That Cowboy's Kids

by Debra Salonen

  “Are you cold?” the little girl asked, catching what few adults ever saw.

  At eye level in her father’s arms, Abby could see the remarkable blue of her eyes and the sadness that left smudge prints under each eye. Poor baby, Abby thought, but she smiled reassuringly and opened the door wide enough for the family to file past. “No, sweetie, but thank you for asking. This door just gives me the willies. It used to be a pretty glass door, but one day a very angry man came and broke it.”

  Tom Butler’s mustache quivered again. Another frown, she sensed. He waited politely for her to enter.

  Yep, a gentleman.

  Abby scooted past him and paused in the small foyer beside Angela. The original foyer had been twice as big, with a picture window and two couches that gave it a homey look, but added security measures, including video cameras and electronic passkeys, meant less room for the people they were supposed to serve.

  “Why’d he do that?” Angela asked. “I thought you helped people.”

  Abby stifled a sigh. A big part of VOCAP’s focus was helping victims of domestic abuse. The man who took out their door—and very nearly Abby’s head—wanted his wife and family back. When Abby wouldn’t give him either, he took his anger out on her. She’d managed to get away and call the police. The door wasn’t so lucky.

  “We do. But sometimes people aren’t ready to be helped.” That her chipper tone, meant to shore up her own flagging morale as much as reassure her new clients, came off sounding like a cheerleader on the Mickey Mouse Club was confirmed by the girl’s look of scorn.

  She won’t be easy, Abby thought, but who could blame her? Trust isn’t easily given by someone whose world’s been shattered by violence.

  AFTER SETTLING HIS DAUGHTERS in the cheerful waiting room, Tom followed Abby Davis into her office. “Make yourself at home,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” Tom lowered himself carefully into the square upholstered chair squeezed into a niche opposite a cluttered desk. Perched precariously to one side of the desk was a computer screen.

  While the entry and hallway of the building sported large posters proclaiming the rights of victims, particularly women and children, this office revealed an attempt to promote serenity. A climbing plant with varie-gated leaves framed the room’s single window, which faced the parking lot; two watercolor paintings of unstructured seascapes lessened the impact of metal bookshelves crammed with textbooks and stacks of files.

  Tom was becoming a bit of an expert on mid-level bureaucratic office decor—he’d seen more than his share over the past five months. This had to be one of the smallest, yet classiest, offices yet. He particularly liked the hubcap-size, self-sustained waterfall that muffled the sound of the computer.

  The machine’s drone reminded him of what lay ahead: another retelling of the story, bringing to mind images safely stuffed in the recesses of his head—until fatigue or sleep brought down his guard.

  Why even bother? What can these people do? Can they bring back Les? Can they take away Heather’s nightmares or make Angel smile again?

  Fighting off a wave of despair, Tom reminded himself why he was here—the court order. It might be a hopeless waste of time, but he didn’t have any say in the matter. His rights had pretty much vanished the minute some junkie looking for drug money had put a gun to his ex-wife’s head and pulled the trigger.

  With a hoarse cough, he swallowed the gagging sensation in his throat.

  A moment later, Abby Davis entered the room. Barefoot. She’d discarded her broken shoes and damaged hose. She seemed flustered, as if the lack of shoes somehow diminished her professional armor, leaving her vulnerable.

  Tom studied her. Clear skin, pale from her indoor job. A few tiny lines starting around the eyes. She wore no makeup, except for a ruddy lipstick.

  She was a nice-looking woman, even if her taste in clothes didn’t appeal to him. The severity of the cut and length of the jacket pretty well hid what looked like a trim rear end and shapely waist; the color was something he’d have buried once he made sure it was dead.

  “Okay,” she said, sliding into the upholstered desk chair. She folded her hands primly on the desk between them and asked, “How can we help you?”

  Help. A word he’d come to deplore. He stifled a jolt of anger, reminding himself, as he had Angel, this was the way it had to be.

