Sunshine and Shadows (17 page)

"You're a sweet girl, and we're going to have a lot of fun together," Lisa said encouragingly. "You can teach me how to cook rice and beans the way you like it. And I can show you how to bake granola brownies."

"Mmm," Connie said, thinking it over. "That sounds like fun. Can we go out in the canoe sometime? And maybe I could learn to swim in the river?" She looked hopeful.

"Of course you can. Now why don't you go to sleep, and I'll see you in the morning."

"Would you—would you mind if I hugged you, Lisa? My mother always used to hug me. I never had a hug at bedtime after she left me with Nina."

Lisa put her arms around Connie and held her close. Her heart ached for the child.

"At my house you can have a hug whenever you need one," she assured Connie as she stood up and turned out the light.

"I'm glad," Connie said in a small voice, and Lisa went out and softly shut the door behind her.

For a moment Lisa stood in front of Adele's closed door, wondering if she should knock. But if Adele was already asleep, she would only be stirring up a hornet's nest, and Lisa already felt emotionally strung out after the unsettling events of the day.

Slowly she turned away. She moved quietly around the house, folding the Sunday newspaper, turning off the muted television set, and retrieving the pillow from the corner where Jay had thrown it. She went out through the door into the kitchen and on into the garage. To her surprise, the garbage can was in its place, its lid was on tight and the garbage had been picked up.

Jay,
she thought in surprise.
Jay did that for me.

She went back inside, where Jay's rosebud stood in its vase on the kitchen counter. She touched a fingertip to one pink petal. Jay had only given it to her this morning, and yet it seemed like such a long time ago.

Her life had changed so much in the past few weeks; today everything seemed to be on fast-forward. But she felt optimistic about the future, which seemed about to unfold like the petals of a flower.

Chapter 9

As he drove home that night, Jay Quillian, the confirmed bachelor, decided that the impossible had happened. He had begun to imagine being with Lisa for the rest of his life.

He could see it all in his mind. They could live in his town house, go to the beach on weekends, make love every night and most mornings, as well, and they could have children. They were both so comfortable with kids.

What a dream! He could play it out in all its enthralling detail in his head; he could
see
it. And as soon as it became real to him, he began to wonder if it was really possible. With other women, he'd never been able to get past the insurmountable problems.

Jay would never give up his work at the mission, not for any relationship, and most women couldn't comprehend that kind of dedication. But now he was sure that Lisa in all her benevolence could accept his commitment, and that in itself made her special.

Any woman who could provide a home for an older woman who had no home of her own, who didn't mind possums tipping over her garbage can because they were hungry and who could open her house to a kid with no place to go was the kind of woman he'd been looking for all his life. But it was the way she had taken Connie to her heart that had been the deciding factor, because Jay knew more about being a throwaway kid than he let on.

When he thought back to his early years of growing up in West Palm Beach, the days seemed awash in sunshine. His life had been happy. Then one day when he was ten his parents suddenly announced that they were divorcing, and his father had moved immediately to Baltimore. His mother found a boyfriend right away.

That year Jay made the rounds of his relatives' houses, staying with them for nights at a time when his mother was out of town. She liked to accompany her male friends when they traveled on business, and she liked to go to parties.

Sometimes the welcome wore out at his aunts' houses or at his mother's friends' places, and he'd sneak back into the closed-up house where he and his mother lived when she was in town and eat whatever he could scrounge, fending for himself as best he could. Sometimes there wasn't much food, and often he didn't have money to buy more.

After he became a teenager, life was easier. By that time his mother thought it was safe to leave him at home by himself when she left town. Most of the time he had enough food, especially after he got a part-time job washing cars at a car lot up the street. Later he bought a fast car with his earnings, and after that he was mobile.

He was a popular kid, a football player and an honor student. Girls liked him, and the guys enjoyed hanging out at his house. There they found the freedom that they didn't have at their own homes, and it was easy to pick up a few six-packs of beer as they passed an obliging convenience store on the way over.

Jay and his buddies spent a lot of hours whiling away their time, playing poker, experimenting with drinking games that they learned from a friend's older brother who was a junior in college, and anticipating what fun it was going to be when they all got to the University of Florida themselves.

Jay, who was known as Jamie at the time, almost didn't make it.

He could hardly remember the details of that day when his life had crashed down around him because it was all a blur. He and his football buddies had been drinking all day in celebration of their graduation, and late in the afternoon his friends accepted his high-spirited offer to go buy more beer when they ran out. He barely remembered the slick pavement, the yellow caution light switching to red, the squeal of brakes and then the rain on his face after they pulled him out of his smashed car. He never even saw the girl.

While he was sitting on a gurney in the hospital emergency room, holding a gauze pad to the little nick above one eye that was his sole injury, a somber policeman walked up and told him the girl in the other car was in critical condition and not expected to make it. Later she died.

Jay couldn't believe it. How could she be seriously injured? He was barely scratched. And he was only out to have a good time. He hadn't meant to hurt her.

