by Nancy Adams
When Maud had finished, there was a slight pause.
“What does it all mean, Sam? She’s never run away before. What happened? She’s been really down ever since she came back from New York and Jenna moved out. She won’t tell me, Sam, and I know it’s not my place to ask, but I can’t help but shake with worry for the little mite. I need to know why she’s taken it into her head to run off like this.”
“I was having an affair. The other night when they came to surprise me, Jenna and Jess walked in on it.”
There was instant silence on the other end and Sam could swear that the woman was dumbstruck.
“Oh! Sam,” she exclaimed softly when her nerves had returned.
“Look, Maud, I can’t talk about it now. I hurt Jess a lot the other day and I need to make it up with her. But first we need to find her as fast as possible. After all: she’s a ten-year-old with absolutely zero street smarts and she’s walking around L.A. Have you called her friends?”
“All of them. I called them before you. I didn’t want to alarm you if it was just a case of her hiding out at one of their houses. But when I spoke to them or their mothers or their housemaids, they swore they hadn’t seen her. None of them know where she is.”
“Maybe the friends are hiding her from the parents.”
“I thought of that, so I asked them if they’d make sure.”
“Have you contacted Karl?”
“No. I was hoping that it wasn’t needed.”
“I’ll call Karl myself and then I’ll head right over.”
“You don’t think she’s really run away, do you, Sam? She’s just angry and probably hiding out somewhere close by. I’ve been over the house twice already looking for her. I even sent all the staff out into the gardens to look for her. They’re still looking about. She may be here and we just haven’t found her yet. This could all be a trick to make you feel bad.”
“You’re probably right, but I’ll call Karl just in case. Look, I gotta go. I’ll get them to send my plane to MacArthur airport and I’ll be back in L.A in five to six hours, okay?”
“Okay, Sam. Safe journey.”
Sam put the phone down and sat there stunned, Claire beside him with a look of simmering angst on her face. After a moment, he turned to her and smiled softly.
“Sorry, about this, but I’m really needed back home.”
“No. You go. It’s much better that you’re back in L.A. for this.”
His smile increased in width and he took the back of her head delicately in his hand, pulling her gently toward him. She closed her eyes and ceded to his movement, pursing her soft lips the moment their faces were only inches apart. It was as though he were the sun and she were a plant stretching out her leaves to his light. The moment their lips met, they both melted into one another, kissing softly and tenderly.
When they parted, Sam continued to gaze into her eyes.
“What was it you wanted to tell me, anyway?” he asked her.
A glum feeling struck a sickly cord in her stomach.
“It was nothing really. It can wait. This thing with Jess is much more important.”
Smiling, he once again craned his neck forward and kissed her warm lips.
After that, he got out of bed and showered. While he was in the bathroom, Claire felt sick with worry. She had been so close to telling him, but once again some ill fate had taken back her hand at the last minute.
In the shower, Sam called his assistant Karl on speakerphone while he washed himself.
“Karl,” he said the moment he answered, “I need you to get the jet from Kennedy to MacArthur. I’ve got to head to L.A.”
“What’s up?”
“It’s Jess. She’s gone missing.”
“Oh! I’m really sorry, Sam.”
“That’s why I also need you to get in touch with someone in L.A about finding her. Call John Ryan. I’m not going to notify the police, they’ll just tip off the media and we won’t be able to move. We’ll do this all in-house.”
“Okay, I’ll call John right away.”
“Maud’s got everything they’ll need, contacts of friends etc. So tell them to head to the house first and speak with her.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“Thanks, Karl.”
He put the phone down and quickly finished up in the shower. When he was out, he found that Claire was already dressed.
“Aren’t you going to shower?” he asked her.
“I thought it would be better if I were ready now, so we could leave quicker.”
“Do you know how you’ll get back to the city? I can drive you as far as the airport, but after that I’m flying straight to L.A.”
“I’ll get a cab from there.”
“You can drive the Aston if you want. It’s got to go back to the apartment anyway. I was thinking that it would be fun for you to drive me to the airport and then take the car all the way back home.”
Claire smiled and replied that he was right: it would be fun.
Once Sam was dressed, they grabbed their stuff, locked the house up and jumped in the Aston, Claire driving. On the way, she decided against racing the old car and instead kept to the speed limit.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Sam said to her as they cruised along the freeway.
“You don’t have to be sorry, Sam. Things happen. I just hope that your daughter is okay.”
“I’m sure she is. She’s probably hiding out at one of her friends. She’s most likely sworn them to secrecy and they’ve hidden her away. She’s simply pulling a trick on me to make me feel guilty.”
“You can’t be hard on her, Sam. She’s been through an enormous amount in her short life and a lot of it has occurred this past week. Her faith in her father has been shaken. You have to understand that she’s so young and all off this must be very hard on her.”
