Family Ever After

by Margaret Daley

  “I was fortunate to have loving parents. You didn’t. That would affect anyone.”

  “It’s much more than that, Cara. I’ve done some things that I’m not proud of. I’ve spent the last years trying to make up for those mistakes, but guess what? You can’t really run from the truth, your past.”

  His words twisted her stomach. She knew that more than most. But for Timothy’s sake she was determined to keep her past in the past. She never wanted her son to be hurt by it. “Having a father who abused you isn’t your fault. Even what happened concerning your separation from your sister isn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  She gripped his upper arms. “No, it wasn’t. You can’t always fight the system. You were fourteen. Some things are out of your control.”

  “How well I’m finding that out. But you’re wrong, Cara. It was my fault because until the family who adopted Whitney found out about my troubles they had been willing to adopt me, too.”

  “What troubles?”

  He pulled back and put some distance between them. “Mostly fighting. I was so angry at my dad but could never do anything about that until…” He turned away.

  “Until?” The anguish in his tone shoved her concerns about the trial to the background.

  For a long moment he didn’t reply. Cara wanted to hold him, erase the pain, but his inflexible stance forbade it.

  “Until at thirteen I was big enough to stand up to my father,” Noah said in a raw voice. “I nearly killed him.” He pivoted, his arms rigid at his sides. “He was beating on Whitney and I couldn’t let him do that. It was one thing to hit me, but not her.”

  Her heart bled for him. What he must have gone through. She came toward him.

  He put his hand up, halting her halfway to him. “I don’t want your pity. I was wrong. If my sister hadn’t stopped me, I would have killed my father. I have to live with that.” A merciless laugh erupted from deep in him. “You would have thought I would have learned not to fight. I continued trying to solve all my problems by striking out at whoever caused them. It wasn’t until I went to live with Paul and Alice that I began to change, slowly, reluctantly.”

  She didn’t care he didn’t want her near him. She covered the space in a few strides but didn’t touch him.

  “In fact, the Hendersons were my last chance before juvenile detention. Somehow they got through to me and didn’t give up on me.”

  He looked directly into her eyes, and somehow even with all that he had revealed, his expression didn’t hint at what was going on inside him.

  “I found it was easier to control myself by shutting down my feelings. It usually worked for me until I met you. If I had known what those guys were trying to do to you in the parking lot, I would have fought them in order to save you. I came close with them in the restaurant. That would have been the first time in almost twenty years.”

  “Oh, Noah, I’m sorry.” She finally laid her hand on his arm. The tension beneath her fingertips conveyed how upset he was, but little showed in his expression. He clung desperately to old habits.

  “Don’t you see? There’s something about you that makes me want to lose control, to let everything out. I’ve never told anyone this. Never, not even the Hendersons, Jacob or Peter. But here I am, telling you. I don’t understand. What is it about you that does that to me?”

  She didn’t have an answer for him, but he wanted one. “I’m a good listener. I—I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I try never to judge another.” The verse from John came to mind. “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” But she knew his fear because she had been on the other end, judged and condemned.

  He framed her face with his hands. “I feel like I’ve been gutted.” One corner of his mouth tilted upward. “No wonder I don’t lay my soul bare every day.”

  She cupped her hands over his, tears glistening in her eyes. Through the sheen the most endearing look transformed his expression into an open one. She needed to share hers with him, but the words stuck in her throat.

  Swallowing several times, she attempted a reassuring smile. “Even for someone like me, who wears her feelings on her sleeve, it’s never easy. I—”

  “Mom.”

  A wheezing sound punctuated the stillness and sent alarm down her. She whirled around.

  Timothy mounted the last step. “I can’t—” a series of coughs mingled with his gasps “—breathe.”

  Cara flew across the deck and gathered her son to her. “Let’s get you back to the cottage.”

  She started to pick up Timothy, but Noah came around her and scooped him into his arms. She followed them down the stairs and across the pool area. Her heart galloped as it always did when her son had an asthma attack.

  Noah shouldered his way into the guesthouse. “Where do you want me to put him?”

  “The couch. I have to give him a breathing treatment.” She headed into the small kitchen and retrieved Timothy’s nebulizer.

  Back in the living room her hands shook as she prepared the treatment for her son. His wheezing worsened as she gave him the hose. His pale face and continual coughing scared her. This was a bad attack.

  “What if this doesn’t work?” Noah’s ashen features spoke of his own concern.

  “Then I do another treatment, and if I don’t think I can get it under control, we pay a visit to the doctor, or in this case, because it’s in the middle of the night, the emergency room.”

  When two more sessions with the nebulizer didn’t improve Timothy much, Cara looked at Noah. “Please watch him while I get my purse.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “You don’t have to,” she automatically said as she grabbed her bag with her car keys.

  “Yes, I do. Give me a moment to let Adam know where we’re going. I’m also calling Jacob. He can meet us at the hospital.”

  “I hate to disturb him. The E.R. doc—”

  “Cara, I don’t hate disturbing him. He’s the best pediatrician in town. I’ll feel better if he’s there.” Noah jogged from the cottage.

