When He Found Me (Road to Refuge Book 1)

by Victoria Bylin

  Cody opened another shoebox. It held a pair of sneakers. MJ checked the size and grinned. “They’ll be a perfect fit.”

  The next box held a similar pair but a size larger. The third box held yet another pair in the next size up. S. Riley had given her son at least a year’s worth of shoes, and there was one box left. She lifted the lid, folded back the tissue, and saw a pair of women’s Nikes, white ones with pink stripes in her size. They were the prettiest shoes she’d ever seen, maybe the prettiest shoes she’d ever owned because she needed them so badly. As she took them from the box, a gift receipt fluttered to the floor. On the back she saw his writing and picked it up.

  I guessed at the sizes. You can exchange anything that doesn’t fit.

  MJ wished she knew S. Riley’s full name. He’d live in her heart forever. Smiling gently, she put the receipt in her purse, then took the white shoes out of the box. Unable to help herself anymore than Cody, she unlaced her old shoes and kicked them off.

  “Mommy, wait.” Cody held up a bag of socks. They were white anklets with pink ribbing. “These are for you.”

  New socks to go with her new shoes. MJ pulled the fresh cotton over her toes, wiggling them for the joy of it. The hotel clerk couldn’t stop grinning, and neither could she. She put on the shoes, stood, and spoke to him while she wiggled her happy toes. “The man who left these things—I’d like to leave him a note.”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Oh.” She bit her lip. “So I can’t thank him.”

  The clerk was a stranger to her, but he’d shared the fun of the shoes and his eyes were bright. “I think he knows what he did.”

  “I hope so.”

  At a time when she needed help, a stranger had shown her unexpected kindness. Maybe Lyn was right about her life changing. They’d had that conversation a month ago after MJ became a Christian in the middle of a nerve-wracking night. Sleepless at three in the morning, she had turned on the radio and heard a man ranting about earthquakes, war, disease, and killer bees. It was all frightening, but the bees scared her the most. She imagined them swarming into her apartment, attacking Cody. Helpless and frightened, she thought of Lyn’s simple faith and how her friend trusted the Lord to guide her. In that moment, MJ had prayed. If you’re out there, God. I’m listening.

  Nothing happened.

  No voice shouted from the heavens. Thunder didn’t clap, and the wind didn’t stir. There was only a distant car alarm and the certainty she had done something significant. When she shared the experience with Lyn, her friend gave her a Bible and told her to get ready for big changes.

  Shoes weren’t a big deal to most people, but they were big to MJ and Cody right now. She could only hope her mother would show the same mercy when they arrived in Refuge, and that the man who rented her house would be as compassionate.

  She needed to get on the road, so she collected the boxes and shoes and spoke to Cody. “Let’s put on the sneakers instead of the cleats.”

  His brow wrinkled. “I like these.”

  “They’re for sports only.”

  “But I want to wear them now.” His lip popped into a pout.

  Her son could be stubborn. So could she, but this battle wasn’t worth fighting. He’d be riding in the car for at least four more hours. If the shoes entertained him even a little, he might not be so crabby. “Okay, but just this once.”

  Cody barely heard her. He had on the baseball cap and was pretending to swing a bat the way a neighbor, Mr. Davis, had shown him with a plastic toy. A victim of emphysema, Mr. Davis spent his days breathing oxygen and watching ESPN. MJ had adopted him, and in return he had been a substitute grandfather to Cody. Mr. Davis had given her son the baseball glove as a going-away present. The elderly man would have enjoyed this moment.

  MJ dropped Cody’s old shoes in a wastebasket, paid the bill, and took her receipt from the clerk. Feeling almost giddy, she lifted the bags and headed for the door. “Come on, slugger,” she said to her son.

  With Cody skipping at her side, MJ hurried to the car. She put the bags in the back seat, checked her son’s seatbelt, then turned the ignition. The engine sputtered as always, but it turned over and she headed for the highway that would take her home to Refuge.

