by Anne, Melody
The sad expression on the judge’s face told her before his words did that she wouldn’t be walking from the courtroom with Justin — not today, at least.
“This case will be adjourned for two months.” With that, Judge Malone hit his gavel and rose before the bailiff could say a word. However the judge didn’t leave the room immediately. He first turned toward Jewell with concern in his eyes. “I know you love Justin — I have no doubt of that,” he said, and he sighed. “Sometimes, the best thing we can do for someone we love so much is to let them go so they can have a better life than one we might be able to give them.”
He left Jewell shaking so badly that she was barely able to remain on her feet. But she looked resolutely into the sweet blue eyes of her brother and prayed she could keep her composure long enough to reassure him that they would indeed be together again. She went through agony each time she had to let him go.
“Jewell? Can we go back home now?”
Oh, how his innocent words ripped through her very soul.
“Ah, Bubby, soon. I have to do a few more things to prove to the judge that I can take care of you,” she replied, disappointment thick in her voice as she walked right up to him and bent down to be at eye level. The advocate let him go and he fell into her arms.
“But why can’t we go home? I miss you every day. Ms. Penny doesn’t read to me like you do, and she makes me eat peas. I hate peas. You promised we’d be back together.” His tears soaked through her thin suit jacket, and his small frame shook with each heartbroken sob.
“Oh, Justin, I promise that I will get you back. I’ll do anything and everything for us to be together again. I love you more than the moon and the stars. I love you more than any other person on this planet.”
“I love you too, Sissy. Please don’t make me go back to that house.”
“Ah, baby, it won’t be much longer, and I’ll come see you every single Saturday, okay? And then after eight Saturdays we won’t have to be apart anymore.”
“Eight Saturdays?” His eyes widened with hope.
Thank goodness he didn’t understand that meant two months.
“Yes, only eight more Saturdays. And after that last Saturday, I will pick you up and you’ll never have to go back to another strange house again.” She would keep this promise no matter what it took.
“You swear?”
She was heartbroken at his question. How could any boy be so distrustful at such a young age? Her brother should be playing with action figures and Legos, not worrying about where he would sleep each night, or whether he would be with a mean foster parent or a nice one, or if his sister loved him.
“I swear.” Or I’ll die trying, she added silently.
“I love you, Sissy,” he sobbed as the advocate shifted on her feet, letting them both know that their time was up.
“I love you, too, Justin.”
His sobs grew into screams as the advocate removed him from Jewell’s arms and pulled him from the courtroom. As soon as the doors shut, Jewell’s mask of strength came crashing down and she collapsed into the closest chair.
When the court security officer told her she had to leave the room, Jewell stood and walked zombie-like into the cold white marble hallways of the courthouse. After making her way slowly to the restroom, she splashed her face with water and didn’t even recognize the eyes of her reflection.
When her mother died, Jewell hadn’t had time to grieve, because from the day of the funeral she’d been fighting to get her brother back from the state and the people who had taken him away. She and her little brother had lost everything in the last few months of their mother’s life. But they couldn’t lose each other.
Once she left the courthouse, Jewell wandered the streets of Seattle until it turned dark, and she slumped against a dirty brick wall, too tired to go on even a single step farther. So much anguish filled her every single day. Her mother had been her best friend, her rescuer, her only person to lean on and love in a world full of people who didn’t care about her.
Closing her eyes, she thought of that phone call, her mother’s strong voice, for once, sounding defeated.
“I need you to come home and take care of Justin. I have cancer, and I only have two months left.”
The pain of those words still sat heavy in Jewell’s chest. Of course, she’d come home immediately, and she would never regret her decision. The bills had piled up, the money had run out, and she and Justin had lost it all. Their home. Their security. Their mother. And now, each other. She wanted to give up, and if she were the only one she had to think about, she was afraid that she would.
She just didn’t have the energy left inside her to go on. Wanting to stop feeling for at least a few hours, she waited and hoped for sleep to rescue her. For a few short hours she could dream, and with luck her dreams would be filled with images far more pleasant than the reality her life had now become.
How could dreams possibly be worse than what she was living through? They couldn’t.
Chapter Three
No birds were chirping when Jewell awoke. A light sprinkle of rain was drizzling down over her and washing some of the grime from her homeless body. She didn’t know if she was capable of even standing at this point, but it didn’t matter.
No. She was better than that. For one moment she’d given up; for only a second in time she’d decided it was all too much to endure. Now that moment was over. She had two months. As much as she wanted to break down and cry, as much as she wanted to curse the powers above for taking her mother, for interrupting her own life, and for ruining her, she knew she couldn’t.
If she gave up, Justin would have no one fighting for him. And her mother’s final words had been another plea for Jewell to take care of her little brother. Her mother had closed her eyes for the last time after Jewell had promised never to allow their family to break apart.
