The night he’d fathered it.
That evening had started out as a dream come true for her. Or rather, a reality finally coming to pass. She’d found her true love.
Growing up with a mother who jumped in and out of relationships because she never waited for love, Charlize was most influenced by her mother’s parents and aunts who often watched her when her mother was off on another fling. Her grandmother had introduced her to romance novels as a teenager, telling her not to settle for less than the real thing, and she often talked about how she knew she was going to marry her grandfather the night she met him. And he always claimed he knew she was the one for him the first night they met. Aunt Gracie and Uncle Fred had also been together since high school.
Aunt Blythe would tell her it didn’t always happen that way, though. She’d also had her true love, who’d died in an accident weeks before they were married, and she’d never met anyone who could take his place. She would tell the story of how they’d been friends all through high school, went to different colleges and reconnected six years later. Both her aunts and her grandmother stressed that the reason for Charlize’s mother’s unhappiness and eventual death from chemical abuse was due to her rushing to find what her mother and older sisters had had, rather than waiting for the right man to come along. She hadn’t even known who’d fathered her one and only child.
For thirty years Charlize had been waiting diligently, but had never met a man who felt like her other half until the night she met Riley Colton. She hadn’t been looking that night. To the contrary, she’d been preoccupied with the All Welcome fundraiser—had been focused on the amount of money needed to build the community center—when Riley started talking to her.
But she’d been hooked by the sound of his voice. The way, the first time he’d looked her in the eye, her stomach had jumped. And then settled.
For a few hours she’d had heaven on earth. Until she’d realized she’d been like a kid at a theme park, living in a fantasy world that, behind the scenes, wasn’t all that pretty.
And now she was entering fantasyland again—for real this time—becoming a mother. And would forever be aware of a less beautiful existence behind the scenes, too, in the form of the baby’s father.
He just didn’t fit. Not in her life. Not in any of the plans she needed to make...
Her phone rang just as she was heading back to her aunt’s bedroom, to check in on her, maybe wake her up. Grabbing the cell on the first ring, she hurried back out to the kitchen where she’d squeezed fresh orange juice and was ready to make Blythe’s oatmeal.
She’d already called to have another private practice social worker cover her two in-home visits that morning.
She recognized the number, but it wasn’t Riley Colton’s.
“Laurene, what’s up?” she asked as soon as she could speak without fear of having her aunt be privy to the conversation. Business was confidential, even from home.
“Ronny’s real mad,” her client said, almost at a whisper, and every nerve in Charlize’s body stood on end. Having been appointed by the court to counsel Laurene and ostensibly Lonny, too, to keep contact with the household, Charlize was trying to help Laurene Dill get a better job so that she could afford to leave her emotionally abusive boyfriend.
“Is he there?” First and foremost, she had to look out for the twenty-year-old’s safety.
“No. I just... I don’t know if he...you know...has sound on the cameras he’s got around...”
The home security system she’d found installed at the house and had added to her notes after yesterday’s home visit. Twenty-four-year-old Ronny Simms had dangerously serious jealousy issues. Laurene claimed that Ronny had never hit her, though he’d threatened to more than once, but he was high up on the police radar just the same—and as of the previous week, in the court system, as well. On four different occasions, neighbors had dialed 911 for drunk and disorderly conduct and damaging others’ property. During the last incident, Ronny had stubbed his toe on a painted rock acting as a doorstop then thrown it out a window of their home. It had sailed the small distance between their house and the house next door, breaking a window.
* * *
The doorstop had been a gift to Laurene from a high school friend with whom she was no longer in touch. Ronny hadn’t liked it in their home from the beginning, then had blamed Laurene for his damaged toe. The police had arrested him, charges had been filed and he’d been sentenced the week before to six months of probation and anger management classes. The court had also ordered the services of a social worker for the home.
Which was why Charlize was on the case. She was to monitor the home for signs of abuse. And to counsel members of the household in terms of healthy living. After speaking with Laurene in private the day before, Charlize’s theory was that Ronny was jealous of, or feeling threatened by, whatever feelings Laurene still had for her friend. That, more than the physical pain, had launched the attack that had landed him in jail. He’d not only broken a window, he’d also thrown everything he could get his hands on in the kitchen where the doorstop had been sitting along the wall.
“He just kept going on and on about your visit yesterday,” Laurene was saying, her quiet desperation setting off Charlize’s internal warning bells.
“What he’s doing to you isn’t right,” Charlize said, her tone filled with the strength of her belief. It could take years to undo the emotional and mental damage Ronny had done to Laurene, but first and foremost, they had to break through the manipulation enough to get the young woman out from under his control. “You know that. That’s why you talked to me, why you’re filling out the job applications I brought you. Why we’re working on your interview skills.” She’d repeat the words a thousand times if that was what it took.
And in her experience, sometimes it took every single one of those repetitions.
And sometimes it still didn’t work.
But for the ones it helped...the ones who managed to break free...to regain control of their minds, their lives...
