by Rhea Wilde
I headed to the shelter to see if there was anything I could do. Finally seeing that my leg was fine, Marie gave me a chance to deal with some of my administrative duties. There was always work at the shelter. People needed help setting up applications for potential job openings. Others were in poor health and needed medical paperwork filled out. Some people just needed a place to stay out of the sun.
It was hard to work with Kimmy on my mind. At any moment, things could have turned for the worst. But I remembered what Officer Dion said. I remembered there were other people who needed me. So I did the best I could to be there for them.
As I helped a senior find a comfortable spot near the television, I couldn’t help but notice how feeble he was. His hand resting on my arm, he gently squeezed me as he slowly lowered himself on one of the couches where everybody else was, gathered around the television as usual. He looked up at me with a smile. There was a kindness in his eyes. So many years of experience stared back at me. An entire lifetime I could only begin to imagine.
“Thank you, young lady,” he said as he bowed his head to me. “Won’t you join me and keep me company?”
“I’m sorry,” I said with a smile. “There are other people who need tending to.”
“I see,” he said, a slight frown on his face. “Just know… I’ve got a place when you need to rest your weary feet.”
He tapped his lap gently. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the older man and the sudden glint of mischief that appeared in his eyes. I patted him on the shoulder and turned around to help with some of the other patients when I saw a man standing right there in front of me.
“Hello, Sheila.”
It was Lee. He looked the same the last time I saw him. His suit fit him perfectly. His hair was combed neatly. A small waft of cologne swept into my nose. He was completely out of place in the shelter. He would have been out of place anywhere in New Gardens outside of his own building.
Lee began to draw everybody’s attention. The people in the shelter all started to murmur to one another.
“Who is that?”
“What’s that guy doing here?”
“You think he’s gonna buy the place?”
“Why would he do that?”
“To tear it down, of course.”
He stared at me, and I looked back at him, unsure of what to think.
“Hello,” I said to him without an ounce of emotion. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I just wanted to speak to you. Is there a chance we can talk?”
I sighed and looked around for something else to do. I wasn’t in the mood to speak to him. If anything, I needed something to forget he existed.
“Look, Lee. I’m really busy—”
“It’ll only take a moment. This is important.”
The way he looked at me was like nothing I could remember. The man I was in love with so many years ago was gone, replaced by a stranger. Instead of a young teenager who had his whole future ahead of him, I saw a mature man who looked like he was on his own.
“Please,” he said.
I looked away from him, exhaling a deep breath through my nostrils as I did, knowing I couldn’t refuse him. If he said it was important, it probably was.
“In my office,” I said.
I turned around and made my way through the main floor of the shelter and down the corridors. Lee followed just behind me, drawing the attention of every person he walked by.
I stepped into my office and took a seat at my desk. Lee walked in and closed the door behind him. The silence in the room hit me immediately.
“Do you want something to drink?” I asked. “A glass of water?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
He moved over to the bookshelf. He began examining all of the books on the wall, combing over them with his right hand.
“A lot of books,” he said. “You always did like to read.”
“I’m surprised you remember that.”
“Is it?” he said as he turned to me. “You never talked to me about it but I knew. I even bought you a book for your birthday. Do you remember what it was?”
“Yeah, of course,” I rolled my eyes as I said it. “You bought me Jane Eyre.”
“Yeah… What’s wrong with that?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“What?” he said, the confusion on his face, his eyebrows furrowed. “You loved it.”
“Of course I did! Every girl my age loved that book! It’s like buying a kid a box of candy or a toy. It was obvious.”
“But I didn’t know that. I tried. I truly did.”
He smiled at me and the memories of our past came back to me. I gave him a half-smile and looked away from him as the thoughts of the man he used to be swirled around in my head.
“Go on,” I said. “What’s this all about, Lee?”
“Are you in that much of a hurry?”
“For you, yes.”
“I told you this is important.”
“If it’s so important, you’ll get to the point.”
“Right…”
He moved away from the bookshelf then took a seat across my desk in front of me. His eyes shifted to the ground. It looked like he was twiddling his thumbs with nervousness.
“If this is about Castle, then you don’t have to remind me,” I said. “I’m not gonna go near him. I heard you the first time.”
“This isn’t about Castle.”
“Then what is it about?”
“It’s about you. It’s about me. It’s about us.”
“There is no us, Lee. You made that clear to me twenty years ago when you left me.”
“It’s not just about us. It’s about… It’s about Noah. It’s about my son.”
“What about him?”
He shifted in his seat and sat up straight. His eyes still pointed down, he moved in a way that made him seem uncomfortable. Uncomfortable like he was twenty years ago on the day he left me.
“I know that it’s over between us,” he said.
