He was her professor. Maybe she didn’t feel right coming to him with personal problems. Maybe that was why she always left the pursuit up to him.
Not sure how clear his thinking was at that point, Cal didn’t analyze any further. He’d found a valid reason to call.
She’d failed to pick up two other calls from him that day. He looked away from the window, not wanting to see if her shadow appeared on the other side of the shade. If she was even in the living room.
Or home at all.
“Hello?”
He slid down in the seat to a more comfortable position. “Hi.” He gave her a chance to take control of the conversation. To tell him why she hadn’t answered his calls. Or returned them. To tell him she couldn’t talk. To give him any indication of what was going on with her. Silence hung on the line.
“How are you?”
“Okay.” And then, “Fine.”
“How did it go today?”
“Good. I guess. The judge took the matter under advisement. He set another hearing two weeks from today, at which time he might or might not call on further testimony and he might or might not render his decision.”
“At least you have a fighting chance.”
“Yeah.”
Mind racing for something to give her, Cal said, “You think he could have been giving you all time to work this out on your own?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He didn’t say so. I just don’t think he was ready to make such a serious decision in an hour’s time. I figure he needs to think about ramifications or possible solutions he might be able to offer.”
“So you definitely have hope that you could win?”
“I don’t know.”
His air conditioner was running hard. Cal turned it off. “You sound different.” She was concerning the hell out of him.
“I think I am different,” she said. “I have a new perspective, I guess. Anyway, I don’t think I’m going back to court.”
“What?” Surely she wasn’t thinking about taking Sammie and running. He dismissed the thought almost as soon as it formed. Morgan wouldn’t run from trouble.
“I think my folks are right.” Her words shocked the feeling right out of him. “Hearing them in court this morning, listening to them as I imagine the judge would hear them…I think if I were in his position I’d grant them full custody. And if I really think that, and I really love my son, and I really mean it when I say I will do anything for him, then I have to turn him over to them.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I think I do. I’ve spent this day looking back over my life, over my choices, and I can’t honestly tell you whether I went into court today to fight for myself or fight for my son. I couldn’t bear to lose Sammie. I was so certain I was right, I wasn’t really listening to Sammie. Or anyone else. I was just like my father.
“And what kind of life am I giving my son? He ran away that Friday, but he could just as easily have been kidnapped. There was one man out there ready to take advantage of an opportunity to hurt my father. I’m sure there are more. And how do we know when any of them might see an opportunity and act on it? Beyond that, Sammie could be living with every opportunity at his disposal and I’m depriving him because I don’t get along with my father. Daddy’s a chauvinist. He’ll be different with Sammie than he was with me. Value him more because he’s his heir.”
“Sammie’s been around ten years. Your father has had the opportunity to spend as much time with him as he wanted, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How much time has he spent with him?”
Morgan didn’t reply and Cal thought maybe he was getting through to her until she said, “Anyway, I can tell you tonight that from now on all of my fight will be for Sammie, and only Sammie.”
He wanted to tell her that it always had been, but figured she wouldn’t believe him. She’d had a rough day. Hearing your own parents discredit you in court was enough to get anyone down.
There had to be a solution here. He racked his brain and couldn’t find it. “Have you told your folks yet?”
“No. I called them but they didn’t pick up. They have season tickets to Little Broadway and I think there was a show tonight. Anyway, I left a message on Mom’s cell telling her I wanted to speak with them.”
Thank God. They had time.
“I plan to call them in the morning.”
“Wait.”
“There’s really no point, Cal. I have to do what’s best for Sammie. I won’t be able to live with myself if I don’t.”
“Do you think spending time with Frank is best for Sammie? The training? The tryouts?”
“Of course.”
“And do you think your parents will facilitate that?”
Her pause was answer enough. “I can ask them.”
“But what if you do and they say no? If you’ve given over Sammie’s care to them, you won’t be able to do anything to help him with that.”
It wasn’t about his father. Or basketball. But he used them because he knew that she’d been so pleased with the change in Sammie since he’d been introduced to Frank.
“You’re right. It would kill Sammie to stop now. He’s finally feeling happy about something in his life. In control.”
“I want to see you,” Cal said then, quickly, before she could close the small chink he’d made in her stoicism. In her certainty.
“It’s… Cal… I mean, Sammie’s in bed asleep. I can’t go out. And we have class in the morning. And it’s late and…”
She hadn’t said no. That was all the encouragement he needed.
“I’m parked outside your house,” he told her. “If I come to the door will you let me in?”
