by Janice Sims
“What’s up?” Belana asked, looking into Suri’s eyes.
Unshed tears sat in Suri’s lovely eyes. She blinked and soon her cheeks were wet with them. She wiped her face with a paper napkin and forced a smile. “I’m pregnant.”
Belana immediately reached across the tiny round table and grasped the other girl’s hand. “If there’s anything I can do to help, just tell me,” she commiserated.
“There’s nothing anyone can do,” Suri said sadly. She smiled again through her tears. “I don’t believe in abortion, so I’m going to have the baby. The father won’t be a part of her life, though. He’s already told me he’s not leaving his wife, and he already has three kids, he doesn’t want any more. He accused me of trying to trap him. He said he would make sure his lawyers made my life miserable if I tried to make trouble for him.”
“In the form of telling his wife what he’s been up to?” Belana guessed.
Suri nodded. “As if I wanted his money!” she cried passionately. “I don’t need his stinking money.”
“Are you going to be okay raising the baby on your own?” Belana asked, hoping Suri would calm down. Her last outburst had other customers looking nervously their way.
New York City had plenty of nuts but you didn’t want to be stuck in a bakery with one of them.
“I’m not going to raise the baby,” Suri told her. “I’m putting her up for adoption and then I’m getting on with my career. I’m only twenty-three. I can barely feed myself on what I earn. How could I possibly think of raising a child?”
“But you said you didn’t need his stinking money,” Belana reminded her.
“I meant that I wouldn’t dream of stooping to take his money,” Suri explained. “I could actually use financial support.”
Belana didn’t know what advice she should give Suri, or if she should be giving her advice at all. What if she advised her to go after this guy for financial support and ended up dead? She wouldn’t be the first mistress to meet an untimely end when she tried to make trouble for some rich, married guy. Anyway, Suri had said she wasn’t keeping the child. Someone with means would adopt a healthy baby. There would probably be hundreds of couples who would want to.
Suri definitely would not be dancing while she was noticeably pregnant, though. She would need funds to live on while she was waiting for her child’s birth.
Belana had plenty of money. She’d inherited a twenty-million-dollar trust fund when she had turned twenty-five, and she hadn’t even touched the principal. She was living on the interest.
“I’d be happy to help you make ends meet until you can go back to work,” Belana told her.
Suri looked shocked. Belana was not surprised. No one she worked with knew she was John Whitaker’s daughter. She was another struggling dancer to them.
“I inherited a little money a few years ago,” she said to Suri. “It’s enough to make my life a bit easier. I don’t see why I can’t use it to make your life a bit easier, too.”
“I don’t know, Belana,” Suri said reluctantly. “I couldn’t say when I could pay you back.”
“You don’t have to pay me back,” Belana told her.
“What? That’s insane. You work hard for your money.”
“I didn’t work for this money, it just sort of fell into my lap,” said Belana. She went into her bag and withdrew her checkbook.
Suri began to cry again when she presented her with a check for fifty thousand dollars. “This is too generous,” she said, sniffling.
“You mean you can live on less for a year? In this city?” asked Belana knowingly. She had been to the loft apartment Suri shared with three other girls. Her share of the rent was probably only five hundred a month in the rent-controlled building she lived in. But everything was priced high in the city—food, clothing, transportation. Not to mention doctor’s fees. She would have to be under a doctor’s care.
“You’ve got to eat right and keep your doctor’s appointments,” she said. “You don’t want to put your child’s health at risk.”
Belana could tell Suri hadn’t even thought about medical costs.
“You see what I mean?” Suri asked. “I’d never be able to afford to keep this baby.”
A wistful quality in the girl’s voice made Belana wonder if Suri was being entirely truthful about not wanting to keep her baby, but Belana held her curiosity in check. She would not encourage her by questioning her decision. It wasn’t her place to do that.
She rose and placed her hand over Suri’s, causing Suri’s hand to close over the check. “You’re my friend, and I care about you. Take the money, and take care of yourself.”
