Читать книгу A Time To Forgive - Darlene Gardner, Darlene Gardner - Страница 8

Nearly ten years later

CONNOR SMITH HAD SPENT the last decade attempting to outrun the past, but it caught up with him. Again.

The pattern was as familiar as the long, straight rows of gravestones in a cemetery. Just when he thought he’d relegated J.D.’s murder to a terrible memory and started to live in the present, something happened to pull him back into the abyss.

The latest something was his niece, Jaye, an unusually pretty little girl with pale blond hair swept back from the widow’s peak on her high forehead and gray-green eyes that were reminiscent of his dead brother’s. She’d got her first name from J.D., too.

The girl sat on a stool at the counter-height island in the kitchen nook of his Silver Spring town house picking at the piece of toast and jam he’d fixed her. Her skinny, nine-year-old legs dangled well above the porcelain-tile floor.

He stood between the island and the state-of-the-art black microwave that was built into his golden-maple cabinets, cradling his second cup of black coffee of the morning and waiting for a bagel to defrost.

On an ordinary Saturday morning, he’d already be at the office figuring out how to make one of his clients money. But there was nothing routine about a morning in which his sister chose to abandon her daughter.

“Where’s Mom?” Jaye asked.

There it was, the question Connor had been dreading. The microwave beeped, signaling that the bagel had thawed.

He ignored the summons and kneaded the throbbing space between his brows. He’d found his sister Diana’s note more than an hour ago but still hadn’t figured out how to break the news to Jaye that her mother had taken off for God only knew where.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” Jaye asked abruptly in a hard voice that didn’t sound as if it belonged to a child.

“Yeah, she’s gone,” Connor said softly, futilely wishing he could soften the blow. “I think she needed to be by herself for a while.”

He expected Jaye to dissolve into tears, the way he imagined any young girl would react upon hearing that her mother had cast her off and left her with an uncle who was essentially a stranger.

Jaye’s chin quivered slightly, but her eyes were dry, her petal of a mouth pinched. “What’s going to happen to me?”

That was the question that had been swirling around and around in his brain since he’d read Diana’s note. She’d claimed she’d be in touch but made no promises about when she’d be back for Jaye. He doubted it would be any time soon.

Diana had nearly jumped out of her skin every time he’d asked her a question last night. He’d recognized that something was wrong, but had unwisely decided to wait until this morning to confront her about it.

He swallowed his anger at his sister and focused on the sad girl with the hard eyes. “Your mother left a note asking me to take care of you.”

How, he wondered, had Diana managed to look after Jaye for this long? She’d given birth less than a year after J.D.’s murder, when she was barely seventeen. She’d had sex with so many boys, she said, that she couldn’t figure out who the father was. Their parents, still drowning in grief over J.D.’s death, hadn’t been able to deal with a new blow.

After arguing bitterly with their mother, Diana had run off. Connor had spent a night and a day looking for her before their great-aunt Aggie had called to say that Diana had turned up at her house outside Roanoke in southwest Virginia.

There Diana had stayed for the next four years until Aunt Aggie’s death, when she’d cashed in her meager inheritance and simply taken off with Jaye. She’d called now and then to let the family know she was alive but hadn’t resurfaced until last night at ten o’clock when she rang the doorbell at his town house.

And now she was gone—again—but this time she’d left her daughter behind.

“My mom said I have a grandma,” Jaye continued, still in that tough, cold voice. “Maybe I should stay with her.”

“No,” Connor said. His mother could barely take care of herself, let alone a granddaughter. His father, re-married and living in Richmond, was only a slightly better choice. All his energy went to his second wife and their young son.

“Then where am I going to stay?” Jaye asked.

He looked around at the interior of his pricey three-story town house, which a maid cleaned twice a week until it sparkled. It was no place for a child, and he was a poor choice for a guardian.

He worked upwards of sixty hours a week at a high-powered brokerage firm in Washington, D.C., where he was so well regarded he’d recently been fielding offers from Wall Street. The rest of his waking hours, he spent at the gym or on the bar and restaurant scene with his girlfriend, Isabel Pennington, who’d been making noises about moving in with him.

