by Alice Ward
Looking back, I thought he was afraid of me. Now that I was older, it’s more likely he was afraid of what life would deal him. He’d left so much behind in order to protect me. I remembered that much. Given his options and the world to which he’d belonged, he’d chosen to become my surrogate father.
The second fact was that Mexico was not where we belonged. It was a good idea for a few years until things calmed down and people forgot about me. Even though we moved around quite often, we were still targets. Bernie was too good looking, and I was too rich. How strange to be exiled to a land where your strongest qualities became your handicaps.
I didn’t retain that handicap for long, however. One night when Bernie was asleep, I sneaked out to investigate a group of young guys I’d watched from the window for weeks. They’d catch me watching and motion for me to come out and be with them. I was too naïve to realize their intentions had nothing to do with anything but the money they thought I had.
I caught up with them that night, and they dragged me into the shadows, stripped me and razor-slashed my face. Once they’d left, I managed to stagger to our door, naked and bleeding badly. I screamed Bernie’s name and beat my hands against the thick wood. He found me collapsed on the doorstep and carried me inside where he bathed and stitched my face as well as he could. He didn’t dare call attention to us by getting a local doctor, and I eventually passed out from the pain. Bernie stitched slowly and cautiously, applying disinfectant as he went. I finally awakened, my face wrapped in the torn strips of a white cotton sheet. When at last the bandages could stay off, he and I were forced to accept the disfiguring scars left behind. That was when I’d begun wearing sunglasses — always. I think it was my effort to hide my ugliness from an even uglier world.
Bernie’s “handicap” had caught up with him eventually as well. I knew he was lonely, and I understood that women weren’t the solution. He’d left me in our small but immaculately elegant apartment that night. He’d given me strict instructions about locking the door and shuttering the windows, no matter how curious I became.
Even though he never told me, I had a fairly good idea where he was headed. His kind frequented one part of town. The night passed slowly, and he didn’t come back. As the sun began to rise, I defied his orders and went looking for him.
After hours of searching, I finally spotted the neckerchief he wore. It matched his eyes and he rather favored it. It was hanging from a branch in a shriveled laurel tree and I clutched it in my hand as I headed for the federales.
His bandana wasn’t the only thing they eventually found. He had been beaten so badly I could barely identify him. I ordered cremation; there was no money for anything better. I dropped his ashes into the muddy trickle of a river; the only water available for a hundred miles. The man who had become my parent, my tutor and my only link to the man I was born to be was gone.
I was alone then and scared shitless. Bernie had been the connection to my family, not to mention my sole source of income. He had parceled it out as needed. I think he was afraid I’d buy drugs or do something equally stupid. So, now, as rich as I was, I was also flat broke and totally alone. I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know how or even want to contact my father. If my parents had wanted me, they’d have brought me home long before. It seemed like they were more about rewarding Bernie for his selflessness than supporting me.
As it turned out, I happened across an American minister and his wife who had come to the country to start a mission. I knew I couldn’t use my own passport, but I managed to trade it for enough money to buy a phony American birth certificate, driver’s license and passport with my new name. The next time the minister went back to California, I was sitting in his back seat. They were good people, and I had a good story. It was enough to get me back into the country where I belonged.
California was a good place to begin a new life with a new identity. After all, three million Californians were illegal aliens, and that made a system in which it was easy to get lost. Looking back, those few years were probably the most formative of my life at that point. I had to learn how to survive. While I didn’t naturally fit the beach bum look, I took it on. Eventually, it was me.
I grew to just over six-foot-three with deep blue eyes. My hair had become a sun and bleach-enhanced head of curly blond. Working odd jobs at first, I tied in with a group of young people who crammed, all fifteen of them, into a retro-style trailer across the street from the ocean. While drugs were abundant, I’d seen enough of how they screwed with people’s lives in Mexico to steer wide.