Suri got up and hugged Belana so tightly she could hardly breathe. “I’ll pay you back one day,” she promised.
“If you want to help someone else someday, fine, but I’ve just done what I wanted to with that money. I won’t miss it,” Belana said with a smile. She extricated herself from their embrace and said, “Hey, are you going home for Thanksgiving?”
Suri was from a small town in upstate New York. She had always dreamed of dancing for a New York City ballet company. “Yeah, I’m going home. I hope my parents take the news well. Five daughters and the baby girl is the one who gets pregnant before marriage. All the rest were married before presenting them with grandchildren. I’ll be the shame of the family.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Belana warned. “You might be surprised by their reaction. Single parenthood doesn’t have the stigma attached to it that it used to.”
Suri took a deep breath and released it. “From your lips to God’s ears,” she said hopefully.
“Okay,” said Belana with a note of finality. “I’ve got to run.” She gave Suri a quick hug. “I know you probably feel ambivalent about this, but congratulations on your good news. I think babies are always a blessing.”
Suri smiled, calmer now. “Thank you, Belana.”
No amount of reassurances from Belana could make Nick less apprehensive about meeting her father. As he drove, he thought about all the different ways this day could go wrong. No, make that days. Belana had persuaded them to spend the night. Now he had double the time in which to do something embarrassing. Don’t forget Nona. She had been behaving herself recently, but she was a wild card. He didn’t worry about his mother. His mother was gracious to a fault.
Belana rode up front with him serving as the navigator even though he had a perfectly good navigation system in the SUV. She kept up a line of jovial banter on the two-and-a-half-hour trip, pointing out landmarks, telling anecdotes about when she and Erik were kids and how they always thought going to Connecticut was equal to going on an adventure.
She regaled them about New Haven, Connecticut’s finer points, the most well-known being it was the home of Yale University. Her father had gone to Yale. Nick had inwardly cringed upon hearing that. He had gone to a city college on scholarship. There was nothing prestigious about it. He tried to relax, remembering what she’d said about her father being just a man. He was shy, she’d said. Yeah, right. What did John Whitaker have to be shy about?
On the last leg of the trip now, he drove the SUV down a private lane and then they saw the house. No, you couldn’t call it a house. Okay, you could call it a house the way they called the White House a house. The Whitaker house was about as big as the White House. The woodwork was white but the bulk of it was made of red brick.
“Wow,” cried Nona from the backseat. “Is that a house or a hotel?”
Belana laughed. “It’s a house.”
“It’s gorgeous,” said Yvonne, sitting forward. “What do you call that design?”
“It’s a mish-mash,” said Belana. “When it was first built, I believe they were going for something on the line of Jefferson’s home in Virginia, Monticello. When Daddy bought it he made renovations, adding a guest house, a pool and pool house, and did a lot of landscaping that included extensive gardens and even an apple orchard. It was his country retreat. He said he wanted
to feel like a gentleman farmer. He doesn’t really live here much anymore. But this is my Grandma Drusilla’s home. She loves it here.”
They parked in front of the house on the circular drive. As soon as Nick shut off the engine, a tall, trim man in jeans, a plaid shirt and a dark jacket followed by a woman about four inches shorter than he was, and wearing black slacks and a black jacket over a bright fuchsia blouse, bounded out of the house followed by two golden retrievers.
Nick looked down at their feet: they were both wearing black hiking boots, the kind that strung up and had thick soles. He figured they did a lot of walking on the property.
“That’s Mom and Dad,” Belana said, her excitement evident in her voice. “Come on, everybody.”
She sprang from the car and in a matter of seconds was being engulfed in her father’s arms, then her stepmother’s. Nona was right behind her, but Nick paused to give his mother a hand out of the high car. She was petite and complained it was a chore for her to get in and out of.
“This is Nona, Nick’s daughter,” Nick heard Belana say as he and his mother walked up to them.
