“Hush up, and I’ll take you home!”
The words somehow shot through our terror, and my sobbing slowed. “Home?” I asked, but Lizzie still shrieked.
“If you’ll settle down, I’ll take you!”
Lizzie tried to stop, so he finally set us down and bent down low. “You don’t have to be scared of me. I got grandkids my ownself. I wouldn’t want them wandering around in here during hunting season. You could be shot.”
His voice wasn’t threatening like Eloise’s and Deke’s always were, so we just stood there, waiting for him to lead us home. Our tormenter had suddenly become our savior. “Just follow behind me now.”
He picked his blade back up and whacked at vines and bushes, held back branches, and got us to a path someone had already forged. We followed closely, thinking it would all be over soon, that he would take us straight to our little house with the playhouse in the yard, that our mommy wouldn’t be dead but waiting for us, ready to take us in and put us into a bubble bath, feed us macaroni, and tuck us into our own beds. I could almost smell the scent of fresh-mown grass and the jasmine climbing the little arbor on one side of the yard. I could almost hear her voice . . . see the delight on her face.
Which one of us would she scoop up first?
It’s okay, sweetie . . .
She would take off these nasty clothes we had worn for days, wash us and dry us with the fluffy towels that felt soft against our skin, then curl up in our bed with us on clean, fresh sheets . . .
“Almost there now,” the man called behind him, and we picked up our step and began to run, run, run toward the light in the opening of the trees.
But the sight stopped us cold.
It was only the Krebbses’ house. We were right back where we’d started.
Lizzie started to cry again, but I just stood there staring at that house, feeling kind of numb and very, very tired.
Deke opened the back door.
“Take your young’uns, Deke,” the man said. “I found them wandering through the woods. They’re just babies, man. You need to take better care.”
Deke looked aggravated at the disturbance and grabbed both of our arms. “In the house! Eloise!”
She waddled toward us and swatted our behinds. “Where you girls been? Don’t you know your grandma’s been looking all over for you?”
I was pretty sure she hadn’t been looking for us. I figured she didn’t even know we were gone.
We went to our tiny room before they could chastise us. Lizzie crawled under the bed, as if Deke couldn’t get to her there, and she cried quietly. I joined her, and we curled up together, our hearts broken that our escape had failed. We wept together with gasping sobs as the disappointment seemed to smother us like some kind of gaseous fog.
Finally, I fell asleep and dreamed about coming out of that forest again . . .
Only this time, I saw our pretty little house with the flowers and the playhouse . . . arms to run into . . . and hugs that tickled us . . . love that smiled on us.
It lasted all the way until morning.
SIXTEEN
I remember the day the big box came to the house. I didn’t think much of it when Deke signed for it at the door, but then he opened it and began pulling out the wrapped boxes with pretty bows and cards taped to each one.
“What is it, Deke?” Eloise asked.
“It’s from her.” He uttered the word her as if it were a piece of gristle at the back of his throat. “Birthday presents.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Eloise jerked the box away from him. “They’re four today.”
“Us?” I asked, looking up at her. “Are those for us?”
Lizzie, who had taken to sucking her thumb more than ever before, pulled it out of her mouth and looked up at the gifts. “Can we open them?”
Eloise and Deke didn’t say no, so I bolted forward and tore into the paper of the biggest box. A lifelike baby doll lay inside it. My heart swelled as I gently pulled it out and held it against me, as carefully as if it were real.
“Kara, look!”
I looked at Lizzie and saw that she had a baby, too, wrapped in a soft blanket and cradled in her arms.
Eloise grabbed up the next gift before we thought to open it and tore into it before we could. It was a pair of pink sneakers. Deke snatched the next one, ripped into it, and found a frilly wedding veil attached to a plastic tiara. Lizzie gasped and reached for it.
Deke held it up out of her reach. “These are expensive things, Eloise,” he said. “You reckon we can get anything for them?”
“The dolls, anyway. They’re some of those collectors’ dolls. We could hock them down at the pawnshop; get a couple hundred dollars, maybe.”
Lizzie had sat down with her baby and was rocking her body back and forth and whispering to the doll. “Shhh. It’s okay, sweetie. I’ll take care of you.”
I wanted to go off by myself and tell mine that she was going to be okay, too, that I would be her mommy and dress her and feed her and rock her to sleep at night.
But Eloise stalked across the room and jerked her from my arms. I yelled out my protest and flung my body at her, but she shoved me away.
“It’s mine!”
But she sneered and held the doll over her head. “It ain’t yours,” she said. “Nothing’s yours until I say it’s yours.”
Deke went for Lizzie’s, but she screamed and tried to run. Eloise grabbed her by the arm and wrenched the doll away.
Lizzie’s cry shook the house, and Deke’s hand came down across her jaw. I grunted as if he had hit me. She fell to the floor, shrieking and gasping. He picked her up by one arm and jerked her back to his closet, threw her in, and slammed the door shut.
I threw myself at him, kicking and beating with my fists. But he threw the dolls down and picked me up, wrestled me into the other closet, and locked me in.
