She let out a long breath. Yes. That's why she'd done it. And she'd do it again, she knew. Abba had said what you do for the children, you do for me.
She pushed through the heavy wooden doors of the church. She walked past the statues of Peter and the angels and toward the rows of empty pews.
In the past she'd always demanded answers in her prayers, solutions to every problem. She'd wanted roadmaps to mark the path, guidance to strengthen her will. But as she walked through the church this evening, a strange lightness of being lifted her spirit—a peaceful light that seemed to surround and fill her, warming her throughout, embracing every part of her, melting her heart.
She stepped into a pew and sank to her knees, dropping her head into her hands and letting go. This time she would leave the problem in Abba's hands.
It had been a long day. Bingham had watched Amalise Catoir carefully during the day's meetings, mulling over the situation, but he had come to no conclusion. Clearly she'd interfered, gone to great trouble to purchase the house he'd seen on Kerlerec, then transferring it to those renters. That was a fact. But things got murky after that.
Sitting at the long bar in the Sazerac, he signaled the bartender. The guy walked over and bent, cupping his ear to hear. It was Saturday night, and the place was packed. A trio played in the far corner. They weren't bad, but for some reason, tonight the noise irritated him.
"Ramos gin fizz," he said. The bartender nodded.
What was she after? Despite the confidence he'd expressed to Robert, he was worried. Had she told the new owners about Black Diamond, about saving souls and trees? That's all he needed, neighborhood protests. But there'd been no sign of an insurrection so far. He'd checked the local news sources today.
It was too late to stop the project now. If she'd breached confidence, what was her motive?
The bartender set the drink down before him. He nodded and lifted the glass, thinking about Robert Black. Robert was the wild card in the deck. This deal was Robert's big opportunity, and there was too much money involved for him to ignore Miss Catoir's activities. He'd have to keep a close eye on the boy. He suspected that if just one sign of trouble arose in the Marigny before money changed hands on Wednesday, Robert would gladly dump the girl's body in the garbage fill east of the city.
Money was one thing. A life was quite another.
Bingham sighed. He'd tamped down Robert's flame as best he could. But even if nothing unexpected happened, Robert wouldn't let this go, he knew. Robert wasn't the type to render mercy, and he didn't like the girl. She didn't fit his pattern of reasoning.
Robert was a thug, he thought not for the first time. But he was useful. Bingham reached for a glass bowl filled with Brazil nuts, large and salty, and ate one. Chewing, he glanced down at his watch and over his shoulder toward the lobby entrance. Eight o'clock and his stomach growled. Dinner was waiting, and Robert was late.
He popped another Brazil nut watching the two bartenders spin from the bar to the rows of sparkling bottles and spigots and glasses behind them, snapping their fingers, moving with the music as they slid the drinks down the long bar to customers with flair and high fives. Christmas greenery already framed the mirrors behind them, crowding the seasons earlier every year.
Robert slid onto the empty stool beside him. Bingham turned his head and scanned his casual attire. The necessary jacket and tie for dining were missing. "I thought you were joining me for dinner."
"Nope." Robert's voice was curt, his eyes narrowed and dark, his expression flat. "I'm going back to the conference room."
"You'll eat cold pizza there."
Robert shrugged. Bingham turned to the mirror, watching as, beside him, Robert ran his hand over the gleaming bar. "Unusual wood," he said.
Bingham glanced over his shoulder at the room encased in the same seamless swirl of wood as the bar. "It's all from one tree, did you know that?" He lifted his drink. "The trees grow two hundred feet or more. They grow in Brazil, in the Amazon rain forest." He studied Robert's reflection. "Down there, they're called monkey pot trees."
Robert gave him a sideways look. "Did you say monkey pot?"
Bingham nodded and picked up a handful of nuts. "Their nuts are similar to Brazil nuts. The trees produce pods the size of a large coconut, and the nuts are inside. The whole thing weighs about five pounds." He opened his hand, as if weighing the nuts.
Robert tapped his fingers on the bar in time with the music. "So why do they call them monkey pots?"
Bingham half turned toward Robert, leaning one arm on the bar. "The name comes from an old proverb: 'A wise old monkey doesn't stick his hand in a pot.' When the pods of these trees ripen, they split open, spilling their seeds across the forest floor. Supposedly a young monkey encountering a not quite ripe pod is tempted to reach its paws into the narrow opening to get at the nuts. Guess what happens then?"
Robert gave an irritable shrug. "I'm listening."
"The young monkey grabs a handful of nuts, but finds his hand stuck because he can't pull his hand and the nuts back through the hole. Yet the monkey won't let go." Bingham nibbled a nut and watched Robert's reaction in the mirror. "He's trapped by his own greed."
"Huh."
"Unless, of course, the monkey drops the nuts. Or he's smart enough to take them one at a time." Bingham nibbled on a Brazil nut while eyeing Robert. "An older, wiser monkey knows it's better to be patient and wait till the pod ripens and opens and gives up the treasure."
Robert rose and patted Bingham's shoulder. "You worry about philosophy. Right now, I've got my own nuts to worry about over at Mangen & Morris."