  “Mom, I’m okay.” Coughs perforated his raspy words.

  She pulled him up next to her. “Hon, you will be.”

  Two minutes later, Noah rushed back into the cottage. “Let’s go.” Again he lifted the boy into his arms and headed out to Cara’s car.

  She gave him the keys while he settled Timothy in her lap. Noah’s presence comforted her in ways she hadn’t ever known with Tim. She wasn’t alone in dealing with the asthma. In St. Louis she’d always felt she had been.

  Father, please take care of my son. I’m the one who was wrong, not Timothy. Punish me, not him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Noah drove past the courthouse, his grip on the steering wheel tightening. A few protesters were out in front with those signs they loved to carry. He slid a glance toward Adam then Cara. As she looked away from them, her mouth firmed into a frown and her hands clenched in her lap.

  “I’m sorry they are here,” Noah said, at a loss for adequate words.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for.” Weariness infused her voice. “Hopefully this will be the last day we have to suffer them.”

  Noah pulled into the parking lot next to the building and found a space. “Stay close to me, you two. I’ll handle them if they bother us.”

  “Fine,” came her lackluster reply, which was out of character, heightening Noah’s concern. Cara and he had been up most of the night with Timothy at the hospital. He’d managed to catch a few hours of sleep before getting ready for his court appearance, but he wondered if Cara had. When he’d left her early this morning, she’d been sitting by her son’s bed, watching him, as though she was afraid to go to sleep in case he had another attack.

  One of the protesters saw them walking toward the steps. “Ready for this?” Noah quickened his pace.

  “No, but we don’t have a choice.” Even as tired as Cara was, she didn’t drop her head or look do
wn. She directed her gaze straight ahead, fixated on the double doors into the building.

  Adam, even with his walking cast still on, managed to keep up with them.

  A man yelled, “Liars.”

  Cara tensed, her step faltering. Adam halted, his hands balling.

  “Ignore them. We know the truth. God knows the truth. That’s all that’s important.” Noah took her hand to make sure she kept up with him.

  Another person shouted something unrepeatable. Cara’s cheeks colored.

  “I can’t believe these guys. We need to say something.” The incredulous tone in Adam’s voice reflected how Noah felt, but he knew confrontation on the courthouse steps wasn’t the solution.

  “A few more feet and we’re home free.” Noah held the door open for them and waited until they entered before following them inside. “The hard part is over with.”

  She shook her head. “I wish.”

  “At least Timothy is fine now. He’s a trooper.” Noah fit her hand within his again as he threw a look toward Adam to make sure he was keeping up. “He had me worried last night.”

  And you have me worried now. The deep circles under Cara’s eyes, as though they were bruised, and her lethargic movements concerned him. Timothy had gotten his fighting spirit from his mother, but right now she was exhausted and seemed defeated, which made his apprehension multiply.

  “Last night was a bad episode. Thanks for calling Jacob. I did feel better with him there at the hospital.”

  “Was it the first attack he’s had since coming to Cimarron City?”

  “He’s had a few small ones, but the breathing treatment at home took care of it.”

  Noah slipped his touch to the small of her back as they entered the empty elevator to take to the second floor. “You never said anything.”

  “Both Timothy and I like to deal with it in a matter-of-fact manner. He doesn’t even want people to know. My husband used to make him feel as though he had done something wrong.”

  “He did? Why?”

  Cara didn’t answer him. She came to a halt at the doors that led into the courtroom. Her gaze connected with his. “After this is over with, we need to talk.”

  The ominous words stunned him. He never liked it when someone said to him we need to talk. The muscles in his neck and shoulders constricted as he eased into the seat next to Cara on the front row right behind the assistant district attorney. Adam settled next to him on the other side.

  The bailiff announced the entrance of the judge and they rose. Noah gripped Cara’s hand, which trembled, and sent up a silent prayer for strength.

  * * *

  “Thank you, Mrs. Winters.” Finished with his questions, the assistant district attorney took his seat behind the prosecutor’s table.

  The defense lawyer, his thin face and bald head out of place on his stocky body, rose slowly, checked his notes then proceeded toward Cara, a look of disdain on his face. “You want these good men and women of the jury to believe your story today when your life has been a lie?”

  Cara’s chest contracted as though every bit of oxygen was wrung from her lungs.

  “Answer the question.”

  Cara opened her mouth, but words refused to squeeze past the constriction in her throat.

  “All right, next question since you won’t answer the first one. Did you have a child out of wedlock?” The bald counselor rocked back on his heels.

  The assistant D.A. stood. “Objection. Relevance, Your Honor.”

  “Your Honor, this question and the ones to follow go to this witness’s character. Mrs. Winters wants to portray herself as a moral, innocent woman attacked by these three young men and threatened by them in the parking lot.” The defense attorney gestured toward his clients, seated at a table, in suits and ties, the picture of virtue.

  Cara sucked in a breath but couldn’t fill her lungs with enough air. Pain radiated through her. She glanced toward Noah. His features blank, cold, he sat stiffly, staring straight ahead, not at her.

  “Overruled. Answer the question, Mrs. Winters.”

