by Karen Leabo
But Jenn had agreed to meet with Esther more out of curiosity than anything. If Esther was there to parrot Dennis’s threats, Jenn would quickly end the interview.
“Why are you doing this?” Esther said without preamble. “Why are you saying these horrible things about Dennis? I can understand you wanting your child, but to slander your stepfather like this, after all he’s done for you...I don’t understand.”
“The answer is real simple, Mama,” Jenn said. “I’m saying these things because they’re true. Dennis molested me for years. He hurt Tammy, too. Why do you think she ran away?”
“Tammy was a troubled girl who never recovered from losing her real father,” Esther said. “I don’t believe you, not a word. Don’t you think I’d know if my own daughters were being abused?”
“Apparently not.”
“He loved you both like you were his own girls,” she said, tears forming in her faded blue eyes. “He gave you everything your hearts desired. If he was secretly hurting you, why didn’t you tell someone?”
“He courted me with gifts and candy to buy my silence. But I did eventually get up the nerve to tell someone, a teacher at school. She didn’t believe me. I knew no one would believe me, not even my own mother.”
“That’s patently ridiculous.”
“Think, Mama. Remember those fishing trips Dennis used to take me on? Remember how I cried and didn’t want to go? Remember how he used to tuck me in at night? Didn’t you ever wonder why he spent so long doing that?”
“He was reading to you,” Esther said. But Jenn saw the tiniest crack in her mother’s veneer. She decided now was the time to play hardball.
“If Tammy were here, she could convince you.”
“Tammy’s dead. But if she were alive, I know she wouldn’t approve of you maligning your stepfather this way. Oh, I know they had their differences—”
“She’s not dead. She ran away and faked her death so she would never have to deal with Dennis again. That’s how frightened she was of him. She’s living in Birmingham with Hank Patternson, and they have three kids, grandchildren you’ve never even met.”
Esther stared at her daughter, her mouth hanging open. “Dennis is right,” she finally managed to say. “You’ve completely lost your mind, you’re delusional.”
Jenn should have expected as much. “Believe what you like,” she said dismissively. “You’ve been fooling yourself all these years, so why should things change now? If you have so little regard for me that you can’t even check out what I’ve told you, then Dennis has turned you completely against me. There’s no hope.” She stood and hit the buzzer that would bring her guard.
“Wait, Jenn—”
“Joe Andresi knows where Tammy is,” Jenn said. “Talk to him. If you can’t even do that much, I don’t want to see you again.” The door opened and Jenn sailed out of the room like a duchess instead of a prisoner.
Joe came to see her every day. His visits were the only bright spots in an otherwise dismal three weeks of bland, starchy meals, sleepless nights on her lumpy cot, quick, cold showers in the jail’s mildewed bathing facility. Yet his visits weren’t without tension.
He brought her news of Cathy, with whom he’d been allowed a few short, supervised visits. Resilient as always, the child was thriving in the midst of a large, patchwork family of foster kids under the wing of an older couple. The couple was kind and compassionate. They had a clean, wellcared-for home and Cathy had appeared freshly bathed and dressed in spotless clothes each time Joe had seen her.
“Does she miss me?” Jenn asked each time, seeking reassurance that her baby wouldn’t forget about her.
“Of course she does,” Joe would answer. On this particular visit, he’d brought her some pictures Cathy had colored. One of them showed a “family” with the stick figures labeled in letters she was only beginning to learn: “Cathy,” “Mama,” and “Mr. Andresi,” though the spelling of Joe’s name was butchered almost beyond recognition.
The picture made Jenn smile.
“That brown square thing is supposed to be my car,” Joe explained. “The trees are the woods where we went camping. This orange thing is the fire, and the red thing is a hot dog.”
“Very nice,” Jenn commented. Abruptly her throat closed, and she found herself close to tears yet again.
“Oh, Jenn, it’s going to be all right. We’ll all be together again.” He hugged her, then kissed her lightly on the lips.
“Ronnie says the case he’s building is shaky.”