I found a job with a beachside peda-cab company and eventually saved enough money to begin my own, and then to franchise. Bernie had tutored me to the equivalent of a high school diploma, enrolling me in every virtual school he could. With that advantage, I enrolled in the university and emerged with a pocket of degrees that were nothing more than alternate identities in a world where life was a series of passports to the opportunities you sought.
Not remembering a great deal about my parents, for whatever reason, I had to fill in some gaps with imagination. I remembered my father had a string of highly successful clinics, so I figured that’s where my head for business originated. I couldn’t remember him being at home very often, and when he was, he seemed caught up in some sort of “greater plan,” making him unavailable to me. I knew I should remember more from those years. After all, I wasn’t set aside until I was thirteen.
But I remembered one thing clearly.
I remembered the day I murdered my uncle.
CHAPTER TWO
Auggie
Sitting on the wrap-around porch of our farm-style house, I was deeply immersed in the past. There I was, surrounded by all the people and things that made my life the happiest imaginable. All but one person; my first-born son.
I suppose to the onlooker, I appeared content and complete. My long coppery hair was tied with a length of yellow ribbon, and the legs of my jeans were folded up, exposing my pedicured feet. While my freckles had faded somewhat, my green eyes still never missed a thing. I looked like a carefree farm girl although I was the wife of a multi-millionaire. I’d never known what it meant to be hungry or to yearn for the unreachable — with the exception of my child. He was gone from me in so many senses.
Ford had been a happy, normal child. We’d nicknamed him for my maiden name, Langford. Although he was the fourth Worthington LaViere, it was simpler. Maybe that’s where we made the first mistake; the first alienation.
Somewhere along the way, my baby boy changed. He began to idealize the crueler things in life. It was the dark side of his LaViere genetics. My husband, Worth, had managed to subdue that tendency within himself, re-directing the controlling, vindictive, lack of conscience onto the path of a psychology professional. He’d built a business empire and developed a soul. I like to think I had something to do with that, but perhaps I took too much credit. More likely the driving force had been a hatred of his own father. A man who had given in to the darkness Worth had banished.
Worth’s father had seized whatever he wanted, including my own mother. Together they had created a child, Linc, who inherited the worst traits of both parents. It was Linc and his fateful demise that had driven my own son from me. Kidnapped and held ransom by Linc, Ford had gripped the pocket knife intended for his father’s Christmas gift. He had coldly and without remorse driven it into Linc’s neck, watching as the blood seeped out over his grandfather’s heirloom desk.
There was no residual emotion. It hadn’t been a stoic response; it had been the cold and calculated murder of a man who threatened him. A man who would have been capable of the same act.
When Ford began to express jealousy and resentment toward his younger siblings, Worth and I switched into protective mode. We had to protect our twins, Marga and Mark. It wasn’t a place any parent wanted to find themselves, especially since Worth was a respected psychologist and our living parents were model citizens.
As I began to fear my son more
and more, and as he became increasingly out of control, there seemed no alternative but to agree to the judge’s orders that Ford be institutionalized. But the nightmare didn’t end there. He had been beaten and managed to escape, and we knew it would only get worse if he were sent back. We had no idea what to do, then an unlikely savior stepped in.
My personal assistant, Bernie Livingston, was the only person willing to sacrifice his life as a kidnapper and run away from everything he’d ever known. He loved my son and had been a surrogate father to Ford when Worth was otherwise occupied with his many businesses. No, we weren’t your average American family, but amongst the old money equine set, it’s sad to say we weren’t that unusual.
Bernie and Ford disappeared, and only Worth had some idea of where they were. It was too dangerous for me to know; I had the younger children to protect. I knew Worth sent Bernie money regularly to keep them both comfortable. I remembered the day, a few years earlier when Worth had taken me into his study and relayed his fears. Bernie was no longer drawing money from the offshore account. The balance hadn’t been touched in several months.
There were no communications, no contact information and no way that Worth could track them down. I remembered the fear that had crept over me, mixed with an intense guilt. What sort of parent was I?
