She turned to Jennie. “Allergy. Call nine-one-one.”
Jennie couldn’t move.
“Call. Now!” It was an order, and Jennie whipped out her phone.
“It’s all right,” Alexis told Christa. “You’re going to be all right.”
“They’re coming,” Si said putting his cell down. “EMTs are coming.”
“Do you need help?” The manager and several of the wait staff had appeared.
“My foot,” her father bellowed. “I can’t walk.”
“Is there a place she can lie down?” Alexis asked.
“EMTs are on the way,” Jennie reported.
“Certainly. There is a sofa in the waiting area.” The manager turned to one of the waiters and asked him to assure that no one was using it. Then, they assisted Christa down the stairs, and, as they laid her on the sofa, Christa took a deep breath.
“Oh.” She sighed. “It’s so good to breathe again.”
Alexis sat beside Christa and called her father. “Dad, Christa’s had an allergy attack…I’ve used the EpiPen and EMTs are coming…We’re at Joshua’s…Great. See you in a minute.” She bent over Christa and smoothed her hair. “You’re going to be fine. An ambulance is coming. Dad and Emma are two blocks away.”
Jennie’s father limped down the stairs as the EMTs arrived, complaining that no one cared about his injury. Alexis rolled her eyes, turned away from him, bent down, and rubbed her sister’s arm.
“Mom, why don’t you take Daddy back to the hotel? We’ll finish up here.” Jennie hoped he would go without causing additional problems.
As EMTs began to check Christa’s vitals, Jennie spotted Thomas, hurrying down the sidewalk, a strikingly beautiful woman by his side. Jennie’s mouth dropped. The woman was almost as tall as Thomas. She had auburn hair pulled into a loose bun. As they entered the restaurant, Jennie noticed her steel-blue eyes and her smooth, almost paper-white skin. She wore a black coat over a black silk dress and black sandals. A diamond ring with a gold band glistened on her left hand, and Jennie had no doubt that her necklace was twenty-four karat. Emma Coleman, she thought.
“Greek goddess,” she whispered.
Ignoring everyone else, Thomas went directly to Christa and knelt beside her. “Are you all right, sweetheart?” His face was filled with worry.
“I’m okay, Dad.” She took a deep breath and wiped the tears from her face. “Mr. Bateman insisted I taste his dinner. I don’t know what it was.”
Thomas hugged her and kissed her head. “You’re going to be fine.”
Christa nodded. “It scares me when that happens. I think I’m going to die.”
When Thomas turned to talk with the EMTs, the woman slipped in beside Christa and wrapped her arms around her. She was speaking softly. “I was so worried,” was all Jennie heard.
She suddenly felt jealous. I’m her mother. I ought to be comforting her. She started to ask the woman to move, but checked herself, squeezing her fist until it hurt. Enough drama for one night.
“They want to transport her, and I need to go with her.” Thomas was speaking to the woman.
“Go. I’ll take Alexis to my house. We’ll see you later.”
“Thank you.” Thomas paused. “Sorry to run out on our date.”
The woman smiled. “Go…I love you.”
“I love you, Emma.” He hugged her.
As they loaded Christa into the ambulance, Alexis approached Jennie. She had been talking to her father. “Thank you for taking us to dinner. It was…good to meet you.” Her eyes flicked away as she spoke.
“It was good to meet you again, Alexis. I hope your sister will be all right.”
“Thanks.” Alexis walked away with her arm around Emma.
“Thomas.” Jennie caught him as he began to climb into the ambulance. “Thomas, I’m so sorry. Will she be all right?”
“I’m sure she will. They always take her in after a reaction like this.”
“It has happened before?”
“A couple of times.”
Jennie looked down and shuffled her feet.
“She ate a casserole?”
“Daddy insisted. I tried to stop him.”