“Hello, Nona,” said John Whitaker, smiling. He had a kind face. His skin was a medium brown and he had salt-and-pepper hair that he wore natural and cut low to his scalp which showed the wavy texture of it. His eyes, Nick noticed, were dark brown, not whiskey-colored like Belana’s. She must have gotten her mother’s eyes. In fact, there wasn’t much that Belana had physically inherited from her father. When John turned to shake Nick’s hand, though, he saw in his eyes what she had gotten from her father. The expression in his eyes was so kind and welcoming that Nick instantly forgot about his earlier fears.
They shook. “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Whitaker,” he said, smiling.
“Same here, young man,” said John, also smiling.
Nick gestured to Yvonne. “This is my mother, Yvonne.”
Yvonne stepped forward and shook John’s hand, then Isobel’s. The three exchanged greetings. She held on to Isobel’s hand a moment longer. “What a lovely place you have.”
Isobel clasped her hand firmly. “It would be my pleasure to show you around.”
The two women strolled off by themselves. Nona ran to catch up with them. John turned to Nick. “It seems my wife is seeing to the ladies. I was thinking of going for a walk before I saw you all pulling up. Won’t you join me?”
Nick felt like he needed to stretch his legs after the drive there. “I’d enjoy that,” he said, and they began walking in the direction of the stables.
The golden retrievers trailed behind the men.
Belana stood on the circular driveway by herself, having been abandoned by everyone. “What about me?” she pouted. She laughed. She was thrilled everyone had hit it off so well. She went to find her grandmother. Drusilla was probably preparing to hold court in the drawing room. Smaller than the living room, it was her favorite spot in the house. She liked to take tea there every afternoon as though she were a British citizen. She had never set foot in Great Britain.
She found her grandmother in the kitchen, instead, overseeing the preparation of the Thanksgiving feast. With her grandmother in the large space were the family’s two live-in staff, Naomi and Penny, both African-American women.
Drusilla, dressed in a tailored pantsuit and comfortable flats, was leaning on her cane stirring something in a Dutch oven atop the stove. “Grandma,” Belana said.
Drusilla turned. Her slightly wrinkled café-au-lait-complexioned face broke into a grin. “Well, if it isn’t the prodigal daughter,” she chided her granddaughter.
“I haven’t been away that long,” Belana denied, laughing.
She went and bent down to hug her grandmother. Drusilla had a powerful personality, but she was only five-one. And Belana suspected she was shrinking. She looked smaller every time she saw her. “How are you, dearest?” she asked Drusilla.
Drusilla wore thick glasses attached to a chain around her neck. Otherwise, she would be losing them all day long. She put them on now and stared up at Belana. Her eyes appeared larger when she wore them and she reminded Belana vaguely of an owl.
“Passably well,” said Drusilla. “The Grim Reaper has my address but he’s having trouble finding it.”
Belana chuckled. “Well, let’s hope he doesn’t start using GPS.”
“What’s that?” asked her grandmother.
“Never mind,” said Belana. “What are you doing in here? I’m sure Naomi and Penny can function without you.”
Naomi, a tall, hefty woman in her early sixties who had been with Drusilla since she had moved here over twenty years ago, laughed. “I don’t think so, Miss Belana. What would we do without her?”
Possibly have fewer headaches, Belana thought with a smile. Her grandmother liked to have a hand in the running of everything on the estate. Belana believed it was her meddlesome nature that was keeping her going.
“How are you, Naomi?”
“Doing well, and how’re you?” Naomi countered.
“Just great,” said Belana. She looked at the younger woman, Penny, who had been hired only four years ago. “And you, Penny?”
Penny was busy peeling sweet potatoes. She smiled at Belana. “Excellent,” she said. “I heard that you got the role of a lifetime. I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks, Penny. Rehearsals are killing me but I have a good feeling about it,” Belana told her. In her mid-forties, Penny was an aspiring writer. She knew a little about dreams and how it sometimes took a long time to achieve them. “Still sending out your work?”
