Lost Are Found (A Prairie Heritage, Book 6)

by Vikki Kestell

  “Don’t be afraid to take your pain to Jesus, Kari. He already carried your griefs and sorrow. You can take them to him and let them go.”

  That night Kari closed her eyes and thought again about what Ruth had read to her. It didn’t make sense and she was still so very angry, but some tiny piece of what Ruth had read seemed to resonate inside. Kari rejected Ruth’s religious overtures, but that one tiny piece hung on anyway.

  Beginning in mid-January, Kari’s attorney, Jorge Baldonado, pursued her divorce with the precision of a surgeon and the ferocity of a pit bull. In court, he presented the incontrovertible evidence of David’s infidelities and financial maneuverings to cheat Kari out of her share of their property. He was both eloquent and concise—and he was ruthless. Kari watched in breathless awe.

  David’s attorney, on the other hand, one Richard Forster, presented no case other than attempting to badger, belittle, and discredit Kari at every opportunity. David sat through that part of the proceedings pursing his lips, a tight, smug smile playing about his mouth.

  Later in Ruth’s office, Kari had raged and fumed, “I wanted to bash his smug face, Ruth. I wanted to see the look on his face then!”

  Fortunately, Baldonado had coached Kari so that she was able to respond to Forster’s accusatory questions in calm, succinct sentences. At every juncture she thwarted Forster by keeping cool and maintaining what Jorge called “the innocence of angels.” When Kari stepped down from testifying, a vein was throbbing in the middle of David’s forehead. She flashed a smirk his way and watched him redden with suppressed ire.

  Then Baldonado turned his ferocity on David and David paled and stammered under his onslaught.

  Forster whined to the judge, “Mr. Baldonado is badgering and intimidating my client.”

  The judge, looking over his glasses, replied in a dry voice, “Perhaps you should have better prepared your client, counselor.”

  Kari sighed in satisfaction.

  In his concluding remarks, Kari’s attorney asked the judge for a fair and equitable division of Kari and David’s assets. He did not ask the judge to enforce the adultery clause in the prenuptial agreement.

  Then it was over. The judge finalized Kari and David’s divorce, and Kari received sixty-five percent of all of their assets—the extra fifteen percent in recognition of the stocks David had sold off without her knowledge or permission and the other assets David had not declared. Baldonado had demonstrated to the court’s satisfaction that David had disposed of joint property in an attempt to hide the funds during the divorce proceedings.

  Kari, though, had declared the proceeds from the CDs she’d sold. The judge included them in their shared assets, not holding them against her.

  Kari walked out of the court, thanked her attorney, and went straight to an appointment with Ruth. By then Kari had been seeing Ruth for five months and had come to trust Ruth as a friend and confidant.

  “It was glorious, Ruth, on so many levels,” Kari admitted. “I know I’m not supposed to gloat, but . . . well, it felt good to win for a change instead of being beaten down.”

  Ruth shook her head but smiled in understanding. “I’ll let you get away with the gloating today, but not after today. No gloating next week, okay? So. Next steps?”

  “The judge said I can list the house with a realtor now. A court representative will oversee the disbursement of the proceeds from the sale.”

  “And then?”

  Kari shrugged. “Get a job, of course. I’ve been looking, but no luck so far.”

  “Will you keep David’s name? Hillyer?”

  Kari shrugged. “What would I go back to? Friedman? I have enough to deal with without adding to a worsening identity crisis.”

  Saddened, Ruth nodded. “I take your point.” O Lord, please help this woman! she prayed.

  A month later the house sold—or it was at least under contract. The realtor warned Kari that the buyers were waiting for the sale of their home to close before they could finalize and close on Kari and David’s house. “This is not a contingency sale,” she assured Kari. “Their house is sold. It is now just a matter of timing, for their sale to close and then fund your sale.”

  The realtor projected the entire process to take up to ninety days; Kari estimated perhaps another thirty before the court authorized the funds from the sale to be disbursed to Kari and David. In the meantime, David was only obligated to pay a quarter of the mortgage on their house and none of the utilities since Kari benefited from living there.

