The Trouble With
Two Alpha’s
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Brenda Westfall
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 1
My name is Gabi Cross. I’m twenty-two and have been on my own pretty much my whole life. Orphaned when I was three. My presumed parents left me on a bench outside the local hospital.
I had been found by a nurse who was about to go on duty. She was just about to walk in the door when she noticed my blanket move. She raced to the bench and picked me up and took me inside the hospital. I was asleep when my parents left me outside in the cold on that bench.
The doctors and nurses went crazy trying to figure out who had dumped me on that bench outside the hospital. The bench had sat by a side door the employees used. There were no cameras to catch anything.
At first, I had been held in a room at the hospital while they took care of my hypothermia. My fingers and toes had been exposed to the night air.
Once they had me well, instead of letting me go to a foster home the nurse who had found me ask if she could take me in. She was already a foster mother. She had three other foster kids in the house when she brought me home.
At first, they all treated me like the new puppy or a shiny new toy. But as I grew, they became resentful of me. I learned fast how to fight back. I might not have been very big, but I always got even.
Toby was the oldest of the three, at fourteen. Then there was Trek who was just turning twelve. Then came Brittney. Bratty Brittney they called her. Till I came along. She was only eleven.
I remember one time when Mother Betty was gone to work, Trek and Toby decided they would rip my baby doll to pieces and try to blame it on the dog. We didn’t have a dog.
I had carried the doll with me everywhere. It was all I had been left with on that bench that night in front of the hospital. Even at three I knew who had done the damage.
Yes, I got even, I waited till they were at school, then snuck into their rooms. When they came home that day after school, I was nowhere to be seen. You could hear them yelling so loud that the windows seemed to be moving. I had gone into their rooms, one at a time and ripped all the posters off their walls. Toby was into football. He had every poster of every major league player hanging on his walls. Some had been autographed.
Trek had all these model cars he had built. Some with his father, who had passed away two years before. Not that that meant anything to a three-year-old. Anyway, I had gone into his room and smashed them with a thick book. The plastic snapped into tiny pieces. I threw the pieces all over his room.
The lady who sat with me when Mother Betty was at work said she hadn’t seen me do it. She had been busy in the kitchen working on baking some bread and cookies.
I was the only other person in the house!
Toby and Trek both told me they wouldn’t forget what I had done. They didn’t either. They waited for a couple of weeks till it had all been forgotten. That is when they struck.
Mother Betty had gotten me a new doll. You know the ones stuffed with fluff and made of material instead of plastic. They tied me to a chair in the backyard and made me watch while they set her on fire. They burned her one piece at a time. They pulled her arms off, then her legs, then her hair and made me watch as each piece burned.
The lady who had been sitting with us got fired that day. Mother Betty said the boys came close to burning down her house. She said a lot of things to the boys.
Toby and Trek got their butts beat that time. I smiled and watched from the doorway. Each of them seen me watching and smiling. I even stuck my tongue out a few times.
Brittney wasn’t as hard on me at first. But as I grew and started to develop, she hated me. By the time I was nine and she was seventeen, I had better boobs than she did. I had developed early, according to Betty.
I had no idea why, but I knew it was a good thing. It had to be right, the way Brittney hated me. She would have friends over, both boys and girls and the boys would notice me more than her. Yes, I was only nine, but I was big and beautiful. At least that was the attitude I gave off.
Toby and Trek never forgot when I got away with something. They always tried to get me back. Even when I was little, I could outsmart them.
When they destroyed something of mine, I waited till they weren’t around and went into their rooms and found their money. They both mowed lawns during the summer and hid the money in their rooms.
I would simply take their money and go to the store down the block and buy what I wanted. I figured they owed me for whatever of mine they had destroyed. When Mother Betty found out what had happened, she sided with me.
She would tell the boys if they didn’t want to pay for things to stop destroying my things. Then she would say something about finding better hiding places. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to them or to me.
I started hiding my things anyway. I had found a loose board in the floor under my bed one of the times when I was hiding from them. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to pull that board up and hide things I liked. The board came up in a two-foot-long piece. I put what I wanted to hide under it and put the board back, then pushed the head of the bed over it. The feet of the headboard sat on the loose board making it hard to find.
The boys were never that good at hiding things. Toby usually hid things in his socks in his drawers. Trek hid his things in his closet. Usually up on a high shelf. Like that was going to stop me.
My childhood had been pretty decent till Betty was killed in a car wreck. She was on her way home from work one night when a man crossed the center line and hit her head on. The doctors said he had a heart attack behind the wheel. Betty didn’t have time to get out of his way.
That is when I was put in the system. Yes, I was passed from house to house. Family to family. Never fitting in. By the time I was sixteen, I had been in more than thirty homes. No one ever kept me long. They all said I was too much trouble.
