Blue

by Danielle Steel

  “Did you try calling him?” Andrew sounded worried, too. Blue and Ginny had been under a lot of strain for months with the court case and everything else.

  “I called, texted, and e-mailed. He hasn’t answered yet.”

  Andrew thought about it for a minute. He was a fourteen-year-old kid, and he knew life on the streets better than they did. And New York was a big city. “Why don’t you wait and see what he does today? He may just calm down and come home this afternoon.”

  “He won’t. He thinks he’s ruining my life. He isn’t. He’s the best thing that’s happened to me in the last four years.”

  “Don’t panic,” Andrew said gently. “Even if he stays away for a day or two, he’ll be back. He loves you, Ginny.”

  “That’s what he said in his note,” she said, with tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat.

  “Just try to relax, he’ll come home. Boys do this stuff. And he has a lot going on in his head.” Even though Andrew had no answers for her, his voice was soothing.

  “I don’t know where to start looking for him.”

  “You don’t need to right now. It’s daytime. I’ll come over after work, and we can look for him together,” he said. “Call me if he turns up.”

  She spent the day waiting to hear from Blue, calling his cell phone regularly, and she sent him a few more texts, and an e-mail. But he didn’t answer anything. She felt like she’d been going around in circles all day by the time Andrew came at six o’clock. She hadn’t eaten but had had about four cups of coffee, and she looked jangled beyond belief.

  “What if he never comes back? He’s all I have,” she said, as tears rolled down her cheeks. Instinctively Andrew put his arms around her and held her. He could feel her heart pound against his chest.

  “Let’s have something to eat, and then we’ll go out and take a look,” he said calmly. He texted Blue from his cell phone, too, but Blue didn’t respond to him, either. And when he called his cell, it went straight to voice mail.

  Andrew made them each a sandwich with what was in the fridge. He had gone home to change into jeans, and was wearing a hooded jacket and a dark blue sweater and running shoes. He had a feeling they were going to do a lot of walking that night, to all the places Ginny could think of where he might be.

  They started at McDonald’s, where they had had dinner the night they met. His favorite pizza restaurant. A couple of other burger places. The bowling alley downtown. They stood outside a movie complex for a while, and didn’t see him, and at eleven p.m. they went to Penn Station, and crossed over the tracks to the tunnel where he’d been living when he ran away from Houston Street. There were half a dozen kids, and only one of them said he knew him, but he said Blue hadn’t been around in months. She called Houston Street, but they hadn’t seen him either, and they said they’d tell their street outreach team to keep an eye out for him. But he was nowhere. She didn’t bother to call his aunt, because she knew there was no way he would go to her. At midnight, they sat on a bench in Penn Station and Ginny put her face in her hands and Andrew put an arm around her shoulders.

  “What am I going to do?” she said, looking at him miserably.

  “All you can do is wait. He’ll come home.” And then she thought of Lizzie, her niece in California. It was still early enough to call there. When she did, Lizzie picked up, but said she hadn’t heard from him all day. She figured he was busy at school.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked her aunt, and Ginny didn’t want to explain it to her.

  “If you hear from him, just tell him I’m looking for him, and to come home.”

  “Okay.” Lizzie hung up, sounding unconcerned, as Ginny looked up at Andrew.

  “Thank you for doing this with me.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t been much help.”

  “It’s nice to have company,” she said, looking exhausted. All she wanted to do was find Blue and bring him home. “I guess we might as well go home,” she said as they wandered slowly through Penn Station, walked up the stairs, and Andrew hailed a cab. She leaned against him on the way home, and it was comforting to have him there next to her. And when they got to her address, she suggested they walk along the river, to see if he was sleeping on a bench there. It was October, and the nights were chilly, but the days were warm. Walking along, looking down at the river, reminded her of when she’d seen Blue for the first time. They sat down on a bench, and Andrew pulled her closer. He could see the sadness and defeat in her eyes.

