Protected (Jacobs Family Series Book 2)

by Vannetta Chapman

  Travis eyed his mother over the top of his tea. Unsweetened but with a touch of lemon, it hit the spot. “Were you serious?”

  “Absolutely. He was driving me crazy. I couldn’t get anything done with him underfoot. When he caught me reading ads from the Livingston online paper, he dusted off his golf clubs. Then Fred convinced him to join the walking geezers.”

  “Geezers, huh?” Travis stood up and joined her at the sink. After washing his hands, he began cutting carrots and radishes for the salad as his mother took the chicken breasts out of the oven, sprinkled parmesan cheese lightly on the top, then popped them back in. “You two are amazing.”

  “Why do you say that, dear?”

  “Most couples only bicker with each other. You two actually make healthy changes. It’s good to see.”

  “Don’t put us on any pedestal. We have our share of quarrels. Remember the time I locked him outside until he promised to paint the bathroom?”

  Travis laughed as he picked up a cucumber. “I do. I was seventeen and came home to find Pop turning over every brick that lined the front garden, trying to remember which one he’d hidden a key under.”

  “I made sure I had both door keys.”

  “What I don’t remember is why you didn’t just paint it yourself? You’ve done plenty of projects around here.”

  “I tried, but the walls in that room are nine feet tall. Your father insisted I wait on him. I had bought a china-blue paint, brushes, everything, and after three months I’d had it. Finally, I pulled out the ladder and started myself, but he came home and caught me—carted all the stuff back out to the garage. I looked at half painted walls for six months.”

  “So you locked him out.”

  “Yes, I did. It made more sense than arguing.”

  Travis leaned over and kissed the top of his mom’s head.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Because I think you’re great. I see a lot of obstinate men and women. Most of them aren’t as creative with their stubbornness.”

  “God did give me a sense of humor with my bull streak.”

  The dinner was exactly what Travis needed. Only a few times did his mind return to Erin Jacobs and Baby Joshua. If his parents noticed he occasionally lost the thread of the conversation, they didn’t say anything.

  After his dad left for choir practice, he helped his mom with the dishes. It was when he’d dried the last dish and was hanging up the towel that she brought up his inattention.

  “I should have known I couldn’t slip anything past you.”

  He pulled her into a hug, the top of her head not quite reaching his chin.

  “Parents are paid to notice these things, son. I’m assuming it’s your job, unless you’ve taken the time for a personal life and haven’t told me.”

  Travis laughed as he retrieved his keys. “My personal life—the boat and the guys—are fine.”

  “Can you talk about it?”

  His mom followed him out into the night. It was all so comforting that Travis wanted to stay. The sound of crickets filled the evening air. A basketball bouncing next door brought back the familiar urge to lose himself for an hour in the sport, in any sport.

  Unfortunately, he still wouldn’t have any answers for Erin after that hour. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

  “Must be a bad one.”

  “First time I’ve had a client ask for a different caseworker.” Travis leaned against his Chevy Blazer, stared at his mom, and tried to shrug it off.

  She put both her hands on her hips, which had rounded a bit since she turned sixty, and demanded, “Are they crazy? You’re the best caseworker in Polk County.”

  “I’m glad you’re not prejudiced.”

  “They don’t have to believe me. Have them ask your boss—the tall woman.”

  “Director Moring.” Travis had to smile at the look of outrage on his mother’s face. He should have known she would go to bat for him.

  “Exactly. She’ll tell them you’re the best.”

  “Actually she assigned me to the case.”

  “Well, there you have it. What kind of fool—”

  “Actually I think I’ve somehow stepped off on the wrong foot with this new mom…” Travis’s words trailed off as he watched his mom’s head jerk up.

  She stepped closer, put her hand on his arm, and peered up at him in the darkness.

  “I don’t suppose you’d be talking about the younger Jacobs girl?”

  Travis felt his jaw tighten so that an ache started up his molars. “Mom, you know I can’t talk about my clients. It’s a violation of HIPPA laws—”

  “Stop. You don’t have to tell me anything. Besides, I’ve already heard most of the details through the church’s prayer chain. Those girls have had a hard life.”

  “There are two?”

  His mom mirrored his position, leaning against her red Ford Fusion and crossing her arms. “Dana’s the oldest. Erin’s the youngest. Didn’t you go to school with one of them?”

  Travis frowned and ran his thumb over his bottom lip. “I knew her name sounded familiar, but Erin is very young—twenty-two.”

  “You probably knew Dana.”

  Travis shook his head. “We had a small class, four hundred kids. I don’t remember her.”

  “Well she wasn’t an athlete, and you were all about sports in those days.”

  “If she’s as beautiful as her sister, I think I would remember her.” The moment the words escaped his mouth, Travis felt the heat crawl up his neck.

  His mother’s gentle laughter spilled out into the night, mingling with the neighbor’s children and the slight breeze in the trees. The tension in Travis’s shoulders began to ease, though he still had no idea what he would do about Erin’s request.

  “They were pretty girls in a simple kind of way. And their foster parents were good people. Jules and Nina Brown went to our church.”