"Too bad you can't stay."
"You wanna close Wednesday?"
Robert left, and Bingham hunkered down over his drink. He had some decisions to make, he supposed. But he was finding his judgment impaired because, he realized, he'd broken a rule he'd held fast for the last few years: Avoid personal relationships. He'd come to like Amalise Catoir. She had heart as well as brains.
Not that any of that mattered. It was timing that concerned him. The next four days would decide the future. Nerves were strung out in Tom's investor group back in New York. The investors were already plumped with greed like those primates down in the Amazon. Worse, he was worried about Robert—there was no telling what he would do if pushed.
He finished the drink, left some bills on the bar, and headed for the dining room. The maître d' spotted him and picked up a menu. Bingham lifted his hand, smiling, and walked with light steps into the restaurant. Today was Saturday. Next Wednesday he'd be free of all this, and appropriately, the next day was Thanksgiving.
He, for one, would be thankful indeed. Life was good.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Well, it was 10 p.m. on Sunday, and Doug hadn't shown up to tell her she was fired. Yet.
Raymond had stopped by on his way out to say Doug and Preston needed the revised wire transfer agreement for final review in the morning, before distribution to the whole group. Apparently Doug had already left for the night.
The wire transfer memorandum had taken all afternoon to draft, but it was almost done. She'd drop it off with the typing pool and once again take the stack of purchase agreements home to work on overnight.
Just as she retrieved her purse and was prepared to leave, the phone rang.
"Amalise." It was Jude.
"Hi." She froze at the sound of his voice. He hadn't met her at church this morning as he usually did on Sunday. Turning, she gazed through the window at lights across the way. A shadow moved through a room in the other building. Someone over there was still working.
"Rebecca says Bingham Murdoch's project is still blazing away. She says you're all pulling long hours."
"Yes." She picked up a pencil and tapped it absently on the desktop. "I think she likes it really. Everything Rebecca does
is at warp speed." She could hear a smile in Jude's voice.
"Are you leaving soon? I was thinking you might stop by for a cup of coffee."
With a sudden urge to cry, she swallowed. She longed to confide in him, but she'd sworn not to lean on him anymore.
"Amalise?"
Elbow on the desk, she rested her forehead in her hand, spreading her fingers over her eyes as if to shield herself from images of Jude and Rebecca. So much had changed in the last two weeks while he was on watch. Only Jude would understand.
She looked down at her watch and heard herself saying, "Yes. I'd like that."
"Good. I'm wide awake, still on pilot time. I'll have the coffee ready."
"All right."
She set the phone down on the hook and looked at it, forcing herself to remember Rebecca. Then she slung her purse over her shoulder and picked up the stack of purchase agreements. She walked to the door and switched off the light.
Jude opened the door immediately when she knocked. Grinning, he hugged her, then held her at arm's length and said she didn't look the worse for wear.
She laughed and slipped out of her coat. Jude laid it over the back of a chair. "Sit right there." He gestured to the couch. "Make yourself comfortable. I've got the coffee ready. Be right back."
Settling down at one end of the couch, she looked around. The last time she'd been here was before Phillip's death. It was the night she'd fled, the night she'd found Phillip in her home with young, blonde, beautiful Sophie. She'd come here looking for Jude, but he hadn't been here that night. And briefly she wondered, as she had often, whether things would have been different if he had.
Jude's living room was small and square, opening through an archway into a dining room about the same size, with wide-planked wood floors throughout and sparse furniture. An old fireplace in the living room housed a space heater instead of logs. Even so, the flickering light from the heater gave the room a cozy feel. Colorful pictures she'd not seen before hung on the walls—a scenic one that looked like City Park, another of a schooner cutting through foaming waves. A watercolor of some trees in a familiar-looking swampy area hung over the fireplace. She wondered if the pictures were Rebecca's idea.
From the kitchen came sounds of cabinets opening and shutting, cups clattering, and the sucking vacuum clunk of the old Coldspot door. Smiling, she leaned back against the cushions and picked up a folded copy of the Times-Picayune from the coffee table. She hadn't read a newspaper in days. An article quoting Anwar Sadat suggested that Egypt and Israel were making progress toward a permanent peace accord.
Jude returned, and she set the paper down beside her.
"Watch out, it's hot." He wrapped a napkin around the mug before handing it to her.
She took it with both hands, feeling the warmth, as he set his own cup on the coffee table and took a seat at the other end of the couch.
"So." He sat facing her, spread out, arms resting atop the cushions on either side. "How's Bingham Murdoch? Keeping you busy, I hear."
She kicked off her shoes, twisted around toward Jude, and sat cross-legged holding the mug. "The schedule's frantic. Murdoch is worried about interest rates moving against him, increasing his costs. And other things." Like public outcry over the demolition of a large part of the Marigny. But she held her tongue, looking at Jude over the cup and sipping the coffee.
"That makes sense, I guess."
She nodded. "But what I've done might not."
A deep line appeared between his eyes. "What's that, chère?"