I knew — and so did Worth. We had both been raised by a ruthless parent who had considered their own position before that of their offspring. We both understood what it was to be an outcast. If it hadn’t been for our twins, we would never have sent him away. We had to protect them, and Ford represented a very real, very potent danger. He hated them and would stop at nothing to harm them, killing them even. He had expressed desires of suicide, so he was afraid of nothing.
The entire plan had been devised one horrible night. The night of Ford’s escape. There was no time for careful deliberation. He was wanted by the law, and we had the money to get him away. We did what any petrified, thoughtless parent with everything to lose would do. We used our money to send him away.
At least I tell myself that’s what most people would do.
Even now the guilt has not lessened. I knew Worth felt it too — although perhaps to a different extent than I. Until that talk in the study, he’d known how to get Bernie’s attention. All he’d had to do was discontinue the allowance. If the money dried up, Bernie would have contacted us. It felt like some sort of macabre tumor inside me. As long as I ignored it, I was safe. The moment I began to feel for it, to consider its effect on my life, it would blossom and smother me from within.
I substantiated all this with the instinct to protect the twins — but there was a deeper, more horrible reason… I didn’t want to deal with Ford. I’d had a lifetime of my mother and then periods with Worth’s father and our brother, Linc. That was it. I was done. May I be damned to hell for thinking that way, but I couldn’t help it.
My reverie was interrupted by the sight of Worth’s Escalade approaching down the winding road. We’d bought a former Arabian horse complex and had converted it into a series of gentleman hobby farms with a central breeding and sales facility. We’d lived there since Ford left and I would never leave. It would be the only way he’d ever find us — if he chose to.
“You look like a young girl dressed like that,” Worth said, walking up the drive and climbing the porch steps. He had begun dressing a bit more casually, and I felt a pull in my tummy at the sight of his tall, well-muscled body and tanned arms. White teeth dramatized his loving smile as he bent to kiss me. I felt the flutter strengthen.
“Are you in the mood for a young girl?” I retorted saucily, winking at him.
“I’m in the mood for you,” he assured me and took the glass of sweet tea I offered him from the pitcher on the table next to me. He took a long drink and exhaled. “Boy, I needed that,” he said with a groan of appreciation. “Where are the twins?”
“They’re around,” I said, looking toward the training barn. “We had a new white stallion arrive today, and they’re both rather enchanted with him. I’m afraid they inherited their love of horses from me.”
“I could think of far worse things to inherit,” he mused and once again I was thrust into the memories of Ford. I knew to what he was referring.
“Worth, you’ve never…” I let the question hang in the air, but he shook his head. I looked down and swallowed hard. I wasn’t sure whether it was Ford I missed or the guilt of banishment I regretted more. I hoped I might see him again, somewhere, sometime in the future. The twins were sixteen now and would be driving soon. He was no longer a danger to them. “Do you think there’s any way we could…” again I let the sentence remain unfinished.
Worth shook his head. “All the trails have dried up, Auggie. He’s a fully grown, mature man now. If he wanted us, he knows where to find us.” He refilled his glass and took a sip, setting it on the arm of his chair as he looked out to the west where the sun was beginning to seek its night. Neither of us dared to speculate whether Ford was even still alive. That thought couldn’t be allowed to take root.
I saw Worth’s arm go up in a wave toward the barn. I turned and saw the twins waving back as they approached. Both of them had inherited my coppery hair and green eyes, but they were tall and slender as Worth had been when he was their age. Marga was a beauty, I had to admit. Her cheekbones were prominent, and she had a million-dollar smile, which she flashed often. Mark was a bit more on the reserved side, but I’d heard him talking to someone on his phone one night as I passed by his room. It wasn’t the voice he used with his male friends. I knew it was only a matter of time before they were both dating and driving around the countryside as I had at their age.
