by Diana Palmer
Colby gave him a dark look, which was returned with interest.
“Good night, Colby,” Sarina said.
“Good night,” he replied, winking at Bernadette.
“See you tomorrow. At four,” the child added with a grin.
“We’ll probably run out of cake before then,” Rodrigo said blandly.
“No problem. I’ll bring another with me.”
“Going to bake it yourself?” Rodrigo muttered under his breath.
Colby glared at the older man. “Sure I am. Did you knit that suit yourself?” Colby added with a speaking look at the other man’s dark jacket.
“Let’s go,” Sarina said quickly, getting between the two men. She literally led Rodrigo out by one hand just as he had his mouth open to answer Colby’s mocking taunt.
COLBY DIDN’T SLEEP well. Something Sarina had said kept nudging at the back of his mind. Something about Bernadette’s birthday. Resolutely he refused to listen. He got up before daylight and made coffee. Later, he dressed and went to the mall to shop. He had no idea what to get a little girl of seven. But as he was passing one of the science shops, he stopped suddenly. He couldn’t get the thought of a microscope out of his mind.
He walked into the shop and talked with the salesman about a particularly expensive one that connected to a computer, so that specimens could be saved on CD-ROM.
“It’s a bit extravagant for a seven-year-old,” the salesman said dubiously.
“She’s not your average seven-year-old,” came the tongue-in-cheek reply.
He produced his credit card. The store provided a sedate wrapping, but added a colorful ribbon to offset it.
With the present wrapped, and secure in the SUV, he went to have a leisurely lunch and then went walking around the mall. He was uneasy about what he’d “overheard” when Rodrigo and Sarina were talking privately. Something was going on between those two, but nothing of a particularly romantic nature. It was driving him crazy. She was driving him crazy. He kept remembering how she felt in his arms, that morning in his apartment. He’d thought of little else since then. She didn’t hate him. She wanted him. But it wasn’t going to be easy, getting her back into his life. She still had hidden fears of intimacy, and he had a few of his own. If he got closer to her, and lost control, as he had all those years ago…
He turned away from the clothing store window he’d been looking in and walked back down the mall. It was almost four. Time to go. He climbed into the SUV and drove toward Sarina’s apartment. He hoped Rodrigo was there. He was looking forward to helping the man headfirst into what was left of Bernadette’s cake.
THERE WERE COLORFUL balloons tied to the worn wrought-iron railing on the front porch, and scattered bits of pretty paper and ribbon in the trash can next to the door. He tapped gently and Bernadette came running to the door, pretty in a pink striped dress with white stockings and pink sneakers that looked new. She had a jaunty chiffon bow clasped in her newly short, dark hair.
“Hi!” she exclaimed. “You came!”
“I promised I would,” he reminded her, with a glance at Sarina, who was washing dishes at the sink.
“Come on in,” she called. “I saved you some cake and ice cream. Want coffee?”
“Please.” He looked around. No Rodrigo. He grinned as he took off his jacket. He was wearing gray slacks and a long-sleeved shirt and blue patterned tie that highlighted his dark good looks. He didn’t often wear short-sleeved things—the prosthesis, for all its realistic look, was more noticeable in them. Newly repaired, the high-tech prosthesis was back in place.
“This is for you,” he told Bernadette, handing her a beautifully wrapped rectangular box.
“Can I open it?” she asked, all eyes.
He smiled. “Go for it.”
She put it down on the coffee table, frowning. “It’s heavy,” she murmured as she tore at wrapping and ribbon.
Sarina brought his coffee in a white mug and stood beside him.
“You’ll think I’ve lost my mind when you see it,” he said without looking at her. He was beginning to have second thoughts about the present. “I don’t know why I bought it…”
The last of the paper came off and Bernadette looked at her mother with quiet dismay. Sarina wore a similar expression.
They both looked at him, without speaking.
A faint ruddy flush colored his high cheekbones. “I can return it,” he began slowly.
“No!” Bernadette exclaimed, wrapping her arms around it with horror.