  David, under Anthony Esquibel’s watchful eye, came and claimed the rest of his personal belongings. Then Kari went through what remained in the house, sorting what she would keep and what she would sell, and giving away the rest. She was ready to move, but could not until the sale closed and paid out.

  As the days passed, Kari watched in horror as her bank account dwindled. Baldonado had used all of the retainer and more. Would she have enough to live on until she received her share of the sale of the house? Would she have enough to get into an apartment when the sale closed?

  I have got to get a job—like, yesterday! she fretted.

  Before and during the divorce proceedings, she had applied to every job she qualified for and was invited to four interviews—but she was yet to receive a job offer, even though she was bilingual, nearly fluent in Spanish, a definite advantage. Visions of having to vacate the house but having nowhere to go haunted her.

  I’ll have to take a job at McDonald’s or Taco Bell soon, she fretted, and it still won’t be enough.

  Time dragged on and, for a while, Kari took care of herself again. She resumed her daily hikes and managed her eating and personal care. But in spite of her weekly meetings with Ruth, Kari felt herself sinking. She could tie the moment things really began to go south to the session where Ruth had explained what she called “the plan of salvation.”

  Kari sneered just thinking about it.

  “I recognize the feeling you are describing, Kari,” Ruth had said softly. “We all have a God-sized void in our hearts. I had the same emptiness you are expressing. Jesus came to fill that void. He asks us to admit that we need him, that we have fallen far short of God’s standards. Rather than condemn us, he asks us to surrender our lives to him so that he can fill the void and heal our hearts.”

  Kari had stared at Ruth with ill-disguised contempt. “I haven’t said so up until now, Ruth, but you really should know: I have an intense dislike of all things religious. So, when I want you to preach to me, I’ll let you know. Until then, please keep your religious claptrap to yourself.”

  Kari’s words had gushed out with more vehemence than she had intended, and Ruth had drawn back, stung. “I apologize for offending you, Kari,” Ruth had answered, carefully wetting her lips. “Shall we call it a day, then?”

  Kari’s mouth turned down farther. Ruth doesn’t understand, she reasoned. She has a family! She has kids, even grandkids! She’s never been alone like I am. Never. No, she doesn’t understand.

  The thing was, Kari couldn’t stop thinking about Ruth’s words—about the “God-sized void in her heart” Ruth had described.

  But it’s not God I need to fill that void, Kari insisted. So why did it feel like she was trying to convince herself?

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 3

  April 1991

  It was supposed to be spring but spring in New Mexico is nothing if not fickle and unforgiving. Cold air slipped into the state overnight and the gusting wind had a harsh bite to it. Midmorning Kari wrapped herself in a ragged afghan and trudged to the mailbox.

  She pulled fliers, newspaper ads, junk mail, and “real” mail from the box. The box was stuffed full—she hadn’t picked up the mail in four days. Back in the house she dropped the afghan carelessly on the sofa and wandered into the kitchen. She dumped the pile of mail on the island and sifted through it, sighing over envelopes containing rejection letters from prospective employers and groaning over the bills—lots of them, including one fr
om Esquibel Investigative Services.

  I haven’t paid Ruth lately. I haven’t even paid Anthony and Gloria, after all they have done for me! Her self-respect plummeted yet another notch.

  Kari swallowed, thinking about her latest application to an open position in the UNM library system where she had worked before she and David married. Kari hadn’t yet been asked to interview. She wondered if David—out of spite—had somehow influenced the hiring manager against her. And even if she got a job at UNM, the idea of working on the same campus and possibly running into him made her shiver.

  I’ve been out of the job market too long. Maybe I just have to keep applying for lower paying jobs with Albuquerque Public Schools, she thought, and to any receptionist position I find.

  Sinking down onto a stool at the kitchen island, Kari tried to ward off the cloud of discouragement that swirled around her.

