“What did you say to Father Hotty down there?”
“Not much. He introduced me to his brother, Raymond. He looks just like him close-up, too. They’re Irish twins.”
Albany sat back on the bleacher, putting her elbows on the bleacher behind her. “Maybe that was why your subconscious mind led you to here. You needed to meet that brother of his.”
“Maybe. But why would the brother be significant?”
“You tell me. You tell me.”
I scratched my forehead, remembering that there was something that Jack, or Mick, rather, said to me in the car. Something that I blew off, but it stuck with me.
As I watched Father Mathews dribble down the court, fake out his defender and pass the ball, I studied his arms. The tattoos. Aside from the fact that it was strange to see a priest with so much ink, I knew that there was another reason why I was examining them.
I felt more and more frustrated as I tried, and failed, to access why those damned tattoos were so significant to me. I leaned back, so that I was sitting right next to Albany, who was also leaned back against the bleacher behind us, and swung my legs.
I studied Raymond. I narrowed my eyes as I saw that he had a stiff posture and he almost looked like a coiled snake. He was intense, very intense – he studied the players and the refs, and, more than once, he went over to the refs to chew them out for one thing or another. I saw him as being somebody who had a bad temper. I could tell that. There was something about how he was pacing around the floor, and shouting at the players and refs all the time, that led me to believe that he was somebody who didn’t want to take much crap from anyone.
Father Mathews was much the same, really. I could tell that he had a temper on him as well. But his brother seemed to be a piece of work.
“What are you looking at, Harper? You really seemed focused on something.”
“I am focused on something.” I took a deep breath. “But I’m not sure exactly what I’m focused on.”
I shook my head, trying to clear out the cobwebs. “Hey, Albany, I’m going to get up and stretch my legs. You can come with me or not.”
“I’ll hang out here,” she said.
I nodded my head and then headed out the gym door.
I decided to call Heather. “How are things?” I asked her.
“Good. I just arrived. Steven is excited, to say the least. Do you want to talk with him? I got here and he was all ready to go. He seems anxious to get back.”
“No, that’s okay. When do you think that you’ll be getting back?”
Just then, though, I heard Steven’s voice. “Ms. Ross, this is Steven. I can’t thank you enough for doing this. I didn’t think that you would come through. I hoped that you would, but I never thought that you would. Heather tells me that you have an apartment for me to move into. Is that right?”
“Yes. I rented one out for you. It’s in Mid-Town. It’s not much, it’s just a studio, but I think that you’ll like it.”
“I can bring Stella, right?”
“Right.” I grinned. “Hey, and call me Harper, okay?”
“Harper. Thanks so much, Harper. Here’s Heather again.”
She got back on the line. “Harper? You there?”
“Yes, I’m here. You’ll be back when?”
“In a couple of days. It takes awhile to cross the mountains, of course. I’ve never driven cross-country like that before. It was fun.”
“I’ll see you then.”
I hung up the phone and I contemplated my next move. Was I going to introduce Steven to Mick? Would that freak him out to see him, considering that Steven was the identical twin to Jackson? Would that freak him out so much that perhaps Jack would come back, or a different alter?
I needed to be careful. Mick was right – if the other alters were unpredictable, that would be too much of a risk to try to summon them. Somehow, I knew that, if I introduced Steven to them, it would probably cause a break. That was the last thing that I wanted at that point.
I went back to the stand. “The game’s over,” Albany said. “Father Mathews’ team won. The Grizzlies won. He’s an amazing player, really.”
“Yeah.” I stared at him. He was standing next to his brother, his hand on his brother’s shoulder. He was laughing, but his brother was standing perfectly straight. He didn’t appear to have the same easy gait as Father Mathews.
A coiled snake. That image kept coming into my head.
“Let’s go,” I told Albany. “I think that I need to do a bit of research when I get home.”
Albany and I got up and walked out of the gym. I waved to Father Mathews, who waved back and smiled.
There was something weird about this whole scenario.
My subconscious mind knew what it was. I just wished that my conscious mind did as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I went home and saw my two kids and paid Sophia as she left. “Abby,” I said, as she came up and hugged me. “I need to talk to you. I need to run a few things by you.”
I went in and sat down on the couch and patted the spot next to me. Abby came and sat down. Rina, for her part, was sitting in the chair in front of the television, and she made no move to greet me as I came in the door. She was sitting there with a TV tray in front of her and she was eating a bowl of cereal.
I felt guilty. I was at the basketball game while I left the girls at home with Sophia. I knew that Sophia fed them, but I also knew that Rina was increasingly getting annoyed with me for not being home for dinner.
As much as I thought, in my head, that I was going to someday make it up to her – that I was going to someday start coming home before 6 – I knew that I didn’t want to lie to myself. This was my life. It was a life of chasing witnesses and doing legal research and seeing people in jail. It was a crazy life of constantly trying to juggle the demands of clients, opposing counsel and judges. It was anything but an 8-5 job, as much as I wished that I could work fewer hours and focus more on the girls.
“What did you want to talk about, mom?”