That was just fine with me. When I turned sixteen, I snuck out the second story window of the home I was staying in and I never looked back.
I ran to the road and started walking. It wasn’t long till I was picked up by a young man on his way out of the area. I begged him to let me go as far as he was going. Then I would hitch hike a little further. I didn’t want anyone to recognize me if they had anything out on a missing girl.
I had started out on the west coast and ended up in the mountains of Tennessee. I had worked my way out east. At sixteen, there wasn’t a lot of places that would hire me.
After leaving Bishop, California I ended up in Carson City Nevada. I managed to find a job sweeping floors at a warehouse. I got the feeling things at this place weren’t on the up and up and hightailed it out of there. I had overheard the man who hired me talking one night with another man. They were talking about trying to set me up with delivering packages for them.
“The girl is too dumb to know what we are doing. She would be perfect for the job. We could send one of the men with her as a driver. She is innocent looking, and no one would suspect her
.”
The other man had agreed. I split once I overheard them. I didn’t need to get into any kind of trouble. I wasn’t about to end up back in Foster care.
I managed to hitchhike another ride. I was able to get an old man to pick me up on his way across the state. We made our way to Elko, Nevada. There I found a job sacking groceries. That job only lasted about four months. I kept smashing people’s groceries.
I always lived on the streets. I only rented a hotel room on occasion to take a shower. I had a backpack now with clean clothes. I found Laundromats that stayed open all night. I could pretend to be doing laundry in order to stay inside some.
Again, I found myself on the road trying to get a ride to somewhere. Anywhere. I ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was able to stay there a little longer. I was now seventeen and looked much older. At least that was what my boss thought. I was hired to work in a bar. At first, I was hired to keep the place clean. But as men started noticing me more, my boss decided to make me a waitress.
He pulled me into his office and told me he was going to have me waitress and he wanted me to wear a new outfit that barely covered my ass or my boobs. He said I would make more money. I did all right. The tips were pretty good. It didn’t take long till I had my very first apartment. But after a year I started growing restless. I had put back most of my money. I didn’t have a lot of expenses. I walked to work from where I lived. I didn’t need a car.
I couldn’t take it any longer. I packed my backpack and took off. I had called my boss and told him I was leaving town. To say he was upset was an understatement. He said I had been pulling in more money than most of his employees. Men, especially, like to put money out if they got to look at my boobs.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the way men looked at me. It’s just that I was missing something. What I didn’t have a clue. I just knew I wanted more than this out of life.
I hitchhiked again. Not stopping till I found myself in Rock Springs, Wyoming. There I was able to find a ranch that needed some help. I was hired to cook. It didn’t take them long to figure out I couldn’t cook. However, the owner said he liked me well enough, so he would give me a chance to do something else. I ended up cleaning out stalls. Brushing down horses and stuff like that. I liked it well enough, but again, I grew bored.
My next stop was in Casper, Wyoming. I stayed there for a couple of months. I just didn’t feel like it was where I was supposed to be. From there I stopped in Omaha, Nebraska then Kansas City, Missouri, on to St. Louis, Missouri, Popular Bluff, and finally settled in the Smoky Mountain region of Tennessee.
By the time I settled in Tennessee I was twenty-one. I went from one job to the next. Till I found a job I liked. I got a job cleaning the cabins at one of the parks. I cleaned the cabins when people left and when I had time off, I went hiking. I loved it here.
Mr. Lewis was a wonderful boss. He even gave me a little cabin to stay in as part of my job. The cabin I got to live in was the furthest from everything and everybody else. I liked it.
It wasn’t long till I was getting into the job. People would thank me for cleaning their cabin. Sometimes I even got tips. When I wasn’t cleaning cabins, I worked in the office taking reservations. Mr. Lewis said his wife had always done the books before she got ill. Now she was fighting cancer and didn’t feel good most days. When she felt good, she worked the front office. Otherwise Mr. Lewis and I did.
If I ever needed anything from town Mr. Lewis said I could use his old beat up pickup truck. I had to tell him I had never driven a vehicle before, that I always hitchhiked a ride. That afternoon he took me for a drive. He parked out in the middle of nowhere and told me to get behind the wheel. He gave me driving lessons.
“I can’t have you hitchhiking. Why it isn’t safe for anyone out there. And a young lady as beautiful as you should be even more careful. I will make sure you know how to drive, then we will go get your license.”
I was never so grateful for anyone’s help as I was his. He taught me a lot of things while I worked for him. He taught me how to fix things around the cabins when something broke. He took me in and treated me like I was his own daughter. Or maybe more like a son. He and his wife had never been able to have children.
One day while Mr. Lewis was out of the area doing some errands, his wife came to the office and ask me to take her to the hospital. They lived above the office. I panicked before I remembered that I knew how to drive.