  It was Travis’s turn to be surprised. “I remember Mr. Brown. He taught my Sunday school class a few times.”

  “I expect he did.”

  Travis stared into the night, trying to put the pieces together. “Didn’t they—”

  “Yeah. They were killed in a car accident about a year ago. You were down in Florida visiting your brother at the time.”

  “Wow. And they were the girls’ foster parents?”

  “Had been since they were very young.”

  Travis waited for his mom to continue, but she didn’t. It wasn’t like her to hold back. He knew there was a reason for her reticence, but he couldn’t resist asking.

  “Why were the girls in the foster care system?”

  His mother sighed, but the night had grown too dark for him to read her expression. “I don’t know if it’s my place to share that family’s pain. It happened such a long time ago.”

  “Mom, this client of mine has petitioned to adopt an infant she found.”

  She repositioned herself against the car. “Someone called today from the church—said there had been a baby found. Your father took the message. I sent a donation over, but I didn’t realize immediately it was Erin who found the child. Then the phone started ringing off the hook. You know how a small town is. People are worried about her.”

  “It’s my job to determine if she can provide a stable and healthy environment. For the next ninety days, I’m going to have to visit her at home and work.”

  “The ARK,” his mom said softly.

  “Today she asked me to assign her a new caseworker, preferably a female. I believe there’s absolutely no grounds for her request. Director Moring agrees and wants me to remain on the case.”

  Travis stared out at the streetlights that punctuated the darkness before continuing his thought.

  “I’m wondering if this particular case—this woman—might have a problem with men and male relationships. If she does, then I’m not sure I can approve placement of an infant boy permanently in her home. Obviously, I need to dig further into her history based o
n what you’ve said.”

  Travis paced up and down between the two cars, his concerns over the case taking more legitimate form as he verbalized his thoughts. He stopped and turned back toward his mom. “If there’s anything you can tell me, anything that will help me make a good decision for Baby Joshua, then I would appreciate it.”

  His mom was silent for so long, Travis almost gave up hope. When she finally did speak, he could tell she had slipped back in time.

  “You would have been eleven when it happened. I didn’t know Mrs. Jacobs—the girls’ mother—very well. Of course, Livingston was smaller then, and they lived on the edge of town. She came into church a few times. Always sat at the back. I remember her bringing the older girl—Dana. I also recall the first time I noticed she was pregnant with Erin.”

  She pulled in a deep breath, and Travis felt a shiver go down his spine as she pushed on, unearthing Dana and Erin’s story.

  “Part of the reason it’s so hard to tell is because we all blamed ourselves afterwards. Asked what we could have done to stop it. As a community you want to think you would notice. As a church, we’re commanded to be a family. We should have intervened, but we didn’t. We were all busy with our own lives.”

  “What happened to Erin’s family, Mom?”

  “After Erin was born, Mrs. Jacobs stopped coming to church at all. One of those things where people slip away and you don’t really notice—in the front door of the church, out the back. It’s one of our biggest sins.”

  He moved beside her, stood shoulder to shoulder with her, and waited.

  “When it happened, Erin was two or three, so Dana must have been closer to ten. You can check the papers for the exact dates. The father was a heavy drinker. Everyone knew it. He’d been seen in town overdoing it, even picked up a couple of times and made to sleep it off in the city jail. Overall he wasn’t a mean drunk though. At least that’s what we told ourselves. Then…”

  She fiddled with the glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, and Travis felt the hairs along his arms stand on end. He pictured Erin’s brown eyes staring into his, the way she had run across the waiting room to him. He tried to envision her as a three-year-old child, and the image cut him like a chisel piercing his lung.

  “Then what?” Travis had heard of and even witnessed many instances of abuse. He steeled himself against one more.

  “Then one night he killed her, killed the girls’ mother. Somehow Dana was able to get Erin out of the house and run with her into the woods. Mr. Jacobs followed them there, but he passed out before he could hurt them. I believe it was a miracle. He would have killed them too.”

  Travis realized he was clenching his car keys when the metal pierced his skin. He forced his hand to relax, took a steadying breath, and let the information sink in. Tried to reconcile what he’d heard from his mother with the young woman who had stood beside him in court a few hours earlier.

  “Dana managed to dash back to the house and call the police. They found the girls there with the mother’s body.”

  “And the father?” Travis heard the hard edge behind his words. It was the voice he used when he had to testify in the courtroom, when he had to keep his anger in check.

  “He’s been in the state pen in Huntsville ever since. Convicted of manslaughter.”

  “I had no idea.” He looked again at the basketball goal, longed for something, anything to throw—or punch. “None of this showed up on Erin’s preliminary report. It wouldn’t though since it happened while she was a minor.”

  “A dozen families from our church would have stepped up and taken those girls. Jules and Nina wanted them most though. They’d never had children of their own.”

  “Did they love them?”

  “Oh my, yes. As if they were God’s prize for forty-five years of work on this earth.”

  Travis again ran his hands through his hair. “How could I not remember any of this?”