“Lee, it’s been over for twenty years. It’s called puppy love. It happens to every teenager. You don’t have to explain it to me.”
“I think I do. I think I owe you an explanation. So that you understand completely. You deserve to know.”
I wasn’t interested in rehashing old memories. But seeing Lee sitting there in front of me, I couldn’t ignore them. I could remember all of the feelings I had like it was yesterday. I could talk to the old me because she was right there with me.
“I thought you were going to propose to me,” I said. “I thought you wanted me to move in with you so we could be together for the rest of our lives.”
“If I hadn’t made any mistakes, that probably would have happened.”
“Ifs change a lot of things.”
“They certainly do.”
“…What happened?”
He turned his head up but his eyes shifted away from me.
“That year when I went away to college, that first year… It was like nothing I imagined. It was a different experience for a young man. I saw so many different things. It was like using my eyes for the first time.”
He stared at me.
“I met someone,” he said. “A girl… And with you still in high school, so far away…”
“You cheated on me,” I said as I swallowed. “I figured out that much.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s around the same time Noah was born.”
“Yeah.”
“When did you know?”
He sighed a deep breath and shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“She was already five months along when I left you. Sheila, I’m sorry. If she hadn’t kept the baby, I’d already betrayed you. Just being away from you, I couldn’t avoid the temptation—”
“Lee, you don’t have to explain it to me. That was a long time ago. And we were both young. It happened. I’m over it. I don’t care.”
“Well, you should.”
/> He stood up from his seat and turned his back to me. His hands behind his back, Lee began slowly pacing back and forth behind the chair in front of him.
“It was hard,” he started. “When Noah was born, I had to take on a job. I couldn’t focus on school, so my grades started to slip. I lost my scholarship because I was academically ineligible to play. My grades were too poor.”
“I remember. Some mutual friends told me.”
“Yeah. I didn’t make it out of college. I had to stop so I could work full-time. I had to make ends meet just by working temp jobs all over the city.”
“What did you do?”
“You name it, I did it. Construction, gardening, driving trucks, filing paperwork. Every odd job in the city that came up. None of it was pretty and the pay wasn’t good but it was enough.”
“What about Noah’s mother?”
Lee paused for a moment. He stood there in silence, his hands still tied behind his back. I could see it in his eyes. He was somewhere else. Lost in a memory of when he was barely an adult.
“It was harder for her than it was for me. Imagine, being a young woman and having to take care of a child. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you and now you’ve got to worry about another mouth.”
“I can imagine. There are some single mothers here at the shelter. It’s not something I’ve never seen before.”
“Yeah, it was… It was difficult.”
“What happened?”
“We moved to the city so I could be closer to work. I realized if I wanted to take care of her and Noah, I was going to need a better job. I started studying to go back to school. I started working later in the evenings.”
“Admirable.”
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “I was so focused on trying to make money I neglected her. I neglected Noah. The whole reason I was doing it in the first place.”
Lee’s throat shifted as he swallowed. His eyes glazed over slightly. I remained calm in my chair though I was anxious to hear the rest of what he had to say.
“She fell in with the wrong crowd,” he continued. “She started using drugs. I didn’t notice it at first. But when I did, it was already too late. I…”
He turned to the side, his face looking away from me. But on the left side of his face, I could see the tear beginning to streak down his cheek.
“I found her one morning. I got her to the hospital. But there was nothing they could do. They could have done something if I’d only been there.”
“Lee…”
“I couldn’t handle it. Worst of all, I couldn’t explain it to Noah. I couldn’t explain to him that his mother was gone because I wasn’t there for her. I was his father and I had to tell him it was my fault his mother was gone.”
“Lee, it’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You were doing it for him. You were doing it for her. You didn’t know.”
“I should have.”
Lee wiped the tear from his face and exhaled a deep breath to regain his composure.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“What else could I do? I was still a kid. I didn’t know what to do, so I put Noah up for adoption. I had all of his paperwork. I always knew where he was or what he was up to. I knew he moved from foster home to foster home. But I never reached out to him. When I did, it was already too late. A lifetime of adults who never cared about him had changed him. You can imagine how he felt when he discovered how he lost his mother.”
“Lee… I’m sorry…”
“It’s okay. It’s over and done now. You can see why Noah has such disdain for me, why he has such disdain for most older people. That’s why he doesn’t trust me.”
“Because of what happened with his mother.”
“Not only that. It’s also because of the life I relegated him to. A life of solitude since he was a child.”
“Lee, it’s all right.”
I stood up and moved closer to him. I rested my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, the last thing I ever expected to do.
“You were trying to do the right thing,” I said.