Her mother had found peace in a world that had turned against her, a world that seemed no longer to care about any of them. As much as Jewell wanted to take back the promise she’d given her mother, she knew she couldn’t. Today would be the day she’d find a new job, save every single dime she made, and then get a place with furniture, in a neighborhood with a good school.
Today she would start the life she’d promised her mother she would live. True, it was all overwhelming — all the more so because everything had started out well for her. Although she was only twenty-four, had graduated from college only last year, she’d landed a wonderful job at an advertising firm where the execs had told her she was a rising star. She’d thought life would be easy from that point on. It wasn’t turning out to be so easy after all.
After she’d chosen to walk away from her career to care for her sick mother and her little brother, her employers had quickly forgotten about her. When she came back begging for her job, they’d told her that she’d had her chance and she’d blown it. There were many like her out there, many who’d stood in line to take her place, and none of them would have let something as insignificant as family come between them and their careers.
That’s where Jewell was different from the sharks in the world of advertising. Family would always come first for her, and right now the only family she had left was Justin. She wouldn’t fail him.
When she saw a McDonald’s, she slipped inside and headed immediately to the restroom. What she saw in the mirror horrified her. Her hair looked as if a crew of hyperactive mice had made a nest and settled in overnight, tangling it and leaving it filled with filth. Streaks of dirt ran down her sunken cheeks, and her clothes would surely have to be tossed.
Still, none of that was going to stand in her way — not today. After finger-brushing her hair as best she could, and rinsing out her mouth, she stepped back out into the lobby of the fast-food joint. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours, and then she’d had only a quick bit of bread from the shelter.
That didn’t matter, either. She’d have plenty of food for both h
er and her brother when she found them a secure place. It wouldn’t be fast food, though. Their mother had been an excellent cook, and Jewell had truly loved standing next to her in front of their gas stove, taking in all she was doing.
It didn’t matter how good a cook she was, though, since she didn’t have time or a stove, or even a place of her own to prepare a meal in. Even if she had to give up sleep, she’d soon have everything she and her brother needed to live a decent life. She would soldier on today without stopping until she had at least one job. She would work seven days a week, twenty hours a day if that’s what it took.
Arriving back at the shelter she’d left the day before, Jewell walked through the doors and signed in on the visitors’ sheet. It wasn’t long before she’d had a hot shower, managed to find a small bite to eat, and then found a halfway decent outfit from the communal clothing closet to wear in her search for work.
The next thing she did was sit down and begin flipping through the classified section of the newspaper that the shelter provided to help people who were down on their luck. Sure, some of those living there planned on being in the shelter for only a day or two, but others were almost lifers. Jewell had been there too long already. She vowed to herself that she’d be out as soon as possible, and the way out was a good job.
But by the end of the week, she was once again broken. She’d trudged all around the city, job listings in her bag and hope in her heart, but door after door had been slammed in her face.
Overqualified.
Position already filled.
Come back once you have more experience.
Over and over, at each place she went, she was refused employment. What good was her degree? What was it doing for her now? She couldn’t get a job as a secretary, because she was overqualified, couldn’t get another job in an advertising agency, because she had left the one she’d had after only a few months and, anyway, she didn’t have enough experience. No one cared that she’d left because her mother had been terminally ill.
They deemed that an unfortunate weakness on her part, a sad sign of unreliability. If she’d walked out on a job once, she could easily do it again. The truth was that she would if she had to. She didn’t regret sitting with her mother, didn’t regret those last precious moments they’d been able to share, and didn’t regret that they’d been a family for just a little while longer.
But now she couldn’t find a job to help save her little brother, and it felt like the weight of the world was resting on her shoulders. She’d promised Justin she would do whatever it took to get him back, to bring him home with her — wherever home was. She probably wouldn’t be able to keep that promise.
She didn’t want to give up, but it all seemed so hopeless. She just couldn’t bear the idea of returning to the shelter, sitting through yet another sermon about hanging in there, about there being a better life out there for everyone. Instead, she found herself in an abandoned building she’d slept in before. There were other people around, all of them minding their own business, and Jewell curled up in a corner with a suit jacket the only thing keeping the chill from seeping into her bones.
Despite everything, despite her miserable week, she forced herself to be positive. Her last thought before falling asleep was that everything would improve in the morning. It had to. She would not leave the next place where she applied for employment until they gave her the forms to sign that would provide her with a paycheck.
Yeah, that worked really well for her. A week later, she still didn’t have a job. She didn’t have to give up on herself — the world seemed to have given up on her.
A shoe nudging her in the side woke Jewell up. She didn’t want to speak to whoever was rude enough to interrupt the only time she was allowed a modicum of peace. She wasn’t ready to face the cold, hard world quite yet. The birds hadn’t even heralded the morning. But she slowly opened her eyes and squinted into the bright beam of light shining right on her.