“Shut up, both of you!” His voice roared over our cries. “Else I’ll throw one of them mutts in with you and let him tear you apart. You hear me?”
I bit my lip in the dense, smelly darkness of the closet, sobbing out my pain and childish rage.
That was how we celebrated our fourth birthday.
SEVENTEEN
Probate meant nothing to us, and we weren’t aware of the newspaper articles or the label they had stamped on Lizzie and me. We learned to live our lives as quietly as we could and to stay out of Deke’s way. It wasn’t too hard, since he and Eloise spent most nights at the casino, then slept all day.
As the probate court date approached, though, they spent more time at home, talking on the phone to the lawyer handling their case. We didn’t understand any of it then, but Amanda offered them settlement after settlement, enough to make them millionaires many times over, if they would drop the case and return us to her.
But their lawyer had visions of getting the whole estate for them and a commission check for himself that would have set him up for life.
The night before court, Mack, Grandpa Buzz’s dearest and closest friend, invited Amanda and her friend Joan to a barbecue at his house. The old man was stiff with arthritis, but he had set up their table outside so that they could talk and breathe the sweet Southern air and try to put things in perspective.
Amanda was pensive and brooding, anxious about what the next day might hold. “Tomorrow could be my last chance to get the girls back. If I win, they’re bound to regret not taking a settlement. Then I can offer them a consolation prize, in exchange for custody of Lizzie and Kara. I know they’ll take it.”
“And if they win?” Mack studied her face.
“If they win, maybe I can still convince them to give the girls back. They’ll have gotten what they wanted and won’t need them anymore. They’d have to retain legal custody just for the sake of the money, but maybe we could work out letting them live with me.”
Mack pushed his plate away and leaned on the table, his concerned gaze resting on Amanda. “Honey, I hope it works out for you that way. Maybe it will.
But if it doesn’t, I want you to start trying to accept it.”
“I can’t accept it. How can you say that?”
“Because those girls aren’t hidden from God. He knows where they are and who they’re with. He loves them more than you do.”
“Then He’ll bring them home. He knows they’re better off with me.”
Mack took her hand and kneaded it in his. “I just don’t want you suffering anymore. There comes a time when you have to accept God’s will and then ask what He wants you to do. You have to realize that He has some greater plan that you might not ever understand. But whatever it is, you can endure it.”
She couldn’t get angry at the sweet old man who loved her almost as much as her father. “I know. But I believe that God told me they would live with me again. He led me to Isaiah 49, and it talks about the children coming home.”
Mack shook his head. “But He didn’t say when.”
“I don’t understand why He had to take it all away.”
“You may never understand,” Joan said. She was a tiny woman with big brown hair and huge round eyes. She had the voice of a preteen, but Amanda knew her well enough to take her seriously. “None of us may ever understand. Will the girls be in court tomorrow?”
“I doubt it,” Amanda said. “Robert said they don’t have to bring them, and that they probably won’t. It wouldn’t help them to have the judge see them crying for me.” She rubbed her tired, red eyes.
“Your whole life could change tomorrow.” Mack got up and stirred the charcoal in the grill. They had stopped glowing and now were crusted in ashes. “Or nothing could change at all. Let’s pray for a while, so you’ll be strong going in.” He came back to the table and reached for both their hands.
And as they prayed, Amanda tried to lay her burdens at the foot of Jesus’ cross.
But she wasn’t sure that she had the strength to leave them there.
The next morning, Joan and Mack went with her to court and sat at the back of the courtroom, their presence giving her a bit of peace.
Eloise and Deke were already at their table with their lawyer. They had left us with some woman in town who kept a dozen children in a tiny, cramped house.
Amanda would later say that she had searched their faces for a sign of empathy, a sign of gentleness, for she prayed each day that we would look up to smiling faces. But she saw nothing good in the Krebbses’ faces.
The judge came into the room, and the court session began.
As the hearing progressed, it looked to Amanda as if the Krebbses’ character was glaringly obvious to the judge. Part of her wished he would realize their greed and their misuse of us for their own personal gain and order the custody switched back to her. But this was not a custody hearing. It was only about money.
When both sides were argued, the judge left the room, and they broke for lunch. But she could not make herself eat a bite.
“Honey, you need your strength,” Joan said in that adolescent-sounding voice. “Please eat.”
“I’ll be sick if I do.” She pushed her plate away. “Mack, do you really think they’ll lose?”
“I really think you’ll win,” he said.
“Then that means I can approach the Krebbses afterward and offer them some money. I might even get the girls back today.” The weakness of her hope was reflected in her voice.
Still, the thought kept Amanda going as she went back into the courtroom to hear the judge’s decision.
He put on his glasses, clasped his hands, and looked down at the paperwork in front of him. “This has been a very difficult decision.” He took the glasses back off and rubbed his eyes. “I’d like to be fair to both parties, while still upholding the will of the deceased. Mr. Holbrooke clearly wanted his wife to have what was his. But he never knew that she would lose custody of Lizzie and Kara Holbrooke. It’s an unfortunate situation, one that I don’t think Mr. Holbrooke intended. But I’m only here to decide the matter of probate, not the custody issue.”
