Seated across the room, Ria waited for the woman to regain her composure and thought about the support group that had gotten her through those first terrible months after Jimmy's disappearance.
The paralyzing grief was gone—time's greatest blessing—but the pain was always with her. There hadn't been a day pass when she didn't think about her child and wonder if he was happy and healthy. His memory was with her constantly, even now. His lopsided smile, the soft brown eyes that sparkled with life and happiness, the sturdy body that was always in motion.
Going back to work had saved her.
Wabash Women's Center had started small, offering support groups for newly divorced women and single moms, plus confidence workshops and counseling, which Ria as a licensed social worker ran herself. Tova Jones, Ria's best friend and fellow Purdue alumna, ran the job-training program which included career planning and placement. Internist Dr. Katherine Stevens ran the open-door clinic. Volunteers and teacher interns from Purdue supervised the preschool and day care programs.
Since the center had been Ria's idea, her fellow directors steamrollered her into acting as chief administrator, which was a fancy title meaning she got to spend fourteen hours a day juggling the bills and scrambling for donations—when she wasn't filling in for the volunteers who helped staff the day care center or counseling new clients.
Brenda had first come to Healing Friends three months ago, her eyes still red and swollen, and her face pasty white from lack of sleep. Her attendance had been sporadic since then. In spite of Ria's encouragement and support, however, the painfully shy twenty-three-year-old waitress had never been comfortable enough to say more than her name. Instead, she'd sat with her gaze focused on the hands she kept tightly folded in her lap, listening intently to the others as they poured out stories of pain and loss and grief.
Tonight, however, something seemed to have broken inside her, and words spilled out almost too fast for her to control. Ria considered it an extremely positive sign.
"I'm s-sorry," Brenda mumbled as she scrubbed tears from her blotchy cheeks.
"Never apologize for sharing your emotions," she told Brenda gently but firmly.
"Heck, no, honey," exclaimed the imposing woman sitting to Brenda's right on the shabby brown sofa.
Calpurnia Glendon was six feet two inches of exuberant, outspoken, gloriously flamboyant female who was fond of brilliant colors and large, clunky jewelry she designed herself. Eighteen months earlier, on Christmas Eve, she'd lost her husband and twin sons in a fire. She'd been in the group from the beginning and now acted as Ria's co-facilitator. "Me, I blubbered my eyes out for the first six weeks I was here."
"Actually, I think it was more like eight," Ria said, thanking her with a look. Callie grinned before she turned back to Brenda, who was now busily kneading the used tissue in nervous fingers. "It's all right, Brenda. Take your time. We're here to listen."
Brenda nodded, then cleared her throat. "Missy was just lying there, like … like a little doll baby. I'd just gotten her this little pink sleeper, and she looked so sweet. Even … even Monk thought she looked real nice like. 'Wake up, little lazy bones,' I said, and then bent down to kiss her on the little tuft of hair, like I always did, you know? And then I noticed she … she—" She faltered to a stop, her face twisting with anguish.
Ria ached for the suffering woman. The other seven women in the support group waited, their expressions uniformly solemn.
"Is Monk your husband?" Annie asked in a timid voice.
"For almost a year now." Brenda dropped her gaze to her hands. "My mother, she keeps saying he's no good because he didn't want the baby at first, but he's a real good guy, Monk is."
Callie snorted. "Get your head outta the clouds, girl. The man threatened to leave you if you didn't stop coming to our group here."
Brenda brought her head up to glare at the older woman. Ria dropped her gaze, hiding her surprise. Callie and Brenda had obviously spoken outside of class. It happened that way, sometimes. Callie took her responsibility seriously and often phoned members of the group when they were absent, to check on them.
"I told you, Callie," Brenda declared with a rare passion, "he didn't mean it. He just gets these moods sometimes. From all the stress and stuff he went through in Desert Storm. And he has terrible headaches, he can't sleep and or eat and the littlest noise hurts something awful, which is why I know he sometimes—" She broke off to bite her lip.
"Sometimes what?" Ria probed in a gentle tone.