  Shane wanted to be certain the woman picked up the shoes, so he went to the coffee shop across the parking lot and ordered breakfast. From the booth he could see her car. As he expected, she and the boy went to the office to settle the bill. Minutes later, she emerged with the shopping bags and a radiant smile. When the boy gave her a high-five, Shane signaled the waitress for the check. He’d done a good deed. It wouldn’t help Daisy, but he felt right about the shoes.

  The woman was putting the shopping bags in her car when his phone chirped. The number belonged to Craig Hawkins, a teammate and friend who shared Shane’s Marina del Rey apartment. It was barely eight o’clock California time, and Craig usually slept until noon.

  “What’s up?” Shane answered.

  “You had a visitor this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “A woman. When I opened the door, she ran. I’m almost positive it was your sister.”

  Before leaving Los Angeles, Shane had shown Craig a picture of Daisy. Having her show up two days after he left L.A. struck him as a divine joke, a cruel one. “How did she look?”

  Craig hesitated. “Not good.”

  “Was she high?”

  “I don’t know.” Craig lowered his voice. “She was wearing dark glasses, but I saw bruising on her cheek.”

  So some jerk had given her a black eye. Sick to his stomach, Shane swiped his hand through his hair. “Did she say anything at all?”

  “Just ‘Sorry, I have the wrong apartment.’ She looked—” Craig stopped, but Shane knew what he was about to say. Daisy had looked awful. Battered. Hung over. Maybe strung out. Craig’s voice settled into the matter-of-fact tone of a reporter. “She was gone before I realized it was her. She wasn’t blond like in the picture. Her hair’s red now.”

  Shane could imagine the brassy tone she would have picked. “Thanks, Craig. Let me know if you see her again.”

  Next, Shane called Troy, who answered sleepily after four rings. Shane didn’t bother with small talk. “Daisy went to my apartment.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Some creep gave her a black eye.”

  Troy swore. “I can check out the shelters again. The best I can do is leave word that you want to see her, but you know the risk.”

  “She might run.”

  “Or go back to the creep who hit her.”

  Shane didn’t blame Troy for failing to find Daisy. Shane had failed her first. He blinked and pictured her with the social worker, leaving Coach Harper’s house with a ratty suitcase. They’d been with the Harpers for almost two years. While Shane thrived, Daisy had started drinking and hanging out with a bad crowd. Worried she’d get pregnant, the social worker recommended a group home.

  Thinking of that day now, Shane gritted his teeth in shame. He should have fought for her, pleaded with the social worker to give her another chance. Instead he’d breathed a sigh of relief and watched her leave.

  Eventually she dropped out of school and moved from one low-paying job to another. The last time Shane saw her had been at his college graduation. She’d been wearing a black mini-skirt, four-inch heels, and cherry red lipstick. With alcohol on her breath, she had flirted outrageously with his friends, until he grasped her elbow and half dragged her into a storeroom. He could still see the chairs stacked against the wall, the dim light, and the dust. Blocking the door, he had begged her to clean up her life, until she lifted her chin and told him to go to hell.

  Something had snapped inside of him, and he called her horrible names. She started to cry, but he didn’t let up. Each lash of his tongue cut deeper until she was hysterically begging him to open the door. When he finally relented, she stumbled in the direction of the guy who’d been the main target of her flirting. They left together, and the
next day the jerk bragged about sleeping with “Preacher Boy’s” sister.

  Shane had been a Christian then. He had prided himself on the nickname, because it proved he walked like he talked. If the car accident had done nothing else, it exposed his hypocrisy as thoroughly as it destroyed his faith.

  He needed to find Daisy before she slid deeper into alcoholism, even harder drugs. “Find her,” he said to Troy. “She has to be somewhere.”

  “All right, but you know the odds.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Shane ended the call, left a generous tip, and paid his bill at the register. In the parking lot he looked for the woman’s car but didn’t see it. She was gone, but he’d never forget yesterday’s encounter.

  He drove to a full-service gas station, paid to have the flat tire fixed and put back on, then filled up his SUV, a big Chevy Tahoe with four-wheel drive. Satisfied, he pulled onto the highway and set the cruise control. Twenty minutes later, his phone rang. He glanced at the number, saw “Kim Howard” on the caller ID, and decided not to pick it up. Kim was the real estate agent in charge of the house he was renting. They’d had dinner together, though he wouldn’t call it a date. She paid for the meal, and he’d been in too much pain to enjoy himself.