“Casseroles can be deadly for someone with food allergies. You never know what they contain.” He paused, watching an EMT place an oxygen mask over Christa’s face. “I told you that Christa and Alexis would know what to do and to let them do it.” He shook his head. “One instruction. She was with you for two hours…” He turned away, and climbed into the ambulance.
Chapter Five
Jennie tossed all night, unable to sleep. In her recurrent dream, her father had prevented Alexis from helping her sister. When Jennie had taken the needle and placed it on Christa’s leg, he had screamed, “No drugs,” snatched the needle from her hand, and smashed it against the wall. Christa had fallen to the floor, gasping for breath and, as she had died, Jennie’s father had stood over her, proclaiming, “They need to learn to obey. That’s what is wrong with America, today.”
Afraid that if she fell back to sleep she would have the dream yet again, she crawled out of bed at five o’clock, careful not to awaken Sarah, showered, and slipped out of the room in search of coffee.
At the front desk, she requested a telephone book and located Thomas’s address. The clerk had given her directions to Church Street. “Turn left at the corner, take the first right. Saint Phillip’s Church will be just ahead. You can’t miss it.”
As the sun began to rise, she walked down Meeting Street, sipping a latte. Jennie had not been to Charleston since Thomas had interviewed for his job at the college. They had briefly looked at houses, but not in this part of town. She had forgotten how beautiful the city was.
As she passed the church, she began to think about the events of the previous night. She heard Thomas’s words as if he were walking beside her. She was with you for two hours, and I gave you one instruction. He had said no more than that, but she knew he had wanted to add How can you possibly care for her for an entire weekend?
Maybe he’s right, she thought as she reached Broad Street and stopped for the traffic light. Maybe I have no business pushing into their lives at this point in time. I know nothing about them. The light turned green and she crossed the street.
She was furious at her father. He always had to give orders, always had to be obeyed, never listened when someone else spoke. She smiled a little. Alexis had certainly made her point. Her father had limped back to the hotel and her mother had called to tell her about the purple bruise on his foot. If her petition were to be granted, he and the children, especially Alexis, were bound to have conflict, and she would be damned before she let him touch either of her children.
She paused as she turned and looked up and down Broad. The sun was rising over a large building at the end of the street, the Customs House, she recalled from a map in her room. To her left, she spied the steeple of Saint Michael’s Church, a couple of blocks away. She had passed Saint Phillip’s just minutes earlier. She had heard Charleston called the Holy City, and one explanation lay in the number of churches whose steeples dotted the skyline.
She would never be able to negotiate a truce between her father and the children. Thomas had noted in court that both girls had strong opinions and were quite verbal. Perhaps she should end this entire thing now. Appear in court and withdraw her petition.
Across Broad Street, houses replaced the stores and offices she had just passed. Two blocks further, at the intersection with Water Street, Church appeared to end. Jennie looked around, confused. She had not passed Thomas’s house, so the street should have at least one more block. Finally, she spied the name on a sign, half a block to the right.
Jennie’s mouth dropped open when she spotted his house. She had heard him answer questions about his income and the value of his house in court yesterday—Alice had told her that the questions were asked in order to demonstrate Thomas’s ability to provide for the girls—but actually seeing the house ma
de what she had heard real.
She had once read about Charleston single houses. Typically, they were one room wide, several rooms deep, and two or three stories high. The houses were traditionally turned to catch the breeze from the harbor, and a porch would typically run along the entire side facing the water.
However, the design of Thomas’s house did not follow that pattern. As she inspected it, she decided that if, originally, it had followed the standard plan then it must have been modified. It seemed as if three-quarters of the long porch had been taken in, leaving a porch which was small by Charleston’s standards, and resulting in a very large two-story double house. It was built of stone and capped by a slate roof. Climbing rose bushes, not yet in bloom, hung over the wall that surrounded the property and an ornate iron gate stretched across the drive. Peering through, she could see a path leading around the side toward what might be a garden behind the house. Two cars, a Mercedes-Benz and an Altima, sat in the driveway.
