She waved away his concern. “I just need a bit of air.” She stood and headed for the nearest door, which took her out onto the restaurant’s back deck.
Dinner must have taken even longer than she’d thought because moonlight now glinted off the undulating surface of the inky ocean. The soft shushing of the waves did nothing to sooth her like it normally did. Her cast clunked against the rail as she rested her forearms on it, and suddenly she couldn’t hold the tears at bay for another moment. What was she supposed to do with her life? She couldn’t live at House of Hope expecting others to take care of her forever, especially now that the house needed to be rebuilt and she was just an extra burden to everyone.
And to add insult to injury, she missed Nate. She must be losing her mind. Nate had stolen everything from her, even her child – their child – and she could only think how she wished she could see his face just one more time.
Anger at her continued weakness surged through her. Consign the man to the vilest region of hell, if hell even existed, which she doubted. If there was a God, He’d certainly given her the short end of the stick when it came to blessings. And since everyone always talked about God’s love, she had to conclude He didn’t exist. How loving was it for Him to put her in a home with a workaholic for a father? A mother who had to be at every social event, charity auction, or country club shindig that offered alcohol, and who was always emotionally barricaded behind the Great Wall of China? What kind of God would let an accident like that happen and allow Nate to become so cruel without consequences? No…if God was love, nothing in her life showed proof of His existence. And yet…there were good, kind, loving people like Marie and Dakota who believed in Him…
Behind her, the door opened, and soft footsteps crossed the deck.
She balled up her fists and dashed at the moisture on her cheeks with her wrists. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone?
Jalen stopped beside her and held out her coat. “Figured you’d be getting cold out here.”
He was right, but she hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it. She accepted the jacket and jerked it around her shoulders. “Thanks.”
He folded his broad hands together, leaned against the rail and studied the star sprinkled sky above them.
She wished he would go inside and leave her alone to enjoy her misery.
She heard him swallow, and then he spoke so softly she almost didn’t hear the words. “My sister’s husband killed her.”
A jolt of shock spun her towards him.
His gaze remained fixed on the night sky. “I was sixteen when it happened. We all knew he didn’t treat her right. But none of us thought it would go that far or even close, I guess. One night he just…lost it… He’s serving life down in Salem now.” He turned his back to the rail and rested his elbows on it, looking her right in the face. “She’s one of the reasons I work with Justus at Deschutes Rejuvenation. I figure if I can reach one or two of those boys before they become like my brother-in-law, I’ll be doing my part for this world. What God put me here for.” He tilted his head, his eyes soft and full of understanding. “He’ll help you find your place too, Riley. But you have to give yourself time.”
She smirked. She couldn’t help herself. “You think God has a plan for me, Jalen?”
His brows went up. “You don’t?”
A bark of cynical laughter popped free before she could prevent it. She held up her cast and then gestured to the eye she knew was still red and ugly. “Maybe God’s plans are for me to be some man’s punching bag?”
A muscle ticked in Jalen’s jaw, and a sheen of moisture filled his eyes. But he held his silence, only studying her with something like disappointment in his expression.
And she hated that she’d hurt him. Sure she’d been going to church with Marie and Dakota for weeks, but that didn’t mean she was buying into all the rhetoric. She spun away from him before she did something really stupid like collapse into his arms. “Go away, Jalen. I just need some time to myself.”
The deck creaked, and she felt the barest caress of his fingers against her shoulder. “I’m praying for you, Riley.” And then he slipped quietly back into the restaurant.
Dakota felt a wave of concern as Jalen came into the room. He looked troubled. She stood and strode toward him, doing her best to ignore the pain pulsing through her foot. “Jalen?”
He rested his hands on his hips and pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “Something isn’t right, Dakota. Something about this place has her even more on edge than usual. I’m worried about her.”
She touched his arm. “I’ll go talk to her.”
The chill breeze seemed to bite into every pore as Dakota stepped out onto the deck. She tucked her arms together and stopped at the rail next to Riley.
