The Soldier's Forever Family

by Gina Wilkins

  Steven A. Stowe’s face looked at her from his driver’s license. His current driver’s license. One by one, she pulled the debit card and four credit cards from their slots. None of them had passed their expiration dates, either.

  But...he was using his cards. That was how the police knew—

  A whimper escaped her before she could stifle it. Steven wasn’t using them at all—Tim was. He traveled enough for business that it had never occurred to her to associate his trips with the times Steven had supposedly cropped up in Southern California. But maybe the investigators had.

  Aghast, she thought about the huge risk Tim had been taking when he’d used someone else’s credit card for cash advances and large purchases. Except... She gazed at the driver’s-license photo. Tim and Steven did look a lot alike. People had always thought so. No one glancing at the awful driver’s-license photo would have questioned his identity, especially not when the man presenting it dressed well and had a smile that said he was trustworthy. And, of course, he could present other ID.

  Rebecca dropped the billfold onto a shelf as if the leather had singed her fingers.

  Her almost ex-husband wouldn’t have the wallet, credit cards and, most of all, that ring if Steven was still alive. So Tim knew he was dead...and had a stake in keeping the police chasing a man they believed to be alive and on the run.

  And Tim was happy that Steven was dead. She couldn’t forget that.

  Panting, Rebecca ran head-on into a terrible dilemma. Did she ensure Matthew’s father went to prison by giving these to that horrible detective? Tim might not have had anything to do with the death. Knowing Steven was dead wasn’t the same thing. It could have been an accident. And his first instinct would be to protect the company.

  She wished as she hadn’t in years that she could talk to her mother. But she knew what Mamm would expect of her. “Pray,” she would have said. “Ask God what the right course is for you to take.”

  Only, Rebecca’s faith had been worn down by life with a nonbeliever, by the modernity surrounding her. What her mother, raised Amish, really assumed was that prayer would open her heart, where God’s will would be revealed to her.

  She wasn’t sure she’d recognize God’s will if it appeared in letters of fire in front of her, not anymore.

  What if she pretended she had never opened the safe? Tim would never know.

  Billfold still in her hand, Rebecca was already shaking her head. At least if none of the cards were ever used again, the police would start looking harder at the possibility Steven was dead, wouldn’t they? So, in a way, if she took these things she’d be doing the right thing while not betraying a man she’d once loved. Who was a good father, when he found time to spend with his son.

  Heart hammering in her chest, Rebecca made her decision. She took the ring out of the safe again and replaced the hemp organizers. Then she rushed downstairs to stow the wallet and ring in her purse, and hurried for the front door.

  Which opened just before she reached it.

  “Shopping?” her husband said snidely.

  * * *

  A WEEK LATER, Tim arrived at the apartment to pick up Matthew. Playground and burgers, he’d promised.

  The moment Rebecca let him in, she recoiled and took a couple of cautious steps back. He was waxen beneath his tan, his eyes wild and his forehead beaded with sweat.

  “Dad!” Matthew yelled, and came galloping down the hall.

  Taking a couple strides inside, Tim snarled at him. “I need to talk to your mother. Go to your room and shut the door.”

  Vibrating with shock, Matthew stared at his father. Then, with a muffled sob, he whirled and ran.

  “Don’t talk to him like that!”

  Tim turned his turbulent glare on her. “Why did you have to go snooping?”

  She opened her mouth to lie, but couldn’t. “I wanted the sapphire necklace.” Which, in the shock of what she’d found, she had forgotten to take. She no longer wanted it. Why cling to a memory of this man’s tenderness?

  “You don’t understand what you stole.”

  Rebecca stared at him. “Really? I’m pretty sure I do.” She searched his face. “Tim, tell me you wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Of course it wasn’t me!” He turned away and, with a jerky motion, swung back. “Misleading the cops a little, that’s not so awful. It was the only way to save the company. Don’t you understand?” he begged. When she didn’t respond, his face darkened. “You like your financial settlement, don’t you? What if I couldn’t keep paying child support? You might have to actually work for a living.”

  The scathing tone and flushed face pushed her over the edge. “It was your pride that kept me from working during our marriage, and you know it. As it happens, I have a job.” Assisting in an elementary classroom would give her an in with the school district when she applied for a teacher’s position starting in the fall.

  He rocked back. “What?”

  “You heard me. And here’s something else you need to hear. I haven’t gone to Detective Estevez. I know, whatever happened, you think you’re doing the right thing. And, for better or worse, you’re Matthew’s father. I did hide the wallet and ring somewhere you’ll never find them.”