“Yeah, mom, what did you want to talk to Abby about?” Rina asked from her position on the leather chair. “I hope you want to talk to her about that scumbag James, because the whole school now thinks that Abby is a slut.”
I groaned. That was the last thing that I wanted to hear. “Abs, is this true? Is that rumor getting out of control?”
“Yes,” she said, little tears forming in her eyes. “It is.”
I bit my lower lip. “Well, I’m just going to have to call his mother. She needs to hear about this. And I think that she’s going to have to come over tonight. This is getting out of hand.”
Abby didn’t try to stop me and I saw that Rina was looking at me with interest, but didn’t say a word. I took their acquiescence to mean that they both were on board with my doing things this way, and I was heartened.
I didn’t know what I was doing with these girls. I was fumbling around in the dark, really, trying to do the right thing, but never quite knowing what that right thing was. This whole Abby situation had been in the back of my mind. I had hoped that it would resolve itself, and that the whole rumor would die down. I guess I was naïve about that.
“Anne-Marie,” I said when I called James’ mother. “This is Harper Ross. I need to speak with you. I was hoping that you were free tonight. I need to nip something in the bud.”
“Oh, hey, Harper,” she said. “I can come over tonight. I’ll just ask Robert to baby-sit James.”
Robert was her husband. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why, whenever Anne-Marie wanted to go somewhere, she had to have Robert “baby-sit” James. Why wasn’t it his responsibility to watch that kid, the same as hers? Why was it that when Robert was watching James for Anne-Marie, it was some special thing, where Anne-Marie was just expected to watch their son?
I shook my head. I could never understand why the woman was always stuck with the “second shift,” which referred to all the child-care and house
care that women had to do once they got home from their jobs, while men were still expected to just be able to come home, crack open a beer and watch television. Anne-Marie was a dentist, her husband Robert was a software engineer, and both worked as many hours as the other. Yet, whenever I called her, she was making dinner or helping James with his homework, while speaking quietly because she didn’t want to interrupt Robert’s program on TV.
“Good,” I said. “I’ll see you about 8?”
“See you then.”
I got off the phone. “Okay, Buttercup, Anne-Marie is on her way here.” I hesitated. “I hope that Anne-Marie can just get James to do the right thing without threatening him. But I also think that that kid needs to have the fear of God put into him. I mean, not the fear of God so much as the fear of the State of Missouri slapping him hard with a…” I shut my mouth. Abby was too young to understand what it was that I was prepared to do.
“With a what?” Abby asked.
“Nothing, Buttercup. Nothing.”
ANNE-MARIE ARRIVED RIGHT at 8. I had a glass of wine ready for her, and I made myself an iced tea. I usually always had wine on hand for guests, and I knew that she would appreciate the gesture. She worked just as hard as I did, so I knew that her time with her friends was her time to relax.
She gave me a hug and I gave her the glass of wine. “Oh, thanks,” she said. “Where do you want to talk?”
“Let’s go into my sun room,” I said. “Away from prying ears.”
Rina heard me say that and she rolled her eyes. “Okay, mom, go and gossip about Abby behind closed doors. Way to have open communication.”
Rina was forever throwing shrinky terms like “open communication” at me, which was a product of our counseling sessions that we went to before she officially came to live with me. She remembered bits and phrases from those sessions and, once in awhile, she parroted them back to me.
“I know, Rina, but I need to speak with Anne-Marie alone. I’ll invite you guys in when we’re ready.”
Anne-Marie and I went into the sun room and she sat down, pulling the crocheted blanket, that hung over the leather chair in there, over her legs. “This is such a cozy room,” she said, admiring the fireplace and the large windows that looked out into the backyard. “You’re so lucky to be living here.”
Anne-Marie and her husband lived in a newer area of town, where the trees were small and spindly and the houses were enormous and expensive. It was a new development on the edge of town, which wasn’t far from where I lived, but much pricier. “Yeah, I love this area. It’s so close to everything, but far away enough.”
She took a sip of her wine. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”
“It’s about your son.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, my son. Egads, I wished that we could possibly have a conversation that didn’t involve him, but I know that’s impossible. To say that I’ve been having problems with him would be an understatement, unfortunately.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Oh, he’s been acting out in school. Getting in trouble with the principal, slipping grades, getting into fights. I have no idea why he’s been acting this way. I’m at my wit’s end.”
I felt for her, and I didn’t want to pile on. But I knew that I had to. “Oh, well, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I need to, because James needs to make things right.” I took a sip of my iced tea. “There’s no way to tell you this except just to come out with it. But James has been spreading rumors about Abby. He told his friends that he and Abby have slept together. Obviously, that has caused a great deal of stress for her. Rina just told me that kids are calling her a slut behind her back. I need for James to make this right and to tell everyone that he lied.”
I didn’t even know if having James tell people the truth was going to make things right, but it had to help. In a way, I knew that the damage was done. Whoever said that “a lie travels around the world before the truth gets its pants on” was right.