  “This ain’t—isn’t—for me. I’m here for my girls,” he said with as much civility as he could muster.

  He looked away from the sympathy he saw in her greenish-gold eyes. He didn’t need sympathy; he needed someone to tell him how he was going to make a life for his daughters without screwing things up. He only knew one way to live his life, and it hadn’t been good enough for their mother, how could he expect it to be good enough for them?

  If she read deeper implications into his response, she chose to ignore them. “The girls will be fine in the waiting room. We’ve got the hottest video games around, and Becky Barton’s great,” she said, mentioning the young black woman she’d introduced to him in the waiting room. “She’s a student volunteer. She works with victims all the time.”

  Victims. Tom swallowed hard. Not a word he ever thought would apply to him.

  “I apologize for not being more prepared, but your file just arrived this morning.” She picked up a piece of paper from her desk and studied it.

  He knew how to save them both some time. He’d repeated the story so often it was beginning to sound like a fairy tale. A bad fairy tale. “My ex-wife, Lesley Ahronian, Heather ’n Angel’s mom, was killed January 7.” His mouth filled with a rancid taste. The finality of saying those words never failed to get to him.

  “A robbery?” she asked, her voice businesslike, detached.

  “She was getting money from an ATM machine. The guy who did it got a hundred and eighty dollars. They found one of the twenties under her body along with the receipt for two hundred bucks.”

  Val told him the bank’s security camera provided a horrific record of the event. Although the image wasn’t perfect, it produced a suspect, a drug addict with a long history of violence. Whether or not it would be enough to convict him of murder remained to be seen.

  “Heather was in the car when it happened,” he added gruffly, trying to keep that horror from engulfing his last bit of sanity.

  A grimace of anguish flashed across her face.

  “She was asleep. The guy tried to steal the car, too, but the alarm scared him off.” Even saying the words made his stomach work closer to his throat. What if…?

  “Where was Angela?” Her matter-of-fact question put him back on safe ground.

  “At a friend’s house. Val, Lesley’s husband, picked Angel up after the police told him about Lesley. There was some initial confusion because the car was registered to their business and Lesley didn’t have any ID on her. The police took Heather into protective custody,” he said, recalling the terrible anguish of that weekend.

  The attack happened Thursday night, but because of his stupidity, Tom didn’t find out about it until late the next morning. One of Ed’s friends flew Tom down south, but by then Tom was too late to see the judge and no one would let him near Heather without a judge’s decree.

  “You do have legal custody.” Tom could tell she tried to keep it from sounding like a question, but it still irked him.

  “They’re my kids,” he snarled.

  She glanced up at his tone. “Sometimes when a woman remarries, her new husband adopts the children.” Her voice sounded soothing, the way he’d talk to a skittish colt.

  She had no way of knowing what a sore subject this was, especially after his recent trip to court. “It was suggested. Once,” he said pointedly.

  Valentino Ahronian was a decent guy who made every effort to be friends with Tom but Tom just couldn’t get past the idea that Val had something that belonged to Tom—his family. Of course, he would have hated the breakneck pace Val and Lesley had chosen, but that didn’t stop him from resenting the man who’
d married his ex-wife and who saw Tom’s children on a daily basis while Tom was relegated to the background—a shadow father trotted out on special occasions and for two weeks in summer.

  “Are there any custody issues I should know about? Is Mr.—” she consulted her page in a quick nod that set her blunt-cut pageboy dancing near her jawline. Her hair was thick and shiny, about the color of his favorite roan mare “—Ahronian out of the picture then?”

  “No,” Tom answered, wishing he had a better handle on his feelings where Val and the girls were concerned. “He calls. The girls still have feelings for him.”

  Compassion deepened the gold in her eyes, as if she could feel the torment he went through every time Val called. Tom forced himself to look away. “But, Val’s got his hands full trying to keep his business running. Lesley was the guts of their operation.”