Marga was the apple of Worth’s eye. As far as he was concerned, she could do nothing wrong, and she played that card often. Mark, although quieter, didn’t seem bothered by the imbalance of attention. He knew I loved him, though. Of that there was never any doubt. After losing Ford, I clung to him even tighter, never wanting to let another baby boy go. If anything, I loved him, needed him, too much.
I handed Marga and Mark a glass of tea, and they sat on the porch swing side by side. Twins seemed to have a special bond. That made me happy. They were a picture, sitting there in mucking boots with hay in their hair and the smell of horses radiating from their perspiring bodies. “Dinner will be ready in a half hour. You two need to shower.”
Marga nodded and emptied her drink. She stood and gave Worth a kiss on the cheek as she went inside. Mark remained behind.
“Is there something you need, son?” Worth asked Mark.
Mark looked at me, a bit uncomfortably. I got the message. “I need to check on dinner. See you in a bit,” I said and went inside.
CHAPTER THREE
Worth
“What’s up, son?” I asked him. Mark was at that transitional age when boys became men. I had noticed from time to time that he wanted to have man to man interaction but wasn’t sure if I was open to that quite yet. I had never related well to children, and we hadn’t been terribly close before this. Marga was a little manipulator; pure Auggie in that girl. Mark was different. Serious and a deep thinker.
“Dad, don’t know if it’s anything, but you know that farm to the west over the ridge?” He sat up straighter, telling me he had something serious to discuss.
I nodded. “Yes, the one that sold recently?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Well, I was exercising one of the horses out that way earlier today, and a guy was sitting on a horse looking in our direction. He just stayed in one place; wasn’t riding anywhere. He seemed to be nosy, if you know what I mean.”
“I see,” I answered and thought a moment. “Did you feel as though he was up to something?”
“No, not really, but I don’t know. It’s just that Mom is boarding some pretty expensive animals, and it seems like a coincidence that he’s so interested in what’s going on over here. You think he’s a competitor?”
I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he�
��s just interested in your mother’s operation. It’s the only one of its kind in this half of the country, you know.”
“Yeah, I guess. He just kind of creeped me out, is all. False alarm probably.”
I could tell he wasn’t ready to let it go that easily. “Why don’t you keep this between us and just sort of leave one eye in that direction?” I suggested, which seemed to appease his concern.
“I’ll do that, Dad. Well, better get that shower.” He popped up, and his body language suggested he was feeling some sense of relief now. I watched him go inside. He was a younger version of me except he had Auggie’s hair. His shoulders were broadening, and I had a fairly good idea he was attracting some attention at school from the girls. He was playing basketball on the school team, and basketball ruled in Kentucky. We’d be talking about college soon.
I followed Mark into the house, and the aroma of fried chicken caused my stomach to growl. I’d been too busy to get lunch and even if I had, Letty’s fried chicken was famous around these parts. Her mother worked for Harlan Sanders years earlier when he started his first restaurant down in Corbin. She knew the recipe and had passed it down to Letty, and consequently my grateful dinner plate.
I thought about our previous housekeeper for a moment, and a pang hit. Betsy passed on two years earlier from cancer. It had been rough. For the last year, she’d been in hospice, and there wasn’t much we could do to help her. She’d taken care of us the entire time we were married and had been a part of the family. I missed her.
Letty was different from Betsy. She was opinionated and not afraid to voice it. She’d raised a son who had gotten into trouble and was now a permanent resident at the reformatory on the other side of the county. Letty had come to Oldham County to find a job so she could be closer to him for visiting days. Someone had sent her over to our place, and she turned up one day at the door.
Auggie had invited her in, and I happened to be home that afternoon doing some paperwork. Letty was school simple but street smart. That made a nice contrast to our household and we’d hired her that same day. She immediately moved into a bedroom-sitting room combination off the kitchen and pretty much ruled that part of the house. I think Auggie was even a little afraid of her, but Letty’s presence made it possible for Auggie to spend more time down at the barns, so it was an agreeable truce between the two of them.