Brenda darted a nervous glance around the room before dropping her gaze to the tissue she was shredding. "Nothing," she muttered, her shoulders stiff.
"He hits you, don't he, girl?" Callie declared, her voice flat.
"No! That's a mean thing to say."
"Ain't mean if it's true."
"Well, it's not!" Brenda twisted in her chair, her face contorting. "You're just like that policeman, trying to make me say things about Monk that aren't true."
Ria caught Callie's quick glance. "What policeman, Brenda?"
Brenda started. "The one the paramedics called when they … after…" She stuttered to a stop, her face losing the color her outburst had brought to her cheeks. "The cop, he kept asking me did Monk ever lose his temper with Missy? I told him Monk yelled sometimes, but it's like, he's got a right, you know? Him working so hard to provide for me and the baby and all."
Ria felt a chill. "Are you saying the authorities think Missy might have been murdered?"
Brenda flinched. "The coroner, he said it was natural causes. You know, SIDS?" She glanced up, her expression beseeching and a little lost. The other women nodded their understanding.
"At least your husband hung around," Annie said in a thin voice. "My boyfriend split as soon as he found out I was pregnant. Quit school and joined the Army."
"How about your folks?" Sylvia asked quietly.
From the corner of her eye Ria saw the relief that passed over Brenda's face as the group's focus shifted away from her. For the rest of the hour Brenda stared in silent misery at the floor, alone with her own memories. As soon as the meeting ended, she bolted from her chair and headed for the door.
Ria had been giving Annie a hug when she saw Brenda rush past. "Excuse me a minute, Annie," Ria said, hurrying after the fleeing woman.
She caught up with her an instant before Brenda reached the stairs leading to the ground floor.
"Brenda, wait!"
Brenda spun around, her face ravaged by tears. "It wasn't my fault, Ria. Missy was almost out of diapers, and I had to go to the market for more. She usually slept a couple of hours, so I figured I'd be back before she started to cry."
She swiped at her wet cheeks with a trembling hand. She was clearly agitated, which was understandable. It was the raw fear in Brenda's pale blue eyes that had alarm bells ringing in Ria's head.
"Did she cry a lot?" she asked with a gentle smile.
Brenda nodded. "It wasn't so bad when Monk was on the road, but when he's home, he needs his sleep, you know? 'Specially after he's been out on a long haul." She stopped, her gaze darting past Ria's shoulder. "I've got to go." Before Ria could stop her, she turned and raced up the stairs.
"There's bad stuff going down in that girl's life," Callie said as she reached Ria's side. "Might be we don't see her again."
"We can't force her to come, Cal. All we can do is be supportive when she's here."
While Callie collected several foam cups that had been left under the chairs, Ria emptied the coffee urn into the sink in the small rest room at the end of the hall and wiped it clean.
In the room opposite, Tova was conducting a job skills seminar. One floor up in what had once been the living room, dining room and kitchen, Kate was holding evening clinic. The Center was open until nine. Ria rarely made it home before eleven.
"I sure do hate what I'm thinkin'," Callie murmured as they climbed the stairs side by side.
When they reached the foyer, they stopped. The door to the clinic
's waiting room was open, and Ria noted that most of the seats were filled. For the past six months Kate had been lobbying for a physician's assistant, but the budget was already stretched tissue thin.
Callie shifted her huge tapestry purse from one shoulder to the other. "When are you doing your back-to-nature gig? Tomorrow?"
"No, early Saturday morning." She flexed her tired shoulders. "I still can't believe I'm starting off my one and only vacation by spending two nights in a tent with ten other females."
The annual Big Sister-Little Sister campout was to be held in a state park near the Illinois border. As the deputy director for the greater Lafayette area, she'd felt obligated to participate—even though the ten-year-old girl who was her Little Sister had just come down with chicken pox and wouldn't be attending.
"I read this story once, about this fer-de-lance that crawled into a man's sleeping bag in the middle of the night and curled up on his belly. One twitch and the guy was dead. He had to lie there frozen for hours until the sun came up and the snake got too hot and finally crawled away." She shuddered. "I know I won't get a wink of sleep."