  “You can’t do this to me.”

  She crossed her arms. “What exactly am I doing to you?”

  “You’re holding them over my head.” He shook his head, baffled. “Why? You’re the one who left me. I loved you.”

  The fury she’d been suppressing swelled inside her. “So much so that I felt like a ghost in your house. One of the few times I tried to make you really see me, talk to me, you shoved me into the kitchen cabinet. I had to hide for days after that so nobody would see the bruises. But you weren’t around to notice. You were never around.”

  “I told you I was sorry!” he yelled back.

  “Sorry isn’t good enough!” Rebecca struggled to calm herself. She had forgiven him, hadn’t she? She wasn’t acting like it. “Tim, whatever you believe, my taking Steven’s wallet and ring had nothing to do with our history. I just...couldn’t let you keep fooling the police. It’s wrong. Whatever you did or didn’t have to do with Steven’s death—”

  “I told you. I didn’t have anything to do with it. And it was an accident, anyway. We just...” He swallowed. “Him dying would have complicated everything. He took the money, he ran. That’s all anyone has to know.”

  Hating what was staring her in the face, Rebecca whispered, “Why?”

  “You don’t need to know. You need to quit interfering with something you don’t understand!” Teeth showing, the muscles in his shoulders bunching, he leaned in. “Give me back everything you took.”

  Rebecca took a prudent step back. “No.” Groping behind herself, she found the knob and opened the front door. “You need to leave. I’ll make your excuses to Matthew.”

  He didn’t move. “You’re blackmailing me.”

  “No!”

  “It’s the custody issue, isn’t it?” He gave an incredulous laugh. “You’ve got me over a barrel, and you know it. If I back off, you’ll give me what I need.”

  The possibility had never crossed her mind. She wasn’t devious enough. But now that he’d laid it out...heaven help her, she was tempted. Her pulse raced. Matthew would stay with her, and he’d be safe from his critical, domineering grandfather.

  What she was contemplating was a lousy way to protect her son, but she’d use anything or anyone for him.

  “No,” she heard herself say. “I won’t give it back. But you have my promise that I’ll keep quiet. No one else will ever see what I found.”

  Her pulse raced as she waited. His eyes narrowed in a way that told her he was thinking, and hard.

  Finally he grunted, said a foul word and agreed.

  * * *


  THREE WEEKS LATER, she had her divorce and primary custody of Matthew, subject to the usual visitation schedule and swapping of holidays.

  Detective Estevez might still be watching her, but, thank heavens, he hadn’t been back. She hated the idea of lying to his face.

  Rebecca already felt tainted enough by a decision she knew wasn’t morally defensible. She imagined her mother shaking her head and chiding Rebecca with a gentleness that could still sting.

  Yet, her mother had never shed her discomfiture regarding law enforcement. A fear of authority was bred into any Amish man’s or woman’s very bones by their bloody heritage. Throughout their history, the Amish had been driven out of one place after another by men in uniforms. Burned at the stake, tortured, imprisoned.

  To go to the police about a family member’s behavior? No, Mamm would never have chosen that path. She would help that person see the error of his ways, guide him back to making godly choices. Punishing a wrongdoer wasn’t the aim of the Amish, and they never willingly went to the law.

  Rebecca shook her head.

  Her mother wasn’t here anymore. Rebecca was willing to live with a stain on her character if that was the only way to save Matthew from a life of being alternately shamed and molded by his grandfather.

  * * *

  THE DEAL HELD, although Matthew noticed the coolness between his parents. Worse, a couple of months after the divorce, he returned puffy eyed from a weekend with his father. Lower lip protruding, he stayed stiff when Tim hugged him.

  Tim gave her an angry look, as if whatever had happened was her fault, then left. Rebecca followed Matthew to his bedroom and coaxed the story out of him.

  Grandfather Gregory said some bad things about Mommy, and when Matthew objected, he had spanked him. Hard. And Daddy let him!

  Furious, Rebecca hugged him. “Did he use his hand, or a belt, or...?”

  Her little boy gaped at her. “A belt? Don’t people always spank with their hand?”

  Well, that was something. “Is your bottom sore?”

  He wriggled on his bed. “Uh-huh.”

  She gave him another squeeze. “I’ll talk to your dad. Sometimes I think he’s a little afraid of your grandfather. He may have thought a spanking wasn’t that terrible. Especially if you were rude.”