He didn’t know anything about raising a child, especially one he wouldn’t have recognized as his niece until a few hours ago.

Though, for the moment, there was no other option. He was it.

He swallowed the lump of trepidation in his throat and strived to make himself sound self-assured. “I already told you that I’m going to take care of you. So you’ll stay here. With me.”

Jaye’s mouth flattened in a mutinous line, then she hopped down from the stool and shoved it so hard that it overturned. Without another look at him, she ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the guest room where she’d slept the night before.

Connor dragged a hand through the hair on his throbbing head. He made snap decisions involving tens of thousands of dollars every day, but he was lost in how to deal with a nine-year-old child. Should he follow her? Explain that he wanted her with him but had grave doubts about his ability to care for her?

“Diana, how could you do this?” he asked aloud.

The hell of it was that Connor didn’t blame Diana for abandoning her daughter. He blamed Drew Galloway.

Galloway hadn’t been in direct contact with anyone in the Smith family other than J.D., but the knife he’d thrust into J.D.’s chest had ripped the family apart. It had certainly precipitated Diana’s tailspin.

The hate that always simmered beneath the surface of Connor’s skin boiled up, nearly singeing him. Even though Galloway had been in prison for almost ten years, the killer was still leaving a trail of victims in his wake. The latest was the discarded little girl who pretended she didn’t want to cry.

Connor tamped down the surging hatred. He needed to focus on Jaye, not on Galloway. It was mid-February, more than halfway through the school year. He’d have to figure out which was the nearest elementary school and find out how to get Jaye enrolled. More immediately, he needed to visit the grocery store so the refrigerator contained something healthier than leftover pizza and beer.

Deciding to give Jaye time to get used to being stuck with him, he walked to the table and righted the chair she’d overturned.

He’d have a much tougher time righting the wrong that had been done to Jaye.

He had a fleeting thought of the teenage girl and the sobbing woman who had sat behind Drew Galloway that dark day in the Laurel County Courthouse.

Had Galloway’s family suffered even a fraction of the pain and the ramifications as Connor’s family?

Somehow, Connor didn’t think so.

ABBY REED WAS GOOD at spotting troubled children.

She should be. She’d lived with one for fifteen years until he’d been sent away for murder to the maximum-security Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center.

She’d had nearly ten years to come to terms with what her only sibling had done, but still couldn’t accept that he was a cold-blooded killer. In her gut she knew there was more to what had happened that night than had come to light.

Her heart bled for the boy who’d died and the people who’d loved him, but the Drew who used to read her bedtime stories while their single mother worked two jobs hadn’t been evil. He’d been a kid in trouble.

After the murder, hardly anybody in the small Maryland town of Bentonsville had agreed with that assessment.

Her mother had moved their family of three from inner-city Baltimore to Bentonsville two years before the boy’s death in a failed attempt to get Drew away from the potential to do wrong. After Drew was convicted, sentiment against him had run so high and so hot that Abby and her mother had had to move again.

They’d gone to Wheaton, a suburb of Washington, D.C., that was only fifty miles from Bentonsville but lacking in the acres of unspoiled countryside that had made the little town such a beautiful place to live. The trade-off, though, had been worth it.

Nobody directed hateful looks at them or pointed and whispered behind their backs.

Nobody recognized Abby as the frightened fifteen-year-old half sister of the boy who’d been labeled a murderer.

Nobody maintained that the sister of a convicted killer shouldn’t be hired to teach in the Montgomery County public-school system.

Abby had secured the job after graduating from Towson University with a major in music and minor in education. She spent the bulk of her time running the orchestra program at Blue Moon Middle School, but once a week taught a beginning class for fourth-and fifth-graders at the neighboring elementary school.

Montgomery County, with the nation’s capital on its southernmost border, was among the nation’s richest. The students Abby taught were largely the carefree children of privilege.

The fourth-grader in her strings class at Blue Moon Elementary was not happy-go-lucky. She wasn’t in the deep, dark trouble that Abby’s brother Drew had found himself immersed in, but trouble nonetheless.