Callie chuckled. "I hope you like s'mores and rock music, girl, 'cause you sure are gonna get your fill of both."
"I thought about coming down with a sudden case of twenty-four-hour flu, but Betty Lou Sanberra would just knock down the door to my town house with those linebacker shoulders of hers and haul me out of bed."
Callie's grin was merciless. "Knowing you, you'll be right in the thick of things, roastin' weenies and sittin' around the campfire, telling those tired old urban legends about guys with hooks stalking lovers in parked cars and folks waking up in a bathtub full of ice and finding out they mislaid a kidney."
Ria had to laugh. She suspected Callie was right. "It's supposed to rain this weekend. The man at the sporting goods store swore that the tent he sold me was waterproof, but he couldn't quite look me in the eyes when he made that claim."
Callie laughed. "If it rains, maybe they'd call it all off."
"Not a chance. Betty Lou would simply consider mud camping a challenge."
At the door they exchanged hugs before Callie pulled open the door. A gust of wind scented with rain swirled around them, and they exchanged looks.
"Pray for clear skies," Ria muttered, shooting a fatalistic look at the sky. "Start tonight."
Callie's sultry mouth twitched. "Soon as I get home," she promised, before heading into the rising wind.
Ria frowned at the thick charcoal clouds faintly visible in the fading twilight before closing the door. Tova's seminar had apparently just ended, and noise swelled from below as the attendees spilled into the corridor. In the clinic waiting room a baby cried and a child laughed.
Turning to head upstairs, she spied a waif-thin teenager helping an elderly woman who was using a walker to inch her way across the foyer. On the sunset side of eighty, Ester Cocetti lived in a tiny frame bungalow across the street from the Center. In her salad days she'd been an exotic dancer in the wild and woolly days of Al Capone's Chicago.
Now crippled with osteoporosis and arthritis and struggling to exist on a tiny pension from her husband's job as a railway conductor, she'd been Kate's first patient. Since then, the garrulous widow had adopted them.
"Ria, dear," she said, drawing to a stop. "I was hoping to see you before your vacation."
"Hey, what's happening, boss lady?" Sixteen-year-old Tina Cocetti was spending the summer with her great-grandmother. As a favor to Mrs. Cocetti—and in spite of the added strain to their budget—Ria had hired the girl to do odd jobs. To her great surprise and delight, Tina had turned into a regular dynamo.
"Good evening, ladies," she said before leaning down to kiss the papery cheek Mrs. Cocetti presented. "Is this a routine visit, I hope?"
"Oh, yes, dear. Katie does mean well, but she fusses so."
"Gram's been having chest pains," Tina contradicted, earning her a look of rebuke, which she blithely ignored. "Dr. Kate said it was the chili peppers Gram insists on putting in everything."
Ria leveled a severe look at the woman she'd come to adore. "Now, Mrs. C.—"
"Don't you starting fussing, too. I'm perfectly fine." Mrs. C. patted Ria's arm. "I'm glad we ran into you, though. I wanted to ask you about that rabbity looking girl who went running out of here a few minutes ago. Poor thing looks like she could use a good iron supplement."
"Oh, Gram," Tina muttered, her gaze on a youth about her age seated just inside the waiting room, reading a magazine. "She was just a little pale."
Ria narrowed her gaze. "What was this woman wearing?"
"A dress in the most unattractive shade of mauve, poor thing. Two sizes too large, at least. In my day we called them house dresses."
"Brenda," Ria murmured, more to herself than the Cocettis.
Mrs. C. cocked her head. "Whatever her name is; she's the same woman I saw tussling with a man in your parking lot last week."
Ria felt a sudden chill. "Tussling?"
"Well, it wasn't really a tussle. God knows that poor thing couldn't hold her own against a flea, let alone a bruiser like the one who grabbed her."
"I'm sorry, Mrs. C, but I'm afraid I'm not following."
"Not at all dear." Mrs. C. glanced around to make sure they weren't being overheard.
The old woman puckered her brow below the fringe of white fuzz. "It was a few minutes before seven. She was just getting out of this old Ford station wagon—you know, the kind with the fake wood on the side." Her lips compressed. "Now in my day, they used real wood. Oak, I think and—"
"I hate to interrupt, Mrs. C., but I'm a little pressed for time."