I didn’t know how to get a hold of Mr. Lewis. I was able to get Mrs. Lewis to the hospital. I sat and waited to find out what was going on. Once I knew what was wrong, I drove like a bat out of hell back to the cabin rental office.
I was pacing the floor when Mr. Lewis came in. He immediately knew something was wrong. I told him I had to take his wife to the hospital. He told me to drive him. He was too shaken-up to drive himself. He had me tell him what the doctors had said on the way.
I stayed at the hospital with him through the night. We were able to stay in the waiting room outside the ICU. Mrs. Lewis had gone into a coma. The doctors told Mr. Lewis there wasn’t much hope at this point.
He knew the time would come when he had to say goodbye to her, but he was in no way ready. They had been married sixty-two years.
Chapter 2
I have never seen anyone shut down like he did. Mr. Lewis just sat in a chair, staring into space. I had to take him home. I made the arrangements for the funeral.
The morning of the funeral most of the town had gathered. Everyone knew the Lewis’s. They had lived there most of their lives.
There must have been two hundred people show up for the funeral. I had to pretty much lead Mr. Lewis to his seat in the church, then lead him through the graveyard to his seat. He was just so lost without her.
I was able to keep the cabins going till fall that year. But then Mr. Lewis said he was closing the doors. He was going to put it all up for sale.
He kept me on till the end. I helped contact a realtor. I gave the realtor a tour. I just about did everything to help make myself homeless again.
In the end he sold it to some man from out of town. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. He ended up giving me the old pickup truck. He said he would miss me. I told him he had better stay in touch. But I knew I would never hear from him again. I just never figured he would do what he did.
Two weeks after he closed the deal on the cabins, he took his life. He had rented a hotel room in town. They said they heard the shot and raced upstairs to find him dead on the floor. He had attached a note to himself.
I had been staying in the hotel myself. I was out that day hiking. When I got back to the hotel the manager and the sheriff came to my room.
“Miss. Cross, I’m Sheriff Langley.”
I got so nervous I about threw up. I am not use to the sheriff showing up. Well, not here anyway. My first thought was I am too old to be put back into the foster system. That thought made me relax a second. Then I thought something was wrong?
“Miss Cross the reason I am here is that early this morning Mr. Lewis… he… well he shot himself.”
“Oh No, I got to get to the hospital. I must hurry. Is he here at the hospital?”
I didn’t know he was staying in the same hotel I was. I hadn’t seen him. For all I knew he had left town.
“No, Miss. Cross. He…
“Where is he then?”
I didn’t let him finish his sentence. I found him putting his hands on my arms and forcing me to look at him. I could see it on his face, Mr. Lewis wasn’t at any hospital. But why? My brain didn’t want to think the obvious.
“Miss Cross, he was upstairs in one of the hotel rooms. He shot himself in the head. He isn’t at any hospital. He is dead.”
I felt my stomach turning, then my knees buckled. I hit the floor before the sheriff realized I had fainted. I came too on the bed with two men standing over me calling my name.
“Gabi, Gabi you’re going to be all right. Gabi, look at me. Gabi, can you hea
r me? He left you a letter.”
I didn’t want to make sense of what they were saying or why they were standing over me. The sheriff sat on the edge of the bed and spoke to me like I was a little kid. Maybe inside I was.
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis had been like parents to me. I know I hadn’t known them that long, maybe a year, but they had treated me like their own daughter.
“Miss Cross, here is the letter we found in his room. He had left a note on his body to make sure we found this letter for you. I don’t know what it says. I do know he left everything he had to you. He said you were the only family he had left.”
Still, my little brain wasn’t making sense of things. It wasn’t till much later that night after I had been to the funeral home to make arrangements yet again for someone, that I had calmed down enough to even think of the letter. I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay for his funeral, but I knew it was up to me.
That night I lay in bed thinking about the Lewis’s and what all they had done for me. That is when I remembered the letter. I had shoved it into a drawer by the bed, so I didn’t have to look at it when the sheriff had given it to me.
I reached over and pulled open the drawer. I stared at the envelope for a while. Finally, I reached in and took it out. I sat back on the bed with my back against the headboard. I slowly opened the letter.
“Gabi, my sweet, sweet girl, I can’t tell you how happy your presence in our lives made us. Momma thought of you like the daughter she never had. Me too. You gave us so much joy I can’t begin to tell you how much.
Momma and I had tried when we were younger to have a family, but she was never able to conceive. She had wanted children so bad I felt like I had let her down. That is till the day I found you on the side of the road and brought you home to work for us.
That was the happiest day of momma’s life. She told me that first night that you were the daughter she needed. I agreed with her. I am sorry to have to leave you alone.
I know from what you have told us that you have always been alone. I know you’re stronger for it. Not that what I did makes it any easier. I’m sorry Gabi, I just couldn’t go on without momma. My wife was my life. She meant everything to me. I couldn’t breathe without her.
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