by Webb, Peggy
Chapter 76
LOS ANGELES
The trial of Shambu and the Batwa pygmies for the murders of Joseph and Malone Corday was headline news around the world. No one kept up with it more closely than Maxwell Jones. He sat in his big chair by the window, reading the latest news report. “Convicted,” the headlines screamed.
He read quickly, omitting the gory details of the murders. What he was looking for was more important. The murders were called a “group killing.” All the Batwas received sentences, but Shambu took the brunt of the punishment—but not the blame. He’d brought Malone Corday down with him.
“Malone Corday, the major fund-raiser for the Corday Foundation, was the mastermind behind the illegal kidnapping and selling of baby mountain gorillas,” the article read.
Max smiled. No matter how much Brett Corday tried to defend his family, the stench of blood was still on the family name, the taint of betrayal was still marring the work of the foundation.
Max riffled through his stack of newspapers, scanning first one article, then another. Brett Corday was quoted extensively in all of them. They’d all wanted to know what the remaining male member of the Corday family had to say.
“It is with deep regret and sorrow that we acknowledge Malone’s part in this tragic scheme,” he’d said. “As you know, the Corday family has not tried to hide the truth. In fact, we have rigorously sought it.” Here the reporter digressed, lauding Corday for calling the news conference to announce his brother’s guilt and to assure the public that the foundation would continue.
“The primary purpose of the foundation has been to preserve the habitat of the mountain gorilla and to ensure that the species continues to thrive,” Corday was quoted as saying. “That is still our purpose, and we will work diligently toward that end.”
Several of the articles quoted Eleanor Corday and showed photographs of her entering the courthouse. She was a damned fine-looking woman.
But not nearly as magnificent as Ruth Corday.
Max knew she had been at the trial, because the articles mentioned the fact that all the Cordays were in attendance, presenting a united front. Either she hadn’t had anything to say, or she had been shielded from the reporters.
His hands shook as he searched for a remnant of her— her name in print, a glimpse of her face in the crowd, a quote. Anything.
At last he found it. Not a small mention but an entire story, complete with picture. A wedding picture.
Max’s hands began to shake. Ruth and Brett Corday smiled at him from the front page of the newspaper he was holding. “Wedding of the Century,” the headline proclaimed, then, in small print, “Dr. Brett Corday weds his brother’s widow.” A private wedding, the article said, public not invited; but the enterprising reporter had hidden near the compound and caught them coming out of the house after the ceremony.
Ruth looked as if she’d been given the keys to heaven. A black despair settled over Max, and he started to cast the newspaper from him, but curiosity won over rage. He couldn’t make himself stop reading about her. The article went on to compare her to her biblical counterpart, the woman who had given up her people to follow her mother-in-law to a strange land. Ruth and Naomi. Ruth and Eleanor. Even her first husband’s name was taken from that famous story. Malone. Same name, different spelling.
Ruth Corday. Rescued by a kinsman. Not a cousin this time, but a brother. A powerful man. Courageous. World renowned. A man who had sacrificed an eye for his brother. Not a man to be tampered with. Certainly not a man who could be manipulated.
Outside Max’s window the delivery van pulled up to his front door, bringing the white roses. Max gazed at the photograph of the man who had stolen Ruth from him. Brett Corday would never let her go.
Outside, the delivery man rang the doorbell. Max laid down the paper. All hope was gone. Ruth would never be there to smell the roses.
It was Saturday, and his secretary and all his servants had the day off. Feeling alone and suddenly very old, Max made his way down the stairs.
He missed the bottom step and almost fell over. It wasn’t like him to be so clumsy. He caught the railing to steady himself. The front door seemed very far away and was tilting sideways, as if some crazy person had come along and knocked it crooked on its hinges.
Max started forward and fell to his knees. His face twisted downward, and he felt the huge tear that rolled out of his left eye.
The sound of the doorbell echoed through the house.
“I’m coming,” he said, but the words were unintelligible, even to his own ears.
The bell rang once more. Help was still on the other side of the door. If only he could get to it.
He crawled forward, inch by inch, wondering why the left side of his body felt like lead. When he reached the door, he had to rest before he could get enough energy to lift himself on his knees and twist open the doorknob.
The delivery boy was getting into his truck.
“Help,” Max said. Why couldn’t the boy hear him?
The boy’s hand was already on the door. In a few minutes he’d climb into the truck and drive away, and it would be too late.
Desperate, Max gave one last cry, knowing he wouldn’t have energy for another. The boy turned, then started running toward him.
“Get Ruth,” Max said over and over, but the boy didn’t seem to understand.
Chapter 77
THE VIRUNGAS
They laughed because he was carrying two over the threshold. After all they’d been through, it felt very good to laugh.
“We’re home, Ruth,” Brett said, setting her on her feet.
She knew that at last she was. After all the years of running. After all the years of longing.
“I think I’m going to cry,” she said. For happiness. For joy. For relief. For all the lost years.
Brett understood.
“Come here.” Holding out his arms, he cradled her close. Then, when her tears had subsided, he tenderly wiped them away.
“Better now?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you. Much... . What a way to begin a honeymoon,” she said.