"You always are, dear."
Tina took pity on her. "Like Gram said, this lady was getting out of her car, and all of a sudden this big old truck comes barreling into the lot."
Ria's stomach tightened. "Truck?"
"Yeah, just the cab part, you know? Kinda blue-green, with a red stripe?"
Ria nodded, feeling sicker and sicker.
"Anyway, this big guy jumps out and grabs the lady by the arm and throws her up against her car. She musta hit her elbow, 'cause she grabbed it and sort of bent over. And then he was, like, yelling at her."
Mrs. C. looked surprisingly sprightly all of a sudden as she bobbed her head in vigorous agreement. "I told Tina to call the police, but by the time she found that blasted cordless doohickey, the man had pushed the woman back in her car and she drove off, with him following practically right on top of her."
Ria compressed her lips. Maybe Callie was right. Maybe Brenda was being knocked around. "Could you identify this man?" she asked, her gaze including them both.
"Probably," Tina said with a shrug.
"Of course," Mrs. C. said at the same time. "My eyesight is still young, even if the rest of me is moldering away as we speak."
Ria choked a laugh. "You're doing no such thing."
"Ha. You haven't seen me naked."
"Not so loud," Tina exclaimed, looking mortified.
Ria and Mrs. C. exchanged smiles. "I appreciate the information," Ria told the old woman before giving her a gentle hug. "And please, let me know immediately if you see that man again."
"I certainly will. We can't have those kinds of goings-on in our neighborhood." Mrs. C. moved her walker a few inches, then stopped. "If Big Al were still around, that bully would have been buzzard bait by now." Her face turned dreamy and her eyes distant. "Now there was a man, Ria. There was a man."
"Don't start, Gram," Tiny muttered, opening the door.
Ria helped the old woman out the door, then watched as Tina helped her grandmother across the street.
Arms crossed against a wind that was suddenly biting and angry, Ria glanced toward the entrance to the lot that was hidden behind the building. Though it was the first day of summer, she was suddenly ice cold.
* * *
Chapter 3
« ^ »
The third of the five Hardin sons and the next eldes
t after Grady, Flynn Hardin had always reminded Ria of a nineteenth-century pirate, with his tawny hair flowing like a lion's mane to his wide shoulders and a gold, pirate's earring glinting in his ear. Of all of Grady's brothers, Flynn had always been her favorite, maybe because he was so much like his big brother.
"I appreciate your help on this, Flynn. I know it's not your case." Ria finished refilling both their mugs and returned the pot to the warmer before reseating herself at the table.
"No sweat, sugar. I'm honored to be asked. Gives me a chance to spend time with my favorite sis-in-law."
"Your only sis-in-law at the moment," she reminded him gently. "And an ex at that."
"Like hell." His grin was crooked, but his eyes were serious. "A piece of paper don't mean squat when it comes to family."
The old longing to belong took hold before she could shake it off. During the nightmare days and nights after Jimmy's abduction, the Hardins had put aside their own pain to offer comfort and support.
After the divorce, which no one wanted but everyone seemed to understand, they'd made it abundantly clear that she was still one of them. She was invited to every family function. Sarah still called with invitations to lunch. Mason stopped by the Center often, to share a cup of coffee and regale her with his latest bunch of corny jokes. Flynn and the others called often, just to check on her. Only Kale, the closest emotionally to Grady, had seemed constrained.
She lifted her cup and forced down a swallow of coffee. "Thanks for coming. I know you've had a long day."
"No problem." Looking deceptively lazy, he pulled a small black notebook from his pocket and flipped to a clean page before taking a pen from the pocket of his sport shirt. "Why don't you bring me up to speed on what's already happened? You said it was a case of crib death?"
"I hate that term," she muttered before pausing to order her thoughts. Dealing with Brenda's tragedy had served to bring her own into sharp focus again. As always, when the pain hit, she took refuge in precision. Compartmentalizing her mind helped keep the grief locked down tight.
ONCE MORE A FAMILY Page 4