  “The poor kid feels like everything is his fault,” Ginny said sadly. “All that crap in the tabloids yesterday, and my sister getting mad at me and calling me a weirdo and an embarrassment to her.” She smiled up at Andrew. “I guess I have been kind of a weirdo for the last few years, running around the world, trying to get myself killed. I felt so guilty for letting Mark drive that night, and for not realizing how much he’d had to drink. My sister’s life is about the size of a teacup, and she doesn’t get it. Nothing like that has ever happened to her.”

  “You and Blue have a lot in common,” he said gently. “You feel guilty about your husband and son. Blue still has Father Teddy’s voice in his head telling him that he ‘tempted’ him, that it was his fault. He knows better now, but it’s going to take a long time for that voice in his head to go away. The best thing you’ve done for him is prove to him, not just with words but with actions, that he’s worth everything you’ve done for him, that you stand behind him, and that he’s not guilty of anything. You told me when I met you that you wanted him to have an ‘amazing’ life, not just a good life. Well, he does, thanks to you. And one day, because of you, that accusing voice in his head will go away, because your voice telling him what a good kid he is, in spite of everything, will be louder than Father Teddy’s.”

  What Andrew said to her touched her deeply, and she looked up at him with questioning eyes. “How do you know all that?”

  He hesitated for a minute before he answered, and he looked off into space while he told her, remembering. “The same thing happened to me when I was a kid. I was eleven. Father John—he was a big, fat, funny, jolly guy. He had a fantastic collection of comic books he promised to let me read, and baseball cards to show me. So I went to his house, and he did pretty much the same thing that Father Teddy’s been doing to all these kids. And he told me it was my fault because I tempted him, and that the devil would kill me on the spot if I told anyone. It took me months, but I finally told my parents.

  “They didn’t believe me. Everyone in the parish loved Father John, and I was always kind of a mischievous kid. We never talked about it again. I knew what a bad person he was, and I felt guilty for what he did to me, so I decided that one day I would become a priest, but a really, really good priest, so I could make it up to God for what I thought I had ‘tempted’ him to do. I went right into the seminary straight from high school. And I became a very, very, very good priest, just as I promised God I would.

  “But I was miserable. I didn’t have the vocation I thought I did. I wanted to go out with women, and have a family.” He smiled at Ginny as he said it. “But I felt guilty again, about leaving the priesthood. And then these incidents started to surface in the church. People started talking about priests like Father John and Father Teddy. Nothing ever happened to Father John, he must have molested hundreds of kids over the years, and he lived out his days in peace. But when people started talking about it openly, all I wanted to do was get out of my vows, and work as a lawyer defending these kids that no one ever used to believe, just like me. I knew that if I tried to do it from within the church, they would pressure me into defending the perpetrators or even covering for them.

  “So I finally left and stopped feeling guilty. I miss being a priest sometimes—there were some things I liked about it. But I’m much happier helping kids like Blue put the bad priests behind bars. And I don’t even have to be a priest to do it. The strange thing is,” he went on, “I think I still had some kind of residual gu
ilt from my childhood, and when I saw how you believed in Blue, how you stuck by him, and defended him, I think it healed something in me, too. You’re a very healing woman, Ginny, and a very loving one. Maybe that’s enough to undo the damage done to people like Blue and me, or at least start the process. It’s a little late for me, but I hope so.

  “And you don’t need to feel guilty about anything. Your husband did whatever he did that night. You couldn’t have stopped him. You didn’t know. And Blue couldn’t have stopped Father Teddy any more than I could have stopped Father John. Whatever they did is their responsibility, not ours. What we have to do is what you’ve been telling Blue. We owe it to ourselves to allow the healing to happen and move on. And even my life is going to be better now because of you. Everybody has something they can beat themselves up for. It’s just not worth the energy to do it.” They sat there quietly for a long time, and he pulled her closer to him, and she looked at him and smiled.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said.

