“You mean, Teresa from the day care?”
“It’s not a day care. It’s a sort of unofficial foster home. In a border town like Querida filled with people coming and going, some legal, some not, no one pays much attention as long as no one gets in trouble. I’ve been helping her support it with my job as a waitress and—” she shrugged “—a few freelance jobs.”
Ben held up one of the diamond necklaces. “Freelance?”
She snatched it from him and put everything back in the bag. “That rat is throwing Teresa out,” she said, sadness gone, anger back, “and I won’t let that happen. So I can’t go anywhere.”
“What rat?”
“Cyrus Tyree. The man whose house I broke into. His father owned the house and property Teresa rents, and he never cared if she was occasionally a little late with the rent. But he died two years ago and that guy you saw tonight is always trying to throw her out. She’s behind only two months, but he’s added penalties and says he’s going to make her pay for damage to the kitchen, which wasn’t her fault anyway, because a water pipe broke, and that was because he never fixes anything. I have to find her thirty-five hundred dollars by the day after tomorrow or Teresa is out.”
“Why did she pretend that you were Magdalena, and not Corie?”
She looked away, shaking her head, then back at him. “Because the deputy mayor likes to hassle me and the chief of police is his friend. At the moment, I’m not in their good books. Teresa didn’t know who you were. Magdalena was the name I thought I wanted when I was twelve and dreaming of rescue.”
“But I told her I’m your brother. That I was trying to find you.”
“We don’t trust just anybody. It’s safer.”
“Why are they hassling you? That assault charge?”
When she looked surprised that he knew about that, he explained about finding it in his search for her.
“That charge was filed by the creepy deputy mayor, who was trying to get payment from me—” the emphasis indicated that the payment wasn’t necessarily in money “—in exchange for his cooperation in helping Teresa fight Tyree. I didn’t give him his payment. In fact, I had to hit him with my purse so he didn’t take it. Needless to say, after a year of scrounging for every dime, Tyree is about to throw Teresa out.”
“You did enough damage with a purse to warrant your arrest?”
She grinned. “It had my tips from the restaurant in it. In a coffee can.” Then she sighed. “So Teresa struggles every month with her basically crooked landlord, and no one will help because the mayor’s office is corrupt. Anyway, I’m going to sell Tyree’s wife’s jewelry.”
Ben arched an eyebrow. “To who?”
It was clear she didn’t want to answer, but she was beginning to know Ben, so she replied, “There’s a guy in the courthouse who can find a buyer.”
“Corie, I’m a cop,” Ben said. “You can’t keep or sell this stuff.”
Suddenly, Corie was up and running, with her bag, and would have beaten them to her truck and driven off if she hadn’t tripped and fallen. Jack helped her to her feet and hung on to her, while Ben took the cloth bag and lectured her on the ramifications of what she’d done. “You’re going to get us all thrown in the slammer.”
“Listen to them, Corie,” Sarah said. She’d followed Jack and Ben. “They’re right.”
Corie struggled against Jack’s hold, but he held fast.
“You have to return those jewels,” Ben said. “There are other ways to handle someone like Tyree.”
“Yeah?” She scowled. “You mean call a cop?” The word writhed with scorn. “The guy who can get me a buyer is a cop. The local pimp is a cop. Every store owner in town pays twenty-five percent of his take every month to a cop! There’s no justice in Querida, brother Ben, so that’s not an option here. I suppose if I gave you this to return it, it’d find its way into your pocket.”
“He’s not that kind of cop,” Jack said. “And he’s right. The jewelry has to go back. We’ll find another way to help Teresa.”
“How? If she’s tossed out of the house, Berto’s going to get sick again and Lita and all the other kids who have no one but her...”
“Did you say thirty-five hundred dollars?” Jack asked.
She stopped ranting and stood quietly. “Yes.”
“I can get two thousand out of the bank,” Jack said, then turned to Ben. “Sorry. My savings is in Certificates of Deposit. What about you?”
Ben stared back at him disbelievingly, then sighed. “I’ve got a thousand on me,” he said. “And I can get the rest out of an ATM. But you’re going to owe me so much interest—”
“I’ve got a couple hundred,” Sarah said. She patted Corie’s shoulder. “See? We can fix this.”
“I’ve got three hundred in tips,” Corie put in.
Ben stared at her. “You don’t have to contribute hard-earned tips. We can give the full amount.”
“I was going to sell this stuff, remember? If you hadn’t appeared, I’d have had to come up with all of it. Teresa gave me a home. You can’t know what that means to a kid.”
“Easy,” Ben said. “You’re like a cannon with too much powder.”
“Yeah, well, I’m aimed at you, dude, so watch it.” Then she looked from one to the other and shifted her weight. “But thank you,” she said more quietly.
“You get the money,” Jack bargained, suddenly realizing he had the upper hand, “if you agree to come home with us to Beggar’s Bay.”
Corie spread her arms helplessly. “Jack, I’m not going to fit in with the Palmers. Like I told you before, I love that you found me, but I can’t go with you. My life—”
“If you don’t come with us—” Ben backed him up “—he won’t give you the money for Teresa. I’ll see to that.”