“It’s the way to begin a life, Ruth. With honesty ... and with love.”
She wrapped her arms around him, and they stood that way for a long while, content for the moment merely to hold each other. The trial was over, the jungle was safe for the gorillas, and they were finally together.
Soon holding was not enough.
They lay naked upon his bed, Ruth’s hair spread across the pillow and Brett bending over her. He marveled that at last she was his, that he could watch her openly and touch her freely.
“You are so beautiful.” He skimmed his hands over her ripe body. “When you were in Ruhengeri, I used to stand outside in the dark and watch you, wishing you were mine.”
“I’m yours, Brett.”
“And I’m yours. Now and forever.”
Gathering her into his arms, he made careful, tender love to her.
To Ruth. His wife.
Chapter 78
Ruth couldn’t remember when she’d slept better or longer. When she woke for the second time, it was already past noon. Flushed and content, she stretched languorously, remembering how it had been to wake up in the bed with Brett—the soft kisses, the tender touches, the sweet loving.
“Stay in bed,” he’d said when he got up. “You need the rest.”
She hadn’t realized how much until that moment. Suddenly she felt the weight of everything that had happened in the last few months descend on her shoulders. She snuggled back under the covers, he tucked her in, and she closed her eyes. Just for a little while, she’d thought.
And now it was afternoon. The first day of her marriage. The first day of her new life.
She pushed back the covers and stood naked in the patch of sunlight coming through the window, shivering with happiness.
“I have survived,” she said.
It had been a long, hard journey from that white bedroom in N
ew Orleans to the Virungas in Central Africa, from the terrified, broken teenager to the self-confident adult.
An idea formed suddenly in her mind, and the more she thought about it, the more certain she was of what she had to do. Tell about the rape. Not for revenge, but for mercy. By telling her story, she might be able to help hundreds who had suffered the same fate. She might give them courage to speak out against their abusers before it was too late to bring them to justice.
Her baby kicked hard, and she took that as a sign that he approved of her decision. She padded barefoot to her closet and pulled out a gauzy yellow maternity frock. As she dressed, she sang a song made famous by her father.
She hoped that wherever he was, he knew.
o0o
Brett sat beside Cee Cee in her outdoor enclosure. She was more subdued than usual, sitting with her doll clutched tightly against her chest and her face turned toward the jungle.
“What is Cee Cee thinking?” he asked, signing.
In the distance one of the two young male silverbacks beat his chest and issued a hooting cry of challenge.
“What that?” Cee Cee asked.
“Gorilla.”
“What gorilla say?”
“I don’t know.”
Scowling, Cee Cee punched his chest with her forefinger.
“Gorilla talk. Tell Cee Cee what say, tell now.”
How could he explain to Cee Cee that she was the only gorilla he understood, that while he had a very good idea what the sounds of the wild mountain gorilla meant, he could only guess at the precise meaning? Or even if there was a precise meaning.
Still, he had to try. He moved squarely into her line of vision so he could get her full attention.
“I am human, Cee Cee. Humans don’t talk animal talk. Humans don’t understand animal talk. Humans only understand Cee Cee’s talk.”
“Brett human?”
“Yes.”
“Ruth human?”
“Yes.”
“Eleanor human?”
“Yes.”
Cee Cee nodded her head sagely, then cocked her head, listening for sounds from the jungle. The wild mountain gorillas had moved higher up the slopes, and their cries were now faint and indistinct.
“Cee Cee human,” she signed.
It was not a question. Brett didn’t argue with her. Perhaps she was right. Cee Cee ate from a plate and slept with a blanket. She watched TV and painted pictures. She joked and pouted and lied and loved. But she had never killed. Perhaps she understood better than Malone what it was to be human.
He hugged her, complimented her on her hair bow, praised her intelligence, and, at her insistence, her singing ability, then went into his office and sat down at his desk. Putting her with the wild gorillas would be the same as sending his own child into the jungle.
He took down the file marked “Project Cee Cee” and wrote “Closed” across the cover. From the bedroom he heard his wife singing. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, listening.
In a house where there was singing, there was also joy. Brett caught hold of the joy and held on.
Chapter 79
LOS ANGELES
The house was white stucco with a red-tile roof. Lush trees and flowers and a spacious, well-manicured lawn, as well as a tennis court and a kidney shaped swimming pool, gave it the look of a home of someone rich and famous, which was exactly the intent of the board of directors. White Sands did in fact house many wealthy and famous people, though none of them would ever use the tennis court or do laps around the swimming pool.
White Sands was a nursing home, and Maxwell Jones was one of its famous residents. He sat in his wheelchair with a lap robe over his legs. One of the nurses, Marilyn Quincy, had crocheted it for him. It hid his atrophied legs, and she told him it made him look dashing, as if he were going to get up out of his chair and start directing movies any minute now.
“Bullshit,” he said, but she didn’t seem to understand him. Nobody understood a thing he said.
She smiled and patted his hand, then pulled her chair close in case he needed any help with his snack.
At the front of the room, the wide-screen television blared. Television’s most famous female talk-show host, Kim Cummings, smiled out at them. She was a great favorite with the residents.
