When I Found You (A Box Set)

by Webb, Peggy

  “I know what it’s like to be lonely. I know what it’s like to be scared. You must have felt both those emotions over the years, but I never knew. I always thought of you as larger than life, more beautiful than most other mothers, smarter, more talented. I guess that’s why I was so devastated by your betrayal. I guess that’s why it has taken me so many years to understand that I can no longer judge you, that I can no longer live with hatred in my heart.

  “You were my hero, Mother, and losing my hero nearly destroyed me.

  “I’m not saying that we can ever go back to the easy camaraderie we had before Max stole my innocence. We can never go back. Only forward.

  “Please don’t take this letter as a sign that I want you beside my bed when I give birth to my child. I don’t think I can handle that. Not yet. Nor do I want you to buy out every baby boutique in Oxford and make up amusing stories to tell all your society friends about being a grandmother.

  “There I go again. Trying to control things. I guess you can do whatever you take a notion to do.

  “What I’m saying is that I want us to try to be honest with each other. No more lies. No more pretense. Whatever past you’ve created for yourself with your Oxford friends is your business. But I want only truth between us.

  “You can start by telling me about my father. I never knew anything about him except that he was somebody wonderful who had to go away.

  “I don’t know when I can face you ... or even if I can face you. The thought scares me. And right now I have too much to be scared about to add one more terror.

  “For the time being, a letter will have to do. I send you my offering of peace, Mother. Maybe someday I can send you love.

  “I hope so. Oh, I do hope so.”

  Ruth signed and sealed the letter, then put her head on the desk and cried. Cleansing tears. When she was cried out, she put on her gown and went to bed.

  Covering her womb with her hands, she whispered, “You’re special, little one. It doesn’t take courage to grow up strong and independent in a home with two loving parents, but it takes somebody special to turn out right in a home without a daddy. And you’re going to turn out right. I promise.”

  70

  Ruth heard the sound of a Jeep and shaded her eyes to see. A plume of dust spewed upward on the dirt road, and she felt a jolt of excitement as she recognized the Jeep. Should she go inside and lock the door, or stay in the dirt planting flowers?

  She decided to stay in the dirt. She reached for that inner core of serenity, then pulled off her gardening gloves.

  Her heart lurched when he got out of the Jeep. Neither of them spoke. He strode to the flower bed and stood gazing down at her.

  Her baby kicked so hard, she saw the movement in the hand laid protectively over his hiding place. Brett saw the movement too. He caught her eye, a volume of unspoken thoughts in his glance.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  “My baby has nothing to do with you.”

  He touched his eye patch briefly, a gesture she’d seen him use a dozen times, always when he was uncertain—a gesture that broke her heart. She didn’t want her heart to be broken, and so she stood and started into her house. She had every intention of locking the door and not coming out, no matter what he said, no matter how long he stood there.

  “Ruth ...”

  She stopped in midstride, one foot on the porch, the other on the top step—just stood there pinned to the floor as if she were a mechanical toy and somebody had removed her battery.

  “This is not about the baby.”

  She turned slowly, and seeing him that way—his hair tousled from the wind, the dust from the road settled onto his shoes, his face closed up like one of the masks archaeologists unearthed from forgotten civilizations—she lost all thought of abandoning him in her front yard.

  “There’s tea inside, and some cookies Matuka brought yesterday. You look as if you could use some.”

  She issued the invitation as smoothly as if she were a Southern debutante thoroughly schooled in the art of flirtation, who had been just waiting for the perfect man to use it on. Lord, she was flirting with him. What would she stoop to next?

  He followed her inside. The room suddenly seemed too small. There was hardly anywhere to go that didn’t put her in too close a proximity to him. She escaped to the kitchen. When she got back, he was standing beside the window, looking out, tense as a piano wire that had been stretched too tight.

  She wanted him so much, she could feel the desire coiling through her like smoke, warm and dark and dangerous.

  With shaking hands she poured tea and knocked a teacup onto the floor. It shattered into a million pieces. Her lower lip trembled, and she thought she was going to make a fool of herself and cry.

  They knelt on the floor at the same time. She felt the push of tears against her eyelids.

  “Ruth.” He touched her hand. Their gazes locked. “Let me.”

  She could argue with him. But to what purpose?

  “All right,” she said. He helped her up, handing her gently into a chair as if she were his grandmother’s fine china and he was afraid she might break herself. Which she might. Any minute now. If he stayed in her house too long, she’d shatter into bright slivers of glass and embed herself in him.

  He was still embedded in her heart. Was she embedded in his?

  She’d never know the answer.

  “I’ll get another cup,” she said.

  “No. I don’t really want tea.” He threw the pieces into the wastebasket then sat on the chair opposite her.

  “I guess you don’t want cookies, either.” Why did that make her feel so forlorn? As if she’d lost everything she’d ever had?

  “They look and smell delicious.”

  “But you don’t want any?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  She didn’t dare look into his eyes, afraid that he would see. Instead she focused on a spot on the wall just beyond his head. Somebody had squashed a fly against the wallpaper and then never cleaned it up. The former tenant, probably. Why hadn’t she seen the mess before? Why was she continuing to live in that rude cottage?