Riley glanced over, but from the look on her face it was obvious she didn’t want to talk to anyone. Her jaw jutted off to one side and she snorted. “He send you out here to make sure I wasn’t going to jump off into the water?” Immediately Riley’s face cringed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” She waved a hand, encompassing the beach, the ocean, the restaurant behind them. “I’m just…in a mood I guess.”
Dakota hunched into her shoulders and leaned on the rail beside her. “Want to talk about it?”
Riley sighed. She rubbed the back of her neck, staring down into the dark shadows on the sand below them. “Not sure there’s much to talk about that I haven’t already rehearsed half to death.” She pointed back into the restaurant. “This is the place where Nate’s and my life started to fall apart. Well, actually Nate started to pull it apart before that night but… I was here waiting for him… We were supposed to have dinner. He was late. I thought he’d just gotten tied up at work. But…” She laughed bitterly. “Turned out that Nate was more interested in drinking and surfing than in having dinner with me.”
Dakota frowned, not sure she was quite following the disjointed story but a strange buzzing—a begging for attention—danced at the edges of her mind.
Riley seemed to be on a roll, and if Dakota’s face had paled at all she didn’t seem to notice. Her finger jabbed back toward the restaurant once more. “I was sitting at a table pretty close to where we were tonight, waiting for him to come. My phone rang. It was the hospital. Nate had been in a wreck out on 101. A kid was killed. Just a young guy not even out of high school yet. He was riding his motorbike with his girlfriend.”
Dakota felt the strength leaving her knees. The rail took most of her weight, and it was only by sheer will that she kept on breathing.
Riley’s voice trembled when she continued. “Nate was never the same after that. He’d been a little hard around the edges before then, but after that… He just… Well… That’s when our lives took the turn that brought us to this.” She gestured to her cast and blood-red eye.
Dakota clung to the rail for dear life, the headache that had been plaguing her all evening sprung to the fore with new vengeance. Her jaw dropped open but she couldn’t seem to find even one word to say. She was supposed to be comforting and counseling Riley. She needed to get a grip.
“The crazy thing is,” Riley continued, “I was sitting in there just now feeling all miserable and of all the crazy things missing Nate. Missing him!” She cursed. “After all he did to me… You’d think I would be relieved now that he’s gone.” She scooped a hand back through her hair. Suddenly Riley stilled and Dakota realized she was looking at her. A frown pinched Riley’s brow. “Did I say something wrong?”
Dakota became aware that both her hands were covering her mouth. She lowered them slowly and shook her head, but she could do nothing to stop the tears that were flowing down her cheeks. “No, no… I just… That was the summer of 2007, right?”
Riley nodded, a puzzled frown bunching her brow.
Dakota fumbled for the right words. “I was the girl. The girlfriend.”
And then the sudden understanding of all she truly was responsible for washed through her. “Oh Riley, oh Riley.” She gro
ped for something to sit down on. The deck, and the restaurant and the ocean were all spinning around her in a dizzying vortex, but there was nowhere to sit. She buried her face against her forearms and sobbed for all the pain a single bad choice had leveled on the world.
“Dakota? I’ll get help.” Riley’s footsteps slapped across the boards, and the door to the restaurant whooshed open.
Somewhere at the back of her mind she realized if she didn’t pull herself together Marie’s reception dinner would be ruined, but Dakota couldn’t find the strength to stop Riley. Dear God. Dear God. Dear God! She thought of Riley’s baby, a little boy who had been denied his first breath at the hands of his angry father….
…And the chain of events that led to that moment shot straight as an arrow back through time and landed directly on her doorstep.
Chapter 9
Justus watched quietly as Jalen stepped back inside from the deck and said a few words to Dakota. He scrubbed the back of his neck with one hand and twisted his empty, upside down coffee cup around on its saucer with the other.
