Lost Innocents

To my nephews, Stephan, Andrew, and Thomas Oliva, with love

This book is work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, dead or living, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1998 by Patricia Bourgeau

All rights reserved.

Warner Books, Inc.,

1271 Avenue of the Americas,

New York, NY 10020

Visit our Web site at http://warnerbooks.com

A Time Warner Company

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: June 1998

ISBN 0-446-51687-2 I. Title. PS3563.A287L67 1998

813‘54—dc21

97-23306

Tuesday Afternoon, Late October

R
ebecca Starnes tossed her hair back and sat up straight against the park bench, surreptitiously tucking her knit shirt into her jeans so that it would lie more smoothly over the curves of her chest. Out of corner of her eye, she watched the guy in the parking lot jumping off the wall on his skateboard and landing back on pavement. It was a daring trick, and she tried not to gasp each time he missed. He was wearing wraparound sunglasses, so it was impossible tell if he was glancing her way. She definitely did not want him to think she was staring.

Rebecca was pretty sure she had seen him before, probably at basketball games. But she didn’t know which school he went to. There were lot of Catholic high schools in the area, and it was a big league. He could be from any one of them. For sure he didn’t go to Perpetual Sorrows, because she never would have missed seeing him around her own school. She draped an arm over the back of the park bench and tossed her hair again.

A woman pushing a baby carriage woman along the winding sidewalk stopped in front of and Rebecca smiled. “He’s cute,” she said. “How old is he?”

“Six months,” said Rebecca impatiently. Justin Wallace, seated in the stroller beside Rebecca, was busy examining his round, thick plastic teething ring covered with pictures of Donald Duck and the nephews.

Rebecca craned her neck to try to look around the woman, who was blocking her view of the skateboarder. The woman, absorbed in smiling and waving one finger at Justin, did not seem to realize she was in the way. Rebecca sighed and tried to be polite.

“How old’s yours?” she asked, indicating the carriage the woman was rocking gently.

“Just an infant,” said the woman, giving the netting over the carriage a proprietary pat. “He’s sleeping.”

“Not Justin,” Rebecca said, glancing at the baby beside her, wishing the woman would move on. “I’m just baby-sitting for him,” she explained.

As if realizing that no mother-to-mother camaraderie was to be had here, the woman said good-bye, gave Justin another little wave, and resumed pushing her carriage. Rebecca glanced up from under lowered lids and saw that the skateboarder was still there. She arranged herself again on the bench, hoping to look attractive but not provocative.

Meanwhile Justin shook his teething ring impatiently, gnawed on it a moment, then regarded it with the curiosity of a research scientist formulating an experiment. Silently Justin considered the boomerang effect. He studied the possibilities, then let the teething ring fly. He had no sooner released it from his tiny hand than he realized that he had miscalculated. The teething ring dropped with a tiny thud only a foot away from him, in the dirt under the puffs of crisp brown petals on a dying hydrangea bush. Justin’s lively gray eyes, recently alight with anticipation, now clouded over. His face crumpled as he let out a loud, pitiful wail.

Distracted again from her fantasies about the skateboarder, Rebecca turned and frowned irritably at her charge. The temptation to bark at him faded away as she gazed at him. He looked adorable in the little red sweater with the Dalmatian on it that his grandmother had knitted for him. Rebecca loved all kids, but she loved Justin especially. His parents were young and they had to work hard to make ends meet. Usually Donna’s mother helped them out, but occasionally they asked Rebecca to fill in. Rebecca enjoyed taking care of Justin. She would have done it for free, just to help them out. But Johnny and Donna always insisted on paying her. Rebecca thought it was kind of romantic, the way they were starting out together, having a family.

Of course, whenever she mentioned this around her mother, Sandi Starnes would have a fit. “Don’t think you’re gonna go off and get pregnant and have your mother for a ready-made babysitter,” she would cry. “No way.” Over and over she would warn Rebecca that she had no idea how hard it was to be a mother as young as Donna Wallace. And her mother ought to know.

Rebecca’s father had left when she was only five. He had another family now, up in Massachusetts. Rebecca saw him three times a year. He wasn’t bad as fathers went, but Rebecca knew her mother had to work hard to make ends meet. She’d taken on extra shifts at the restaurant so that Rebecca could go to Catholic school. Rebecca gazed at the baby in the stroller. It seemed as if having a baby to care for would be wonderful, but a lot of mothers, like Donna Wallace and her own mom, ended up having to work all day. A lot of families seemed to just break apart. Still, it didn’t have to be that way. Some marriages worked out, she thought defensively. Some people stayed together.

She looked ruefully at Justin. “What’s the matter, Justin?” she asked sympathetically.

Justin looked up at her, helpless to explain. Tears brimmed in his eyes and coursed down his round cheeks. Rebecca reached into his stroller for the miniature crocheted afghan, also his grandmother’s handiwork, which lay in a wad around his knees, and pulled it up over his denim pants and red sweater. “Are you cold?” she asked kindly. It was getting a little chilly. Autumn had been warm up till now, but it was almost November, and the days had taken a sharply cooler turn.

Justin reacted furiously, feeling the bitter frustration of the supremely misunderstood. He wailed louder and shook the bar in front of him with his dimpled fists. “Justin,” Rebecca muttered, wondering if the cute guy on the skateboard was judging her incompetent. “Cut it out. What’s the matter? Stop crying. You want your bottle? I’ll get it for you. Just stop crying.”

These were the moments when Rebecca knew her mother didn’t have anything to worry about. Rebecca wasn’t about to get herself tied down with a baby. She wanted to go to junior college and maybe train to be a lab technician. She liked science. It was her favorite subject at Perpetual Sorrows. She wanted a condo and her own car, and she wanted to be able to help out her mother with money now and then. Rebecca smiled ruefully to herself as she thought about her mom, worrying over nothing. Rebecca didn’t even have a boyfriend yet, much less plans to have a baby.