She stared at the house for several minutes. If she had not been so sick, or so stupid, she would be living here. She clasped her hand to her mouth to prevent herself from actually speaking the words. She turned and walked on, down the street, finding herself at a park that bordered the harbor. She took the steps to the top of the seawall—the Battery they called it—and looked out at the harbor. Dark pink water reflected the rising sun. Birds wheeled overhead, calling to each other, and a cool sea breeze tossed her hair.
Jennie closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, enjoying the salty smell of the ocean mingled with the pungent smell of the marsh. Hearing a splash, she looked to the left and spotted a gull as it mounted from the water, a fish clamped in its beak. She walked for almost half an hour before realizing that it was already seven thirty and that court convened at nine.
As she approached Thomas’s house again, she heard a girl’s voice. She stopped, and, peering through the tall bush that grew at the corner of the lot, she saw Alexis standing bedside the Altima.
“Christa, come on.” Alexis called. “We need to go. Judge Sullivan is expecting us.”
Christa stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind her. “I don’t want to talk to a judge. I’ll feel like a criminal.”
“Don’t be silly. She wants to know what we think about her.”
“I thought she seemed like she might be kind of nice.”
Jennie’s mouth dropped open.
“Be serious. She wants us to spend all summer in the middle of nowhere.” Alexis placed a hand on one hip. “You want to do that? An entire summer without seeing Dad? Without Emma or Amy or Tasha or anyone else? An entire summer without the beach and without riding?”
“Course not.” Christa came down the steps and both girls stood beside the car. “I just thought she seemed like she might be nice. I don’t want to live with her.” She walked around the car. “Her father scared me last night. I was afraid he was going to hit me. I knew not to eat his stupid casserole without knowing what was in it. I should have asked him.”
Alexis laughed. “He wouldn’t have known either. He only ordered it because it had cheese. You heard him. “Cheese covers a multitude of sins.” She mimicked Askins, and Jennie covered her mouth to keep from laughing.
“You really think she might be nice?” Alexis opened the door on the driver’s side.
“She’s sort of like a new teacher who smiles at you,” Christa said. “She might be nice or she might be a witch.”
“Yes, a witch with a capital B.” There was a pause. “You ready?”
Jennie heard the car’s doors close and the gate began to open. She hurried down the block, away from the house. The Altima backed out and turned in the other direction. As the girls drove away, Jennie rushed back to the hotel.
***
Alice motioned for Jennie as she entered the courtroom. They huddled at their table, speaking softly.
“We finished meeting with Judge Sullivan a few minutes ago. Christa’s and Alexis’s accounts of last night followed what you told me to a T. Your father comes off as a real ogre. Christa is afraid of him. Alexis…well, Thomas was right. She’s quite verbal and was not a bit intimidated by Judge Sullivan.”
Jennie told her about her morning walk and what she heard the girls say. “They both seem to be really cool kids. Alexis is what I would want to be like if I were her age.”
Alice nodded. “I liked them both very much.”
Judge Sullivan entered. “Please be seated. I met with Alexis and Christa for about forty-five minutes this morning. Ms. Green and Ms. Carson were present, but the session was a conversation between the girls and me. The girls described the events of last night in detail and expressed their views of Ms. Bateman’s petition.”
She turned to Thomas. “I found them both to be delightful and, as you noted, Dr. Lindsay, very verbal.”
She looked at Kimi. “Ms. Carson, you may proceed.”
“We call Ms. Emma Coleman, Your Honor.”
Jennie turned to look over her left shoulder. She had not seen Emma enter the courtroom, but she rose from a chair in the back row and walked slowly toward the stand. Even dressed in khakis, a white shirt, and a navy sweater, she was stunning. Jennie glanced at her father and Si. Her father’s mouth was open.
Si shifted in his chair and leaned over to speak to him. “He sure knows how to pick his women.”
Her father smirked and nodded.
