As she went up the stairs, Calla glanced back toward the girl. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen, her arms wrapped around her as if she was cold or protecting herself.
At the top of the stairs, Calla turned right and knocked on her son’s door.
“Nathan? Nathan!”
An unintelligible rumbling was the only reply. Calla opened the door and peered into the shadows for an instant before crossing the darkened room and pulling up the shades. A wide shaft of sunlight revealed her son completely cocooned in a tangle of blankets.
He groaned.
“Better get up,” Calla told him. “You’ve got company downstairs.”
“Huh?” he asked without bothering to poke his head out from under the covers.
“Jazleen is here,” she said. “Apparently you were going someplace together this morning.”
Nathan moaned again and rolled over, flipping back the blankets to reveal his face and T-shirt-clad torso.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I told her I would take her to Oak Street Beach. I couldn’t believe she’d lived here all her life and never been.”
Calla nodded.
With a sigh of determination, Nathan rolled out of bed. “Let me get a quick shower,” he told his mother. “Tell her I’ll be downstairs in fifteen minutes.”
Calla left him to get ready and returned to the kitchen. Jazleen was still standing in the middle of the floor.
“Nathan says fifteen minutes,” Calla told her. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No,” Jazleen answered too quickly.
“Are you sure?” Calla asked. “I’m going to have another cup.”
Jazleen hesitated. “I don’t mind,” she said finally.
It wasn’t exactly “yes, please,” but Calla decided it was the best excuse for manners that the girl could muster.
“Sit down,” she told her as she set the cup on the table. “There’s milk and sugar.”
Jazleen reluctantly seated herself. Calla took the chair opposite her. The girl continued to eye her warily. The silence lengthened between them. Calla was racking her brains for a neutral subject and was just about to comment on the weather when Jazleen spoke.
“That man next door has got a shovel,” she said. “I think he’s burying something.”
Calla glanced in the direction of the window. She couldn’t see Landry Sinclair at this angle, but she could still perfectly recall the sight of the man.
“He’s digging a garden,” Calla said.
Jazleen’s brow furrowed and she snorted in disbelief. “This time of year? Not likely. He’s burying something.”
So much for neutral conversation, Calla thought.
“Nathan said you two are headed for an outing to Oak Street Beach.”
Jazleen didn’t answer. She eyed Calla suspiciously and then sipped her coffee as if that gave her permission not to comment. Her eyes were widely set and a rich dark brown. She was wearing a bit too much makeup, but a cleft in her chin made her look vulnerable.
“We used to go to Oak Street Beach a lot when Nathan was a little boy,” Calla told her. “Lots of fresh air and room to run around. On a crisp fall day it’s absolutely the best. He would sit and just look at the boats on the water.”
She paused, but again Jazleen said nothing.
“I’m sure that’s what he wants to share with you,” Calla continued. “Even if it does mean giving up a sleepy Saturday morning.”
Calla was frustrated when the girl made no attempt to keep up her side of the conversation. She decided maybe questions and answers would be easier.
“Nathan says you watch a lot of TV?”
“Some.”
“Have you seen anything good lately?”
She shook her head.
“I like those dancing shows,” Calla told her. “But more often I prefer reading.”
Jazleen sipped her coffee.
“Do you like to read?”
The girl shrugged.
“When I was your age, that was what I loved best.”
Jazleen raised a brow. It wasn’t exactly an eye roll, but Calla was fairly sure it had the same meaning.
“Do you know how to read?” Calla asked.
“Of course I do!” Jazleen snapped. “I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t think that you were,” Calla said. “But a lot of very smart people don’t read, or don’t read very well.”
“I can read fine, thank you.”
“Okay, good.” Calla hesitated. “Nathan said you’ve dropped out of school.”
“Maybe. I haven’t decided.”
“What does your great-aunt think about it?”
“I’d guess she’d think that it’s none of her business,” Jazleen declared. “And it’s sure none of yours.”
The young girl’s expression was angry. Calla was not feeling very friendly herself.
“If you’re seeing my son, then I make it my business,” she answered.
“What? You trying to turn him into some mama’s boy?”
“Every male on this earth is a mama’s boy,” Calla said. “He may love her or he may hate her, but there is nobody else in the world who can talk to a man the way his mama does.”
Jazleen’s jaw set tightly with anger.
“Nathan and I are very close,” Calla told the girl quietly. “If you stay tight with him, you’re going to have to deal with me. So maybe you should think about getting used to it.”
After the teenagers left, Calla didn’t even attempt to get back to lazy-day musing. Saturdays were busy days with chores she put off all week, but she couldn’t help thinking about Nathan and Jazleen. So it wasn’t surprising that just after lunchtime, she headed across the street to have a chat with Gerty Cleveland.
The woman took her time getting to the door. The tiny apartment was crowded with furniture, but it was neat as a pin except for the area around the recliner that sported TV trays on either side loaded with food, drink, tissues, assorted junk and the remote control. As soon as Calla walked inside, Gerty returned to the chair and popped it into the raised position.