  And why hadn’t she guessed that Brett was the father of her baby? Oh, Lord, she really was going to cry. She folded her hands tightly together, lacing the fingers the way she had done in elementary school when she didn’t want to be the one the teacher called to the chalkboard.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “If you mean am I eating and sleeping and taking care of myself, the answer is yes, I’m all right. If you mean am happy about being deceived, the answer is no.”

  “I understand your—”

  “No! You don’t understand anything. You don’t know what it’s like to learn that you and Malone conspired behind my back. Did you gloat when I got pregnant with your baby, Brett?”

  It took every ounce of his self-control to sit in his chair without touching her.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, Ruth. I merely wanted you to know that I care about your well-being ... and not because of the baby.”

  “You don’t care about this baby? Your own child?” Ruth knew she was being irrational, but she didn’t care. She figured she had a God-given right to irrationality as compensation for being so big that she waddled like a duck.

  “Do I care about my own child?”

  Brett didn’t move from his chair, but his gaze was so intense, she felt as if his hands were all over her. She clutched the sides of her chair to keep from sliding off in a melting puddle at his feet.

  “I would die for him ... and for you.” Shivers ran through her. “You want to know if I gloated when you got pregnant with my child? When I knew my seed had taken root in you, I wanted to kneel at your feet and kiss your womb. I wanted to stand on top of my mountain and shout to all the world that I was the father. Call it gloating. Call it whatever you want.”

  She felt the press of tears behind her eyes, and she realized she wanted to cry not out
of anger, but out of joy. This brilliant, courageous, loyal man had loved his brother so deeply that he’d not only given up an eye, he’d given up a child. And she carried that child in her womb.

  She would tell her child about his father. She would tell him how he dedicated his life to his family and to the mountain gorilla. She’d tell her son the sacrifices his father had made for all of them. She’d tell him everything except the way Brett had deceived her.

  “I shouldn’t have said those things to you, Brett. I’m sorry.”

  “Ruth, I know that what I did is not easy for you to forgive, but I wish you’d at least come back to the compound so I can keep an eye on you.”

  “I’m a stone’s throw from the clinic. I don’t need you to keep an eye on me. How’s Cee Cee?”

  “She misses you. She’s making my life hell.”

  “Good.”

  “I knew you’d say that.” Even though she was near the clinic, Brett had no intention of letting her stay in this rundown cabin indefinitely. His child would be born under his watchful eye—whether or not Ruth Corday agreed.

  He studied her in silence; then, satisfied that she was finally relaxed, he got down to the purpose of his visit.

  “Ruth, there are some things I have to tell you before you hear any talk from the villagers.”

  “Talk? About what?”

  “About Malone. You know I’ve been trying to find out what happened on the mountain?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve discovered some truths that aren’t pretty.”

  “You’re making me crazy with all this beating around the bush. Quit treating me like a child and get on with the truth. I can take it.”

  He knew she could. Ruth was strong, had always been strong. The thing he hated was not being able to hold her in his arms while he told her the truth. Any attempt to do so would be upsetting to her, and she had more than enough to handle without emotional complications.

  “Malone and Joseph were killed because Malone was involved in the illegal capture and sale of the baby gorillas.”

  She thought she was going to faint. The room whirled and got dark. Brett squatted beside her chair, put one hand on her knee, the other on her forehead.

  “Ruth. Are you all right?”

  “No!” She jerked away from him. “Don’t touch me. Leave me alone.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “What did you mean, telling me these awful things? It’s just another lie. Just another way to insinuate yourself into my life.”

  Brett had never felt so helpless in all his life. How would he ever straighten out the tangled web of lies that the Corday family was caught up in?

  “I loved my brother more than life itself.” He touched his eye patch, remembering the sacrifice. He could almost feel the knife blade slicing down his face. “Do you think I’d say or do anything to harm him, especially now that he’s dead?”

  Tears stung the back of her eyes, but she blinked them back. She wouldn’t cry. Not while Brett was there.

  “No,” she whispered. “No matter what else you did, you would never harm your brother.”

  “He did it, Ruth. He betrayed us all.”

  She knew he spoke the truth. Her dear, sweet, gentle Malone would never have done such a thing. But the Malone he’d become—the one who had to prove to himself that he was not a failure, the one who had to prove to his wife that he was better than his brother—could have.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Shambu, the park guard who was head of one of the antipoaching patrols, told us everything.”

  There was more to the story, much more, but he didn’t want to tell her. Somebody bigger than Malone had been behind the scheme, somebody Shambu didn’t know. Or wouldn’t implicate. In any event, the murder had not been premeditated. Joseph had happened on the scene. And now he and Malone were dead, and the truth had died with them.

  “Shambu killed Malone and Joseph?”

  “Yes. He and others. They’ll be punished, Ruth.”

  “And then it will all be over,” she whispered.

  It was far from over, but he didn’t tell her that. She had too much to handle as it was.