Jennie glared at Si and shook her head before turning back to watch the goddess take her seat on the platform.
Emma gave no indications that she had heard Si. To Jennie, she seemed to be completely at ease, not the bundle of nerves that Jennie had felt the day before. She was envious yet again.
“Ms. Coleman, when did you and Dr. Lindsay become engaged to marry? When is your wedding?”
“We became engaged on October third, last year. Our wedding will be on August first at Saint Phillip’s Church.”
“You’ve known Dr. Lindsay for some time, ten years, he said. It has been five years since your first date?”
Emma laughed. “We did finally agree that our first date was five years ago. Our relationship developed in a rather unconventional manner, I suppose. There has been very little formal dating, in the sense that most people use the term. We met at a school event. We became friends, found that we enjoyed the same activities, and we spent increasingly large amounts of time together. Our children became friends. We discovered that we have the same values, similar goals. Finally, we realized that we were in love.”
“In August, how will your relationship with Alexis and Christa change?”
Emma frowned slightly and seemed to be thinking. “Except for the fact that we’ll live in the same house, see each other every morning and every night—we do that frequently now, anyway—I don’t expect much of a change.”
“But you’ll be their stepmother.”
“Very true. They’ve already begun to refer to me as their wicked stepmother, and they pretend to cower when I approach.” She smiled as she pictured Christa crouching behind the sofa when she had arrived at Thomas’s house the night before. “I had to tell them to be careful or someone would take them seriously…Ms. Carson, I’m really at a loss what to say. We talk, now, about boys, friends, school…life, I suppose. I discipline them when they are at my house. I have healthcare power of attorney…” She threw up her hands.
“So basically, you’re saying that other than dwelling with them and their father, you pretty much function as their mother already.”
“Your Honor, Ms. Carson is leading…”
“Yes, Ms. Carson, you’re correct. I function as their mother, and I have for some time.”
“Thank you, Ms. Coleman.” Kimi sat down.
She’s not their mother, Jennie fumed. Those children are mine.
“Ms. Green, any questions?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” Alice stood and looked down at her notes, then at Emma. “Ms. Coleman, you and your first husband are divorced?”
<
br /> Jennie noticed that Emma stiffened at the mention of her husband.
“My husband and I did divorce. He subsequently…passed away.”
“I’m sorry.” Alice paused, seeming to expect a reply, but Emma did not speak. “What was the reason for the divorce?”
“He was physically abusive.”
Kimi was on her feet. “Your Honor, the behavior of Ms. Coleman’s former husband has no bearing on the matter at hand. After last night, counsel is fishing for anything that may divert attention from her client’s lack of suitability to have visitation rights with Dr. Lindsay’s children.”
“Your Honor, Ms. Coleman claims to function as a mother to Alexis and Christa. Ms. Carson obviously intends to assert that since this is the case, visitation with their real mother would serve no purpose. It is reasonable to determine if she is serving as a good role model.”
“Your Honor, I thank Ms. Green for drawing that conclusion about the value of visitation with Ms. Bateman. However, even if that was my intent, the behavior of Ms. Coleman’s former husband is not relevant.”
“Move on, Ms. Green.”
“Ms. Coleman, did you need to protect your children from abuse by your former husband?”
“Your Honor…”
“Your Honor, I am asking about Ms. Coleman’s behavior. A good mother would protect her children from abuse.”
“Once.”
“Tell us what happened.”
Emma took a deep breath. Her eyes were now tiny dots of dark blue and reminded Jennie of small sapphires surrounded by a sea of ice. She noticed Kimi shuffling quietly through a collection of papers.
“A few years after our divorce, my former husband appeared at my house to pick up my children for his court-ordered visitation.” She glared at Jennie, and then turned back to Alice. “He reeked of alcohol, and I refused to allow them to leave with him. He became irate. He cursed me, called me obscene names. I ordered him to leave my house, and I watched him walk back to his car and get in it.
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