He shoved those glasses back on and looked down at the papers. “And the fact is, I don’t think Mr. Holbrooke had any intention of leaving his children with nothing. Their grandfather was a very wealthy man, and they deserve to share in that.”
Deke Krebbs’s hand came down hard on the table. Amanda jumped. She saw that he was already grinning.
“The court did give the Krebbses custody, and it’s obvious that they aren’t people of means. They probably do need financial help raising their grandchildren.”
“You bet we do,” Deke said.
The judge glared at him over his glasses, then took them off and leaned on his elbows. His face was clearly not at peace.
“I’ve decided to award Lizzie and Kara Holbrooke ten million dollars.”
Deke sprang up out of his chair and let out a whoop.
The judge hammered his gavel. “I am not finished! If you can’t be quiet, you can leave this courtroom!”
Deke sat down, still grinning. Amanda gaped at him across the room, wondering if he had any idea how much money he could have had in a settlement. Ten million was just a fraction of the whole estate.
“As I was saying,” the judge went on, “I am awarding the children the amount of ten million dollars. Taxes and attorney’s fees will be paid out of the lump sum, which should come to about half of the total. The balance will be paid out in annual installments of just over $300,000 per year for the next fourteen years. This is to support the children until they turn eighteen. The remainder of the estate will go to Amanda Holbrooke.”
Amanda sat stunned, running the ruling through her mind, trying to decide if this was good or bad.
The media at the back of the room began buzzing and flashing, and some dashed out. Eloise and Deke Krebbs began to celebrate as if they’d just hit pay dirt.
Robert turned to her. “We did it. Congratulations.”
“No!” Her mouth trembled as she got out the words. “This is terrible! The yearly installments will make them want to keep the girls so they’ll keep getting the money. I won’t have any chance of getting them back!”
“Amanda, you get the fortune. You get to guard it.”
“I wanted my children, and you knew that. They’re celebrating like they’re rich. They’ll never make a deal with me now.”
“But at least the children will be cared for. They’ll be able to live in a nice place, wear decent clothes, maybe have nannies that will take care of them. Their quality of life just improved. It’s something, Amanda.”
But it wasn’t something to her. “They’re mine.” She choked out the words. “This is all wrong.” She grabbed his arm. “Robert, go over there and offer them twenty million for the girls. Tell them all they have to do is sign custody over to me, and they can have twenty, forty, a hundred million. Robert, give them all of it if you have to!”
“I’ll talk to them,” he said. “Why don’t you just go home and rest, and I’ll call you?”
“No! I’m going with you. Make the offer, Robert.”
She followed him over to their table. Their attorney was the only one not celebrating their win. He listened as Robert extended an offer of twenty million dollars.
Eloise and Deke heard it and stopped celebrating, listened carefully, then told Amanda that they would consider it.
She went home with Mack and Joan at her sides and waited the longest hours of her life for the answer to come.
It sounds crazy to me now, and for the longest time I couldn’t even believe that Deke and Eloise turned that kind of money down. It doesn’t make sense. But they were suspicious of Amanda’s offer and decided the whole thing was a trick to show the judge that it wasn’t us they wanted, but the money. And they weren’t going to play into her hands.
I chalk it up to stupidity and ignorance.
Then one of them got the idea that when Lizzie and I turned eighteen, we could sue again for everything Amanda and HolCorp were worth, and they would wind up sitting even prettier than they were with
the ten million.
So they turned her offers down and held on to us with a vengeance.
That night, they came home from Jackson and got our dolls from the pawnshop. They had them in the car when they picked us up from the babysitter’s and told us that we were celebrating because we’d just come into some money.
I remember feeling such joy at the sight of my doll, soft and pliant in my arms. I imagined that she had been crying since they’d taken her from me. I pictured her lying on that shelf in that store, afraid and helpless, waiting to see what would happen next. But she was home now, back with me. And I could take care of her. Lizzie and I mothered our dolls together in our little bed as Eloise and Deke boozed it up with their friends in the living room.
Even with the noise and the laughter and the music blaring in the next room, I slept better that night, holding that baby in my arms, than I had since we’d been taken from our home.
EIGHTEEN
I’m sure that Amanda was inconsolable for the next few weeks. I’ve heard that she ate little, slept a lot, and refused to go out. Joan came over after work each day and tried to coax her from her despair.
One day, as they sat in her dark living room, Joan said, “Maybe this is how God feels when the world takes us away from Him. Maybe His heart is just as broken as yours is.”
“Then why would He wish it on me?”
Joan got quiet and stared at the same spot in the air as Amanda.
“I made Jack a promise, Joan. I can’t keep it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“How?”
Joan sighed. “You can take care of the girls financially. The only way I see that you can do that right now is to guard their fortune, clean up the company, and set your sights on their eighteenth birthday when you can give them everything that’s theirs. Eloise and Deke Krebbs couldn’t get their hands on it if they tried. You’re the steward of it, and you can protect it and preserve it and even grow it for them. But that company has got a lot of problems, and I don’t think you want to give it to them the way it is, or the way it might be by the time they’re of age.”
Covenant Child Page 6