“Then, what…?” he began.
Sarina went to the small desk in the living room and opened a drawer. She pulled out a colored sheet and hesitantly gave it to Colby. It was a color ad for a high-tech microscope; the one he’d just given Bernadette.
“I told her we couldn’t afford it,” Sarina began slowly. She flushed.
Bernadette was touching it as if she still couldn’t believe it was real. There were tears in her eyes, too. “I love to go to school because we have a microscope like this in our classroom,” she said. “I go early sometimes so the teacher will let me look at paramecium in it.” She turned to Colby. “Thanks,” she said huskily, and held out her arms.
The expression in her eyes hurt him. That affectionate gesture hurt him. He’d been horrible to the child, but she hadn’t held it against him. He went down on one knee and gathered her close, feeling her small arms tight around his neck as she hugged him. He sighed, kissing her dark hair. Seven. She was seven years old. It was October.
Seven? He went rigid. It was October. She was seven years old. She’d been conceived seven years and nine months ago. In January. Seven years ago. He and Sarina had been married in January. Seven years ago.
A flash of pain hit him so hard that he shuddered. He drew back from Bernadette with the horror in his eyes. His mind was a jumble of half-finished thoughts. Maureen had lied. He wasn’t sterile. Bernadette’s father had deserted Sarina when she was pregnant. She was in dire straits, sick and alone, her father had thrown her out of her home because she refused to have an abortion. The father of her child had deserted her. He’d…deserted her!
“Oh, sweet Jesus!” he choked, in a tone that was painfully reverent.
Bernadette looked at him for a minute and then moved away. She went to a cabinet and pulled out a photo album.
“Bernadette, no!” Sarina said, horrified.
The child looked up at her with Colby’s eyes. “It’s all right, Mama,” she said softly. “He knows.”
Sarina almost fell into a chair, her eyes wide with pain and sick knowledge.
Bernadette took Colby’s hand and pulled him to the sofa, and pushed him down on it.
“Look,” she said in Apache.
He stared at her helplessly, seeing himself in the shape of her eyes, her mouth, her nose. She was his child. His child!
“Look, Father,” she said again in Apache.
The words had passed by his numb brain, but now he realized that she was speaking to him in his own tongue. She wasn’t Hispanic. She was Apache.
“My child,” he whispered, in Apache.
She smiled at him. “This was my granddaddy.”
She pointed at the photo album. As he focused on it, he realized that he was going back in time. There was Sarina, very pregnant, smiling with joy radiating from her face. There she was in the hospital, looking very ill and despondent. There she was, with several people including Eugene Ritter, home from the hospital in a small apartment with lots of presents for the newborn. She was holding Bernadette in her arms. Beside her was an old, stooped man with white hair and a big grin. His father!
He looked at Sarina, shocked.
She moved her shoulders uncomfortably. “I’d given up,” she said huskily. “I was all alone. I couldn’t get help…from anywhere. There was no food, except what my coworkers brought occasionally, and I was too proud to tell them how little I had. I couldn’t even work. Then your father showed up at my door, with his suitcase. He said th
at the child was a girl. He’d take care of me until she was born, and he’d take care of her after she was born, so that I could work.”
“How did he know?” he managed.
“I don’t know. He just did. He provided for us out of his social security check until she was born. Eugene Ritter paid my medical bills. He hardly knew me except as an employee, but I’d become friends with Phillip and Jennifer. I suppose they told him.” She made a gesture with one hand. “Your father could cook, and he did. Once I was back on my feet, and could go back to work, he stayed with Bernadette. Years later,” she said, skipping her night classes at college and the new job she took later, “when he had cancer, I nursed him. When we lost him,” she added unsteadily, “it was a blow.”
Bernadette was watching Colby closely. Her grandfather had told her something to tell him, and said she would know when it was time. She was certain that it wasn’t time now. The man beside her was in great pain. His eyes were blind with it.
Sarina bit her lip, hard.