“Well, yes, but…”
He was out of his car and at the door before she could complete whatever objection she’d been trying to make.
* * *
MORGAN WASN’T DRESSED for company. Cal was tapping lightly on her door before she had a chance to tell him so. She’d pulled her hair up into a ponytail, thinking that she’d soak in a bubble bath, with a cup of chamomile tea in an attempt to relax enough to sleep.
She’d made no effort whatsoever to make the hairstyle look good, as evidenced by the bulges and loose tendrils that had escaped the elastic band. She was dressed in old cutoff sweat shorts and a tank top left over from her pregnancy days. And she’d cried off all her makeup in the glen.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone,” she said, with a brief glance down at her bare feet as she pulled open the door.
Cal, on the other hand, looked perfect. The knot in his tie was, even this late at night, still nicely in place.
And his feet, she noted, were properly encased in freshly shined shoes.
Things got weird the second she looked him in the eye. His gaze was naked, exposing an emotion that was completely unfamiliar to her.
“I had to see you,” he said.
She stood back, letting him into her home, into her pain. And she waited.
He opened his arms. She walked into them. And settled against the rock-hard solidness of his body as though she’d been there before. And belonged. This was nothing like her fantasies about Cal Whittier. All she needed at the moment was comfort, a sense that she was not alone. That she could stand and survive.
Unaware of time passing, Morgan held on to Cal until she felt more like herself. And then, she led him silently to her living room and sat on the couch.
Cal took the seat next to her. Close, but leaving enough space.
“First, let me be clear about one thing. I’m here tonight as your friend, Morgan. What happens tomorrow in class is completely separate and apart from tonight.”
She already knew that, but nodded because he seemed to need her agreement.
“I just don’t want you to feel like you have to accept my presence or my questions or anything else because I’m your teacher.”
“If I felt that way, I’d report you to the university board,” she said. Morgan had no problem with sticking up for herself. Her problem lay in knowing when she needed to do so.
His grin was kind of disarming. “Okay, good. You sound more like the Morgan I know.”
She felt more like her, too, which was nice even if it served no purpose. How she felt didn’t change facts.
“Please tell me what your parents said today.”
Uh-uh.
“I can’t help if I don’t know what we’re up against.”
It was the “we” that did it. It took all of her strength not to cry when she heard that “we.” “It wasn’t good,” she told him. But there was no sense in hiding the truth from him, either. She was who she was. Or had been who she’d been.
She was a Lowen and that made her child vulnerable to crazy people. She had neither the resources nor the inherent mistrust in humanity necessary to keep him safe.
She tended to trust people. Naturally. Without conscious thought. She looked for the bad—her parents were wrong to think she didn’t—but she didn’t always see the bad.
If Cal was her friend, he’d still sit there when she was done spewing all of the words that kept playing like a cruel rerun through her mind. And if he wasn’t, then his opinion didn’t matter, anyway.
And so she told him, almost verbatim, the things her parents had told the judge that morning.
“It wasn’t easy for my mother, Cal. And I know it wasn’t a walk in the park for my father, either. He hated to put our private business out there. And, I’m sure, to give up control of his family to an impartial third party. He’s doing this because he really believes it’s for the best. My dad’s cold and sometimes heartless, but he doesn’t ever set out to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. He doesn’t go out of his way to hurt them. He just doesn’t seem to have any compunction about squashing people in the process of doing what he believes is best.”
As she fell silent, Cal watched her. She knew he was thinking. A lot. But he didn’t share any of his thoughts with her. He was still there, though.
“What did you tell the judge in rebuttal?” he asked.
“That every single incident my mother relayed happened, pretty much as she told it. And I told him that with the exception of one major incident, they all took place prior to Sammie’s birth.
“I told him that I did have a tendency to trust the good in people and admitted to a situation that recently happened at the day care. It was for that open house I told you about that took place the Saturday that Sammie came home. A woman had assured me she was handling all of the decorations and so I didn’t follow up with her. I trusted her to have them done and ended up staying up all night the night before Sammie went missing to get them done. As a consequence, I didn’t listen as well as I should have that Thursday night when Sammie tried one more time to get me to give him more freedom.
“But the truth is, Cal, even if I’d heard Sammie that night, I still wouldn’t have given him what he wanted. He’s ten years old. He shouldn’t be on the internet by himself, or determining what and when he’s going to eat, or deciding his own bedtime. He has to do his homework whether he wants to or not, and I think he’s too young to have a dirt bike. I also won’t leave him home alone. Childhood only comes once in a lifetime. And it’s the only time when you have someone there to know what to do if a pot catches on fire, and to take care of it for you.
