Читать книгу A Child's Wish - Tara Quinn Taylor - Страница 12

“I THINK I WANT HER, Don.”

Barbie Shepherd lay naked in her lover’s arms, hoping he wasn’t going to get all bossy and manly—and hoping he’d stay in bed with her until she fell asleep. She hated nights. The dark, the loneliness….

“Want who?”

“Kelsey.”

Every time she’d thought about the idea in the four days since her daughter had last been here, a good feeling had come over her. Now that Kelsey had met Don—and more importantly, now that he’d met her—she couldn’t be happy without being a real mom again.

“You want her to live here with us, you mean?” His voice was soft, kind of hoarse, like it got right before they had sex. Or right afterward.

He had to leave soon, on a run to Colorado. She toyed with his nipple. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“Really?” she asked. “You mean it?”

“Sure.” Don leaned over, licked her breast, his beard tickling her. Then he sat up, reaching for the cigarettes that were never farther away than the nightstand. She watched the amber flicker of the lighter’s flame, saw the cigarette catch and glow as Don inhaled deeply. Took her own drag when he handed it to her and lit a second one for himself.

“I’m her mother. I have rights.”

“Of course, you do.” The end of the cigarette disappeared between his whiskers and Barbie told herself he was a good-looking man. Especially in the semidarkness, when you couldn’t see his teeth.

“You’re the one who carried her around in your body,” he said now, running a finger lightly from her breasts down and over her belly. “You went through labor, gave birth to her…”

“Breast-fed her and raised her for the first five and half years of her life…”

“She’s an asset,” he continued. “Your asset.”

Yeah. Kelsey was someone who had to love her, no matter what.

“Kids are good for lots of things,” Don went on, letting the ash grow dangerously long before flicking it into the ashtray. “She can help you out around here.”

She hadn’t thought of that. Kelsey had still been too young to be of much use when Barbie had left. Not that she’d minded. She’d liked taking care of her. Still…

“So, what do I do?” she asked now, straddling his stomach as she leaned over to flick off her ashes.

Crushing the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray, Don grabbed her butt. “Get a lawyer.”

She took one last drag and ditched her cigarette. “Can we afford that?”

“You can get one for free.” This was the best news yet—she’d thought the legal part would be the most difficult. “State has to appoint one for you.”

Barbie slid down the roundness of his belly until she rested at the top of his thighs. “You sure about that?”

“Yep.”

Then he moved and she couldn’t think about Kelsey or being a mother anymore. Don wasn’t like Mark in bed. He had lots of tricks, kept her guessing, and as usual she gave herself over to whatever he had in mind. It always ended in orgasm and those moments were glorious.

MEREDITH APPROACHED her Mustang in the deserted parking lot an hour after school let out. It was only Wednesday afternoon and already she was worn out—longing for the weekend, forty-eight hours of anonymity, hot baths, good books and little responsibility.

Her students, whether picking up on her own tension or bringing it from home, had been restless as well, talking too much, too loudly, focusing only in short spurts. And that afternoon during art class Erin had tripped near Meredith’s desk, and now Meredith had a patch of red poster paint staining the white silk blouse she’d worn with her black slacks and white-and-black pumps.

Black-and-white jewelry, black-and-white leather satchel. She’d been hoping for a black-and-white kind of day—and had ended up splattered in red.

“Ms. Foster, could we have a word with you?”

Glancing up sharply, Meredith stopped. She’d noted the van in the parking lot, of course. Enough to be aware that it was there. Not enough to have noticed the Tulsa local-news logo on the side or the two people who had just emerged from it.

“We’d just like to ask a couple of questions.”

She walked past them to her car.

“We’re interested in the editorial that ran in Monday’s Republic. I understand that the newspaper didn’t contact you. Is that correct?”

She looked at the brunette, who was her age, at least, dressed in jeans and a white sweater, and wondered if she liked her job. The hefty, bearded cameraman behind her she ignored completely.

“We’ve got some good tape from Mr. Barnett,” the woman said, her eyes showing something akin to sympathy. “My producer was ready to run with it, but I insisted that you deserved to have your side told, as well.”

Keys in hand, Meredith stood there another second, assessing. Granted, her senses weren’t honed at the moment, but she believed the other woman was sincere.

The brunette dropped her mic at her side. “He was pretty brutal,” she said. “I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

Meredith glanced back at the school. Mark would kill her if she said anything.

And if she didn’t? She’d be crucified.

Who’d stick up for her? Ruth Barnett? Hardly. The woman was a classic battered woman, so intimidated by her jerk of an ex-husband that she’d still lie just because he told her to. And that left—who? Her boss? Fat chance.

“What do you want to know?” She regretted the words even as she said them. There would be hell to pay. And at the same time, she felt better. She’d done nothing wrong, had nothing to be ashamed of. Unlike Larry Barnett.

“Did you tell Mr. Barnett’s wife that he was abusing his son?”

Meredith glanced at the school one more time. This was her last chance to walk away.

But for what? To let that man take everything from her, without even trying to defend herself?