She went around the stroller, crouched down, and rummaged around in the pocket for the bottle of apple juice. She felt her cheeks flaming as the baby yowled, and she didn’t dare look up to see what the skateboarder’s reaction might be.

“I think this is what she’s looking for,” said a male voice.

Rebecca froze, startled but hopeful. She hadn’t heard anyone coming up behind her. Maybe this was him—the skateboarder. Maybe he was taking the opportunity to make a move to talk to her. She took a deep breath and raised an expectant face. Instead of the daredevil skateboarder, a grown-up man stood in front of her. Wearing dull chinos and a windbreaker, he held out the teething ring in one hand.

She glanced over at the parking lot. The skateboarder was gone. Rebecca sighed. “Thanks,” she said, reaching for the teething ring. Justin sat up in his stroller and watched the exchange, wide-eyed. “It’s a he.”

“Really?” the man asked, surprised. “I thought with those curls…”

Rebecca ran a fond hand over Justin’s head of soft ringlets. “A lot of people think that,” she said. She reached out for the teething ring.

“It’s kind of dirty,” said the man, looking at it. “He threw it under that bush over there. Let me wash it off in the water fountain.”

“Okay, thanks,” she said. She scrambled up from behind the stroller and resumed her seat on the bench. The man walked over to the water fountain and rinsed off the teething ring. Then he brought it back and handed it to her. He sat down on the same bench, not too close, but Rebecca had a fleeting feeling of unease. She told herself that this was not some weirdo. He was completely normal looking.

“You must be very proud of him,” he said pleasantly, in a way that suggested Justin belonged to Rebecca.

“Oh, he’s not mine,” said Rebecca, marveling to herself at how adults could be so dense. First the other mother, now this guy. Rebecca didn’t like to think she might look old enough and boring enough to be a mother. “I’m just baby-sitting for him.” Justin had resumed chomping happily on his teething ring. “I’m only fifteen.”

“Oh,” said the man, nodding. He took a packet of cheese crackers out of the pocket of his windbreaker and opened it. He took a bite out of one of the crackers. “Don’t you have school?” he asked.

Rebecca shook her head. “I go to Catholic school,” she explained. “It’s a Holy Day of Obligation.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding. He munched on his cracker thoughtfully. Then he seemed to remember something and held out the packet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to eat in front of you. You want one?”

Rebecca shrugged. She was a little bit hungry. She hesitated for a moment, though. Like all kids, she’d heard about taking candy from strangers. Parents were forever panicking about things like that. This was not exactly some drooling pervert in a deserted place. A woman with glasses was seated on a bench just down the winding path, reading a book. Rebecca could see her glancing up occasionally from where she sat. Some Chinese guy was doing those Buddhist exercises in a clearing across the pond. A police car had rolled slowly by not ten minutes ago. All these things flashed through her mind as she gazed at the cheese crackers in the cellophane. You had to think of these things. After all, all those stories in the papers gave you the creeps. Not necessarily here in Taylorsville, but you never could tell….

The man gave her a wry smile. “They’re not laced with anything,” he said. “I just bought them over there at the 7-Eleven.”

Rebecca blushed, humiliated that the man had read her thoughts, that he knew she was suspicious of him.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said, reading her mind again. “These days, you can’t be too careful. Children are the most precious thing in the world, and they have to be warned to be on their guard. I’m sure your folks have drummed that into your head. I mean, every parent worries about that kind of thing.”

Rebecca assumed this meant that he had children and immediately felt a little more at her ease. She smiled, although in truth his words made her feel wistful. She wished she had a dad who would call his child the most precious thing in the world. She couldn’t quite picture Bud Starnes saying that about her. “I’m not a child,” she said.

“What’s this little guy’s name?” he asked, gesturing toward the stroller with the half-empty packet.

Rebecca glanced down at the stroller, glad for the change of subject. “Justin,” she said. “Justin Mark Wallace. He’s my buddy.” At the sound of his name, Justin looked up and gave Rebecca a wide, toothless grin. Rebecca smiled back. Then she reached for a cracker.

The man grinned, nonchalantly edging closer to her. He leaned his arm across the back of the bench so that his fingers could ever so slightly graze her flesh.

A
s the car pulled over to the edge of the cobbled, circular driveway, Maddy Blake gazed up at the sprawling, Tudor-style house in the fading twilight. Amber-colored leaves drifted silently down from the stately trees, carpeting the emerald lawn. Thorny branches climbed up the sides of the imposing home, making it look rooted, as if it had stood there forever.

“Wow,” Maddy said. “This is quite a place. No wonder he charges so much.”

“Worth every penny,” said Doug defensively.

“Oh, I agree,” she said hastily, avoiding her husband’s glance. “Absolutely.”

Maddy and her husband Doug, were invited here, to the home of Charles Henson, Doug’s attorney, to celebrate. Last week Charles Doug’s had successfully argued on behalf of against a charge of sexual misconduct with a female student at the high school where Doug was a history teacher. The administrative law judge who heard dismissed all charges, and after five weeks out of work, the case had Doug had his job restored. Nevertheless his reputation was not as easily regained.

“I’ve heard the wife comes from money,” said Doug. “That makes a big difference.”

It was Maddy’s turn to cast a sidelong glance at her husband, who gazed steadily through the windshield. Was that a barb? she wondered. This ordeal had been exhausting and expensive. All their savings had gone into paying Charles Henson for Doug’s defense and to paying the bills while Doug was out of work. Maddy was a stained-glass artist who worked for herself, so her income was sporadic. She certainly did not come from money, but she had worked steadily, trying to keep the money coming in while Doug’s job was in limbo.