  She was probably calling to confirm today’s key pick-up, so he let the call go to voicemail. He had two hundred miles to go. Two hundred miles to wonder about the woman and boy in the coin laundry. Two hundred miles to worry about his sister. In his mind he saw her bruised face and brassy red hair, but in his heart he remembered the girl who clung to his hand when they crossed busy streets. Everything had scared her back then. He wondered if anything still did.

  Chapter 4

  Daisy Ann Walker stepped into Mary’s Closet, a thrift shop three miles from her brother’s Marina del Rey apartment. Her insides throbbed with a spongy kind of pain, and so did her head. The sunglasses hiding her black eye turned everything a smoky gray, but they hadn’t blocked the sight of a stranger opening the door to her brother’s apartment. Shane was never there when she needed him, so why start now?

  Her friends were a lot more loyal, especially Chelsea, another waitress at Shenanigan’s, the busy Santa Monica restaurant where they had met three months ago. Chelsea shopped at Mary’s Closet for her little girl, and she knew Lyn Grant, the woman who managed it.

  “If you need help, go to Lyn. She understands.”

  Daisy hoped so, because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Two days earlier, her boyfriend, Eric, had taken her for an abortion, but then he’d left to audition for the new George Clooney movie. Last night she developed a fever. The doctor prescribed medicine, but it was expensive and she didn’t have the money. She’d gone to Shane’s apartment to beg him for a loan. If she had her phone, she could have called him. But she didn’t . . . Eric had it. Eric had everything—her phone, her bank cards, her heart.

  “May I help you?”

  She turned and saw a woman with a mane of wavy chestnut hair. “Are you Lyn?”

  “No, but I can get her.”

  As the woman went to the back room, Daisy browsed a shelf displaying beach souvenirs. Among them were a dozen glass balls, each a shade of blue with a seagull frozen in flight. She often watched the real birds at Venice Pier. With the gulls soaring and the waves breaking below her, she gazed at the horizon and imagined falling off the edge of the world. Would she grow wings and fly? Or would she fall?

  Today she’d bet on falling.

  The tap of heels pulled her gaze to a woman approaching from the back of the store. Tall and slim, she moved with the grace of a dancer, her chin high and her shoulders back. She was wearing a teal-colored suit that set off her ivory skin and made her perfectly cut hair as black as a crow’s wing. Silver jewelry twinkled against the blue, a reminder of the sun sparkling on the ocean. Daisy guessed her to be in her early forties.

  The woman approached with a smile. “I’m Lyn.”

  “Hi.”

  She lowered her voice. “Tina said you wanted to talk to me.”

  Lyn smelled like dry-cleaned silk. Daisy had last night’s martinis on her breath. Where did she start with her story? I had an abortion and I hurt . . . I’m broke . . . I’m afraid to go home. The last time she asked Eric for money, he went crazy, maybe because he was high on uppers. Like a fool, she’d shouted back and ended up in an arm lock with Eric’s voice hissing in her ear.

  “Apologize, Daisy. Now.”

  “No!”

  He had pulled her elbow higher, higher still. She begged for mercy and he let her go, but then he cornered her against the wall like those boys in the garage when she was fourteen. When she whimpered, he had hit her.

  Daisy’s eyes ached with buried tears, but she hadn’t cried in a long time. If she started, she might never stop.

  Lyn spoke in a hush. “Are you all right?”

  She felt as if she were facing the social worker who’d taken her away from Shane and the Harpers. “Chelsea said you could help me.”

  “I’ll be glad to try,” Lyn replied. “How do you know Chelsea?”

  “We work together.”

  “At Shenanigan’s?”

  “That’s right.” Daisy raised her chin with pride. She liked people and made decent money as a waitress. Thanks to good tips, she earned enough to pay rent and make car payments. But it wasn’t enough to pay for Eric’s drug habit. She wished she hadn’t moved in with him, but he’d lost his job as a bouncer and needed help while he built his acting career.