All evening he had been pushing away the niggling reminder that tomorrow was the wedding and after that he had to make a decision about what to do with the rest of his life. He’d given eight years trying to reach boys who were heading down a path that could lead only to trouble. Up until a few weeks ago, if anyone had asked him if he felt like his job made a difference he would have unequivocally replied that of course it did. Troubled boys came to his program, and responsible young men exited it.
That’s what he would have said…
But Treyvon McAllister had changed all that.
Justus massaged the skin between his eyes, and battened down the curl of nausea in his gut.
Treyvon McAllister had come to him much like any of his other boys came to him. Much like he himself had been before he ended up in the system. Trey’s grades had dropped at school. He’d ended up in juvy a couple times, always angry at home, never respectful to anyone in authority…
The principal had called Justus. Asked if he had any room. Enrollment had already been at its peak, but Justus had made space on the roster for one more kid. He converted the storage closet at the end of the dorm into another bedroom. And he’d poured his heart and soul into Treyvon McAllister.
He’d even thought he was reaching the troubled boy. Trey had quit complaining about morning devotions, he’d started doing his list of chores without constant reminders, and he had also started pitching in to help a couple other kids with their chore list from time to time. His grades had improved along with his attitude. So when graduation day rolled around, Justus hadn’t even hesitated to give him a passing grade and send him home.
Trey hadn’t been home for even a week when Justus had been awakened in the middle of the night by frantic pounding on his door. Half asleep and still rubbing his eyes, he’d stumbled down to his entry and fumbled with the lock to find Trey’s mother covered in blood, sobbing and trembling on his front stoop.
“You havta come, Mista Teague! You havta come! My Trey he didn’t mean it. I swear to you he never meant it.”
A cold wash of horror swept through Justus as he took her in from head to toe. “Are you hurt Mrs. McAllister?”
“No, no. Not me. You havta come! Come now, Mr. Teague.” She’d grabbed his arm and tugged.
Justus came back to the present when Jalen sank into the chair beside him.
He was trembling, he realized. He clasped his hands together and shoved them under the table, then tipped a nod toward the deck. “Everything okay?”
Jalen stretched his feet out in front of him and leaned into the slats of his chair, folding his arms. “Not sure, to be honest. Something’s been bothering Riley ever since we pulled into the parking lot out front. She’s quiet normally, but tonight… Well, something more was going on. Dakota is out there talking to her now.”
The waitress came by and set generous slices of cherry cheesecake before them. “Would you gentlemen care for a cup of coffee?” she asked.
Justus turned his cup over and nodded his acquiescence. “Thanks.” He forked off a bite of the cheesecake and chewed without really tasting as Jalen did the same.
His thoughts returned to the past.
As Mrs. McAllister had run to her old Nissan still idling in the drive, he’d hastily dialed Jalen to let him know what was going on. Thankfully they were between terms and had no other boys on campus. He grabbed a jacket, and followed Mrs. McAllister back to her house all the while trying to assure himself that if it were a real emergency she would’ve called 911. But her hysteria bothered him. That and the fact that before they left his place he hadn’t been able to get any more information out of her.
Jalen cleared his throat. “Mind handing me the cream?”
Justus worked his jaw from side to side to keep the words of frustration bottled up inside. Jalen didn’t take cream in his coffee, and well he knew it. He picked up his coffee cup only to find his hand trembling again, and set it back down.
Jalen eyed him speculatively. “You ready to talk about it?”
Justus shoved his dessert and coffee away from the edge of the table and rested his face in his palms. “Not now, Jalen. There will be time enough for reality after the wedding. I don’t want to ruin this day for Reece and Marie.”
Jalen snorted. “The truth is you’ve helped more boys over the years than you could count if you wracked your brain for a month, and you’re letting one boy’s poor choices make you question all the good you’ve done over the past eight years. They were terrible choices – horrendous choices – yes. But they were his choices, not yours.”
The familiar spout of horror and frustration that had been riding close to the surface lately threatened to erupt in a geyser of anger. But he clenched his teeth and managed to hold his silence.