“Sammie’s already had to grow up so fast because it’s just the two of us and we don’t have a lot of money.”
Once she’d started, she couldn’t stop, and when she’d finally finished, his reply wasn’t what she’d expected. “So you ran the bus over yourself,” he said, a steely but kind glint in his eye. “But did you also tell the judge about the fact that because you believed you had a history of making poor choices where men are concerned, you have chosen not to date while Sammie is still young and dependent upon you?”
She didn’t think about dating, except in her fantasies. “No.”
“The bodyguard situation is serious,” he continued. “I grant you that. But just because Sammie’s grandfather has money is no reason for him to have to have custody of your son. Think about it, that would mean every offspring with a rich parent would either have to be rich enough in his own right to afford a bodyguard for his own children, or lose custody of them.”
Which, of course was ludicrous. But… “My father’s point was that I didn’t have enough good judgment to accept his offer of security protection for Sammie.”
“Because you said his offer came with the caveat that you live in his house and follow his rules.”
“Right. My father is manipulative. He has ways of getting what he wants and he’ll hold out until the world ends if that’s what it takes to get things done his way. Bottom line is, Sammie is the boy my father didn’t have. He’s the Lowen heir and he wants him home.”
“Did you point that out to the judge?”
“No. The attorney I saw told me not to make this a fight against my father, but to keep the focus on Sammie. And the point is that while my father might be wrong to put stipulations on his help, I was wrong to deny my son protection simply because I didn’t want to do as my father asked. It’s like the attorney said—it’s a fight between my father’s will and my own and Sammie got caught in the middle.”
“His stipulations were unfair, Morgan. The judge would see that. You weren’t just continuing the ongoing fight between you and your father, you were trying to protect your son from suffering from the same manipulation that kept you down all those years. You might need to reconsider having some protection for Sammie, and probably yourself, but I would think that since Sammie’s safety hasn’t been compromised due to your father’s money up to this point, you’ve done a pretty good job of watching over him and keeping him protected. You might not have bodyguards, but, as you said, you don’t leave him home alone. You don’t let him walk to school alone. You don’t let him on the internet where someone could lure him into an unsafe situation. Frankly, it seems to me that you’ve been your son’s bodyguard.”
For the first time since she’d heard her father speak that morning, Morgan knew a moment of sheer relief. She’d been looking and looking for the other side of the story her father had painted.
And hadn’t found one. Cal had given her something to think about.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I’M GOING OUT on a limb here, but I’d guess that part of the reason you are so careful with your son, so unbending on the issues that he’d been pushing you on, is because you grew up as the child of a very rich man. The dangers, and what it takes to avoid them, are ingrained in you.”
Could he be right? Could he possibly be right? Morgan blinked back tears. She’d cried enough.
“Julie told me that you’d brought report cards and records of achievements and proof of activities to show the judge. You didn’t say anything about that. Did you show them to him?”
“No. Sammie�
�s grades and activities weren’t the issue.”
“But they are proof of your parenting skills, Morgan. And of your involvement in your son’s life. Sammie wants to surf basketball sites on the internet, so you sit back and give him the time to do so. He wants to train to try out for a team, and you allow him to do it. You hear he needs male companionship, you provide it for him.”
No. She shook her head and more hair came tumbling out of her ponytail. “You provided that, Cal, not me.”
“You live your life in such a way that I was there and willing to provide it when the need arose. Sammie didn’t even know me.”
How did he do that? How did he turn things around and make her feel okay?
“Beyond all of that, I have to tell you what’s on my mind, Morgan.”
She tensed. “Okay.”
“Two things. First, you have to believe in yourself. The judge can’t believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself.”
He told her about a student of his, without naming names. Morgan didn’t even know if the boy who’d dropped out of school six times was a current student or a former one. But she knew that he’d finally earned a degree. Long after his parents had given up on him.
“This is so much bigger than a college degree,” she said. But she wanted to be the boy in the story.
“I’m not arguing that, only saying that in everything in life you have a much better shot at being the best you can be if you believe in yourself. It sounded like you weren’t giving the judge the best of you today, but rather giving him the same you your parents see.”
He had a point. One that mattered. “You said you had two things on your mind.”
Nodding, he glanced down at his hands and then said, “I agree that all boys should have a positive male influence in their lives. But I am equally sure that a young man desperately needs his mother. Sammie desperately needs you.”
“I—”
“No.” He held up a hand. “Let me finish because I have a feeling what I’m about to say will never be spoken aloud again as long as I live.”
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