  She kept reading and Tom sensed when she came to the most recent entry. She didn’t make any outward sound or sign, but Tom felt her flinch, inwardly.

  “Last month, Lesley’s mom filed for custody,” he said, trying his best to keep his tone level. “Ruby Pimental’s got a few problems of her own, and Les’s death hit her hard. Somehow, Ruby got it into her head I killed Lesley and she wasn’t about to leave her grandchildren with a murderer. She found some crook of a lawyer to take her case, and we had to go to court.” Tom would never forget that horrible scene in court when Angel rushed to his defense, calling her grandmother every name in the book.

  “It got thrown out, but the judge decided the girls might need some help coming to grips with their loss.” Court words. He’d heard them so often they almost made sense. Sense. How could anyone make sense of something like this?

  She looked at him, her eyes dark with emotion he couldn’t interpret. “Violent crime is like a bomb going off in your world. Pieces fly every which way. Survivors wander around in shock, wondering how or if they’ll ever get back to the place they’d been in before it happened.”

  She wasn’t saying anything Tom didn’t know, but her empathy touched him in a way he hadn’t thought possible. Chubs and Johnny Dee had tried to console him; their wives had sent casseroles and cakes. But Tom didn’t want sympathy or food. He wanted to know if this pain would ever get easier, but he wasn’t brave enough to ask. What if it didn’t?

  “Some people call what we do here ‘triage,”’ Abby said, making an encompassing motion with her hand. “We patch you up so you can start to pick up the pieces of your life and move forward. For some, it means walking them through our convoluted judicial system. For others, it’s a matter of finding the right resources to rebuild their lives. Violence marks you, but it doesn’t have to destroy you, or define the way you live your life from that point on.”

  Something inside Tom reached out for the invisible lifeline she was offering. After months of slogging through the guilt and shock that were weighing him down, he felt as if he might have found a way out of the pit.

  “Trust me, Mr. Butler, things will get easier. You have to take it one day at a time.” She spoke slowly, as in prayer. “And if that’s too overwhelming, then one hour at a time. If that doesn’t work, one second at a time.

  “You keep breathing,” she continued, “even though it hurts like hell. You make yourself eat, even though every bite tastes like dirt, and you sleep when your body can’t stay awake any longer.”

  Something about the way she spoke made Tom realize she was speaking from personal experience. This woman knew loss; she knew grief.

  She took a breath and added softly, “You and your daughters are facing some big changes. Painful changes.”

  She reached out and touched Tom’s hand, taking him by surprise. He hadn’t even realized his right hand was gripping the laminated desktop. Her fingers were cool and soothing like an evening Delta breeze after a scorching summer day. “We can help…if you’ll let us.”

  Something pulsed inside Tom’s heart. Hope. A stranger was reaching out to help him shoulder the fearful responsibility of raising daughters who barely knew him and came from a strange world that he didn’t know at all.

  Tom’s daddy had taught him not to expect something for nothing. “What’s it cost?”

  She withdrew her hand and reached into a side drawer of the desk, giving Tom time to regain his composure. She smiled brightly. Had he only imagined her dark memories? “Our service is free, Mr. Butler. The citizens of California got fed up with criminals walking around after serving a few days or weeks for their crimes, while the people they hurt took years to get their lives back together. They told the courts to impose stiffer fines and put that money into a fund to help victims and the people who witness crimes.”

  She blinked twice and cleared her throat. “Judge Overman has ordered counseling for Heather and Angela. The first thing we have to do is find the right person to help your daughters get past this horror.”

  We. God, it felt good to share his burden with this stranger.

  “I have someone in mind. Donna Jessup. She’s great with kids, but counseling is a highly subjective matter and not everyone connects with the same person, so we can try several. With your permission, we’ll try Donna first.”

  Tom nodded. He felt as if he’d made the first forward motion since that January morning when he woke up in his truck with a highway patrolman knocking on his window.