“I try to keep my feet up every minute that I’m home,” she explained to Calla. “As it is, I’ll be lucky to get five more years of work out of them.”
It seemed to Calla it was probably already time for Gerty to stop working. Steel-gray hair covered her head, her hands shook and she didn’t hear all that well.
“I wanted to talk to you about Jazleen,”
“Say what?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Jazleen,” she repeated a bit louder.
“Jazleen? She’s a sweet girl,” Gerty said. “I was real reluctant to take her. Her mama’s no good. And my sister, her own grandma, gone to Jesus twenty years ago. She was living with my daughter, Val, for a month or two. But there was some kind of trouble with Val’s man. So there was no one else and here she is. But she keeps the place tidied up, and when I get home from work, she’s always got some kind of dinner for me. That’s been nice, real nice.”
“Did you know she’s thinking of dropping out of school?”
“No, I didn’t pay no attention to that. Guess if she’s not going to school, she should get a job. That’s what I did. I left school and got myself a job.”
“Things were different back then,” Calla told her. “Nowadays it’s tough to find a job if you don’t finish high school.”
The old woman nodded absently. “That’s likely true.”
“You shouldn’t let her drop out,” Calla said.
“I hope she won’t,” Gerty said. “But truth to tell, as long as she don’t get into no trouble, I’m tempted to just let her be.”
Calla shook her head to disagree, but her neighbor forestalled her.
“You don’t know the life that girl has lived,” Gerty said. “She’s had troubles like you and me have never seen. That doesn’t happen to people and leave them unmarked. If she can find some happiness on her own, then I’m all for letting her have it.”
Calla continued talking with Gerty for a half hour or more, but it was clear that the old woman had no plans for Jazleen’s future and was only vaguely interested in the young woman’s present.
“But you must be worried.”
“The girl will be all right,” Gerty assured her. “She’ll find her way. I don’t have the time or the energy to make sure she does this, that or the other. She’s nearly grown, so she’s on her own. Besides, she has that boy of yours to make do for her.”
“What?”
“It was real smart of her to latch onto him,” Gerty said. “He’s got a lot of gumption and he’s not afraid of hard work. He’ll be like his daddy, a good family man. Jazleen is lucky in that.”
“Nathan is off to college next year,” Calla explained.
The older woman eyed her skeptically. “That’s what you’re hoping,” she said. “But he seems mighty sweet on her.”
Calla shook her head. “No, it’s just a passing thing. It’s not serious between them.”
Gerty Cleveland didn’t believe a word of that.
Calla left the woman’s apartment and went straight to the supermarket to do her weekly shopping. The day had gotten significantly colder, but she found the chilly wind invigorated her.
It was too bad about Jazleen, she thought to herself. The girl might be stuck-up and rude, but she was still a girl. And someone Nathan seemed to think was special. But if she was pinning her hopes on snagging Calla’s son, she was doomed to be disappointed. Jazleen would end up like a thousand other girls. Working at a menial job as she struggled to raise kids she could hardly support.
Calla decided it would be her goal to make sure that none of those kids were on the way before she could get Nathan safely off to college.
By the time she’d made it home from the store and put the groceries away, she was tired. The house was cozy and warm. She settled herself on the couch with a book but hadn’t read more than a half-dozen pages when her eyelids began to get heavy. She set her book open upside down on her chest and lay back on a throw pillow to catch a quick twenty winks. The glare from the reading lamp seemed to permeate her eyelids, so she switched it off and drifted into a comfortable nap.
Voices from the kitchen awakened her sometime later.
“Let me fix you something to warm you up.”
“Just wrap me in your arms—that gets me about as warm as I need.”
Nathan chuckled, a low masculine sound.
The ensuing silence spoke for itself. They both seemed a little breathless when the conversation resumed.
“What do you want to do?” Nathan asked.
“Uh…let’s just sit together and talk,” Jazleen replied.
He chuckled. “You haven’t had enough talk from me already? I’ve been at it for hours.”
“I love to hear you talk,” she said.
“It’s crazy how we never run out of things to say.”
“Yeah, strange,” she agreed. “But in a good way.”
“That is, until I start talking about school, and then you just say nothing at all.”
Jazleen hesitated. “It’s a part of your life that I can’t share.”
“Of course you can,” Nathan said. “We can share the fun of my senior year and graduation and me going off to college.”
“I want to be happy for you,” Jazleen said. “But the truth is, I don’t want you to go off to college. If you go away, I won’t have anybody.”
“It’s not like it’s forever. And if I get into Northwestern, it’s not that far away.”
She made a huff of disagreement. “You might as well be going to the moon. If you really care about me like you say, you won’t take one step off Canasta Street.”
Calla couldn’t keep listening. It was wrong to eavesdrop on Nathan, even by accident. She knew she wasn’t supposed to hear any of what they’d said.
She reached up and turned the light back on. But instead of reading, she set her book on the coffee table and got up and left the room. She didn’t speak to them or acknowledge that she’d heard them talking. But they knew.
It had been easy to walk away from the conversation. Less so to get it out of her head. And along with it came other voices.