Abby heard a new story about the girl every week. She’d splattered paint on the wall in art class, refused to participate in PE and wrote pithy sayings on classroom blackboards like School Stinks, Down With Learning and Reading Is Wrong. Considering she’d arrived at Blue Moon just four weeks before, it was quite a résumé.

Two weeks ago, she’d noticed the girl standing at the door to Abby’s classroom wearing a wistful expression. Abby had impulsively offered to work it out so she could take the class, even though in reality it was much too late to enroll.

After finding all the music stands overturned on the girl’s first day, Abby feared she was in for a long couple of months.

But then the girl had taken her violin from the case and followed Abby’s simple directions about how to coax sound from it. The violin had sung, the girl had been enchanted and Abby’s problems with the difficult child had been over.

Until today when she’d turned in a forged permission slip to hear an ensemble of National Symphony Orchestra musicians perform at the Kennedy Center.

She stood in front of Abby in the empty classroom, looking adorable in her pink Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt and designer jeans. Abby handed her the permission slip.

“I know your father didn’t sign this so don’t bother telling me he did,” Abby stated.

The child looked down at her feet, which were encased in brand-name tennis shoes. Her eyes were filled with unshed tears when she gazed back up at Abby. “Am I in trouble?”

Sympathy rose in Abby like the Potomac River after a rainy season. The girl had recently confided that she’d come to live with her father after her mother had died. It wasn’t any wonder she wreaked so much havoc at school.

“You’re only in trouble if you don’t tell me why you forged the signature.”

“Because I really want to go on the field trip,” she said in a plaintive voice, sniffling not so delicately.

“Did your father say why he wouldn’t sign it?”

She nodded. “He says I don’t deserve to go because I’m bad.”

Abby bit down hard so she wouldn’t call the girl’s father-come-lately a cuss word. The nerve of the man. She supposed she should give him some credit for taking in his daughter after her mother’s death, but he shouldn’t have shirked his responsibilities in the first place.

“You’re not bad. You’ve done some things that are wrong. But you’re a good girl with a good heart. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”

The girl blinked back tears, not inspiring much hope that Abby’s message had gotten through. “He doesn’t understand how much I want to hear the symphony, Miss Reed.”

Abby understood. Of all the students she’d taught in the four years since she’d worked in Montgomery County schools, this one loved music the most.

The child reminded Abby of her own young self. During the darkest times of her childhood, Abby had turned to the violin and let the music lift her soul. The music could fill a similar void in this child if only her hardheaded jerk of a father would let it.

Abby vowed in that instant to do whatever possible to gain permission for the girl to attend the field trip, even if she disliked what it would entail. “Would you like me to talk to your father, Jaye?”

Jaye Smith smiled, the misery on her face turning to hope. “Oh, yes, Miss Reed. I’d like that very much.”

CONNOR SMITH WAS NOT HAVING a good day.

It had started off on a sour note when Jaye had “accidentally” dumped his potted amaryllis onto the cream-colored carpet in his living room, throwing their uneasy morning routine so out of whack that she’d missed the bus.

He’d gotten snarled in traffic on the way to Blue Moon Elementary, causing him to deposit the silent-as-a-stone Jaye to school after the bell had rung. Then somebody had rear-ended his Porsche on the way to the office. And now one of his clients was talking nonsense.

“I think we should dump it, Connor.” The panicked, masculine voice belonged to a bank president who had trusted Connor with his investments for the past three years. “I checked the paper this morning and the price of a share is down eight cents.”

Connor leaned his head on the backrest of his office chair and stared at the white ceiling. He usually had more patience with Daniel Mann, who called every time the market fluctuated. This time he was panicking about an emerging pharmaceutical company in which he’d invested.

“Remember how I told you that checking the markets is my job, Daniel? The fluctuations can drive you crazy if you let them. But trust me on this. If the FDA approves the drug the company’s developed, the stock will go way up. Sit tight and wait to see what happens.”

By the time Connor ended the connection ten minutes later, Daniel Mann had heeded his advice. But then most of his clients did, as well they should. Connor had made impressive amounts of money for himself and his clients since he’d passed the stockbroker exams and joined the Capital Company six years ago.