“You’re right. You know, I always dreamed that I’d be the perfect father. That I’d be someone that my little girl could look up to.” He paused for a moment, staring blankly at the road ahead, before adding, “But in the end you always end up disappointing them…and yourself.”
“You’re being hard on yourself. You’re a much better father than many. Trust me, I should know. The other night, when I saw Jess take you in her arms, even though she was deeply upset with you, and crying into your shoulder, I saw a daughter who loved her father to the bottom of her heart. I would never react like that with my own father.”
There was a moment of passive silence in the car as Sam was reminded of the actions of Claire’s father when she was a young girl.
“I almost forgot about that,” Sam said when the moment was up.
“I often forget about it too,” she replied blankly.
“I take it your father is still at large.”
“Yes. He’s about to become a Republican candidate for a seat in the Senate.”
“Really!?”
“Yeah.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“It does and it doesn’t. I just let him get on with it.”
“And you don’t wonder that maybe there’s others who he’s abused?”
“He promised me that there weren’t.”
“And you believe him?”
Claire sat driving in silence for a while, before glancing over at him and replying, “I guess I don't have a choice.”
“Yeah, I guess not.”
Again they drifted into silence and simply enjoyed the view of the coast beside the snaking road, the bright sun shining down upon them.
It wasn’t long before they reached the airport and Sam was kissing his love goodbye as she sat in the passenger seat and he bent down to her from the sidewalk, the kiss lingering, the pavement behind them thronging with people strolling along on their way to catch planes.
When they parted, they gazed into each other’s eyes.
“I love you, Claire Prior.”
“And I love you, Sam. I hope that everything will be alright with J
ess. I’d hate for anything to happen. I’d feel that I was to blame for it.”
“You shouldn’t. It will all end okay, trust me.”
With that, he leaned forward once again and kissed her soft lips, this time taking the back of her head and pulling her into him. When they finished, he walked slowly away, glancing over his shoulder at her when he reached the entrance to the airport. She blew him a kiss, making him smile. And then he was gone.
With a desolate feeling residing in the pit of her stomach, Claire fired up the Aston and drove out of there. She had plenty of time to think about things while she drove back to New York and her mind was mostly occupied by the fact that she still hadn’t told Sam about the child. She had determined to tell him during their stay in the Hamptons.
But instead she was driving back two days early and didn’t know when she would next get the chance.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Momma! Papa!” David cried out when he saw his parents waiting for him in the schoolyard among all the other parents.
The boy immediately darted up to Juliette and threw his arms around her. As Jules watched the boy and mother embrace, he observed the lethargic way Juliette wrapped her own arms around David, a weak smile upon her lips, such a contrast to how she used to beam widely at the first sight of the boy, the sound of his voice enough to pass the ripple of a smile across her lips. It was the pills she was on. They made her thinking a little clearer, but at a cost: she became listless and lost her vigor. She also complained that they made her sad and she found all her thoughts going slow. She’d been on them just over a week now, and four times already Jules had had to call Dr. Smith with his worries. On each occasion the doctor had assured him that there would be a settling-in period with the medication of at least a month, that this was normal.
In other words, they had to grin and bear it.
It wasn’t just the effects of the meds that perturbed Jules either. The cost of them was incredible—a month’s worth had already cost him six hundred dollars. He’d paid for it out of his savings, money that had originally been put away for David’s college fund. With him applying for a welfare grant and a care allowance, Jules wondered for how much longer those savings would last. He was sure that the welfare wouldn’t cover such expensive medication, and all his research into everything had merely added to his general angst on the subject.
In the schoolyard, David held onto Juliette and looked up at her with his twinkling blue eyes. Slowly, as though taking a while to absorb his smiling face, she smiled back down at him, a blankness in her own green eyes. As if automatically, she craned her neck and gave the boy a little peck of a kiss upon his forehead.
“Did you enjoy school today?” she asked, drawling her words slightly.
“Yes, Momma. We were learning about the ancient Egyptians. We drew pictures of pyramids, made our own costumes and our own hieroglyphics.”
“That’s a big word,” Juliette remarked.
“It’s the language that they wrote in,” the boy informed her with a smile.
“Don’t I get a hug?” Jules inquired of the boy in a mock-hurt tone.
David glanced away from Juliette at his pa, smiled, released her and took ahold of Jules.
It wasn’t long before they were walking along the street on their way home. As was typical with walking David back, they stopped off at the park on the way and the couple sat themselves down on a bench while David played with some other children on a climbing frame that had been constructed to resemble a pirate ship.
“You feel okay?” Jules asked his love as they both gazed at the gleeful children, swooping in and out of bars and climbing ropes.
“I don’t know,” she replied feebly. “The drugs make everything slower and a little easier to understand, but I don’t feel like myself, Jules. And I still keep forgetting, too. Like: I can’t remember picking David up just now. I know we have, because there he is on that climbing frame and we’re at the park, which we always do when we pick him up. But before the park, before we sat on this bench, it’s all a blur. I try to remember but all I get is other memories all at once and I don’t know if any of them just happened or occurred a long time ago.”