She glared at Ben. “Yeah. You seem like a real sweetheart.”
Jack said nothing, simply opened the passenger-side door of the rental car for her. She got in without another word.
“You owe me so big,” Ben said to Jack, then gave him a wide grin. “I can see this is going to be so much fun.”
Jack smacked his good arm. “Yeah, I do owe you big. Thanks, Ben.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TERESA STUDIED THE fat envelope of money suspiciously. It was just before noon the next day.
After spending the remainder of the night in Corie’s little house, Jack, Ben and Sarah had driven to the café for breakfast. Jack had gone to an ATM and withdrawn two thousand dollars and then all four had headed to Teresa’s.
Teresa opened the envelope and looked at Corie with wide eyes. “What did you do this time, Corazon? Your vision of right and wrong is very imaginative but not acceptable to the law.”
Corie indicated Jack and Ben. “My brother gave it to me. And his brother. And his fiancée.”
“Three hundred of it is her tip money,” Jack corrected. “That should keep you going until the end of the month. Then maybe we can figure out what to do so this doesn’t keep happening to you.”
Teresa stared at him in apparent confusion. “Why do you care?”
“Because Corie cares. Because you gave her a home and I know what a big thing that is. It makes me care about you.”
Teresa hugged him, then Ben, then Sarah.
“I’m taking Corie with me to meet my family,” Jack said. “You’ll have to do without her for a couple of weeks.”
Teresa put a hand to Corie’s cheek, love in her eyes. She held her tightly for a long moment, then let her go. “It will be hard for me. She’s a light in my life. And the children adore her. But I’m so happy you’ve found her. She needs to connect with you and her sister. Do you know where she is?”
“No. But we’re going to keep looking until we find her.”
Teresa hugg
ed Corie one more time before Corie ran around the room hugging children. Jack, Ben and Sarah followed her out into the yard and watched her with a group of little boys playing baseball. They didn’t want to stop playing, but something she said brought them all to her for a group hug.
Sarah had to turn away and wander toward the car as her eyes filled with tears. She felt the giant hole that had lived inside her the past two years fill with the love that vibrated in the air. Teresa’s love for Corie, Corie’s love for the children and theirs for her, Jack’s love for his sister and the sadness he felt at her pain. For the first time since Jerica died, hope sprouted in Sarah.
When everyone returned to the car, tears were rolling down Corie’s cheeks.
“It’s going to be okay,” Jack told her, tossing her bag into the back and holding the door open for her.
“Yeah,” she said wryly. “That’s what you told me when the woman from DHS came to take me away.” She moved to climb in after her bag, but he caught her arm and stopped her.
“I’m not eight years old this time,” he said. “I’m better able to keep my promises.”
“I’m sorry.” Her mouth was unsteady. “I know it wasn’t your fault. It was hers. Mom’s.”
“Do you remember her?” he asked.
She nodded, old pain tightening the line of her mouth. “She was so beautiful. She should have been a good person. But she wasn’t.”
“Yeah.” He hugged her, then urged her into the car. “Get in. We’re going home.”
* * *
HELEN AND GARY came out of the house to meet them when they arrived in Beggar’s Bay around eight that evening. The light over the back door lit the driveway and the cold night smelled of rain.
Helen hugged both brothers, then Sarah, and offered her hands to Corie. Jack introduced Gary, who told her how happy he and Helen were that she had come.
Corie’s eyes brightened. “I do remember you. And a really big kitchen.”
Helen led her into it. There was commotion as everyone came in and gathered chairs around the kitchen table, snagging a straight-back from the living room, while Sarah made coffee and pulled out the turtle brownies Helen had made earlier.
“I think it’s bedtime for some of us,” Helen declared after she’d encouraged Corie to eat a couple of brownies. She turned to Corie now, put an arm around her shoulders and said, “We’ve put an extra bed in Sarah’s room. There’s a nice big tub up there and everything you need to have a long, relaxing bath. But if you’d rather just go right to bed, you’re welcome to do that, too. Where are her bags, Jack?”
Jack stood and gestured at a worn canvas backpack he’d set in a corner. It was all Corie had brought, except for the little fabric purse he held in his other hand and a big, colorful straw bag she’d carried on her shoulder.
Corie reached toward Jack for the cloth bag. He held it away, giving her a fractional smile. “I’ll carry it for you.”
Her eyes met his and then went to the little bag. She sighed, apparently realizing she wasn’t going to see its contents again. “Thank you,” Corie said, turning to follow Helen toward the stairs.
Jack handed the small purse to Ben, who took off with it out the back door. Jack started up the stairs with the canvas backpack.
* * *
SARAH UNDERSTOOD CORIE’S desperation to help Teresa, but hoped what she’d done wouldn’t result in problems for Jack and Ben. Jack loved her so much.
Sarah watched him follow his sister and experienced a sense of rightness, of well-being she hadn’t known in a long time. She remained still for a moment as the past two years of her life seemed to reorganize themselves in her mind into something she finally understood.