  While Abby made the call, he rose and stretched. He wondered how anyone could stand to be cooped up in a four-by-five cubicle five days a week on a regular basis. He didn’t understand it any more than he understood why Lesley had chosen the hustle and bustle, smog and crime of the big city over clean air and open spaces.

  “Done,” she said, reaching across the desk to hand him a piece of paper with a name, address and phone number all set out in neat, loopy penmanship. “Donna will see you at four this afternoon.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  She deflected his gratitude with a casual wave of her hand. Reaching beneath the lip of her desk, she pulled out a sliding table holding a keyboard and mouse. “Now. Let’s get you into our system.”

  Tom shuddered. The last four months had proven how suffocating the octopus arms of the “system” could be, but his peaceful anonymity was a small price to pay for his daughters’ welfare.

  She typed diligently for a few minutes, glancing between her faxed copy and the screen. She seemed engrossed in her work, her lips pursed in a half frown. Tom recalled that she’d mentioned today was her birthday. Thirty, maybe? Lesley would have been thirty-five in September.

  “How are you doing for money?”

  Her question took him by surprise. “Excuse me?” he said stiffly.

  A blush engulfed her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’ve been doing this so long I sometimes let my agenda get in the way of good manners.”

  She took a deep breath then said, “What I meant to ask in a more sensitive way was, has this been a terrible financial drain on your resources? We have some discretionary funds available and state programs such as food stamps that can help.”

  Tom knew she was simply doing her job, but she hadn’t grown up with Walt Butler’s prejudice against the dole. Tom turned sideways to look out the window. In the parking lot his ancient truck stood out like a mule among thoroughbreds. This was going to be the year he bought a new one. Was.

  “My daddy always said the dole is what ruined many a good man, and we Butlers do it ourselves or we do without.”

  She typed and talked at the same time. “I can appreciate that sentiment and I don’t mean to sound condescending, but if you need to spend your days making sure your daughters feel safe and loved, how can you be out doing whatever it is you do? What do you do, by the way?”

  “I manage a ranch, ’bout twenty miles south of here. We run a few head of cattle and have a couple of hundred acres of almonds. My boss, Ed Hastings, covered for me when I was getting the girls moved up here, but now I’m back full time,” he said.

  Finances were tight, but when weren’t they
? So far, he hadn’t had to sell any of the broodmares he and his friend, Miguel Fuentes, were raising on the side, but he’d damn well do that before he accepted a handout from the government. Miguel would understand. He and Maria were pinching pennies, too, what with the new baby coming.

  “Okay, fine,” she said, pushing the keyboard back beneath her desk. At that moment a printer sitting atop a gray plastic shelf to Tom’s right came to life. “But if it happens that you can’t manage as well as you’d like, I hope you’ll let me know. We have a wide array of programs, including low-interest loans for things like remodeling or adding rooms to homes. Sometimes when you add a couple of new bodies to a house, space becomes a problem. So just keep it in mind.”

  She had to stretch across the desk to reach the paper ejected from the printer. Tom reached for it, too. Their fingers met momentarily, and she jerked her hand back as if scalded.

  A moment of stiff silence was shattered by a scream, piercing and high-pitched like a small wounded animal caught in a trap. Heather. Tom bolted through the doorway. Too many nights he awoke to the bloodcurdling horror of that cry. He raced down the corridor, almost taking the waiting-room door off its hinges.

  Heather was seated on a worn, oval carpet between a low wooden table capped with children’s books and a lumpy couch where Angela slouched, a handheld electronic game loose in her fingers. Becky Barton, the young volunteer, was kneeling beside Heather trying to comfort her.

  Tom dropped to his knees beside them and scooped Heather into his arms, babbling nonsense words in a tone that always soothed a frightened horse. “Shh, baby love, it’s okay. Your daddy’s got you, and nothing bad can happen.” He rocked her back and forth until the cries wound down to hiccups. Keeping up his monotone he made eye contact with Angel, who shrugged her shoulders, indicating she didn’t have a clue about what had upset her sister.