“All right, let’s assume it is. The jury finds you guilty. The judge isn’t going to throw you into prison for the rest of your life. He’s a parent, too. He’ll give you two years. You’ll be out in six months. That’s almost nothing.”
“But I won’t have my baby. He’ll have her.”
Joe didn’t need for her to clarify who “he” was. “If Dennis gets her, there are lots of things we can do to protect her. But don’t worry about that now. Let’s concentrate on getting you acquitted.”
Jenn traced the pattern of the little stick girl with her finger and sighed. “I’m so afraid the courts will never give her back to me. I don’t appear very stable. I have no home, no job, I’m technically disabled—”
“You have a home, Jenn. With me.”
The offer was a tempting one. She managed a smile, then gave the answer she knew she had to. “That’s sweet of you, Joe, to offer me a roof over my head, but I don’t think the courts would look too kindly on me being a charity case, either. They’ll want to see some stability.”
“You don’t think marriage is stable enough?”
Chapter 15
The blank look on Jenn’s face wasn’t what Joe had expected in response to his marriage proposal. Then again, he hadn’t exactly planned to ask her to marry him; the words had sort of flown out of his mouth when the opportunity presented itself.
He looked nervously around the visitation room, thinking that he’d probably made a tactical error. These weren’t the sort of romantic environs a woman dreamed of when she thought about pledging away the rest of her life to a man.
When Jenn remained silent for a long time, Joe couldn’t contain himself any longer. “I want to marry you, Jenn,” he said, just to be sure she was clear on the concept.
“No, you don’t,” she finally responded.
Now it was his turn to stare in shocked surprise. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t want to marry me or anyone else, for that matter,” she said in a calm, rational voice that wavered only a fraction. “You already told me that you feel restricted by close family ties. You like to be free to pick up and go—”
“That may have been true before—”
“People don’t change that fast,” she argued.
“I did,” he said with absolute certainty. “I can’t imagine life without you, Jenn. Without you and Cathy.”
“You feel responsible for us.”
Joe couldn’t deny that. “Yes, I do. I want to take care of you for the rest of our lives.” Realizing how chauvinistic that sounded, he added, “I want us to care for each other. I want us to be the family in Cathy’s picture.”
“You want to help me stay out of jail, since you’re the one who helped put me here,” she said pragmatically. “I won’t let you sacrifice yourself that way, Joe. You’ve done enough.”
He sighed. This wasn’t going well at all. “I can’t deny that I blame myself, at least partly, for the spot you’re in. But I did what I thought was wise at the time. I used my best judgment, based on what I knew of the situation. Do you think I’d commit myself to a lifetime of marriage for that if I didn’t really want it?”
“You’ve known me only a couple of weeks,” she noted sensibly, though her arguments were starting to sound a bit desperate.
“That’s all it took, apparently. Look, Jenn, if you don’t want to marry me—”
“It’s not that,” she said quickly.
“Then what?”
> “I won’t let you marry me because you feel sorry for me.”
“Even if it would mean keeping Cathy?”
That gave her pause. “I don’t think there’s any way I can keep Cathy unless I can convince that jury that Dennis abused me. Let’s concentrate on that, and worry about the rest later. Please,” she added when he opened his mouth to argue further.
“All right,” he agreed reluctantly.
“We need proof that I’m telling the truth. We need Tammy.”
Joe forced himself to turn his mind to more practical considerations. “I’ve been working on her. The social worker has talked to her. But she’s one stubborn woman. She still refuses to discuss it.”
“I don’t understand that. Doesn’t she realize what her testimony would accomplish? That she can spare Cathy from the same nightmare we both lived through?”
“Think about it, Jenn. Think how hard it was for you to tell me about the abuse, even though you knew that telling me would most likely convince me to help you protect Cathy.”
“That’s true,” Jenn said, a thoughtful frown on her pale face.
He touched her hand in silent compassion. She was so brave, and she didn’t even realize it. “Don’t give up hope. I have a plan, but I need your help. Do you have any photo albums? Pictures of you and Cathy?”