Losing Jerica had been a life-altering moment. She’d been on overload with nursing sick and dying children for some time, and watching Jerica get the best care, fight valiantly and die anyway had been more than she could deal with. The impact of the loss had spread across her plans for her future, leading her to make the decision to be childless.
But she’d been alone then. She hadn’t known Jack. She’d known Ben, of course, who was warm and wonderful and the kind of man any woman would welcome into her life, but Jack’s childhood had been an awful ordeal that he’d come out of hopeful and strong—and wanting to share it.
Life with Jack, she realized now, would be worth any risk. Whatever she might have to suffer, she could suffer if they were together.
She had to tell him. She waited at the bottom of the steps for him to return, but the landline rang. With no one around downstairs to answer it, and with Helen busy with Corie upstairs and Gary upstairs, too, she went to the wall phone in the kitchen.
Sarah didn’t recognize the voice on the phone. “Sarah Reed?” a cheerful-sounding man asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Sarah, this is Dr. James Weston of the new River Rose Retirement Village. Do you have a minute?”
“Uh, sure.” She leaned against the wall. “How can I help you, Dr. Weston?”
“I’m sorry to call so late, but this is the first chance I’ve had to sit at my desk for a few minutes.”
“It’s all right. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like you to consider becoming the administrator for Rose River,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve noticed we’re under construction across from the grade school.”
She straightened, certain she couldn’t have heard that correctly.
“Sarah?” he asked after a minute.
“I’m here.” She pulled over a kitchen chair and sat. “What did you say, Doctor?”
He repeated the offer. She hadn’t misunderstood.
“Dr. Weston, I’ve never administered anything,” she said, flattered but disbelieving. “You must have me confused with another nurse.”
“John Baldrich sent me your résumé,” he said. She heard the rustling of paper. “You seem to have a full complement of talents. You were a pediatric nurse and yet when you came to Beggar’s Bay, you went to work for Coast Care as a home-care worker, though you’ve maintained your license. John says your clients love you. Also—” there was a pause “—Justin, whose life you saved the other day, is the son of a woman who works for me.
“She said you were wonderful. Calm. Competent. True grace under pressure. And while dealing with a group of seniors in varying stages of health is different than caring for kids, I think you’d be very good at it. I was hoping you’d come by next week and visit with the board, see what our facility will look like, talk about salary, perks, whatever else you’d like to talk about.”
Her mouth stood open.
“Sarah?” he asked again.
“Uh, I’m not licensed for administration, Doctor.”
“I know, but I think you could handle that easily with your credentials and experience. Maybe you’ll have to take a management class. The facility doesn’t open for another six months, but you’re our first choice. We’d love it if you’d work toward getting licensed.”
“Okay,” she said finally. “It’s a busy time for me. You probably know I’m helping with the seniors’ talent show. And, frankly, I was imagining my life going in a completely different direction. But it wouldn’t hurt to talk.”
“It’s always good to talk.”
He suggested a date. She checked her client calendar. She’d be back to work next week and she had Vinny and Margaret that morning. “I have clients early. Can we do it over lunch or in the afternoon?”
“Lunch it is,” he said before ending the call.
Sarah couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. She loved her seniors, and the opportunity to help keep them healthy and a viable part of a lively community was an exciting thought. Her grief over Jerica and all she couldn’t do to save sick children was now put away, love for Jack and his family blossomi
ng over it. And hope over everything.
* * *
JACK HAD LEFT his mother fussing over Corie and gone back downstairs. He had to talk to Sarah. She’d been a stalwart companion on their trip to Texas, and her feminine approach to discord had helped a lot in dealing with Corie.
But he wanted more than a friend in her. He wanted a wife. He wanted a mother for his children, too, but that wasn’t going to happen, so he’d find other ways to deal with his need to parent. He could coach soccer, help with a Boy Scout troop and, when Ben got married one day, he’d be the best uncle any kid ever had.
Downstairs, he saw Sarah in earnest conversation on the phone and detoured to the carriage house in search of Ben.
Jack found him sitting on the sofa, leaning over the coffee table and sealing a priority-mail box with packaging tape. He guessed by Corie’s fabric bag, lying flat on the sofa beside him, that the box contained the jewelry.
“We’re mailing it back?” he asked.
“Safer than trying to return it in person.” Jack held up the package and shook it. It didn’t rattle. “I packed it in bubble wrap. No one will suspect it contains a small fortune in jewelry. I made a label without a return address and got the postage online.”
“It’ll be postmarked from here.”
“Not if I send it with Grady to Seattle to mail it. He’s going there to visit his girlfriend tomorrow.”
Jack sat beside him. “Thank you. I know it’s hard for you to do something so...”
“Illegal? Semi-criminal?”
“I was going to say, ‘helpfully discreet.’”
“Yeah, well, call it what you want. It doesn’t change what it is. But we don’t want your little sister to go to jail, or we might go along. At this point, the three of us are accomplices.”
In My Dreams Page 20