Above Rubies (Rockland Ranch)

by Jaclyn Hawkes

  Rossen turned to look out the window again with a sigh. "Maybe I am."

  Slade walked back out the door.

  Chapter 24

  Monday morning Rossen and Mimi helped Kit pack her bag into the back seat of her car, and he searched her eyes before she drove away. For days he'd been trying to figure out what he should be doing in his life as far as she was concerned, and he was more mixed up than ever. When she looked back at him with those startling blues, he honestly didn't know what she wanted from him, and he was confused as to what was still in her best interest at this point.

  She didn't cry when she left, and he walked back into the house wondering if she was slipping away from him. She only had two more weeks of school before the end of the semester. Maybe over the long Christmas break he could figure out what to do. He knew he couldn't live like this for much longer. He went in and called Treyne’s cell phone to remind him to make sure she had someone with her all the time.

  That night before he went to bed, Mimi was at his feet in his room, playing with the little girl she saw in the full length mirror. After a few minutes she'd plastered it with her tiny, slobbery hands, but she was having a great time giggling at the little girl reflected there. He put her down in her crib and went to his own bed thinking about what Slade had said about Nick raising his daughter.

  Deep in the night he woke up from a dream that devastated him when he became fully awake and understood what it was. Mimi was a beautiful child of eight or ten years old and she was still there playing in his mirror, talking to the girl reflected there. When she looked up at him, she asked, "Daddy, why do I still have to play all by myself?" He got out of bed to go and stand by her crib and look down at her sleeping so peacefully there in the dark. He knelt beside his bed praying for wisdom and peace, to know best how to take care of this beautiful, sweet, little daughter.

  It wasn't even a week later that he was working quietly in his office with Mimi Star playing there beside him in the playpen, when a song came on the radio about a little girl dancing at her parents’ wedding. It told of how the band that was performing, watched this little girl celebrate because her dad was finally marrying her mom. Rossen listened and watched Mimi and had never felt so guilty in his life.

  ****

  That week Naomi flew to Tucson for the trials. The slimy foster father and his wife were convicted of almost every one of the charges and Naomi flew home secure in knowing that this guy would never harm another child, and in fact, would probably be in prison until he was an old, old man. The judge had postponed sentencing, saying he wanted to meet Kit and her daughter before he finalized his decision, so Naomi came back to Wyoming and returned to Arizona with Kit and Mimi Star and Rossen in tow.

  Kit had no idea what was going on and didn’t think Naomi even understood why the judge wanted to see her. When she walked into his chambers carrying Mimi, he stood up and came around his desk and shook her hand. He looked into her eyes and watched Mimi for a second and then with a sigh, leaned back against the edge of the desk and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.

  “I’m sorry to drag you all the way back to Arizona. I imagine it’s a place you never wanted to see again. I just had to see for myself if the system was as bad as it appeared from the court documents. After meeting with you, I can see that Ms. Rockland’s representation was indeed accurate.”

  He sighed again. “Miss Star, I'm sorry to the bottom of my heart for what you've had to endure at the hands of the State of Arizona. It didn’t take me thirty seconds to figure out that that man was not fit to have a dog in his custody, let alone a young woman. He'll never be around another child, but that is of no help to you and what you've been through. I can see you've made the best of a bad situation, and that you've chosen to overcome the wrongs done you and love this beautiful child. I’m proud of you for your selflessness.

  “Under the circumstances, I'm choosing to subvert the wishes of the drug investigators here. This man’s motel was confiscated by the authorities because he and his wife had been manufacturing drugs. I am going to award the proceeds of the sale of that motel to you. It could never be enough to right the injustices done you, but it’s a start. Honestly, a large portion of the proceeds had to go to cleaning up the hazardous materials, but the balance is yours, along with the rest of the money he had in his accounts. You’ll find all of the information here in this file. Ms. Rockland can see to the transfers for you and help you select a trustee to handle the lion’s share of it until you are twenty one. I suggest you hire a professional to handle investing it for you.

  “I also want you to know that I have personally asked for the resignations of those who handled your casework and am, in fact, pursuing criminal action for some of those involved. I can’t promise to fix the system, but I can promise you I'm going to try. No one should have to go through what you have in your short life.” He handed her a large file folder and ushered them to the door. “Once again, please forgive me for dragging you here. I’m so sorry, and I hope this in some small way can make up for your troubles. You’ve become an extraordinary young woman, in spite of it all, and I wish you all the best in the balance of your life.”

  The four of them stood outside the door of his chambers looking at each other. Finally, Naomi said, “Oh, my.”

  Rossen took the folder and looked inside and then repeated her sentiments. “He just awarded you almost seven hundred thousand dollars. He’s right, it can never make up for everything, but that’s a lot of money.”

  As they walked down the hall, Naomi said almost to herself, “I wondered why he wanted to meet the two of you in person.”

  ****

  The last week of the semester Rossen and Mimi went to Logan to stay for a few days. He hadn't called and when Kit came home from classes Monday evening to find them in the living room, her face lit up even as tired as she looked. She hurriedly changed her clothes and apologized about having to leave on a date and Rossen knew as she left and kept turning around that she wished she could stay home instead.