She hadn't planned to tell him, he could see that much from the tense way she began, setting the coffee mug down and winding her fingers around each other in her lap. But she always told him everything, sooner or later. As the words spilled out, she seemed to relax. She didn't provide him with details, not the location of the project, nor what was being built or the names of people involved, although he knew she was talking about Bingham Murdoch's project, wherever it was.
And whatever was bothering her came from deep inside. She was placing her trust in him tonight. Here, perhaps, was an opening, a crack in the armor she'd built for herself. The first hint of hope in some time.
Jude listened, amazed when she came to the part about purchasing a home for a family of strangers then transferring title to them. He interrupted. "Why didn't you just give them the money? Wouldn't that have been more circumspect?"
She shook her head. "No. Caroline and Ellis . . ." She dipped her head, remembering Ellis's expression when she'd first broached the subject. "They have too much pride for that. They'd have never accepted the money." She looked down. "In fact, it was difficult to get them to accept the house, and I'm sure they wouldn't have if I'd asked them first. I put it in my own name to get it done quickly, then transferred it to them after, fait accompli."
He nodded. "Go on."
She told him about the problems arising from her decision. She suspected that Murdoch and someone named Robert had discovered what she'd done, and now she was afraid. Her voice turned husky and deep when she said this, and he yearned to tell her that everything would be all right. How, if this came to light, it would merely be seen as an exercise of poor judgment.
But of course he couldn't say any of those things because the worlds of investment banking and law were so different from his own. And so he sat quietly, listening, as he had all his life. Not for the first time, it crossed his mind that for such a small person, Amalise could certainly manage to stir things up.
When she'd finished talking, the look she gave him wrung his heart. He longed to reach out for her, to hold her. But she'd set up the barricades that night at Clancy's and had manned them ever since, so he merely folded his arms over his chest and worked to keep his thoughts from his face. Because, as the story had grown, he realized that her fear was probably justified.
He asked, "With so much at risk, why did you do it, Amalise?"
She'd told him about the family and the adoptions that would be buried under Murdoch's rubble as the project moved forward. Still, he didn't understand. So much was on the line.
And then she mentioned a boy, a child named Luke, one of the foster children in the family. She looked at him with tears pooling in her eyes. "He's from Cambodia, Jude. Remember? And something happened to him there. He won't talk." She hesitated. "Not really. He's in pain."
Now he understood. He blew out his cheeks and looked off, remembering. The war was coming to an end. In Phnom Penh, the children on the nightly news, waiting for food, cut off from the world. He looked at her and nodded. This woman who'd thought she could fix anything—thought she could even fix Phillip Sharp—had been defeated by the enormity of the problem. So she'd gone on with her life while the children had stood there on the tarmac, waiting. And she'd never forgiven herself for that.
"You're thinking Luke might have been one? One of the shadow children?"
She nodded. "Or one like them."
She told him about a day in a park when she and the boy came across a small dead bird on the pathway, and how Luke's emotional dam had burst at the sight. How the child had clung to her, how he'd spoken out loud for the first time since arriving here. How he'd called her Mother. The word was actually mak, she said, in Khmer.
He heard the catch in her voice as she'd said mak, and he knew Amalise well enough to understand the effect that word would have. This explained it all. The seed had been planted two years ago. Perhaps this was all God's will.
He mused on that for a moment and looked at her. "For what it's worth, chère, I think you did the right thing." He studied her small oval face, her deep brown eyes swept with wings above, the graceful line of her neck, and felt the swell of love building inside. He said, "Sometimes we have to choose what's most important in our lives."
She went still.
"After the accident," he went on, "you to
ld me once that you felt there was a reason you'd survived all of it, that you'd been given a second chance for a special purpose."
She nodded, watching him intently with those big dark eyes.
"Well, maybe this child is it."
She swallowed. "What do you think that I should do?"
He smiled. "You've already made the choice. Done the deed—no pun intended. So just keep working hard. Make yourself indispensable." He cocked his head to one side. "I say it's probably time to throw deep now, chère."
She hugged herself. He smiled.
"You can do it, Amalise. You've done it all your life."
If he could only speak the words that might change things around, if he could tell her how much he loved her. And that even if the worst happened at Mangen & Morris, he'd always be with her, always stand beside her.
But he kept silent because what she'd done carried its own momentum, and whatever consequences were to be had had already been set in motion. Sometimes Amalise was like an overloaded down-bound deep-draft vessel headed for the shallows. Sometimes a vessel like that would make it through, with a good enough pilot.
Her Abba was her pilot.
He started to rise, wanting to move down the couch and sit beside her, and then caught himself. But she didn't seem to notice. She bent forward as if some unseen cord pulled her toward him, eyes bound to his. "No matter what happens now, Luke won't be shuffled from stranger to stranger again. The adoption will go through, and he'll have a home."
Her voice held that determined quality that he recognized and he tried to picture the little boy that had captured her heart.
They talked a while longer. When she glanced at her watch and said, "Oh," he retrieved her coat and helped her slip it on. She turned to him, looking up, her curved lips only inches from his, and for an instant he imagined that this was an invitation. He could smell the lingering scent of soap and something else light and sweet, like flowers.
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