Jenn immediately caught his train of thought. “That’s a great idea! If you can show Tammy that Cathy is a real little girl...” She paused. “I only have one photograph of Cathy. Mrs. Valenti took it in Seattle. It’s in one of my shopping bags.” She thought some more. “I had albums and videotapes before the accident, but I don’t know what happened to them.”
Dennis probably had them, Joe thought, but he didn’t mention the possibility. Pedophiles often had extensive photo libraries of children...which reminded him of something else. “Jenn, if your stepfather were to hide something in his house, do you have any idea where that might be?”
Seemingly perplexed, Jenn shrugged. “Any number of places. He has a desk in the library, always locked. But my guess is he wouldn’t hide something valuable at home, where Mama could find it. He’d hide it in his office. Or in a safedeposit box. I know he had at least one of those.”
“Okay. That gives me someplace to start.”
“You’re going to break into my parents’ house?” Jenn asked incredulously.
He smiled. “No, that’s not what I had in mind.”
She didn’t pursue the matter. “Has my mother talked with you?” she asked.
He nodded as he remembered the unsettling encounter. “I was completely honest with her. I hope that’s what you had in mind.”
“Yes. I tried to tell her about Tammy—about everything—but she didn’t believe me. I thought maybe you would be able to convince her.”
“She didn’t believe me, either, although I don’t know why I expected her to.” Still, even as she’d accused Joe of every vile thing she could think of, Joe had seen doubts in Esther Palmer’s eyes. He hadn’t given up on her, either.
Joe wished the news were better. He’d been hoping that Esther Palmer would jump at the chance to see the daughter she’d lost twenty-three years ago. Esther’s visit with Tammy might have killed two birds with one stone, by convincing Esther her husband was a pedophile, and convincing Tammy to join her sister’s cause. But he hadn’t talked either of them into meeting.
They didn’t have much more time. Dennis, anxious to push the trial through, had managed to get the trial onto the docket in record time.
“I’ll keep you posted, Jenn.” He stood abruptly, releasing her hand. “Right now I have to go.”
Jenn looked almost relieved, which did little for Joe’s ego. He wanted to tell her again that he loved her. But he wasn’t sure she’d even understood the first time he’d told her, and given the fact that she’d just firmly turned down his marriage proposal, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to risk anything else right now. If she didn’t return his love, if his feelings embarrassed her or made her uncomfortable, he’d want to go crawl into a cave and lick his wounds.
There were more urgent priorities anyway, he told himself.
He settled for kissing her, hotly, passionately. Jenn responded immediately, thrusting her tongue against his, pressing her body close. It was comforting for Joe to know that he could at least count on that response. It was distressing to think that he might not ever have the rest.
Jenn paced her small cell and twisted her hands together nervously. The lawyers were finishing up jury selection. In less than an hour, she would be escorted upstairs to a courtroom to face a judge and jury. Since she had no “nice” clothes, Ronnie Bloom had brought her a simple skirt and blouse to wear. She felt itchy in the unfamiliar clothes, stifled, even though her cell was uncomfortably cool.
The pacing was causing her leg to ache, so she sat down on the lumpy cot and went over again the points Ronnie wanted her to make, if she got the chance. But she found it difficult to concentrate. She kept thinking about Joe and his marriage proposal. Had she been crazy not to jump up and cry, “Yes, yes, yes!”?
She loved the man so much it was like a physical pain in her chest. He’d said he loved her—or at least, he’d mouthed the words from twenty feet away. But he hadn’t said it again, not even when he’d asked her to marry him. Maybe if he had...
No, that was blatantly unfair, she scolded herself. She hadn’t yet put her heart on the line by being honest about her own feelings. It wasn’t fair to expect Joe to be the one to always take the initiative.