Jules put his arm around her and pulled her into him, and Juliette instinctively dropped her head onto his shoulder.
“We just gotta take it all one day at a time,” he remarked. “To think about it all at once is too much at the moment. The woman from Social Services is coming around a little later. We’ll see what she has to say about everything and take it from there.”
With that, he kissed her on the top of the head and the two continued to watch the happy children.
A half hour later they were back home and David went over to Gwen’s to play with the Mathieson kids while the woman from Social Services came around. When her car pulled up in their driveway, Jules observed that Juliette shuddered at the sound of it. Smiling benevolently at his wife, he got up and answered the door.
Having let the rather short and rotund woman into the trailer, Jules showed her into the lounge where Juliette was seated on the couch.
“Hello, Juliette,” the benevolent faced woman said when she entered, offering her hand to the latter.
Juliette took the proffered hand and shone the glimmer of a half-smile at the woman.
“My name is Jill Philips and I’m with the Californian Department of Social Services.”
“Take a seat,” Jules said signaling a chair opposite Juliette. “Would you like a coffee?”
“That would be lovely, thank you,” Jill said as she sat her plump figure down.
She wore a happy expression, one which put Juliette a little at ease, but one which was probably part of her professional repertoire. While Jules went off to make the drinks, Jill sat smiling for a moment at Juliette.
“Firstly,” she began, her smile not diminishing as she spoke, “is there anything, Juliette, that you’d like to ask me before I tell you of the state’s decision?”
Juliette remained impassive, simply gazing across at the jolly-looking woman. She was feeling very nervous, and in her angst her head began to feel muddled. She had to concentrate to think if there really was anything she wanted to ask the woman.
“I don’t think so,” she said after her initial pause. “My husband might when he comes in.”
At that moment, Jules emerged with a tray containing three hot coffees. He placed the tray down on the small table in front of the couch and then handed the drinks out, before taking a seat on the couch beside Juliette.
“So,” Jules began once he was seated, “what’s the verdict?”
Jill took a sheet of paper from a folder that sat on her lap and handed it to Jules. The moment he had it, he began reading.
“You don’t really need to read it, Mr. Lee. I can inform you myself that you have qualified for the welfare grant as well as care allowance.”
Jules stopped reading and looked up at the woman, before turning his gaze to Juliette, smiling and saying, “Do you hear that, my love? We got it.”
Her own smile was weak and Jules took her hand in his.
“However,” Jill started, her look taking on a more solemn tone, “I have to inform you that certain other procedures are pending.”
“Certain other procedures?” Jules exclaimed softly with a frown. “What do you mean by that?”
“Because Juliette’s diagnosis has only been recent, we need to run our own assessments of whether she can remain here with you.”
“Hey! Wait a minute,” Jules let out, almost leaving his seat. “Are you implying that Juliette could be taken away?”
“It’s very early yet, Mr. Lee, and the state would never take someone into care unless they were a danger either to themselves or others.”
“Juliette’s not a danger to anyone. I’ve given up my job—a business—so I can be with her every second of every day. She’s gonna get the best help in the world.”
“No care is ever more loving than that of a patie
nt’s loved one, Mr. Lee. However, often the illness that is suffered is too complicated for them to be able to offer the best possible care, and that has to be done by professionals.”
“What is she saying?” Juliette asked Jules, glancing at him with terrified eyes.
“She’s not saying anything,” Jules reassured her, tapping his hand softly on top of hers.
“Look, the assessment will take a total of three months alongside your doctor’s notes on the subject. It will most probably turn out that Juliette will be cleared to live with you and then we’ll reassess her every six months. This is just a warning, nothing more.”
“Just a warning!?” Jules exclaimed.
“However, there is also the issue that you have a five-year-old child living here with you,” Jill went on in her solemn tone, her smile a distant memory. “Because he’s a minor living with a vulnerable adult, we will also have to assess whether this is a suitable environment for him.”
“What!?” both Jules and Juliette cried out.
“Are they going to take David away?” Juliette asked Jules in a petrified voice.
“No way,” was his firm answer.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jill insisted.
“Then what were you saying?” Jules put to her.
“I was merely saying that the child—”
“David,” Juliette said firmly to her. “His name is David.”
“I’m sorry. David will have to be brought into the equation when we consider Juliette’s case. Of course, if the state decreed that it wasn’t a safe environment for him, then you would be given the option of having Juliette removed, or David.”
“You’re telling me you’d give me that option!? Losing my kid or my wife? And where would Juliette go?”
“Look, this is all hypothetical until we finish the three-month evaluation. If Juliette is deemed to be no threat whatsoever—which will most likely be how it turns out—then everything will be fine.”