They rolled their wheelchairs closer to the screen, but Marilyn was careful that none of them jostled against Max. He always had the best seat in the house. It was a privilege that went with his status.
“Today we’re going to talk about childhood sexual abuse,” Kim said. “And with us is someone who will tell her personal story.”
The camera panned to the face of a beautiful woman, dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin. The lens widened to show her loose blue dress and the dark, exotic foliage beyond the window. At the time the show was being taped, Ruth Corday was pregnant, Kim explained. She and her crew had traveled to Africa to interview Ruth at her request.
Max leaned forward in his wheelchair.
“Turn it up,” he yelled.
“I’m sorry,” Marilyn said. “This is not turnips. It’s cheese and crackers. It’s good for you. Eat up like a good boy.”
She crammed his mouth full of cheese, and he spit it at her. Damned bitch. Didn’t she understand anything? Didn’t she see Brett Corday sitting beside Ruth, holding on to her hand as if she belonged to him?
The host of the show carried on about the horrors of sexual abuse, but Max was only half listening. All his attention was focused on the woman in blue.
“And now,” Kim said, “Ruth Corday will tell her own story.”
Ruth told about being thirteen and going with the man she called Uncle to New Orleans. She told about the remote mansion, about the privacy afforded by wealth, the privilege.
Leaning forward in his wheelchair, Max remembered it all, remembered how her young, lithe body had felt, remembered the power he’d felt when he’d made her his.
“At the age of thirteen I was raped ... ,” Ruth Corday said. There were murmurs of outrage among the residents, and Marilyn remarked that the man ought to be castrated.
“... raped by the movie director, Maxwell Jones.”
Marilyn Quincy dropped the platter of cheese and crackers. It clattered to the floor, pulverizing the crackers and sending the cheese in six different directions. One by one the residents turned to stare at Maxwell Jones ... and one by one they rolled their wheelchairs away, mashing the cheese into greasy yellow puddles.
Marilyn Quincy stared at him as if she were looking into the face of Satan himself; then she picked up her chair and walked off, snagging his lap robe on a chair leg as she did.
“Wait!” he called, but she ignored him and kept on walking, dragging the lap robe behind her.
Ruth’s beautiful face beamed at him from the television. Kim Cummings was asking her questions, and she was talking and talking.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Max yelled.
The effort took all his breath. He swung his head and looked around him. He was alone. In the far corner Marilyn Quincy saw him looking and turned her back.
“Who’s going to feed me?” he asked.
No one answered him.
Chapter 80
THE VIRUNGAS
Brett held on to the red squalling baby. Filled with awe, he placed the child tenderly in Ruth’s arms.
“Ruth, we have a son.”
“I know.” She lifted her head off the pillow to look at her baby and smile at her husband.
The first rays of the rising sun touched the windowpanes in the clinic at Ruhengeri and turned them to gold. Rays fell across the bed like a benediction.
It was unusual for such light to shine so early in the morning. Generally, the mists shrouded the sun, diffusing the light so you could hardly know the sun was rising.
Ruth took the morning light as a promise.
She touched the tiny damp head of her son. Love swelled in her so big, she thought she would burst. And in her hear
t she made him a promise that he would have everything she’d never had— stability, normalcy, guidance, and a home with two parents who loved him.
“He will be named for his father.” She reached for Brett’s hand and pulled him down to her side. With one hand on his cheek and the other on her son’s head, she said, “He will be called Brett Corday.”
Brett linked his fingers with hers, joining them, and she held on, knowing that he was someone she could hold on to forever.
The End
-o0o-
Book News From Peggy Webb AKA Elaine Hussey
If you enjoyed this collection, you will enjoy the author’s other romance collections, Donovans of the Delta, Finding Mr. Perfect, Finding Paradise, Time’s Embrace, Warrior’s Embrace. See details at www.peggywebb.com.
Don’t miss The Language of Silence by Peggy Webb, compared to Water for Elephants!
Don’t miss The Sweetest Hallelujah and The Oleander Sisters by Elaine Hussey. Reviewers call her one of the Southern literary greats.
Coming Oct. 2014, Elvis and the Buried Brides, a Southern Cousins Mystery from Peggy Webb.
o0o
About Peggy Webb
Peggy Webb is a USA Today best-selling author from Mississippi with 70 books to her credit. She writes romance, women’s fiction and the hilarious Southern Cousins cozy mystery series starring Elvis, the basset hound who thinks he’s the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll reincarnated. Her peers call her a “comic genius.” She also writes literary fiction asunder Elaine Hussey (The Oleander Sisters, MIRA, July 30, 2014). Pat Conroy calls her literary work “astonishing.” This critically acclaimed author has won many awards, including a Romantic Times Pioneer Award for creating the sub-genre of romantic comedy. Several of her romances have been optioned for film.
Peggy is a member of PEN, America; Novelists, Inc.; Authors Guild, International Thriller Writers, and Romance Writers of America. She is excited about bringing her romance classics back to readers as E-books. The award-winning Touched by Angels and A Prince for Jenny, as well as the Donovans of the Delta series, have all been Top 10 bestsellers.