He looked into her dark eyes, barely seeing them. “Maureen told me nothing about any phone call from you,” he bit off. “I was in Africa…” He got up blindly.
She stared at him. He hadn’t known?
“She convinced me I was sterile,” he said, his voice choked. He looked back at Bernadette, at his daughter, with eyes so full of pain that they seemed black. “All these years…”
Sarina got up. “Colby…”
Before she could get the words out, there was a scream, high-pitched and carrying.
Colby’s first thought was that his pistol was in the glove compartment of the SUV. He was out the door in a flash, his eyes searching for the source of the scream.
He found it quickly. An old woman, stooped and silver-haired and buxom, was outside on the grass in front of another set of apartments, pleading loudly in Spanish with a violent young man who was raining violent blows on her with both fists.
Without hesitation, Colby broke into a run. Sarina almost took off after him, until she realized how it would look, and that she didn’t dare get involved.
The boy saw Colby coming and looked up with a vicious laugh. He started toward Colby, but it was already too late. Colby aimed a roundhouse kick at his head and brought him down. He rolled and got to his feet, but before he could raise his fists, Colby aimed another kick at his diaphragm and brought him down again. He flipped the young man onto his back, whipped out a handkerchief, and, using his knee to hold him down and his arms in place, quickly tied the boy’s thumbs together behind his waist. The boy was screaming curses, violently thrashing, his eyes clouded and glazed. Sarina watched with fascination. She’d never seen him in action. Now she realized with a start how professional and capable he was. The loss of part of an arm hadn’t slowed him down one bit. That military training, she decided, never wore off.
The boy was still cursing blindly. Drugs, Colby noted with fierce anger. He knelt beside the old woman, wonderfully gentle. “Are you all right?”
She was sobbing helplessly. “Why? Why?” she choked. Bruises were coming out all over her bare arms, her face.
“Come with me,” he said gently, helping her to her feet. “Can you walk?”
“Yes,” she whimpered.
He led her gently back to Sarina’s porch, where she and Bernadette were waiting. “Keep her here, while I get the police, will you?” he asked softly.
“Of course,” Sarina said at once. “Señora Martinez, come inside and let me clean your face.”
“No police, oh, please,” she choked, pleading with Colby. “You no understand. He all I got, todo mi familia en este pais. You give him to police, they put him in jail, he learn much and never be the same boy again! I no have the words…!”
Colby held her hand and assured her, in Spanish, that he would take care of the boy and he wouldn’t go to jail. She kissed his hand, her wrinkled old eyes still pouring tears.
“I’ll be back,” he told Sarina, noting her faint surprise that he was as fluent as she was.
“I’ll take care of her,” she promised, and tried not to worry about him, because he still had the aftermath of that terrible shock in his eyes.
“I know you will,” he replied. He reached toward her cheek and abruptly drew his fingers back and turned away. He had no right to touch her, after what he’d done to her life.
He walked back toward the boy, pulling out his cell phone on the way. It was going to be tricky if any witnesses had already dialed 911. He had to trust to luck.
The boy was still yelling obscenities and struggling like a beached fish on the sidewalk. Colby stood over him, dialing the phone.
An older boy came running. He stopped short of Colby. He was wearing a bandana over his head and he had tattoos on both arms. Colby instinctively moved into a relaxed fighting stance, just in case.
The boy noticed. He hesitated. “You come to see Miss Carrington,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You calling the cops, huh?” he asked belligerently.
“No. I’m not.”
The boy hesitated. “Then who…?”
“What’s your stake in it?” Colby asked coldly.
“I’m Raoul. He’s my cousin, Tito.” He looked toward the open door of the apartment. “You seen my grandma?”
“She’s with Sarina and Bernadette,” Colby said. “She’s pretty roughed up.”
He groaned. “Tito, you idiot!” he groaned at the boy. “You estupido!”
“He can’t hear you. He’s bombed out of his mind.”
The boy ran a hand over his face. “She’s got nobody but me and Tito. He’s her nephew, and he lives with her,” he said harshly. “He goes to the store for her and keeps her safe. I told him that stuff was poison…!”