“Oh, no,” she said. “No.” She shook her head and sighed. “That’s all I need to hear.” She took a sip of her wine. “Did you ever think that your life would come to this? I mean, I’m not saying anything about you. I guess I’m more talking about me. I never thought that my life would come to this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, you get married and have a kid. You think that everything's always going to go just great. You have a decent job and a decent education, and your husband has a master’s degree and a fantastic job, too. You have the kid and you just imagine that you have it all. The kid breast-feeds and he eats and poops and you never think about what’s going to happen when he hits puberty and starts acting like a spoiled brat. You never think about those things as you’re staring at your little angel in his crib, sleeping peacefully. Then one day, boom, you wake up and you don’t recognize yourself anymore. You don’t recognize your husband anymore, and you certainly don’t recognize your angel anymore, because your angel is suddenly causing all these headaches and issues.”
She looked sad, so I put my hand on her arm sympathetically. “Believe me, I know where you’re coming from. I have a demanding job, too, and two tweens under my roof, one of whom seems to hate me every other day and love me every other day. But my Abby really has been a little doll. She hasn’t given me a lick of trouble. Now she’s suffering at school, and I need for it to stop. What James has done to her is really one of the worst forms of bullying. Again, I’m sorry for having to pile on when you’re already having so many issues with him.”
She shook her head. “No, no. You need to pile on. If James is saying those things about Abby, then, you’re right, he needs to make it right. I just don’t know how to find out if he actually does the right thing. Who is to say that he’s going to tell me that he told everyone the truth, but he actually didn’t at all?”
“Abby will tell me. So will Rina. Rina is more connected in that school than Abby. She’s a part of all the gossip. She’ll know in one day if the rumor dies down and the kids at school start talking about how James lied instead of how Abby is a slut.” I furrowed my brow. “And by the way, why is it that the kids aren’t talking about James behind his back? If he and Abby had sex, like he is saying happened, why is that only Abby is getting hammered for it and not James?”
Anne-Marie chuckled. “Good question, but it’s the age-old one, isn’t it? Girls who sleep around get called a slut, while the boys who sleep around are called a stud. Not that anybody is calling James a stud, that I know about, but you’re right. It’s such a double-standard. It’s 2017, for the love of all that’s holy. It’s time for people to treat girls and boys the same, but they won’t.”
At that, Rina knocked on the door. “Mom,” she said, “can we come in?”
“Sure. Come on in.”
The two girls walked in. “So,” Rina said, looking at Anne-Marie. “Is James going to stop spreading that lie about my sister and tell everyone the truth, or isn’t he?”
Anne-Marie smiled and then smiled at me. “Yes, Rina, I’m going to straighten him out when I get home.”
I bit my lower lip. “Rina, Abby, I just need to speak with Anne-Marie in private for a few more minutes. We’ll come out in a few minutes, I promise.”
Rina mumbled and grumbled, but she went back into the living room and closed the doors behind her.
I took another sip of my tea and Anne-Marie took a sip of her wine. “Listen, Anne-Marie,” I said. “I wanted to just give you a heads-up. But the State of Missouri has a very specific statute regarding statutory rape. Basically, any kind of sexual contact with a child under the age of 14 is considered to be first degree statutory rape, no matter the age of the other child. Now, I’m only telling you this in case James gets defiant about doing the right thing. There is nothing like threatening a child with the fear of prosecution to get him to do the right thing.”
She looked at me strangely. “Really? That’s the law? I thought tha
t one of the kids had to be over the age of 21 for that to be against the law.”
“No, that’s something different. If one of the children is under the age of 17, and an adult, over the age of 21, has sex with that person, that’s second-degree statutory rape. But first degree statutory rape involves a child under the age of 14, and it doesn’t matter how old the perpetrator is in that case.”
“Oh, wow. You mean that, if my son and your daughter actually did it, they would be guilty of committing a felony?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what that means. I don’t think that it’s usually prosecuted like that, though, unless one of the parents is motivated to punish the other kid.”
She nodded her head. “Good to know. Well, okay, then, maybe I’ll use that threat to make him do the right thing.” She sighed. “Oh, Harper, I just don’t know. Parenting is hard, you know? You try to do the right thing by your kid. You try to give them every bit of guidance, every bit of wisdom. But a kid is going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to act like a little shit if that’s what’s in his will, and it’s so hard to figure out how to stop it.”
“Don’t I know that.”
“Yeah, I guess you do. Not as much as I do, though.” She looked at the clock. “Well, it’s getting late. Thanks for the glass of wine, Harper. I’ll give you a call when I speak with James. And get that little Rina to report back to you what the kids are saying. We’ll figure this out, one way or another.”
“I know,” I said. “And we need to quick. The sooner we nip this in the bud, the better off Abby is going to be.”
I only hoped that it wasn’t too late. Abby’s reputation was going to be irreparable if it went on much longer.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Two days later, Steven and Heather made it back to my office, safe and sound, and I gave Heather a check for $3,000, which she gratefully accepted. “Harper,” she said, “I found an apartment, too, in the art gallery area. I’ll be having a house-warming party, and we’re going to be doing it up right. Kicking up our heels. Don’t worry, there won’t be too many freaks there. Just Steven.” She nudged him and he grinned.
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 84