  “So am I, but I’m fine now. And Blue will be, too. We’re among the lucky ones. You taught me that. I’ve learned a lot from watching you with Blue.” She nodded, thinking about Blue, and hoped he’d come home soon. And then as she looked at Andrew, he leaned toward her, put his arms around her, and kissed her. He had been wanting to do that since the day they met. He remembered how beautiful she was when he saw her on TV, and she was even more so now. He had never dreamed that he’d meet her one day and fall in love with her. She kissed him back, and they sat together for a long time on the bench next to the East River. They got up after a while, and started to walk slowly back to her apartment, and then she thought of something and turned around.

  “Wait a minute,” she said softly to Andrew, and walked to the shed where she had first seen Blue, a short distance away. She stood looking at it for a minute and saw that the padlock was off. She could hear something stirring inside, and as Andrew walked up to her, she slowly opened the door and saw Blue sitting inside, with his bag next to him, and he was concentrating on his laptop. He looked up at her in surprise, and said the only thing that came to mind.

  “Don’t you knock?”

  “You don’t live here anymore,” she said, smiling at him. “Come on, let’s go home.” He hesitated for a minute and looked at both of them, and then he climbed out of the shed, and picked up his bag. He didn’t ask what Andrew was doing there, but he could tell that they were both happy to see him. Ginny put an arm around Blue’s waist as they walked in the direction of the apartment. As they walked past the railing next to the river, she stopped and led Blue over to it. “I want to show you something,” she said gently. “This is where I was standing the first time I saw you. Do you know what I was doing? I was about to jump in, because my life was so miserable, I didn’t want to live another minute. All I wanted to do was die in that river, the night before Mark and Chris’s anniversary, so I didn’t have to live through another one. And then I saw you run into the shed out of the corner of my eye, and after that we went to dinner at McDonald’s and the rest is history.

  “You don’t need to feel guilty about anything, Blue. Nothing is your fault. You saved my life that night. I’ve been paying my dues for the last four years in every refugee camp I could get to. And you saved my life. If you hadn’t been there that night, I’d be dead by now.” And then she looked at Andrew. “And look at all the lives you’ve changed for the better and the boys you’ve saved with what you do. I think we’re three lucky people who lead amazing lives already.” And then she smiled broadly at Blue. “And if you ever run away again, I’m going to kick your ass, is that clear?”

  He grinned at her when she said it. He knew she wouldn’t. “Were you really going to kill yourself that night?” Blue asked looking serious again, and she looked just as serious when she nodded. Andrew wanted to hold her close to him when she did, but he didn’t want to do that in front of Blue. At least not yet.

  The three of them walked slowly back to her apartment, and she turned to Blue. “What do you say we make it official?”

  “Make what official?” Blue looked puzzled.

  “Would you like me to adopt you?”

  Blue stopped walking and stared at her. “Do you mean it?”

  “Of course I mean it. Would I say it if I didn’t?”

  “Yeah, I’d really like that,” he said, beaming again as he looked at Ginny and then at Andrew. “Can she do that?”

  “It takes a little while, but yes she can, if it’s what you both want.”

  “I do,” Ginny said clearly.

  “Me, too,” Blue added, and Andrew walked them back to the apartment and left them there. He lingered for a minute to say goodnight to Ginny while Blue went to put his things away in his bedroom.

  “Thank you for being with me tonight…and for everything you said to me,” Ginny said gratefully.

  “I meant all of it. You’re a very special woman. I hope we get to spend some time together before you go away again.” His eyes clouded as he said it. “I hate to think of you in those places, in danger all the time.” She nodded, she was beginning to worry about it, too, but that was a discussion for another time. They had covered a lot of ground that night. He bent down and kissed her forehead, and then he left, and Blue went to the kitchen to get something to eat. He was starving, and Ginny walked into the kitchen and smiled at him.

  “Welcome home, Blue,” she said softly, and he turned to smile at her and looked like a big happy kid, and his happiness was mirrored by her own.