“Are you alive?”
“Why should you even care?” Jewell snapped.
“Because I can see that beneath the grime on your face that you are a pretty girl. I think I can help you.”
“What? What are you talking about,” Jewell asked as she struggled to sit up. She couldn’t see the woman who was staring down at her.
“I run a business, and I would like to have you come in for an interview.”
It took several moments for Jewell’s muddled brain to process the woman’s words, and then she narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Why in the world would you come to a place like this and offer me a job interview? Who are you?” Whatever it was the woman was offering, it couldn’t be good.
“I find lots of women for my business in many different places, and I’ve heard good things about you from a contact of mine over at your former shelter. If you don’t want work, fine. I won’t waste my time. If you get tired of living on the streets, come see me.”
The woman tossed a card at Jewell and then walked away, leaving only the sound of her heels clicking across the cement floor. It was too dark without the woman’s flashlight to see the card, so Jewell just clutched it in her hand and waited for dawn’s light to stream in through the broken windows of the old building.
When morning finally came around, she looked at the small piece of card stock and her brows furrowed. “What is Relinquish Control?” she said aloud.
Did it really matter? She’d promised Justin she’d do whatever it took to bring him home, and that was exactly what she was willing to do. Whatever it took.
Chapter Four
When Jewell stepped in front of the unremarkable building, she double-checked the address. It didn’t have a business sign, didn’t have anything indicating it was a business. Walking up to the front door, she wasn’t sure whether she should ring the doorbell or go on in. Since there was no Open or Closed sign, she decided to go the doorbell route.
A year ago — heck, three months ago — the place would have seemed too sketchy for her and she would have turned around and walked away. But she no longer had the luxury of doing that. She needed another job and she needed to get money saved so she could ensure she would gain custody of her brother. Plus the woman had come to her, asked her to interview. So that was a very good start.
Jewell hit the buzzer next to the door and waited for what seemed like forever. A striking woman answered at last, but said not a single word. She just looked Jewell over with a swift sweep of her eyes before meeting her gaze.
Whatever this woman was looking for, Jewell had the feeling that she’d come up short. Was this the same person who’d given her the business card? Jewell had no idea, because the woman hadn’t spoken yet. She was wearing at least five-inch heels, doubtless an intimidation tactic. It was working to a degree, though nothing really mattered anymore except getting work. Still, Jewell wouldn’t cower. She was going to paste a smile on her face and make these people want to hire her, no matter what the job entailed. There was no way she could suffer the disappointment of seeing another door close in her face.
“Hi. I’m Jewell Weston, and I’m here to apply for employment. I was handed a card and told to come by.” Her voice came out strong, determined, positive. Amazing.
“I see you decided that you could do better than living on the streets — or in abandoned buildings.” The woman’s distinctive voice, with its low, sultry tone, was certainly the same one she’d heard a few hours earlier.
“Yes. I want the job.” She didn’t add that it didn’t matter what the job was. That would sound too desperate.
“Come inside.”
There was nothing in the woman’s words or her voice to indicate whether she was interested or not. Maybe she was just bored with what she did for a living. She could at least introduce herself so Jewell didn’t have to think of her as the woman. But, hell, she’d call the lady anything she wanted to be called as long as she provided a much-needed paycheck.
“What can you bring to us here, Jewell?”
&
nbsp; They were now in a small room with a table and two chairs. The woman didn’t gesture for Jewell to sit, so she stood there awkwardly.
“I went through four years of college and finished with honors,” Jewell replied without hesitation. “I’m bright and always eager and willing to learn.”
“That’s a must,” the woman said with a cryptic smile.
“Well, then, you have your employee,” Jewell told her with a raised chin. “You may as well quit looking anywhere else.”
“Hmm. We’ll see.”
The woman gathered papers from a file in the corner and then sat down at one end of the table, still without offering one of the chairs for Jewell to take. Should she sit? Was this some sort of test? The walls were bare, with nothing on them for Jewell to focus on to make her feel less uncomfortable, but she was determined not to look nervous.
“Where did you attend school?” The woman wasn’t even looking up as she asked this question.
“I went to UC Berkeley on a full scholarship.” Jewell was quite proud of that.
“Very impressive. So you are certainly smart.” The frown between the woman’s eyes suggested that she wasn’t particularly pleased.
“I’ve always been at the top of my class, which is why I excel at any job I take on.” Jewell had to close her lips to keep from saying more. Some potential employers wanted a lot of talking, and some didn’t. She had the feeling that, in this case, the less she said, the better.
“Please have a seat, Jewell.”
The tone of her voice indicated she was pleased Jewell hadn’t sat down before she’d been asked. Good. Jewell was doing something right in this freaky interview. If only she knew what she was being interviewed for.