Connor glanced up at the flat-screen television in his office that was tuned to the financial news network, satisfied himself on the status quo and reached for another client portfolio. If he was going to get off work by six so he could spend time with Jaye, he needed to cram as much into the day as possible.

Before he could open the folder and dial the number listed inside, his secretary’s smooth, professional voice came over the intercom.

“Ms. Abby Reed is here to see you, Mr. Smith.”

The name was naggingly familiar, but Connor couldn’t place it. He glanced down at the list of appointments scheduled for that day, but didn’t find an Abby Reed. Had his usually efficient secretary added an appointment she hadn’t told him about?

He pressed down on the intercom button. “Does she have an appointment, Mary Beth?”

“She says she’s here about Jaye.”

Connor grimaced, although he wasn’t surprised. In the five rocky weeks Jaye had lived with him, every day brought a new problem. He depressed the intercom button. “What was her name again?”

“My name’s Abby Reed.” The voice that traveled over the intercom and filled his office had a low, sultry quality even though it was heavily laced with annoyance. “I’m Jaye’s strings teacher. And I’m not leaving until you see me.”

Of course. Abby Reed was the Ms. Reed who had been leaving messages at his office and home, trying to get him to reconsider his refusal to allow Jaye to attend a field trip. He’d neither the time nor inclination to call her back because he had no intention of changing his mind.

But what was she doing here? The Silver Spring office of the Capital Company was only a mile from Blue Moon Elementary, but he’d never known a teacher to make office calls.

Jaye’s reign of terror on the fourth grade must have taken a turn for the worse.

“I can vouch that she’s serious when she says she’s not leaving until you see her,” his secretary added.

Connor pinched the bridge of his nose. He really did not have time for this, but he couldn’t send the child’s teacher packing.

“Send her in,” he said and took off his headset.

The door flew open, and a slender, dark-haired woman marched to his desk with a determined stride. Her hair was cut so short it fell shy of her collar, giving her face a gamine quality and making her resemble the young Audrey Hepburn in the old movies he liked to watch. Her lips were unpainted, her makeup minimal and brown eyes angry.

He wasn’t a stupid man. Recognizing the signs of an imminent verbal eruption, he took the offensive. “I don’t intend to make excuses for Jaye, Ms. Reed. So just tell me what she’s done now.”

She recoiled. “Excuse me?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “What’s Jaye done? Gone on musical strike? Bashed in an instrument? Bloodied a classmate’s nose?”

“What makes you think she’s done any of those things?”

“She’s no angel,” Connor said, wondering at the narrowing of her eyes. “And you wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t done something wrong.”

She placed her palms flat on his desk and leaned forward. She couldn’t have been much older than twenty-four or twenty-five, but projected an air of authority a senior statesman would envy. “The reason I’m here, Mr. Smith, is that you haven’t returned my calls.”

He quickly rationalized away his flash of guilt. She’d clearly stated the unsigned permission slip as her reason for calling.

“If you had phoned me about a problem with Jaye instead of about a field trip, I would have called back,” he said.

Her lips thinned and her low voice grew even lower. “The problem I’m having isn’t with Jaye. It’s with you.”

“Excuse me?”

She removed a sheet of paper from her handbag, unfolded it and slapped it down on his desk. He picked it up, recognizing it as the permission form he’d refused to sign. Somebody had forged his signature with a childish scrawl.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, then raised his eyes to where Abby Reed leaned over his desk. “So how much trouble is Jaye in?”

“You haven’t been listening, Mr. Smith,” she all but hissed. “You’re the one I’m having trouble with.”

“I didn’t forge a signature.”

“Jaye wouldn’t have felt the need to forge one either if you’d signed the form in the first place.”

“So you’re not here about the forgery?”

“I’m here to make you understand how badly Jaye wants to go on the field trip. She’s the only student in the class who doesn’t have permission.”

Connor blinked. Was Abby Reed for real? Had she actually stormed his office because he had the sense to realize his niece didn’t deserve to go on a field trip?

“You must know how disruptive Jaye has been since she started school this year,” he said slowly. “Who knows how she’d act on a field trip. She’s not what you’d call well-behaved.”