“I know. And that’s what I’m trying to do now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t repair my relationship with Noah. I can’t bring his mother back. But I can do my best to make sure things like that never happen again. That’s why this is so important to me, Sheila.”
“What’s so important?”
“Taking down Castle. Men like him are part of the reason Noah doesn’t have a mother. It’s guys like him who continue to pollute this city. That’s why I came back. I wanted to fix things. I wanted to do my part.”
“…I understand.”
Lee turned and looked at me. The tears were gone but his eyes were red. Even back then, Lee always had a proud demeanor about him. He was the most popular guy at school. He was captain of the football team. He was the guy every girl wanted to be with. Now he was a millionaire and the richest man in the city. But I didn’t see any of that now. I just saw a man as vulnerable as anybody else.
“Do you remember that time we went to the theater?” he asked me, a smile suddenly appearing on his face. “You made me take you to a play.”
“Yeah, Romeo and Juliet.”
“Yeah,” he said with a chuckle. “I told you how it ended and you got mad at me even though you already knew, too.”
“That wasn’t the point.”
“I know… But I remember after, we were walking down the street. You saw an old man who was lying on the sidewalk. He was alone. He was freezing because it was the dead of winter. You made me give him my varsity jacket.”
“I remember. He was practically frozen.”
“I didn’t want to give it to him. That was my varsity jacket.”
“You could always get another one.”
“Yeah… But that’s when I knew you were different. Most girls would have wanted it for themselves but you gave it to him. You gave it to a complete stranger.”
Lee’s cheeks blew up as he exhaled a deep breath, a tender smile now on his face. I moved my hand away from his shoulder. His demeanor had changed. I looked into his eyes and he was no longer lost in his memories.
“I just wanted you to know why,” he said. “I wanted you to know why Noah is the way he is. Why he was so angry with me. I can’t say I blame him. I don’t know what it is you have going on between the two of you. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know him very well. But I know you, Sheila. You’ve got a good heart. I know you’ll always do what’s right.”
I didn’t respond. After hearing all of Lee’s story, I wasn’t sure any response was possible. It was so much for me to take in I couldn’t process all of it.
“You probably have a lot of work to do,” he sighed. “I should probably let you get back to it.”
“Yeah… Thanks.”
I escorted Lee outside of my office and back through the shelter. Nobody would have guessed how broken he seemed just a few moments ago with how composed he was at the moment. Every stride looked like the kind of step a man would take if he were worth millions.
Lee’s limo was waiting just outside for him. His driver held the door open for him. Just before he got inside, Lee turned to me.
“Your shelter looks like it could use some help,” he said as he looked up at the sign. “I’ll try to see what I can do.”
“I remember what you told me,” I replied. “We have to cure the illness first to get rid of the symptom.”
Lee bowed his head to me and stepped inside of his limo. It sped off into the distance with everybody on the street watching. I stood there for a moment and watched it leave before heading back into the shelter.
As soon as I got inside, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw Dion’s number.
“Hello?”
“Miss Cooper. Can you talk?”
“What is it?”
“I talked to some of the higher-ups.”
“And?”<
br />
“And they said they agree to it. They wanted me to make sure you’re still up for it.”
“Yeah… Yeah, I’ll do it.”
“Once you agree to it, there’s no backing out. There comes to a certain point where we can’t do anything. Once you’re in front of Castle, you have to get the evidence we need, do you understand?”
A sudden burst of anxiety washed over me. When I spoke to Dion at the hospital, I was grasping at straws, desperate for any sort of answer. I threw something at the wall, hoping for anything to stick.
Something stuck.
Now there was no other choice for me to make.
“Miss Cooper? Sheila, are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“If you do this, you have be in 100-percent. Do you understand?”
“…I understand.”
Chapter 22
16 years earlier…
New Gardens International Airport was somewhat of a mystery to me when I was a kid. My parents weren’t poor, but they weren’t wealthy either, so I wasn’t used to going on trips. I have vague memories of going on vacation with my parents and grandparents one time. We took a plane to one of the Dakotas, I never really bothered to pay attention to which one. Outside of that, I spent most of my life in the same city.
Heading back to the airport was different now. I was older. I was an adult. I was doing something because I wanted to do it, not because I was being dragged along. The experience was something different.
As I prepared myself for the next step of my journey, the sudden realization of it all hit me in a way that I wasn’t expecting.
“This must be exciting for you.”
“I suppose it is.”
“I wish I was in your shoes. I wish I had some excitement in my life.”
“What are you talking about? Law school is exciting.”
“Yeah, if you love to read books all day. Real exciting.”
“Well, it’s gonna be worth it. You’re gonna be a great lawyer.”
“If you say so…”
Penny rolled her eyes at me and I couldn’t help but smile.