sick of all of them, so when Rudy ambled in, looking like George Clooney with that amused grin on his face, I have to admit I got a little breathless.

  Milly Luckett did, too, but she was married and overweight, so I quickly told her to get out of my way, that this one was mine.

  He seemed fine with that arrangement, even though he didn’t know about it, because his eyes were on me from the minute he walked in.

  He ordered a beer and a cheeseburger, and every time I walked by him, he grabbed some part of me. Once he grabbed one of my curls and pulled it gently as I breezed by. Another time he grabbed the sash of my apron, untying it. Sometimes he just took my hand as he asked for ketchup or an extra napkin.

  He was a toucher, all right. But that suited me fine.

  “What’s there to do around this town?” he asked me one of those times.

  I flipped my hair back over my shoulder and smiled. “This is about it.”

  He rolled his eyes as if he couldn’t believe my misfortune. “What about restaurants? A place where a hungry man can take an attractive woman out for a bite to eat?”

  I hated to repeat myself, but I shrugged and said, “This is still pretty much it. For anything else, you can go to Yazoo City or Vicksburg. There’s a lot around the casinos. Or you could go all the way to Jackson.”

  His eyes were a pale blue, and I thought he ought to be in movies or something. “Where do your boyfriends take you on dates?”

  “Dates?” I chuckled. “The men around here don’t take girls on dates. They invite us to watch them get their hands greasy on a carburetor in their garage, or to sit on a dirt hill and watch them sling mud all over each other with four-wheelers.”

  “Then you need to broaden your horizons.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I will.” He put his hand on my waist and pulled me closer. “What time do you get off?”

  I grinned, though I didn’t want him to see how thrilled I was.

  “I get off at midnight,” I said. “That is, if it’s not crowded. That too late for you?”

  “I think I can make it for a cute little redhea
d.”

  I flipped my hair over my shoulder again. I don’t know why I kept doing that. I wasn’t the hair-flipping type, but he was making me nervous. “All right. Hang around after I get off, and I’ll show you around the town.”

  “I’d like to see those hills you were talking about where the men go four-wheeling.”

  “Well, they don’t do it at night,” I said.

  “Of course they don’t,” he said with a grin, “but it sounds like a nice quiet place to sit and talk.”

  Right. I knew better than to think he wanted to talk. I got behind the counter and leaned over it, putting my face close to his. “It’s private, all right. But I don’t think I want to go there with a man I just met.” I had just read in a magazine that guys liked it when women were coy.

  “All right, then. We’ll go to Vicksburg and eat at the Ameristar. How’s that sound?”

  “So you’re gonna spend real money on me? Not make me pay my own way or anything?”

  “I’m insulted. What kind of man would make a pretty lady like you pay her own way?”

  “Just about every one in this town,” I said. “And most want me to pay their way, too.”

  He gazed into my eyes then, and I had the thought that we must look like those posters of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. “I can see I’m going to have fun wining and dining you.”

  As I waited for midnight, my mind danced with the promise of being treated like a lady, and I decided that Lizzie didn’t have anything on me. It was about the first time I’d felt good since she left.

  I couldn’t wait for my shift to end.

  THIRTY-ONE

  A couple of days later, I wrote Lizzie back.

  Dear Lizzie,

  I know things look good to you right now, but trust me, she’s up to something. People don’t ride into town in big old limousines and dangle a million dollars in somebody’s face. Besides, it sounds like a prison to me, studying all the time, taking all those lessons, having all those rules. You know how I hate rules. When I get the money, I’ll split it with you, and we won’t have to do anything but drive around in our own limos and count our cash.

  I’ve got all the freedom I want here, so I think I’ll stay, thank you very much.

  I met a new guy, and his name is Rudy Singer. He’s tall and good-looking, and he works at the casino. He dresses real nice and talks smart and he beats the other men here in town hands down. He’s got that movie-star charm that just melts my knees. It’s a good thing you’re not here, because you would have wanted him, too. He really seems to like me. You should see how he looks at me.

  He’s different than the other guys I’ve known, Lizzie. He has a respect for me that others don’t have, and he cares what happens to me. He’s always giving me advice about what I should do and where I should go, and I kind of like that. It’s not like the rules you’re under. More like just good suggestions. And it’s fun to have somebody care that much. Maybe he’s the one, Lizzie. And to think you missed it all.

  Be careful now, because I think the other shoe is gonna drop any day now, and you’ll wake up and find out that Amanda isn’t such a fairy godmother after all. That Amanda’s really the wicked witch, waiting to strike. I worry for you.

  When you finally come to your senses, maybe you can come visit me and my good-looking husband and the little babies we’re going to have together. We’ll be sitting pretty with all my money, and probably move to New York and live in one of those fancy town houses. Maybe I’ll get a job modeling for Cosmo or something. He seems like the type who wouldn’t mind a girl having a career. He’s been buying me things like jewelry and clothes, and plunking down his credit card like it was nothing. You gotta admire a man like that. I think this is the one, Lizzie. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

  I miss you and wish you would come home. It’s not too late.

  Love,

  Kara

  My first appointment with the attorney was a colossal letdown. He reviewed the situation, then told me he didn’t think I had a case. I figured it was because there was no money in it for him up front, and Eloise and Deke didn’t exactly look like the kind of clients a man like him would want to represent.