She straightened from the desk and placed her hands on her hips. She was dressed the way a teacher should dress, in a modest-length dark skirt and nondescript blouse, but he still noticed her gentle curves. Her voice wasn’t gentle. “Then you chaperone the trip and make sure she acts the way she’s supposed to.”

Connor blew out a breath. “Why would I reward her with a field trip? She’s flunking almost all her classes.”

“It’s hard to move to a new school in the middle of the year. And she’s not flunking strings.” Abby Reed seemed to stand up even straighter. Still, she wasn’t very tall. Five foot four tops, he guessed. “She’s one of the best students in the class.”

Connor wasn’t nearly as surprised as he’d been when Jaye had asked if he’d rent her a violin so she could take the strings class. He knew his niece practiced because he’d heard muffled musical sounds from behind the closed door in her bedroom. So far, she refused to play for him.

“I’m pleased to hear she’s doing well, but I still won’t sign the permission slip.”

She released a short, harsh breath. She seemed to be making an effort to hold on to her temper. She failed. “You are a piece of work.”

“Excuse me?”

“We’re talking about a child who’s confused.”

“I know that she’s—”

“This is a child who needs to feel passionate about something. The field trip is to hear an ensemble of National Symphony Orchestra musicians. Do you know how inspiring that could be?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Jaye’s only started to learn and she already loves playing the violin. You’d recognize how much music could come to mean to her if you paid her any attention at all.”

He felt his blood pressure rise and his head pound, the dangerous signs of his own temper about to erupt. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know that Jaye goes to after-school care, which she hates, and that you don’t pick her up until it closes at six o’clock. And that half the time your girlfriend picks her up for you. A girlfriend who told her, incidentally, not to get too comfortable because she wouldn’t be staying with you for long.”

He breathed sharply through his nose. “I can’t believe Isabel said that.”

“How do you know what anybody says to Jaye when you’re never around her?”

“I’m a busy man, Ms. Reed,” he said, holding on, just barely, to his temper.

“Too busy to go on a field trip, obviously.”

“I have a demanding job,” Connor said in his defense.

“Your most important job is to take care of Jaye,” she said and his head spun. His job wasn’t the reason he’d refused to sign the slip.

“I am taking care of her.”

“Not well enough. You should understand that she needs extra attention after losing her mother.”

Connor might have asked how much she knew about Jaye’s situation if her insult hadn’t registered. “I’m doing the best I can,” he said tightly.

“Then help to nurture her interest in music. Jaye’s heading toward trouble. She needs something to care about. That something could be music.”

“I don’t disagree,” he said.

“Then sign the permission slip and chaperone the trip,” she challenged.

The concert was three days from now. That was a Friday, which was no less busy than any other weekday. He’d have to reschedule a business lunch and no fewer than three appointments.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Smith?” she asked. “Are you too busy for Jaye?”

The dare was in her stance as well as her eyes. Somehow he’d failed to convey that he was a well-meaning uncle doing the best he could for a child he loved but hardly knew. He didn’t know why Abby Reed’s opinion mattered so much, but he hated that she thought so badly of him.

He picked up a pen, scribbled his name and handed her the permission slip. “Satisfied?”

She took it without the smile of triumph he’d expected.

“If I let myself become satisfied so easily, Mr. Smith, I hardly would have come to your office. The bus leaves Friday at nine-thirty sharp. Chaperones should arrive at nine-fifteen.”

Without another word, she swept out of the room. The quiet was absolute when she was gone, as though she’d taken all the life and energy of the day with her.

He sat stock still behind his desk, thinking about his jam-packed workweek.

Why, then, had he signed up to chaperone a field trip he hadn’t wanted Jaye to go on in the first place?

ISABEL PENNINGTON WAS a striking woman. Tall, dark and willowy with high cheekbones, an exotic slant to her eyes and a flawless complexion, she’d modeled extensively in her teens and early twenties before opening a boutique in Georgetown.

Connor had started dating her after she’d hired him to build her stock portfolio. In the nine months since then, he’d never seen her look anything but her best.

That included tonight. Despite the pout she wore, along with her beaded, curve-hugging designer dress, she still managed to look beautiful. “What do you mean you can’t go? We’ve been planning this for weeks.”