  The judge’s kind expression didn’t alleviate her panic bubbling to the surface. “Yes.”

  Some murmurs from the audience prompted the judge to bring his gavel down. “Quiet or I will clear the courtroom.”

  “Did your husband, whom you married in the hospital after giving birth, adopt your son?”

  “Yes.”

  “So your husband wasn’t the father of your child?”

  “No.”

  “Who is?”

  “Objection. Not relevant. Women have children out of wedlock all the time. The paternity of her child has nothing to do with the assault and battery charges.”

  “It will shortly become apparent, Your Honor.”

  The serious expression on the lawyer’s thin face didn’t bode well for Cara. How had he discovered what had happened nine years ago? Did he know everything? Her heart thudded a maddening pace that she was sure the jurors could hear.

  “It better be or I’ll cut it short. Overruled.”

  “Mrs. Winters, who is the father of your child?”

  “I don’t know.”

  More murmurs sounded. In the back row a young man, the same age as the defendants, exited the courtroom.

  “Order in the courtroom,” the judge bellowed. “Bailiff, escort the next person who causes a commotion out of here.”

  “Ah, so you had sex with a lot of men, so many you don’t even know who your son’s father really is. Is that right?”

  Flushed with humiliation, Cara gripped her hands together in her lap so tightly that her knuckles whitened. “No!”

  The lawyer’s eyebrows rose. “I am prepared to present a witness who went to high school with you who will testify to what happened on prom night your senior year.”

  “Objection. Counsel is testifying.”

  “Sustained.”

  A slow smile curved the defense attorney’s mouth. “Do you stand by your previous answer of no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why don’t you know who the father of your son is?”

  She rubbed her clammy hands together and again tried to drag a decent breath into her lungs. “Because I was drunk and don’t remember what happened.” Renewed shame and guilt threatened the well-ordered life she had managed to create after that awful night.

  “So you don’t remember how many men you had that night. How about the other nights?”

  Father, help me. Why this now? Haven’t I been punished enough for this mistake?

  “Would you please answer the question, Mrs. Winters?” The harsh lights in the courtroom glared off his bald head.

  “I was a virgin when I went to that party, and other than my husband, I haven’t been with anyone since prom night.” Remembering her vow to herself and God never to do something like that again, she lifted her chin. “That’s why I can answer no.”

  “You want the jury to believe that when you drink you conveniently forget what happens?”

  “Your Honor, I object. This doesn’t pertain to the assault and battery charges.”

  “I agree. Sustained. Move on, Counselor. I think we all get the picture.”

  “No more questions.” Contempt infused the sentence as the defense attorney turned his back on Cara as though she was beneath his consideration.

  She started to rise, her legs so weak and trembling she was afraid she would collapse before she made it to her seat. Although wounded and laid bare for the whole world to see, she wouldn’t let the jury glimpse anything but honesty and conviction in her expression.

  “I have one question on cross-examination.” The assistant D.A. remained seated at his table. “Do you drink alcohol now?”

  “No, I haven’t since that night.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Winters.”

  The smile he gave her brought tears to her eyes. She closed them briefly while composing herself.

  “You may step down.” The judge’s words brought her back to t
he present.

  She pushed to her feet, then descended from the witness box and crossed the courtroom floor. All eyes rested on her. She sensed hostility in many and sympathy in some. She couldn’t look at Noah. She didn’t want to know what he felt.

  Her dark secret had been ripped from her soul. How would she ever explain that one night to the people she loved and cared about? She’d made a terrible mistake that she was still paying for. Years ago when she had come to Jesus, she had thrown herself on His mercy and asked for His forgiveness. She’d thought she had received it, but maybe she was wrong and this was her punishment.

  Noah was called to testify. She waited for him to exit the row. Their gazes locked for a few seconds, then he headed toward the witness box. His unreadable look plunged her deeper into despair.

  The sound of his voice, devoid of emotion, flowed over her as he gave his account of that night in the restaurant. How could he ever fall in love with her now? Tim had known what had happened at the party and the result of that one night of lost control. As her good friend he had married her for her son’s sake, but even Tim couldn’t in the end look past what she had done. In his eyes she had been damaged goods.

  Her tears returned to sting her eyes. The second she swallowed the lump lodged in her throat, it rose again. She needed to leave Cimarron City and go someplace where she wouldn’t be constantly reminded of what she could have had if she hadn’t tried so hard in high school to fit in with the “cool” kids.

  When the defense attorney approached Noah, Cara focused on Noah’s testimony. Although there had been a few witnesses who had given evidence about the altercation among the three defendants and Cara and Noah in the restaurant, she and Noah were the main ones.

  “Mr. Maxwell, you are quite familiar with fighting, especially as a way to solve your problems—” the lawyer paused “—aren’t you?”

  The man wasn’t satisfied with destroying her. No, he was now going after Noah. His past troubles would be plastered all over the newspaper tomorrow alongside hers. He was a respected member of the community with a thriving business that she had already managed to damage. This could really hurt him, and she was the reason it was happening. She shouldn’t have brought charges against Jake, Brent and Jeremy.