“She’s got your Nathan wrapped around her little finger.”
“He’s mighty sweet on that girl.”
In the following weeks at work, Calla worried about it. Evenings at home, it colored her enthusiasm. College was what she and Nathan had worked for, waited for. Her son was going to graduate with honors. There was so much going on and Calla wanted to be celebrating. But she was worrying instead.
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PREVIEW OF MERYL SAWYER’S
Worth the Risk
CHAPTER ONE
Lexi Morrison swept through the doors of Stovall Middle School along with a gust of spring wind. She waved at the secretary as she sailed down the hall to the cafeteria to volunteer in her sister’s class. She hated being late, but it couldn’t be helped. Professor Thompson had kept her behind to compliment her work. It would have been unspeakably rude not to listen, especially since she was counting on him to give her a reference once she’d completed her MBA.
“Lexi, there you are,” called Mrs. Geffen as Lexi shouldered her way through the double doors into the cafeteria.
“Sorry I’m late,” she whispered to the teacher. The second the words left her lips, Lexi realized the room was silent, which was unusual when over thirty teenagers were assembled in one place.
Then Lexi saw why. At the front of the room was a tall man with dark hair and striking blue eyes. He wore a navy shirt with Black Jack’s emblazoned in red on the pocket. He must be the guest chef who was scheduled to demonstrate today.
“Mr. Westcott was just telling us that he learned to cook in the C.I.A.,” Mrs. Geffen told her in a voice everyone could hear.
Lexi nodded and understood what he meant, but she couldn’t imagine the students would catch on. No doubt they assumed he’d been in the Central Intelligence Agency.
She quickly glanced around the room to locate her younger sister, Amber. Volunteering once a week in Amber’s culinary arts class was the commitment Lexi had made to encourage Amber with her studies. This cooking class was an elective and the only subject that interested her. Unlike Amber, Lexi had always been in advance-placement classes and loved school as much as her sister hated it.
She spotted Amber in the front row. Her sister was always so eager to get to this class that she’d probably been waiting for the doors to open. Her honey-brown head tilted slightly toward the guest chef, then turned and caught Lexi’s eye. “Hot,” she mouthed.
So that’s why her sister had been in such a rush to get here. Lexi thought the guy looked arrogant. He was frowning at her. She’d obviously interrupted and he didn’t appreciate it.
“Class,” Mrs. Geffen said as the group began to whisper, “Mr. Westcott was telling us about his training. Let’s listen to what he has to say.”
The teacher was short and packed into a moss-green suit that she’d worn almost every Wednesday that Lexi had volunteered.
“Someone asked where I learned to cook,” the chef repeated.
Lexi recalled Brad Westcott was the owner and executive chef of Black Jack’s, one of the most successful restaurants in Houston. It was also one of the few that didn’t purchase produce from City Seeds, Lexi’s gourmet-vegetable operation.
“Like a lot of you,” he said in a voice that indicated he was at ease with inner-city kids, “I used to think cooking was tossing something in the microwave.”
The students chuckled and elbowed each other, especially the boys. Many of them came from Mexico or South America and regarded cooking as women’s work. They were in this class because their other elective choices had been filled.
“Then I went into the army,” he con
tinued.
That statement got the boys’ undivided attention. Many of them would join when they were old enough.
“I was assigned to the officers’ mess hall. That’s what they call the kitchen—the mess hall. Mostly I peeled potatoes, carrots—”
“What about the C.I.A.?” yelled one of the boys.
“The army is where I became interested in cooking,” Brad continued, ignoring the interruption. “When I got out, I had enough money to enroll in the C.I.A. The Culinary Institute of America right here in Houston.”
Lexi smiled, but it took a few seconds before the light dawned on the rest of the students. The girls giggled while the boys rolled their eyes or elbowed each other.
Their reactions didn’t bother Brad Westcott. “Over half the students at the culinary institute were men. Top chefs in many restaurants are men. Lots of the celebrity chefs on television are men.”
The boys seemed more interested. “A good chef can make a lot of money,” Brad continued. “Plus, you meet lots of interesting people, especially women.”
Now they were impressed. Money was a never-ending concern in the inner city. The word money got the boys’ attention, but mentioning women didn’t hurt. They might try to deny their interest in the opposite sex, but they didn’t fool anyone.
“Something to think about,” Brad told them with a canted smile that made him look mischievous. “Today, I’m going to show you how to make an easy treat. Has everyone washed their hands?”
Lexi was sure they had. It was required before any class where food was to be prepared, and special monitors at the door checked the students. In addition, the tables had been covered with clean butcher paper to prevent spreading germs.
“You’re going to learn how to make chocolate truffle balls.”
There were a few snickers from the boys and Lexi groaned inwardly, but not for the same reason. No doubt they thought truffles sounded like a sissy word, even though most of them probably had no idea what it meant. Lexi knew her little sister adored desserts—especially chocolate.
Amber had been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when she was just seven. She realized sweets weren’t good for her, but she often ignored the doctors’ warnings. The girl loved to cook and she especially liked to bake.
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