  He wondered if he had, in fact, pressured her too much to do things like date, to enjoy this season of her life. She'd hardly even looked at the poor guy. She was home two hours later, and then she and Joey and Treyne went to do something with their family home evening group.

  The rest of that week as he hung out and watched her around campus, he was appalled at how much she was trying to do in the five day period. She hadn't even had to fit a trip to Wyoming in on Wednesday to come home and see Mimi like she had been all fall. And she hadn't been back to LA for almost three weeks. Her life had probably been even crazier.

  She had dates every night that week, and even one for lunch as well, and she worked out with Joey and Matt in the mornings and then with Matt again on Thursday before her date that night. Rossen watched her do her final project in her sculpture class and then she had finals in Spanish and music. For some reason she'd also gone to take two other tests that he didn't know what they were for and she passed off another belt with Matt. Rossen had finally gotten to meet him and was almost glad he hadn't known much about him before. When he realized what good friends they were, he knew he'd have been miserable wondering about the two of them these last months.

  When Friday afternoon rolled around, Matt brought her home around two thirty. They sat in his car talking for almost an hour. When she finally came in, she was sobbing and walked through the living room to go into her room and close her door, without even talking to Rossen or Mimi. She came out twenty minutes later and began loading a couple of duffle bags and some boxes out to put them next to the front door. Then went into the kitchen and started to empty the fridge into a box too, crying all the while.

  She never approached Rossen and he had no idea what to do about her. When she went into the bathroom and started loading stuff out of drawers into yet another box, he finally put Mimi in the playpen and went in and literally forced Kit to stop and pulled her into a hug. She just continued to cry, and when he cou
ldn't stand it any longer and asked her what in the world was wrong, she began to sob all the harder. Joey came home about then and looked at the two of them standing in the bathroom with Kit still sobbing against his chest.

  Rossen looked over Kit's head at Joey and mouthed the word, “Help,”.

  Joey came up close and asked, "Was Matt by any chance here recently?"

  He nodded, "She talked to him in his car for almost an hour before she came in here and has been like this ever since. Why?"

  Joey hesitated, "I just saw him and he doesn't appear to be much better. I wondered if this was going to happen." She pulled Kit away from Rossen's embrace long enough to ask, "What's going on, Kit?"

  Kit looked up with misery shining from her teary eyes and cried like her heart was broken and said, "Oh Joey, he asked me to marry him." Her face crumbled and she buried it against Rossen’s chest again.

  Joey wrapped her arms around them both. "Oh, Kit, I'm so sorry." Rossen was incredibly lost. As if she sensed this, Joey paused in rubbing Kit's shoulder to explain, "This is the fourth one this week, and this one matters. Matt is her closest friend here. I kept trying to tell her he was in love with her, but she didn't believe me. I was afraid this day was coming."

  Kit pulled away from the two of them to continue tossing toiletries into the box almost with a vengeance. Rossen looked on until the drawer was empty, then took the box from her and took it to the front door, too. Eventually she had everything she intended to take and had settled down to only intermittent tears. Mimi stood at the edge of the playpen watching it all with her two fingers glued to her mouth. Rossen started to load the pile by the front door to the bed of his truck and when Treyne came in, Rossen asked him if he would mind driving Kit's car home instead of riding with Joey.

  When everything was loaded, Rossen coaxed Kit to come to the truck and helped her and the baby in buckle in, and drove away. A few blocks down the street, he saw Matt standing on a porch watching them drive by and he silently cussed him as the tears started once more. Rossen didn't dare even ask her anything for fear she'd melt down again. The only time they even talked was when he stopped at a drive through to order her dinner. She finally fell asleep forty five minutes into the drive and even then, every once in a while she gave a little hiccupping sob.

  Chapter 25

  They were home and he'd helped her unload and unpack, and she'd gone to bed, before it finally dawned on him that he'd just helped her completely clean out her college apartment. He sat straight up in bed, realizing for the first time she'd just quit college and he had helped her! She'd been so upset that he hadn't thought a thing about it when she stripped her closet and emptied the bathroom drawers.

  How had he not seen this coming? He got up to pace the narrow confines of his room, then went next door into the game room to pace some more. He looked up at the speed bag and was sorely tempted, resisting only because he knew he'd wake the whole house. That little! He didn't even know what to call her in his head. Thinking back at some of their recent conversations, he began to understand that she had been planning this for a long time, maybe even since the very beginning.

  He went back to bed, but couldn't sleep for thinking of all the things he was going to say to her in the morning, when he explained very succinctly, that she was heading back to school in January. He fell asleep somewhere along the line and when he woke up he was surprised to realize he'd slept way in.

  When he came into the great room, everyone was already there eating except Kit. She was rushing back and forth from her room to the front porch carrying her suit bag and luggage and purse and what all he wasn't even sure. He'd momentarily forgotten she was flying out to LA early this morning. Mumbling under his breath, he followed her back to her room and as he walked by, automatically picked up Mimi Star as she was reaching up from her crib, saying “Dah-eee.” Kit went to step past him at her door and he reached out to stop her, saying, "Kit, slow down for a second, we need to talk." She looked up at him, and he realized she must have cried a good portion of the night. She wasn’t in a very good mood this morning either.