  It—the discouragement—was like quicksand, tugging at her, just as it had since spending Christmas by herself. It pulled at her, sucking her closer to despair, toward a crevasse with no bottom. The darkness in the crevasse called to her, dared her to step into its fathomless fissures . . . and then what?

  A few casual friends, mostly old coworkers, had insisted that she “get out there again.” “Come out dancing, Kari,” they had urged. They had invited her out to The Midnight Rodeo to immerse herself in country-western dance. “It’s all the rage,” they told her. “Just come out to some free lessons and have a little fun.”

  But Kari didn’t want to “get out there again” or put herself back “on the market.” Haven’t I made enough mistakes already? she disparaged herself.

  But the voices inside would not stop. They goaded her without mercy.

  What will you do with the rest of your worthless life? Oh, yeah—what life? they taunted. You’ve managed to fail at everything: Two marriages, no children, no family, no job! No one to even spend the holidays with. You’re worthless! Better to die and free the world of your useless existence, they urged.

  And she heard familiar, tormenting whispers repeating, “We don’t want her! We don’t want her!”

  That phrase, “We don’t want her!” was well known to Kari; she had heard those words all her life. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind they persisted—always soft and subtle and sly, as though she wasn’t supposed to hear them whispering, “We don’t want her! We don’t want her!”

  She always did, though.

  The familiar phrase made her apprehensive, as though she should—she needed—to do something or stop something. Only she could never remember what.

  Today as the phrase repeated itself, anxiety tightened her throat, the harbinger of an impending panic attack. Kari focused on the mail and forced herself to systematically sort it—any physical or mental exercise to distract herself and ward off the dread.

  She slapped junk mail into a pile to be ripped up and trashed. She laid bills aside in another stack, fingering the last envelope to be sorted. It was addressed to her, the return address unfamiliar: Brunell & Brunell, Attorneys at Law.

  Probably another bill collection notice, was her first jaded impression. She tossed the envelope on top of the junk mail and then paused. Picking up the envelope by one corner, she scrutinized it. Against her better judgment, she slit it open.

  “What?” Her eyes narrowed as she skimmed through the one-page letter. She got to the end and returned to the top, re-reading slowly.

  Dear Ms. Hillyer,

  Our firm represents the estate of Peter N. Granger, lately of New Orleans, Louisiana. Mr. Granger passed away in 1964 at the age of 92, leaving all he owned to his nephew, Michael D. Granger.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Granger was estranged from his nephew at the time of his death, and we had been unable to locate Mr. Michael Granger until, in this last year, we uncovered notice of his untimely death in 1958 at the age of forty-seven. We discovered in the same notice that at the time of Michael Granger’s death he had a daughter. Since our discovery last year, we have been actively searching for Michael Granger’s daughter.

  If you are KariAnn Alicia Hillyer, born in 1952 to Michael D. Granger and Bethany M. Granger, and legally adopted by William and Eleanor Friedman in 1961, would you kindly contact our offices at your earliest convenience?

  Brunell & Brunell has been managing Mr. Peter Granger’s estate for many years now and we are most anxious to settle it.

  Cordially,

  C. Beauregard Brunell, Managing Partner

  Brunell & Brunell, Attorneys at Law

  Kari stared at the letter until she caught herself gnawing on the inside of her cheek. This has to be a joke or a scam, she reasoned. I mean, what kind of nut names their child ‘C. Beauregard,’ for heaven’s sake?

  And no one had called her KariAnn in decades. She never used the second half of her name nor did anyone else. Only Daddy and Mommy had.

  Peter Granger. The name seemed to jingle a bell; she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember—always a problematic exercise. Even on a good day her earliest memories were cloudy and troubling, fraught with the threat of a panic attack.

  KariAnn? Kari could hear her mother call her, could hear her father, laughing and playful, tease her by name. KariAnn! he sing-songed.

  Oh, Daddy! her heart mourned. Mommy!

  The emotions she’d been holding at bay swept over her, a tide that could not be stemmed or turned. Kari slipped to the cold tile of the kitchen floor and rocked back and forth, her keening wails heard only by the echoing house.