By this, she meant a two-hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner supporting the D.C. Professional Women’s Association at a venerable downtown hotel. She’d offered to swing by and pick Connor up since his place was en route to the hotel, and she now stood in the foyer of his town house.

She’d arrived at a bad time.

Thirty minutes after he’d told Jaye to pick up her dirty clothes, he’d found his niece lying on her bed listening to her CD player with the clothes still on the floor. She was testing him, he knew. The school guidance counselor had told him to choose his battles. He’d been considering whether this one was worth fighting when the doorbell rang.

“I’m sorry, Isabel.” Connor brought his focus back to her lovely pouting face. “My neighbor just called a few minutes ago to say she can’t babysit.”

“Can’t you call somebody else?” Her voice was persuasive, her smile coaxing. “I was really looking forward to tonight.”

He ran a hand over his smooth-shaven chin. He’d been getting ready for the benefit when he’d gotten the call from Mrs. Piper, a widow in her sixties who lived next door. “I don’t know anybody else to call. I’m lucky to have the one babysitter.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Her lower lip thrust forward a fraction more. “Go to the dinner by myself?”

“Not if you don’t want to. I already paid for the dinners so we’re covered there. I was going to order out for Chinese for Jaye and me. You could join us.”

She ran a hand down the cloth of her expensive dress. “In this? I don’t think so. I’ll go to the benefit myself and take my chances that someone will want to have dinner with me.”

She knew very well she wouldn’t be dining alone and wanted Connor to know it, too. Wherever Isabel went, men followed. It was a fact of life he couldn’t get worked up about.

“Have a good time, then,” he said, without a touch of the jealousy he suspected she’d tried to arouse.

“Oh, believe me, I will. But before I go, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” She carefully and unnecessarily brushed her hair back from her face with long, slender fingers. He noticed that her nails were tipped with white in what looked like a fresh manicure. Abby Reed’s nails, he remembered, had been unpainted. “How much longer will you be taking care of Jaye?”

He shrugged. “Like I’ve told you before, I don’t know. It depends upon how long it takes Diana to get her act together.”

“What if she never gets it together?”

The question was one Connor hadn’t considered but supposed he should have thought about before now. Diana wasn’t a kid anymore. She was twenty-seven, past the age when he could chalk up her actions to immaturity.

“Then I’ll keep on taking care of Jaye. I’ll become her legal guardian or adopt her if I have to.”

“Are you serious?” Her voice turned disbelieving. “You’d raise somebody else’s child?”

“I’d raise my niece.”

“But why is she your responsibility? You have parents, Connor. Why can’t your mother take her? Or your father?”

He’d explained his family situation to Isabel before. He wasn’t about to do it again. “The best place for Jaye right now is with me.”

“I understand that, and I’m trying to be patient. But can’t you see what a strain this is putting on our relationship? We talked about living together, getting to know each other better, but how can we do that with your niece around?”

“I’m getting to know you better than I want to,” he said in a low voice.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He thought of Abby Reed standing in front of his desk, censure on her face. “Did you tell Jaye she wouldn’t be staying with me for much longer?”

“I thought I was doing her a favor,” she said, pasting on a look of innocence. “I never dreamed her stay here didn’t have an end date.”

Connor shook his head, wondering why he hadn’t picked up on this aspect of Isabel’s character before. Probably because he’d been so blown away by her good looks.

“Jaye can stay here as long as she needs to.” Connor crossed his arms over his chest, wondering what he’d ever seen in her. “You’re the one who should go.”

Her lovely eyes widened. “Are you breaking up with me?”

He didn’t need to think about his answer. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

Isabel even looked beautiful when her mouth thinned. “This is unbelievable. One day you’ll realize that you just threw away the best thing that ever happened to you.”

He let her have the last word. It was the least of his concerns. The angry click of her high heels on the hardwood of the foyer followed by the slam of the door echoed in his ears as he trekked upstairs to deal with Jaye and the pile of dirty clothes.

Isabel was wrong.

He’d never come to believe that a woman who couldn’t open her heart to an unhappy, displaced child was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

He was more likely to think of her as one of his many mistakes.