“You can’t blame people for what they’re going to think, if you don’t give them another perspective,” the other woman said, her gaze compassionate.

“I told her I suspected his father was inflicting some pretty severe emotional abuse.”

“You suspect,” the woman said, moving nearer with her microphone as the cameraman closed in behind her. Meredith was trapped between her still-locked car door and what suddenly felt like two vultures. The school was behind her—a perfect backdrop.

“You have no proof,” the woman prompted gently, after a long pause.

“No.”

“What made you suspect?” The question was more curiosity than accusation. She was receiving a fair chance to be heard. Which was more than she’d expected following Mark’s pronouncement Monday night over ice cream. Ruth Barnett had said her ex-husband was not going to let this go away.

Give me strength, she asked her unseen source of guidance—as she’d already done uncountable times over the past week.

“Tommy was a student in my class. I listened to him, as I listen to all of my students.”

The reporter’s eyes narrowed. “So Tommy told you?” she asked, perhaps seeing a larger story brewing. If it was found that the D.A. actually was abusing his son, she’d have a much bigger audience for a longer period of time.

“No.” Meredith hated to disappoint her. She sighed, searching for the best words. “But every time fathers were mentioned, or Tommy mentioned his father, I sensed that there was great turmoil. But no physical danger—at least not yet.”

“You sensed.”

Meredith nodded.

“As in how? You just thought about it and reached this conclusion?”

That was how Mark saw the situation. And probably the majority of Bartlesville, as well. Meredith was tempted just to leave them to it. In the end, it might be far less painful than to have everyone think she was some kind of quack.

But if she didn’t stand up for herself, who would? How could anyone even have a chance of choosing to believe her, to understand, to support her, if she didn’t speak out?

And if she allowed herself to be lied about, allowed her credibility to be crushed beneath Larry Barnett’s expensively shod foot, how would she ever do any good in this world?

A vision of Tommy Barnett’s innocent young face appeared before her.

“I get feelings,” she said. “I tune in, focus deeply and I can feel what other people are feeling. Sometimes.”

“So you’re saying you’re psychic.”

“No.” She didn’t believe there were special people who were granted the right to know everything about someone else, both past and future. “I don’t get grand messages,” she said. “I’m not told secrets, nor can I predict anything that’s going to happen in the future—no more than you can predict your own future. I can just feel what they’re feeling. Sometimes.”

She wasn’t some kind of weirdo. She didn’t run around town invading people’s privacy.

“What am I feeling?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t want to know. She wanted to go home. Perhaps cry. Call her mom. Take a hot bath.

“What’s he feeling?”

“I don’t—” Meredith glanced at the cameraman, let her guard down without meaning to. “Good,” she said, head slightly tilted as she eyed him with warning. “Not nice, but good. Self-satisfied. I’d guess he’s having inappropriate thoughts about something or someone and feeling good about them.”

The camera slipped, was righted…and Meredith met the man’s eyes. She didn’t know if she’d been the target of his thoughts and she didn’t know if they’d been sexual in nature or just mean-spirited, but she knew she’d caught him.

And he knew it, too.

The reporter chuckled uneasily. “Uh, you ever think about working with the police?”

The woman believed her.

“No.” Meredith smiled straight into the camera. “I’m a teacher, not a cop. And I’m nothing special.

“Everyone has the ability to do what I do,” she explained, paraphrasing what she’d read in the books that had finally made her abilities make sense. “My senses are heightened in this area, but we can all—with focus—tune in to other people’s energy. Their emotions.”

Except that in her case, sometimes she couldn’t turn off the feelings.

“Wow,” the woman said. “I’d like to hear more about this, but unfortunately we’re out of time. This is Angela Liddy for KNLD news.” She clicked off the wireless microphone and nodded to her cameraman, who lowered his equipment and turned back toward the van.

“Thanks,” she said to Meredith. “I don’t know what good it’ll do, but I’m glad we got both sides.”

Meredith hoped she’d be glad, too, already regretting what she’d done. “When will it air?”

“Tonight, if I get back in time,” she said. “If not, then it’ll start tomorrow morning.”

Unlocking her car, Meredith dropped her bag on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” Angela Liddy said, speaking softly as she paused beside the car. “But you should know that Larry Barnett is determined to see you lose your job.”

Yeah, Meredith had gathered that much. “It’ll take more than my speaking with his wife to make that happen,” she said. “I have rights.”

“And he has power,” the reporter said. “I’d be careful if I were you.”

Careful. What did that mean—not talking to reporters? Okay, she’d screwed up that one. And otherwise she was just living her life, going to work, coming home, watching the game-show network while she graded papers. What could she do that would be any more careful than that?

Not feel, not be herself?

How the hell did one do that?

MARK CAUGHT the news Wednesday night, lying in bed alone with the television on, attempting to fall asleep. Heart sinking when he heard the intro to the coming stories. Remote control in hand, he raised the volume another couple of notches.

She’d done a damned interview? Bad enough that Barnett was spreading this all over the media, but did Meredith have to feed the frenzy? Did she have no sense at all?