Colby held up a hand. He had the man he’d phoned on the line. He spoke in fluent Spanish, telling the man that he had a young boy high on drugs, he’d battered his grandmother and he needed help. He nodded, aware of the older boy’s wide-eyed surprise as he continued to listen. He answered, telling the man where he was, and adding that he’d better bring help. No, the police hadn’t been informed. He was hoping the neighbors hadn’t phoned for help. He nodded, spoke again, and hung up, closing and repocketing the cell phone.
“Who’d you call?” the older boy asked.
“A friend of mine. An old…colleague, you might say,” he added with a faint smile. “He runs a halfway house downtown. He’ll take your cousin and dry him out. Afterward, he’ll try to get him in treatment.”
The older boy let out a hoarse sigh. “It’s more than he deserves, after what he’s done,” he said coldly. “But he’s family, the stupid idiot! You sure Grandma’s all right?”
“Go see about her, if you want to. I’ll wait here for Eduardo.”
“Okay.” He hesitated. “Thanks.”
Colby shrugged. “If he doesn’t shape up, it’s just postponing the inevitable,” he added. “And next time, he might kill the old woman.”
“Yeah. I know that. I’ll keep close to Grandma for a while. And I’ll do what I can for him.”
He went off in the direction of Sarina’s apartment. Colby stood above the hog-tied drug user and closed his ears to the profanity. He looked around at darkened windows and a couple of fluttering curtains. These people knew that it was dangerous to know much about crime. He didn’t imagine that the police would be called in, this time.
Ten minutes went by before a beige van pulled up in the parking lot between the apartment units. A man in a priest’s habit got out with two strong young men and walked toward Colby. He grinned as he held out his hand.
“Compadre,” he greeted. “How long has it been?”
“Eight years, as I recall,” Colby said, returning the firm hand clasp.
“You look well.”
“So do you, except for the strange-looking camo outfit,” he chided, indicating his old friend’s white collar that denoted a priest.
Eduardo chuckled. “It did take s
ome getting used to.”
Colby nodded toward the boy writhing on the ground. “I don’t know what he took. Judging by the contortions and the glazed look, it’s either acid or crack cocaine.”
“Not much to choose between,” Eduardo said with clinical interest, “although acid’s easier to kick.” He nodded to his companions, who hefted the boy like a tiger on a pole between them and carried him off, struggling and cursing, to the van. “We’ll take care of him, don’t worry.”
“What a waste,” Colby muttered.
“Drugs always are,” the other man said heavily. “Does it occur to you, compadre, that our world is long on pressure and short on relaxation? Too much stress, too much responsibility, too much worry, and this becomes the answer.” He indicated the boy being put in the van. “The old woman?”
“Will be all right,” Colby said. “She’s only bruised and hurt. But apparently he takes care of her, buys her groceries and looks out for her. She’ll be alone.”
“We’ll do what we can to get him back on his feet. Meanwhile, I’ll make it my business to keep an eye on her. Any other family?”
“There’s a grandson, he’s with the old woman. He seems responsible enough.”
“Tell him we can provide what the old woman needs. All he has to do is call me.”
“I’ll do that. Thanks.”
Eduardo shook hands with him. He shook his head, his black eyes sparkling. “What a long time ago we made our living with violence.”
“We were younger,” Colby replied. His eyes began to lose their light. “And unaware.”
“Yes. Take care. Come and see me when you have time. I’ll bet I can still beat you at chess.”
“You and a chess master, maybe,” Colby chuckled. “See you.”
The priest threw up his hand and walked back to the van.
Colby went back to the apartment. The old woman had been given coffee and cleaned up. Sarina was sitting beside her, looking warily at the young man in the bandana who still held a cloth with ice in it to his grandmother’s head.
They looked up as Colby entered the apartment.
“He’s on his way to the halfway house. Father Eduardo said that if you need anything at all, señora,” he told the woman, “he’ll do whatever he can for you. He’s a good man.”