  “You never paid much attention to the news unless it had to do with sports.” His mom squeezed his hand as he opened the door to his Blazer and rolled down the window.

  “So she has a sister here in town?” Travis asked.

  “No. Dana left as soon as she turned eighteen. First for college, then for a government job in the west. Erin stayed with Jules and Nina.”

  “Then they were killed.”

  “Yeah.”

  A mourning dove called out as the hard facts of Erin’s life settled around them.

  “I don’t remember seeing her at church,” Travis said.

  “No. I don’t suppose Erin ever took to church much. She’d come dutifully at Easter and Christmas with Jules and Nina.”

  “Until they died.”

  “I haven’t seen her since.”

  Travis nodded and started his Blazer. “Tell Pops to take it easy. Thanks, Mom.”

  “Sure, honey.”

  Travis drove home more slowly than usual, trying to piece it all together. His life had been relatively calm with few upsets along the way, unless you figured in the occasional dislocated shoulder or sprained ankle.

  Why was it some people, like Erin, suffered not one but two such tragedies in their lifetime?

  And how was he, Travis Williams, supposed to decide if she now possessed what it would take to be a fit mother?

  Thirteen

  Derrick was glad he had switched to Scotch and water hours before. Beautiful day on the gulf, there was no reason not to. Tara had begged him to take her back to shore, but he wasn’t cutting his trip short for her.

  Now she sat across from him, arms crossed and a familiar stubborn look on her face. She’d never change, and he’d been a fool to think it was possible. Then she started in again about the kid, and something inside of him snapped.

  He lunged for her, but she jumped away at the last second.

  “I told you to shut up about that.”

  “Why? So you can ignore your responsibilities? It’s not too late. I can get him back. I can tell the police it was all a mistake and that—”

  He caught her before she could finish the sentence, and then she was clawing at his hands, trying to remove them from her throat. He squeezed tighter. At least she wasn’t nagging him anymore. Maybe she’d pass out and he could have some peace.

  With the last of her strength, Tara raised a knee and rammed it into him.

  Derrick staggered backward, anger turning his vision red.

  Then the game was on, like so many times before. If he wasn’t so angry, he might actually enjoy it. On their second lap around the boat, she slipped, grabbed at the rigging and missed. There was a splash, and then he was staring down into the water. The inkiness of the waves merged with the blackness of the night.

  “Tara?”

  He collapsed onto the bench, reaching for his drink. Had she even been here? Had he imagined the entire thing? Then he looked at the seat opposite him and saw her hat.

  Fourteen

  On Friday morning, Erin looked up from cleaning out the llama’s stable area and bit down hard on her lip.

  She’d been going over Dana’s e-mails in her mind. Dana had always had a knack for looking at things logically. After her initial shock at becoming an aunt, she’d followed with a short but effective list of things Erin could do to insure cooperation from a government agency.

  Leave it to Dana to think within the lines.

  She’d also offered to come home early—to which Erin had immediately replied no.

  Then she’d insisted both she and Ben would both be there for the formal hearing, to which Erin had gleefully replied yes.

  Things were looking up… until Erin actually did look up and had to bite down on her lip.

  It was the one way she knew how to keep from saying words she should not say in front of Joshua. Even at two months—and two months seemed correct based on the baby book she’d poured over—children absorbed the meaning behind your words.

  According to the book, children were like sponges.

 
They took in everything. Absolutely everything.

  Frightening.

  When she was eleven she’d brought home a baby duck. She’d gone off to school the next day and returned to find the duckling sitting at her foster-mother’s feet, watching her wash dishes. After that the duck had followed Nina around like a shadow.

  Doc had explained to her the concept of imprinting all those years ago, and Erin found herself thinking about it again—thinking about the duckling and Nina, Doc, and Joshua.

  From the way Joshua watched her expression now, she suspected the baby book was spot-on. That book had given her nightmares.

  Who had donated it to her?

  Not her most immediate problem.

  No, her current trouble was walking toward her barn in khaki trousers, white dress shirt, and another too loud tie. She leaned against her pitchfork. How many men dressed like that?

  “I’ve been in the animal business too long,” she muttered to Joshua. “Or not long enough. Depends on how you look at it.”

  Joshua kicked his feet, which were covered with frog shoes. He blew a bubble when the frogs rattled, which they did each time he banged them against the car seat. Great invention—toys disguised as shoes. The monkey hat perched atop his head temporarily erased the frown from Erin’s face.

  “He must have found a sale on khaki pants. Why can’t he wear blue jeans like a normal person?” Erin thought of hollering out so Williams would know what stall she was in, then decided he’d find her eventually. Why rush it?

  By the time he did, she’d worked up quite a sweat punching the fork into the hay, picturing the leather seats of his Blazer. She knew it was childish and unfounded, but it did wonders to ease her stress. Best of all she didn’t have even a hint of an anxiety attack like she’d had in his office.

  “Good morning, Erin, Joshua.”

  Her heart rate had kicked up a notch as he walked into the barn, but no doubt it was from the exertion of cleaning out the stall. “Good morning, Travis.”