  “Yes, Ruth. It will all be over.”

  She stood up. “Thank you for coming by to tell me this.”

  He was being dismissed. What else had he expected?

  “If you need me for anything, just call.”

  “I won’t need you,” she said.

  He didn’t know how he could leave her there with the plate of cookies and the cold pot of tea and his baby so big inside her that she held the small of her back when she walked.

  But she’d given him no choice.

  Chapter 71

  Brett was halfway up the mountain before he knew he had to go back. Ruth was not on her knees in the dirt this time, but inside her house with the door shut.

  “Ruth?”

  There was no answer. What if she’d hurt herself after he left? What if she was lying on the floor bleeding?

  “Ruth! Open up.” He knocked loudly.

  There was a long silence, and then he heard her footsteps. The doorknob twisted, and he waited for the door to open. Waited and waited.

  Ruth leaned her head against the door. Ruth Corday. How proud she’d been to bear the name. It stood for dignity, integrity, compassion, vision. And now all that was gone. Malone had taken it away.

  “No,” she said through the closed door. “Haven’t you already done enough? What more do you want? Blood?”

  The minute she said that, she could have bitten off her tongue. There had already been too much bloodshed on these mountains.

  She pressed her hand flat against the door, as if she were touching him.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Brett leaned his forehead against the door. He was tired. So very tired.

  “Don’t cry,” he said.

  “How did you know I was crying?”

  “Because I love you, Ruth. I feel your pain. I hear it in your voice.” There was silence from inside her house. He put his palm against the door as if he might feel the warmth of her skin through the thick wood that separated them.

  “Please leave.” Her voice was so soft, he could barely hear.

  “I’m leaving now, Ruth, but before I go, I want you to know that my love for you has nothing to do with wanting to take possession of my baby. I would love you no matter whose baby you carried.” In the long, terrible silence he waited. “I’ve always loved you and I always will.”

  He stood for a long time with his hand on the door, knowing she was just on the other side.

  “Ruth,” he said.

  No answer.

  He could stand there till hell froze over, and she’d never answer him. He knew that. Ruth was stubborn. It was one of her qualities he found most endearing ... and most maddening.

  When he left this time, he went straight to Matuka’s cabin. She greeted him with a hug and a big bowl of soup.

  “You’re not eating right,” she said. “With all that’s happened in these mountains it’s not any wonder.”

  “This smells good, Matuka.”

  “Eat it all.” She bustled around her kitchen, pouring soup into a covered plastic container.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

  “Sending the rest home with you. All you ever think about is that gorilla ... and Ruth.”

  She wiped her hands on her apron and sat down beside him.

  “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

  He didn’t ask how she knew. Matuka had always divined his secrets. He’d never sneaked anything past her, not even the lizards he’d hidden in a box at the back of his closet when he was eight.

  “I saw her.”

  He was like a son to Matuka. She knew his heart was torn out. Leaving her chair, she wrapped her arms around him and crooned to him as if he were a baby. She wished he’d cry. Through all the terrible times, even t
hrough Joseph’s funeral when everybody had been weeping and lamenting, he’d stood like one of the mountains, unchanged and unchangeable.

  How many more times would he have his heart torn out?

  “Everything is going to be all right,” she said.

  “Thanks, Matuka.” He patted her arm, and she took her chair. This man didn’t want coddling—would stand for only so much of it. “How does she seem to you?” he asked her.

  “Just like you. Sad, hurting.”

  “You’ll keep visiting her?”

  “Every day. Just like you asked. Besides, I like Ruth. She’s a brave lady.”

  “Yes, she’s a brave lady... . You’ll call me and tell me about her?”

  “Every day. Just like you asked.”

  He left with a container of soup to nourish his body and a hug to nourish his spirit.

  o0o

  Ruth was bent over her knitting, the lamplight glowing against the side of her face and shining on her hair. Brett sat in his Jeep, watching. He felt like a thief, stealing these moments with her. Night after night, coming there to check on her.

  Never mind that Matuka faithfully reported to him. He had to see for himself, had to know that she was all right.

  She stood up and stretched. The huge mound of her belly was backlit by the lamp. She was ripe with child. His child.

  Something warm pushed against his eyelids, and he knew it was tears. Unashamed, he let them fall as he watched the woman he loved make her way through the house to her bedroom. Beyond her drawn shades he saw her pull her dress over her head and slowly massage cream onto her rounded belly and full breasts.

  A pain such as he’d never known slashed at him. He ached to kneel in front of her and smooth the soothing lotion onto her stretched skin. He longed to place the palm of his hands flat on her belly and feel the fluttering kicks of his child beneath her velvety skin.

  Ruth placed the bottle of lotion back on her nightstand, then turned back the covers. Alert as a duiker she cocked her head, listening, the covers clutched in one hand, the other over her heart.

  Brett hated that she was alone with nothing but her cat. Hated that he wasn’t beside her, reassuring her. Hated that he was outside in the dark and might be the cause of her alarm. He was torn between going to her front door and making her let him inside, and respecting her desire to be left alone.