  Chapter 19

  Two weeks after Blue ran away for a day, Monsignor Cavaretti called another meeting with Andrew and Ginny. He offered no explanation and there had been no new developments in the case in the past few weeks, and no new victims had come forward. Father Teddy was out on bail, staying at a monastery near Rhinebeck on the Hudson River. And much to Ginny’s relief, nothing more had appeared in the tabloids.

  Andrew met Ginny outside the archdiocese, and they walked in together. They had had dinner the night before, and things were progressing nicely. His eyes swept her gently as they walked in. A few minutes later they were ushered into Monsignor Cavaretti’s private office. For an instant, it reminded Andrew of the hours they had spent together in Rome, having endless discussions about canon law. But the monsignor wasn’t smiling as they sat down.

  “I wanted to speak to you both today,” he said in a somber tone. “As you can imagine, this entire situation has weighed heavily on all of us. These are never happy stories, and everyone involved gets hurt, including the church.” He turned toward Andrew then. “I wanted you to know that Ted Graham is going to enter a guilty plea tomorrow. There’s no point in drawing this out. I think what happened is clear to all of us, and we are all deeply grieved for the children it hurt.” The old priest looked profoundly sympathetic. Andrew was shocked—he had never seen him so humble. “I want to discuss a settlement with both of you. We have taken this as far up as the cardinal, and to Rome. We would like to offer Blue Williams a settlement of one point seven million dollars, to be put in a trust for him until he reaches twenty-one years of age.” He looked straight at Ginny then. “Would that be acceptable to you?” He had enormous admiration for what she’d done for Blue, and it showed in his eyes.

  She glanced immediately at Andrew, and then back at the monsignor and nodded with a look of astonishment on her face. It was more than she had ever hoped, and it would change his life forever. His education, his sense of security, the options he would have later. Justice had indeed been served. She nodded in grateful agreement, unable to speak. “Does that suit you, counselor?” he asked Andrew, who smiled at him, and a look passed between two old friends, a look of respect and affection. The end result blessed them all. The church, at Cavaretti’s insistence, had done the right thing for the boy.

  “It suits me very well, and I am very proud to have been part of this collective decision that is the right thing to do.” The monsignor stood up. “T
hat was all I had to say. We’ll draw up the papers, and of course there will be a confidentiality agreement to go with it. I think none of us will be well served by speaking to the press.”

  Both Andrew and Ginny nodded in full agreement. They all shook hands, and a moment later Andrew and Ginny were back on the street, hurrying away before they spoke. And then he turned to her with a broad grin.

  “Holy shit! We did it! Oh my God. You did it! Talk about giving Blue an amazing life. You could have just listened to his story and never done anything about it. And instead you had the guts to see it through, and gave him the courage to do it. And this will set the tone for all the other kids Ted Graham abused.” It was one of the sweetest victories of his career, and through it he had met Ginny. The possibilities were infinite now, for all of them. The church could well afford what it was paying Blue. And he would never forget Cavaretti’s benevolent hand in it.

  They had lunch to celebrate. And Andrew came to dinner that night, and they told Blue. He looked shocked when they told him. He couldn’t conceive of having that kind of money one day.

  “OhmyGod, I’m rich!” he said, looking at Ginny. “Can I buy a Ferrari when I’m eighteen?” He grinned at her, and she laughed.

  “No, you can buy an education, which is better,” she said sternly, but they were happy for him. He had paid a high price for that money, but it would serve him well, hopefully for the rest of his life if it was well invested, which Ginny knew it would be. It was a lot for him to look forward to and absorb.

  She called Kevin Callaghan the next day and told him that there had been a settlement, though not the amount, but she thanked him profusely for the referral to Andrew, which had been exactly the right one. And she told him Ted Graham was pleading guilty that day.

  “Excellent.” He was happy to hear it, and he reminded her to call him if she came to L.A. He had realized that he would have a soft spot for her forever. Nothing would ever come of it, but it was nice to dream.