“You shouldn’t have to hide in the closet and talk in a near whisper just to make a phone call,” she continued when Laurene remained silent. “You’re a grown, capable, loving woman. You have every right to decide who you want to speak to, and you certainly have every right to speak to your court-appointed advocate.”
“How do you know I’m in a closet? Are you watching me, too?”
If she wasn’t as well trained as she was, Charlize would have teared up at that. “Of course not, Laurene. It’s not normal to live with cameras on you all the time, with someone watching every move you make. Home security systems are intended to watch your home when you’re away...” Or to keep an eye on an offender in your home, perhaps, in extreme cases, but she was not going to cloud Laurene’s already confused mind with extraneous details. “I noticed the cameras when I did my initial walk-through yesterday. He’s got them in every room, including the bathroom, which is very not normal. He’s watching you more carefully in that house than you’d be watched in prison.”
Because Ronny had her in a prison of his own making.
“He just wants to make sure I’m safe,” Laurene said. “We don’t live in a great neighborhood. There’s a lot of crime here. And he loves me so much. He worries about me, about something happening to me. I don’t think he’d make it without me. If you knew the way he grew up, the things that happened...he never knew about love and compassion until he met me.”
The words could be beautiful...if Charlize didn’t recognize the rhetoric. The things Ronny had told Laurene were probably true. As true as the fact that he had real problems, abusive tendencies, surely resulting from his youth, but still illegal. Abusive.
And the courts had determined that he posed a risk to Laurene’s life.
“He wants to be able to call 911 immediately if anyone breaks in.”
“Then he’s n
ot going to like you being in the closet for the length of this phone call,” Charlize said, worried that Ronny was going to commit serious physical harm before she could be successful in getting the other woman out of that environment.
“I told him that I have to have time to pray in privacy, and he said I could use the closet.” She supplied the information as though there was nothing at all odd about it. “And I’m using the phone you gave me so he can’t see the call on our records.”
Thank God Laurene had told her that Ronny checked her calls regularly or she wouldn’t have known to provide a preloaded phone. And thank God double that Laurene was actually using the phone.
It meant that maybe Laurene had some doubts where Ronny’s behavior was concerned. That she was at least listening a little bit.
It meant there was hope.
“Do you pray often?” she asked, wanting to know how much Laurene was using her only escape route.
“Every day. I come in here anytime I just need some time to myself, you know?”
“So you aren’t really praying.”
“No, it’s just what I could think of that wouldn’t make Ronny feel...you know...agitated. He likes it that I pray.”
A grown woman, trapped in a closet for moments of personal freedom, lying about praying just to get those moments, and she couldn’t see...
Charlize wished the blindness was an anomaly, something that was shocking and...fixable. Preventable. Unfortunately, it was an everyday occurrence. One in four women were victims in some fashion and...
“He was...really...agitated...last night,” the younger woman said, a new urgency entering her voice. “He just kept going on and on about you being there, about you messing with my head, messing things up. I just...you can’t come back here, Ms. Kent.”
“It’s court ordered...” she started.
“Then you have to talk to the court,” Laurene interrupted, sounding stronger now. “You have to tell them that you came here and we’re fine. You can’t come back here again.”
Sadness filled her as she heard Laurene’s strength return only when she was fighting for herself to stay in the prison Ronny had created.
She heard someone moving around, a door closing. Aunt Blythe was up, in the bathroom.
Slipping out the back door to continue her conversation in private, she said, “I can’t lie to the court, Laurene. You aren’t fine. The things I saw...look at you right now, standing in a closet...”
“I’m not standing. I’m sitting. And...you don’t understand. He threatened me, Ms. Kent. Either I convince you we’re fine or...he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He...raised his fist to me last night. For the first time ever. It’s not him. Not my Ronny. You have to stop coming here.”
Charlize turned to complete stone for the moment, bracing her mind against the images of distorted faces and abused bodies she’d seen over the course of her job. Then she asked, “Did he hit you?”
“No. He stopped as soon as he saw the horror on my face. But...he was so upset. Who knows what...”
She didn’t doubt that Ronny believed he loved Laurene. A lot of abusers loved their prey. And their mental or emotional instabilities tainted that love an ugly color. Her job was to try to teach loved ones how to love and cohabitate in a healthy manner.
Or, as in Laurene’s case, to give the young woman means to escape someone like Ronny, who didn’t want help.
“I have to make weekly in-home visits,” she said softly, but firmly. “If I don’t do it, the court will appoint someone else. It’s either that, or Ronny could go to jail. These visits were part of the sentencing that kept him out of prison, remember?”
Laurene’s silence wasn’t reassuring.
“We’re all just looking out for you, you realize that, right?”
Nothing.
“I know you’re scared, Laurene. That’s why I’m here, and will always help in any way I can.”
“You just don’t know Ronny. I’ve never seen him as mad as he was last night...”