Penny nodded. “I’ll keep trying until somebody bites.”
“You do that. You’ll get a book deal one day,” Belana said confidently.
“Belana, since you’re here, you can make me a pot of tea,” Drusilla ordered. “I like the way you brew my Earl Grey.”
“I’m on it,” Belana said affectionately. “You go into the drawing room and I’ll be in there shortly with a tray.”
Drusilla took one more look around the kitchen as though she were assessing the state of things, nodded with satisfaction, and turned to leave. “Oh, Naomi, put a few of those lovely cinnamon tea cakes on a plate for me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Naomi, smiling with genuine warmth.
After Drusilla had gone, she and Belana burst out laughing. “She still likes her tea cakes, huh?” said Belana.
“That, and rum in a cup of warm milk just before bed,” said Naomi.
Belana busied herself with the tea things while they talked. “How is your family, Naomi?”
Naomi smiled. The thought of her family was obviously a source of joy for her. “Melora, my youngest, just entered Yale. She’s pre-med. And my oldest, Gemma, is getting married next June.”
“Congratulations,” said Belana. Naomi raised her daughters alone after her husband, Peter, a military man, was killed in action. “Gemma recently graduated from college, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Naomi confirmed. “She’s doing everything so quickly it makes my head spin. She’s only twenty-one.”
They talked more about family. Then Belana picked up the tea tray and went to join Drusilla in the drawing room.
“This is Pegasus,” said John, fondly rubbing the nose of a white stallion with a flowing mane. The handsome beast whinnied and seemed to press its nose affectionately into John’s palm.
The stables housed six horses and it was evident that John Whitaker spared no expense on the horses’ accommodations. It had central heat and air, and the spacious stalls were obviously cleaned frequently. The smell of horse manure was faint but nowhere near as offensive as it would be in a less-maintained stable. The overpowering odor here was of hay.
“They’re all beautiful animals,” said Nick.
“I’m afraid I don’t get to ride them often enough,” said John. “I’ve been forced to hire college students to exercise them daily.”
“You’re a busy man.”
“Yes, but busy men have to take
the time to enjoy the fruits of their labors. I’ve gotten much better at that since I married Isobel, but I still have a long way to go. I was so used to being a workaholic. It was the air I breathed. I didn’t think my life was normal unless I was constantly working. I hope you know when to quit.”
“I have to admit, I’m not there yet, either,” Nick told him. “I work too much, and I know it. I was recently offered a partnership in my firm and I haven’t accepted it yet because I know it means they’ll only work me harder.”
John laughed shortly. “You’ve got it. That would be their license to work you like a dog. I hear you’re a sports agent. Who are some of the athletes you work with?”
Nick noticed that the golden retrievers had found a spot in the corner of the stable and lain down. The mood was tranquil. Nick thought that odd. Didn’t horses get nervous around dogs? But the animals were comfortable in each other’s presence.
He had lost his nervousness, too. Maybe it was being in John Whitaker’s company that had a calming effect on those around him, animal and human alike. For certain, he was the most centered man he’d ever met. Did that kind of self-assurance come with age or with great wealth?
Nick named some of his clients. John nodded, recognizing the names. “I heard about Calvin Pruitt’s troubles. I hope he can find a way to save himself. He seems like a good man.”
“He is,” said Nick. “I’m still praying for him.”
Chapter 10
Erik and Ana arrived at around four in the afternoon to find Drusilla and Belana enjoying a cup of tea and conversation in the drawing room. Belana told them everyone else was on the grounds somewhere; where, she didn’t know.
After introducing his grandmother to Ana, whom she’d never met before, and a quick visit with his sister and grandmother, Erik left Ana with them and went to locate his father who he guessed was with the horses. His father always worried about them in cold weather even though they were housed in a climate-controlled facility.