  She reached for the arms held out to her in her dreams and the aching in her breast swelled: Daddy! Daddy!

  It was always the same; today was no different. As she lifted her arms to her father and just as Daddy’s hands were about to touch hers, he was torn away, severed from her by The Black, the panic-inducing curtain that came crashing down on her clouded mind.

  The Black filled her and the well-known voice whispered, “We don’t want her! We don’t want her!”

  The swelling in Kari’s chest was going to crush her and burst her heart. She couldn’t breathe! A great roaring filled her head. She had to let The Black take her.

  When Kari awoke she wiped her face with her hand and, groaning, she struggled to her feet. She didn’t know how long she had sprawled on the kitchen floor, but she was aching and chilled to the bone.

  The worst part of the nightmares and panic attacks came afterwards—like now—when she awoke with that lingering sense that something vital, something irreplaceable, had been ripped away at the last moment. No matter what she did, she could never grasp the threads of what she had almost—almost!—remembered.

  Hours had passed. The mail was still sorted into tidy stacks on the counter. The wind still howled, but the sun was far down in the west, splashing the Sandias with glorious pink.

  Kari hesitated and then took up the strange letter again. Was my father this same Michael Granger? Could I be the daughter they are looking for? What does all this mean?

  The name Peter Granger tugged at the back of her mind: Kari thought she heard her mother’s voice murmuring the name Uncle Peter, and she had the faintest impression of her father’s brows pulling together, competing sadness and anger flitting across his face.

  And then there was nothing more. She glanced at the letter.

  In 1958 I was six years old. The timeline seems right. Daddy was forty-seven? Kari had no photographs and little information about her parents. Other than newspaper clippings of the car crash that killed them, she had been unable to find anything further as she grew older.

  For the first time, Kari realized that her father had been middle-aged when he died, meaning he had been forty-one—just two years older than Kari’s age now—when she had been born. About her mother she knew even less. Nothing more than her name.

  They left me alone in the world, her heart sobbed.

  That was the pain Kari lived with: Alone. Alone in the world. Not a soul I can call family.

  Swallowing, Kar
i studied the return address on the letter: Brunell & Brunell, Attorneys at Law. 761 Collier Avenue, Suite 100, New Orleans, Louisiana.

  “I can’t afford a long-distance call on a phone bill I already can’t pay.” She dug in a drawer and found a reasonably clean notepad and a single crinkled envelope. Pushing through her muddled thinking, she tore off a sheet of paper and managed to scrawl a response.

  Dear Mr. Brunell,

  I am KariAnn Alicia Hillyer. I was born on May 28, 1952. My father may have been the Michael Granger you mention in your letter.

  However, please advise me regarding Peter Granger. My father died when I was six and, to my knowledge, I have no relatives.

  Cordially,

  Kari A. Hillyer

  At the last second, she jotted her telephone number under her name. Her hand shook as she smoothed and addressed the envelope. Resolutely, she wrapped herself in the same tattered afghan and walked the stamped letter to the mailbox. She slipped it inside, pushing up the red arm that told the postman she had outgoing mail.

  When she returned to the house, the phone was ringing. She picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Kari? It’s Ruth.”

  Kari cringed. She had to be such a disappointment to Ruth—and Ruth was sure to sense and want to know about her latest panic attack.

  “Hi Ruth.”

  “Hi, yourself! I’m just calling to ask if we are on for tomorrow.” Ruth’s words held no reproach, even though Kari had skipped her last appointment with Ruth.

  And the one before that.

  Without calling to cancel, Kari realized, feeling guilty.

  “Uh, sure. Four o’clock, right?”

  “Yes. Well, good then. I look forward to seeing you.” Ruth sounded on the verge of saying goodbye but she paused. “So, how is the packing going? Anything new happen we can talk about tomorrow?”

  Kari had picked up the letter from Brunell & Brunell just as Ruth asked if she had anything new to talk about. “No. Well, yes. Maybe. Um, I got this letter. It’s rather . . . unusual.”