So why hadn’t she told him? She should have just admitted that she loved him, and explained that because she loved him she wouldn’t saddle him with a jailbird wife or a marriage he didn’t truly want. She had no wish to be his “responsibility” any longer. If they were to have a future together, she wanted them to be equal partners. She didn’t intend to be some pitiful charity case, forever beholden.
But could she afford to think of her pride? If claiming that she had a home and a husband-to-be just waiting to welcome her and her daughter would help her cause, shouldn’t she take advantage of the situation?
She was so damn confused. She’d promised Joe that she wouldn’t let pride get in the way of telling him she wanted him. But it seemed that there was so much more involved than simple pride.
Her knee ached, and she absently bent it back and forth, reverting to one of her old physical therapy exercises, which she’d been neglecting lately.
She missed Cathy. At least Jenn would get to see her today in court, though she doubted she would be able to touch her daughter, hug her.
She would see Joe, too, though if Ronnie had his way, his friend wouldn’t testify. No matter what Joe said, the prosecutor would make it look like Jenn had seduced him to get him to switch loyalties. But he would testify, as a hostile witness for the prosecution.
Joe hadn’t visited over the last couple of days, Jenn thought glumly, though she supposed she couldn’t blame him. She’d said she wouldn’t marry him. Why would he come back for more punishment?
She had no doubts that he would move heaven and earth to free her and help her regain custody of Cathy. Beyond that, she just didn’t know. She might have driven him away forever. The thought caused a lump in her throat, which she viciously swallowed. She had to be strong and look competent in front of that judge.
When the appointed hour came, Jenn straightened her back and preceded her guard up the stairs, down a long corridor, and into an old-fashioned courtroom. Instantly she scanned the room for enemies and allies. She saw Ronnie, who smiled reassuringly; Dennis, who ignored her; and her mother, who glanced at Jenn with something akin to pity. Esther was sitting two rows behind Dennis, which Jenn thought odd.
Finally she saw the same weasely prosecutor who’d been present when she’d been magistrated. What was his name? Mark Simmons, that was it. He appeared slick and confident.
She didn’t see Joe. Jenn’s gaze swept the courtroom, but he really wasn’t there. She c
ouldn’t believe it. Hadn’t he been subpoenaed by the prosecution? She hoped he wasn’t planning to be in contempt of court to protect her, although she didn’t doubt that he would do that if he thought it would help.
The small courtroom was filled to capacity with curious townspeople and probably some reporters. Ronnie had told her that the case had garnered quite a bit of publicity. Neither she nor her lawyer had spoken directly to any reporters, but rumors were rampant. Everyone wanted to know why one of the town’s leading citizens and his stepdaughter were fighting tooth and nail over a child they both supposedly loved.
“Where’s Joe?” Ronnie whispered as soon as Jenn was seated beside him at the defendant’s table.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Ronnie shook his head. “No idea. I didn’t want him to testify, but it makes me nervous that he isn’t here. Wonder what he’s got up his sleeve.”
Jenn was just as baffled. She immediately pictured the worst—an accident, illness. She was sure nothing short of catastrophe would have kept Joe away. Her stomach, already queasy, promptly tied itself into a knot.
“Put it out of your mind for now,” Ronnie warned her. “I want the jury to see you paying attention to the here and now.”
She willed her mind to follow the proceedings, which began with brief opening statements. Theatrics were kept to a minimum, since the no-nonsense Judge Hustead had requested such. Despite the fact that he was Dennis’s buddy, he had a reputation as a fair and reasonable decision-maker, and Ronnie wasn’t at all displeased to have drawn him.
Hustead listened impassively, his bushy white eyebrows quivering every so often. The prosecution called Dennis Palmer to the stand. Dennis, sober and believable, related his version of the accident that took his son-in-law’s life and grievously injured Jenn, whom he continuously referred to as his “daughter” rather than stepdaughter, much to Jenn’s annoyance. He told of how Jenn, convinced she was dying, had begged him and her mother to take on Cathy’s legal custody, so that her future wouldn’t be in question. The document Jenn had signed, duly witnessed and notarized, was produced as State’s Exhibit A.