  “I wasn’t rude!” he exclaimed. “I just said my mom wasn’t a—” He sneaked a peek up at her. “He said a word you told me I can’t.”

  She could imagine what Robert had called her. What she wondered was why. How much did he know about Tim’s part in Steven’s disappearance? And the leverage she held over Tim?

  “Never mind,” she said. “Remember, ‘sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.’” Even so, he shouldn’t have to listen to her being vilified.

  Together, she and Matthew decided the best thing was for him to say with dignity, Grandfather, I don’t want to listen when you use bad words about my mom, and then walk out of the room.

  Forehead crinkling, Matthew repeated the line several times, then nodded firmly. “That’s what I’ll say.”

  As far as she knew, he wasn’t spanked again. Perhaps Tim had confronted his father when Matthew wasn’t there. She wanted to think so.

  Two months after her confrontation with Tim over the ring, he attended Matthew’s graduation ceremony from kindergarten. The three of them even went out afterward for pizza and had fun. At least, she thought they had, but when Tim drove them back to the apartment, he insisted on walking them up, where he asked Matthew to go to his bedroom.

  He did it nicely enough, and Matthew shrugged and obeyed. Six now, he was growing like a weed and occasionally giving her glimpses of what he’d look like a few years down the road. That shrug was almost teenage. Rebecca wondered if he’d learned it from his fifteen-year-old babysitter.

  She quit wondering when she glanced back at her ex-husband and saw the way his expression had tightened.

  Feeling a little wary, she said, “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Rebecca, you have to give me Steven’s things.” Tim kept his voice low, but urgency threaded every word. “Josh is pissed about this arrangement. He feels threatened, too.”

  “Too?” she echoed.

  “You don’t know what it’s like.” Hostility darkened his eyes. “Josh is after me, and Dad is angry because I gave in and let you have my kid. Sometimes I feel like that guy in the movie. I’m walking a tightrope between two skyscrapers. The only way off is to fall. That’s a shitty way to live.”

  He was right. It was.

  “I’d...like to think I can trust you, but I don’t trust your father,” she admitted. “Or Josh. And I’ve kept my word. I haven’t told anyone.”

  “You know Josh is my best friend.”

  She did know. Josh and Tim had met during orientation for their freshman year of college and had been roommates. Steven Stowe had been a much later addition, needed for his financial acumen. Because Josh had spent his summers working construction, he supervised the job sites. Tim’s gift had been convincing clients to choose G, G & S over other contractors. It was because of Tim that half the architects in the city recommended G, G & S to their clients. And when the company needed financing, Tim worked his magic on bankers.

  “He’s leaning hard on me. You need to bend a little, Bec.” He hadn’t called her that in a long time. But then he said, “I don’t know how long I can keep protecting you. Be smart and think about it.”

  She was speechless, and he departed without saying anything else. Rebecca almost lunged to flip the dead bolt on the door. Had he been telling her she needed to be afraid?

  She tried to reason through the cloud of fear. Even if she returned the ring and the wallet and cards, she knew about them—about Steven. Even if she gave Tim the benefit of the doubt, what if Josh had killed Steven during an argument? Would he kill again to protect his secret? But there was the chance she’d given them to someone else as insurance.

  Whatever he said to the contrary, keeping that proof might be the only way she could protect herself.

  She put her back to the door and shuddered.

  * * *

  A COUPLE OF weeks later, Rebecca lay sprawled on the sidewalk, grit stinging her cheek. Dazed, she knew only that she was the near victim of a drive-by shooting, and that some man had tackled her to the pavement right after the first crack of gunfire.

  I would have stood there frozen, like an idiot, she thought.

  She groaned and pushed herself to a sitting position. People all around were babbling in excitement and alarm. The middle-aged man who had knocked her down was picking himself up, too. She heard an approaching siren.

  Her phone rang and she groped in her handbag for it. She had to be sure someone from Matthew’s day camp wasn’t calling. Rattled, she stared at the strange number displayed on the screen. Even the area code was unfamiliar.

  “Hello?”

  A metallic voice said, “Call that a warning. You have something we need. Return it, or next time we won’t miss. And if you go to the cops? Your son is dead.”

  Knowing the caller was gone, Rebecca began to shake.

  Copyright © 2017 by Janice Kay Johnson

  ISBN-13: 9781488016998

  The Soldier’s Forever Family

  Copyright © 2017 by Gina Wilkins

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