Mrs. McAllister had turned the corner onto their street, her taillights jittering in a shorted-out flicker that felt oddly appropriate for the circumstances.
Justus had thought through the gamut of possibilities, and by the time he pulled into the McAllister’s garbage-littered driveway, he’d convinced himself that since Mrs. McAllister had driven all the way to his place to get him nothing could be too terribly wrong.
He clambered from his car at the end of the drive. It was a cold miserable night. Pacific Northwest rain hung in a thick cloud of mist, the kind that soaked through even the hardiest of rain jackets and clung to skin with damp clammy claws.
He huddled into his collar and felt relieved to see that Mrs. McAllister seemed calmer as she waited for him in the weak beam of the streetlight at the end of the walk. Treyvon had an old girlfriend who’d brought nothing but trouble into his life. Justus fully expected to find that Treyvon had fallen back in with the wrong crowd, done something stupid, and gotten himself beat up for it.
So when Mrs. McAllister led him through the kitchen’s back door and he saw Helene lying in a congealing puddle of blood on the chipped yellowed tiles, shock threw his hands to his head.
Trey sat huddled in one corner of the kitchen, his arms wrapped around his ears. A black hole with crumbling edges marred the plaster above his head. He was rocking back and forth like a little boy who needed soothing and didn’t even look up when they entered.
Justus’s hand trembled as he reached for his phone. He knew by the staring eyes before he even bent and touched the pulse point in her throat throat that Helene was dead. But the stillness beneath her cold skin confirmed it.
Treyvon finally glanced up with wide, wild eyes. “I didn’t mean it, Mr. Teague. I didn’t mean to hit her so hard.”
Justus had no words. He swallowed down bile as he tapped in 911 with a shaky finger.
Mrs. McAllister turned from where she’d set her purse on the cluttered counter. Her gaze fastened on the phone in his hand. “No!” She lurched at him, almost knocking the phone free. “You can’t turn him in! You can’t turn in my boy!” She clawed at his arm. “I done got you so’s you’d he
lp him! My Trey didn’t mean it! He didn’t!”
“This is 911, what is your emergency?”
Justus held up one arm to fend off the crazed mother who was still punching and clawing and hitting.
“I-I need to report a…death,” he called over the commotion.
“Sir, can you tell me your address?” Rapid-fire typing sounded in the background.
Justus felt like every thought had to be pulled from a miry bog. Mrs. McAllister was kicking him now and scratching at him as he held her at arm’s length from the phone. “Uh, give me a minute…” He tried to grab Mrs. McAllister’s hands without success, and grunted when one of her fists connected with his ribs. “Mrs. McAllister, stop! What’s your house number?”
The woman only screeched and clawed. “Gimme that phone! You can’t turn in my boy. He done turned eighteen. This will be the end of him!”
On the other end of the line the dispatcher spoke in his ear, “Sir, are you safe?”
Mrs. McAllister might be violent, but she was less than half his weight and only as tall as his chest. “Stop, Mrs. McAllister. Just stop.” He finally grabbed a handful of her sweatshirt and held her against the kitchen cabinets.
“Mama…” Trey continued to rock. “What have I done, Mama?”
Like a cloak of civility had been dropped over her, Mrs. McAllister pulled away and darted to her son’s side. She clutched his head to her bosom. “Oh my baby. My poor, poor baby.” She rubbed his back as though maybe he’d been the one who was injured.
Angling away from her, Justus spoke to the woman on the other end of the line once more. “Please send some units.”
“Sir, I need you to confirm your exact location for me.”
Justus stepped out onto the deck and searched the front of the house for a house number, but there was none. “Listen, my name is Justus Teague. I run Deschutes Rejuvenation out on Highway 97. I’m at the home of one of my former students. I followed his mother here. There’s no house number on the front of the house and I don’t remember it. We’re on Seventh in Terrebonne. If you come in from Central, it’s the last house on the northwest side of the street, and there is an old rusty pickup in the front yard.”
Song of the Surf (Pacific Shores Book 3) Page 8