  But Eloise hadn’t wasted any time in setting up a meeting with a different attorney in Vicksburg—the same one who had represented them in probate court fifteen years ago. They assured me he was the one and that he was familiar enough with the case to jump right in.

  “Why wasn’t he your first choice?” I asked.

  “He was a little hard to find.” Deke shrugged. “His firm closed down, and he’s practicing by his self right now.” I expected him to be practicing from a high-rise, air-conditioned office with secretaries and a big library of books. Instead, he had his office in a small strip mall situated between Sally’s Beauty Supply and River City Liquor.

  I followed Eloise and Deke into the stuffy office that reeked of cigarette smoke and body odor. No one sat at the cluttered front desk, but I could hear a phone ringing at the back and a man’s voice from another room.

  “Anybody home?” Deke called out as if he’d just walked into an old friend’s house. In just a moment, a man emerged from the back, wearing a brown plaid blazer and wrinkled khaki pants with sneakers. His hair looked as if he had just walked out of a wind tunnel; he held a pair of glasses in one hand and a cigarette in another.

  “Eloise, Deke!” He trod across the carpet to shake their hands. “Good to see you. Sorry to keep you waiting. My secretaries up and quit on me.” He turned to me, smiling. “You must be Kara Holbrooke.”

  “Yes.” I shook his hand. It made me feel important. Most people either looked right past me or groped me in some way.

  “It’s hot as Hades in here,” he said. “I’m having a little problem with the air conditioner. Come on back and we’ll talk.” He led us through a hall stacked with boxes and files, then to his cluttered office, which was a little bigger than the room out front. He rummaged around for a moment, trying to stack and restack things so that he could free up chairs. I took the one he motioned to closest to his desk. Deke plopped down in the next free one and set his feet up on the desk, as if he owned the place. I hoped this lawyer didn’t think I was like that, all arrogant and rude. I sat up straight with my hands in my lap, trying to look a little more dignified.

  Enos Wright took the chair behind the desk and leaned up, crossing his hands in front of his face. “Never thought I’d see you folks again.”

  Deke dropped his feet and sat up real slow-like. He looked around the office, rubbed his eyes. “You seem to have come down in the world since then.”

  Enos straightened in his chair. He cleared his throat and sniffed. “And so do you, for a man with ten million dollars.”

  I started to say that that ten million had been sucked down the casino’s drain, but Enos was already explaining his own end of things.

  “I had a few setbacks of the financial kind.” He rocked his executive chair back and forth as he spoke. “Sometimes we just have to adjust our standard of living to get through a bad spot.”

  “I hear you,” Deke said.

  Enos turned his attention on me. “So you want to sue again for the Holbrooke estate?”

  My chair was about as comfortable as a granite block, so I crossed my legs, then uncrossed them again. Sweat prickled my skin under my clothes. “Well, yes. I mean, if the money was my grandfather’s and then went to my father, it should have rightfully gone to me.”

  “But you realize it was resolved long ago in probate court, and Amanda Holbrooke got the bulk of the estate.”

  “I understand that, but Eloise and Deke thought that we could reopen it now that I’m eighteen.”

  “Well, whether we could or not,” he said, “we could sure scare them, cause them enough hassle to make them want to settle.” He looked down at his file, flipped through a few pages. “Where’s your sister?”

  I cleared my throat. “Uh, she won’t be joining in the lawsuit.”

&nb
sp; “Why not?”

  “Because she’s gone to live with Amanda Holbrooke.”

  His chair snapped as he came to attention. “How in the world did that happen?”

  I didn’t feel like dredging the whole thing up again, but I figured it was necessary. “Amanda came and convinced my sister to come and live with her, like some kind of heir. But nothing is in writing, you understand. I think she was just trying to head off a lawsuit, but I’m not stupid enough to fall for it.”

  “Good for you.” Enos leaned his chair back again. “I have to say, though, that it would be a much stronger case if your sister was involved. But we can do it without her.”

  Though I had fully expected to go through with the suit, part of me had some distant expectation that everything would fall through, since things rarely worked out the way I planned. I blew out a breath of relief. “How much do you think I can get?”

  He shook his head, thought for a moment, and flipped through the file again. “How much were you hoping for?”

  I grinned. “All of it.”

  He threw back his head and howled with laughter. “That’s very funny.” He glanced at Deke and Eloise. “She’s a very funny girl.”

  I stiffened. “What’s so funny about that?”

  “You’re not getting all of it,” he said. “Maybe part of it. Fifty or sixty million dollars might be reasonable.”

  So much for pulling the rug out from under Amanda. And after all she’d taken from me. But fifty million dollars was nothing to sneeze at.

  “Back when your father died, that estate was worth several billion dollars. By now I’d say it’s doubled. Fifty million dollars isn’t going to put a dent in Amanda Holbrooke’s pocket.”

  Eloise cackled, and Deke chortled until he was overcome in a fit of coughing.

  I had the strongest urge to jump up and run from the room, to find a lawyer who’d never met Deke and Eloise. “So what do I have to do?”

  “Nothing right now. You just leave everything to me.”