  Moving in with him had seemed smart at the time, but nothing went the way she expected. Instead of finding another bouncer job, Eric slept in and went to the gym. When money got tight, she missed some payments and her car was repossessed. She tried to please Eric, but sometimes he went crazy on her, said things he didn’t mean, and hit her. The only thing she did right was dye her hair red. He said it made her look smart and mysterious, not like the dumb blonde she was.

  Lyn indicated a door on the back wall. “Let’s talk in private.”

  Daisy followed her into a big room with a couch, two overstuffed chairs from an earlier decade, and a coffee table with a basket holding apples, packaged cookies, and bottled water. She dropped down on the edge of the couch.

  Lyn sat next to her, angling her knees in a graceful pose. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

  “It’s Daisy Walker.” She used to go by Riley but not anymore.

  Lyn handed her a bottle of water. Daisy opened it and sipped. A sip turned into a gulp, then another, until she drank more than half.

  Hands folded loosely in her lap, Lyn broke the silence. “What can I do for you, Daisy?”

  “I need medicine.”

  “For your eye?”

  She remembered the dark glasses and took them off. “It’s not my eye. It’s something else.” Her hand drifted to her middle.

  “PID?”

  PID stood for Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. A friend of Daisy’s dealt with it. “No. I had an abortion.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  So was Daisy, but she shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad.” She’d been awake and it hurt, but a nurse held her hand the whole time. The worst part had been lying on her back with her feet up like an upside-down bug. “The procedure went okay, but I forgot to take the antibiotics they gave me when I left. Now I have an infection.”

  “Did you call the clinic?”

  “Last night,” she replied. “The doctor called the pharmacy, but the new pills are two hundred dollars and I don’t have the money right now. Chelsea said you might help.”

  “I will, but I’m also worried about your eye. What happened?”

  I walked into a door. If she lied, Lyn would know it. And if she didn’t trust Daisy, she might not help her. “Eric hit me.”

  “Who’s Eric?”

  “My boyfriend.” She tried to look Lyn in the eye, but her gaze skittered to the snack basket. She saw a tiny package of Fig Newtons. She loved Fig Newtons, except
they reminded her of Shane buying them for her when she was little. Eric said Fig Newtons made her fat, and he threw them away when she bought them. Daisy could almost taste the gooey filling, but she turned her attention to Lyn.

  The brunette plucked the package from the basket and handed it to her.

  Feeling shy, Daisy opened it and took a bite. “These are my favorite.”

  “I like animal crackers,” Lyn admitted. “There was a time in my life when eating cookies was the best thing in the world. Sometimes it still is.”

  “I know what you mean.” Daisy chewed the cookie, tasting the sweetness and remembering how Shane bought her a whole package for her eighth birthday. Her mother had given her a bouquet of daisies made out of metal. They’d been pretty, but Daisy had wanted a doll she saw on TV.

  Lyn’s mouth relaxed into a wistful smile. “Life gets complicated, doesn’t it?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Want to compare complications?”

  Daisy was enjoying the cookie. “Sure, why not?”

  “I’ll go first,” Lyn offered. “I drove drunk more than once, almost killed someone, and did three months in county jail. I cleaned up my act for a while and got married, but the marriage didn’t last. When my ex-husband drank, he hit me. Medical bills led to credit card debt. To cope with it all, I drank even more—”

  “Stop!” Daisy stared at her, wide-eyed and frightened.

  The woman gentled her voice. “I’m just getting to the good part. I’ve been sober for nine years now.”

  Daisy thought of last night’s gin and the gin she’d drink tonight. She didn’t want to hear Lyn’s story. She wanted to get the medicine and go back to the apartment, curl up in bed, and hope Eric would leave her alone.

  She took another bite of the Fig Newton, felt it squish, and wished she could stay on this couch forever, but it was her turn to share complications. My mother died when I was twelve. I was molested by two boys in a garage. I started drinking in high school and I don’t want to stop. My own brother hates me.

  Suddenly bitter, she didn’t want to tell Lyn anything. Abruptly, she raised her chin. “Will you help me or not?”