And it clicked. Right then. Getting herself out of work mode, and Laurene’s life, and popping back to her own for a brief second, Charlize thought about the previous night. About the sidewalk and the glint of metal coming at her.
Ronny and Laurene’s case hadn’t included a police escort stipulation. She’d given the cops their names the evening before, because they’d asked for the names of every client she’d seen recently, but she hadn’t thought...
“Does Ronny drive a small black pickup?” she asked.
Laurene’s continued silence was not a good sign. Not for Laurene. And not for Charlize, or the baby she was carrying.
* * *
Riley was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, marveling at the spotlessly clean counters and sink his siblings had left behind after he’d excused himself from their goodbyes to take a call in his office, when his phone buzzed again.
A text from Charlize. Her aunt was up, having breakfast, and since she was sharpest first thing in the day, Riley should probably head over.
Leaving Pal to welcome Bailey and Ashanti to their day’s task lists, he was ringing Charlize’s bell within ten minutes of her text. She answered right away, glancing toward his blue SUV parked at the curb, rather than at him.
The visit wasn’t personal; he read into that look. They wouldn’t be discussing anything close to parenthood or having children, just Blythe.
Which was fine by him.
For the moment.
His body didn’t get the memo. It attempted to stand at attention as he took in Charlize, who wore her regular clothes—light blue cotton pants, white short-sleeved tailored blouse and sandals—so seductively in front of him. Professional and yet...more, too.
He was all business, though, when he saw the older woman seated at the table, spooning oatmeal into her mouth, while focused on the tablet in front of her. He caught the online Scrabble game she was playing before she turned the thing off.
And saw some of Charlize in her smile when she shook his hand as they were introduced.
“Mind if I sit down?” he asked, pulling out a chair perpendicular to her at the kitchen table.
She offered him coffee. Charlize asked if he’d eaten. And he got straight to the point, shaking his head in response to their queries.
“I’m a professional investigator, Ms. Kent,” he said, taking a seat. “I need to talk to you about RevitaYou.”
Blythe’s wrinkled brow furrowed as she set down her spoon.
“I found your calling card in a brochure,” he said. “Do you have any idea how it came to be there?”
She nodded, looking only at him, as though her niece, who’d taken a seat across from her, wasn’t in the room.
“I went to a seminar,” she said. “A friend down the street was talking about this poster she’d seen. At first, I was just interested because I wanted to look younger...” She pointed to her face. “These wrinkles and sags...they’re so depressing. I used to be quite a pretty woman,” she told him, nodding.
“I think you still are,” he replied—meaning the words. She didn’t look twenty, but her hair was stylish, curly; she was all done up nice, with clothes that made her appear as though she was heading out for a lunch date. And she looked him straight in the eye. That was the icing on the cake for him.
She lifted a hand, knocked against the spoon in her bowl and then used her napkin to clean up the oatmeal she’d spilled.
“So you went to the seminar...” he prompted as she wiped.
“And when I got there, everyone was so excited. Not just the people on stage, but everyone. We were part of something brand-new. And huge. All these people around me, they were talking about how this was a chance they couldn’t miss, talking about helping out their families, being able to travel again... I’ve always wanted to go to Ireland,” she said. “
Anyway, I had my life savings sitting there, waiting for me to get too frail to take care of myself, waiting to be sucked up by an old folks’ home...”
“Aunt Blythe! There’s no way you’re going to...you’ll always have a home with me,” Charlize blurted out. Riley glanced her way, saw the wealth of concerned love on her face as she looked at her aunt.
The older woman nodded. “I just didn’t want to be a burden on you,” she said.
“Did you get return on your investment?” Riley asked before they could segue too far off into family and living arrangements.
He had a child on the way whose living arrangements would coincide with the Kents’. And...his? Possibly? On weekends? Or something?
The thought made him sweat. Profusely.
Blythe rescued him with a slow shake of her head. “I gave Mr. Matthews fifty thousand dollars, and then he stopped returning my calls. The last time I called, the number had been disconnected. But Mr. Matthews was so nice, and I just kept hoping something had gone wrong with his phone and that when he could, he’d get in touch with me.”
She was back to looking at only Riley. Leaning toward him, with a shoulder to Charlize. And by the look in those old eyes, he was pretty sure the woman knew full well she’d been had.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Charlize asked softly. Riley had to hand it to her. There was no judgment in her tone. No blame. Just that same concern.
Her voice drew you right in, that mixture of caring and protection. A permanent “have your back” type thing. Could easily become addictive. He’d known that kind of love once. Briefly. With a member of his FBI team...
“You’re so busy,” Blythe said with a quick glance at Charlize, and then, to Riley, “I was too embarrassed to tell anyone,” she said softly. “I’d come across as the batty old woman who’d been an easy mark...”
“My client, who was also an investor, and who had your card in his brochure, is only twenty-seven,” he told her. “This has nothing to do with age.”
Colton 911--Family Defender Page 6