  "What?" She almost barked it at him. Whew! She was really not in a very good mood this morning!

  He fell into step beside her as she marched back out to the front porch with her purse and a carry on. She set them down near some shoes and a leather rope case that were sitting there, turned on him and snapped, "I'm kind of in a hurry here to catch a plane, what do you want to talk about?"

  She was in such a temper that he had to work to keep from cracking a smile. He'd never seen her quite like this. Without sugar coating it, he said, "Well, for starters, you're not quitting school already."

  He was ready to do battle, but he wasn't anywhere near ready to handle the temper she turned on him. After staring him down for a long second, she said almost slowly, "You big, fat, boneheaded jerk! Don't you even try to tell me what I can and can't do! I have done everything you asked and then some! I have gone off and left my daughter! I have dated more stupid, pig headed, chauvinistic, egotistical men than I ever want to see again in my life! I have earned sixty two credits this semester, sixty two! I've gone without sleep, I've driven and flown thousands of miles. I've turned down marriage proposals from five different men, one of whom I completely trashed! I have sung in front of millions of people and worn high heels to do it! I've gotten a purple belt in Karate. Except for taking statistics, which I didn't have the right prerequisites for, I've been through your whole list to the letter! I have done everything you asked me to, just to keep you happy and I'm done! Nothing is good enough for you! I'll be eighty and still be a child to you!”

  She barely paused for breath, then went on, "I am going to California today, and I'm going to get through this concert, and then I'm going to come home and hold our daughter and sleep for a week! I'm going to bask in being settled down! I'm going to revel in it! Do you hear me? I'm going to build my own house this spring, and plant a garden barefoot, and ride a horse until I can't even walk, and then I'm going to sit on the porch in a rocker and watch our little girl play, and when she's tired of that, we're going to go swim in the pond, and then while she naps, I'm going to work with my clay for as long as I want.

  "I don't have to go anywhere I don't want to; with anyone I don't want to be with! I am not going to keep dodging being kissed by guys I don't want anywhere near me! I am not going to have any more awkward conversations with handsy men about why I'm an unwed mother, but still a nice girl! I am not going to drive away from here in tears ever again! And I am certainly not following any more of your stupid rules!

  “In fact, do you know what you can do with your stupid rules! You follow them if you want to! And you and I can grow old, single, in two houses across the bench from each other, watching Mimi play by herself as an only child! You can insist that she always have her mother's last name, and you can explain to her on Father's Day why she doesn't have one.

  “You do that if you want to, but count me out! I'm going to love whom I love, and tell whomever I want that! I am not going to try to carefully control how I feel anymore! I am sick and tired of your stupid rules, and being bullied by you because you think you know what's best for me better than I do. You can sit at your computer and pretend that we don't mean anything to each other if you want, but I am not gonna play the game anymore! And I am NOT going back to school next month!"

  As she finally wound down Rossen was speechless. He couldn't even begin to process a comeback. She walked around him and began to throw her bags into the back of her car. She picked up his leather rope case that was laying there on the front porch with her stuff and put it in, too. He took it back out with just the barest hint of a smile on his face.

  The second he smiled, he knew it was a mistake. It only made her madder than ever! She threw some more stuff into the car and he finally took her hand and pulled her to look at him and said, "Easy Kit, settle down. What did I do to deserve this? What is it that you want from me?"

  She jerke
d away. "You really don't want me to answer that. It would be against the stupid rules!"

  He reached for her arm again, exasperated. "Then give me a hint, Kit!"

  She spun on him. "You want to know what I want from you? Try emotional honesty! Try commitment! Try respectability! Try physical intimacy! Try any of the things that most couples who love each other like we do, have! Ope, sorry, broke the stupid rule! Can't talk about anything that matters between us!" She climbed into her car, slammed the door and peeled out on the snowy gravel road, sliding sideways and sending snow flying all over his pant legs as she went.

  He just stood there watching her car disappear over the hill. Mimi looked at him with big eyes, her fingers still in her mouth and started to laugh. "Oh, you think it's funny do you? I thought so too, and that was a big mistake. I never shoulda cracked that smile. And she still got away with my rope. Daddy has now graduated from just plain bonehead to big, fat boneheaded jerk." He shook his head, amazed at all the things she had said. Said? Yelled at the top of her lungs!

  Slade came out onto the porch to stand beside him. "Who was it that said hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?"

  Rossen shook his head again. "You’ve got me. But he had that right. And I haven’t even scorned her. Holy Canoli!"

  "Did she just say what I thought she did?"

  Rossen shook his head one more time and laughed. "Yeah, I think she did."

  "Maybe you'd better go to California."

  ****

  Kit was mad until almost the very end of the concert that night. She'd started to mellow out slightly beforehand while a stylist had been doing her hair, until she’d looked up to realize she now had a brilliant pink section woven through it! Then she was angry all over again. She sent the girl packing, almost in tears, with Kit hoping that whatever she'd put in wasn't necessarily permanent.