While he was waiting to find out the girl's fate, he unexpectedly encountered her boyfriend in the rest room; the guy had been throwing up in the sink. He never found out if the other fellow knew who he was.

When the girl died, Jay had been duly charged with manslaughter and pleaded guilty. After the sentencing, both Jay and his mother had gone for counseling. She subsequently married a man who, in spite of everything, loved Jay and had adopted him, Jay's birth father having died in the meantime. His mother sobered up and settled down. After she and Fred had two children, a boy and a girl, they moved to Albuquerque, which was about as far away from West Palm Beach as you could get and still stay in the continental U.S.

Jay didn't blame them for moving. People had talked after the accident, and he understood why his mother wanted a fresh start for her new family, which she was rearing under a completely different philosophy from the way she had brought up Jay.

Some people would think that Jay had paid his debt to society. Maybe he had. But Jay didn't think so. He had never forgotten the bleak anguish in the eyes of that man he had seen in the rest room at the hospital. Jay had not only killed someone, but he had stolen that man's life away by killing the girl he loved. He would be atoning for that forever.

He tried. He really did. He gave money to charities and he taught art to kids; he had so little personal life that his law partner kidded him about it.

If he had told people why he was making a gift of his life to others, maybe they would have understood. Then again, maybe they wouldn't. He couldn't take the chance. He didn't want anyone to know that he was the kid who had killed a girl and gotten off almost scot-free. He was grateful to his stepfather for giving him a new last name, and he himself had changed his first name.

It was, after all, not such a big deal to become Jay instead of Jamie, to become Quillian instead of Watkins, and James Watkins, as far as most people were concerned, had disappeared from the face of the earth almost as completely as that girl he'd killed when he was only seventeen years old.

* * *

"I've located Connie's father," Sister Maria told Jay and Lisa when they met in her office the next afternoon. "He's taken a steady job in North Carolina."

"How did you manage to find him so fast?" Jay asked in surprise.

Sister Maria walked behind her desk and sat down. "I've been working on this case for a long time. I've always been concerned about those children living with Nina. Last week I talked with someone who had recently seen Carlos—that's the father's name. I telephoned the furniture factory where he works this morning, and he called me back on his lunch break. He's very concerned about Connie," she said.

"Will he send for her?" Lisa asked.

"He says he's living in a crowded house with another family, and there's no room for anyone else, but he's already rented a place that will be available this summer so that he can provide a home for his daughter. Life has apparently been hard for him since Connie's mother left."

"You mean her mother isn't coming back?" Jay said.

"It looks like she's decided to stay in California with another man. This family has had a lot of hardship, but Carlos thinks it's all behind them now. Until June or July, when he is sure he can send for her, he wants Connie to stay with Nina. Or Lisa," Sister Maria said.

"Connie is welcome at my house as long as necessary," Lisa said firmly.

"I went out to the fields to talk with Nina this morning," Jay said. "She admitted that she doesn't have legal custody of Connie. Just as I suspected, she's not Connie's grandmother, only a distant relative. I told her that we'd see that Connie was taken care of, but she got on her high horse and said that Connie has to spend some time with her cousins once in a while, and that she should be allowed to visit."

"Why didn't Nina think of that before she threw Connie out of the house?" Lisa asked skeptically.

"My guess is that the boys raised the roof when they found out that Connie was gone for good, and in order to shut them up, Nina told them that Connie would come back occasionally. I thought that Connie would miss the boys, so I agreed that she could visit Nina every other Sunday evening. If there's any sign of mistreatment, of course, we'll stop it. After all, Nina has no legal hold on Connie," he said.

"Did Nina say anything else?" Sister Maria asked.

"One other thing," Jay said, his voice tinged with irony. "She said she didn't want to see Connie hanging around the house uninvited."

"I'm so sick of her treating Connie like a disposable kid!" Lisa said, her eyes flashing.

"At least Connie's out of there. I still worry about the boys, though. I wonder if Nina's treating them well."

Sister Maria sighed. "Well enough, I think," she said. "The other sisters and I have talked with the boys individually, and they seem to have a strong affection for one another. Miguel, the oldest, is quite strong and capable. I can assure you that we're going to keep a close watch on the situation and will be in touch with the social-welfare department at the first sign of any problem."

Jay turned to Lisa. "How is Adele doing?" he asked.

"We didn't see her this morning before we left," Lisa told him. "I don't know what kind of mood she'll be in when we get home, but Connie and I are planning to eat dinner in the community-center dining hall, anyway. I intend to have a serious talk with Adele tonight."

Sister Maria walked them to the door. "Don't worry too much about all of this," she said encouragingly. "Migrant children are like little chameleons. They learn to adapt to different places over and over all their lives, but if you have any problems with Connie, Lisa, let me know."

After saying goodbye to Sister Maria, Jay and Lisa walked slowly back to the community center.

"Have you seen Connie since this morning?" Jay asked.

Lisa shook her head. "I've been in Sister Maria's office all day. She was filling me in on Connie's family problems. It's a wonder she's not an emotional basket case."

"She's stronger than you think," Jay said. He sensed that Lisa was troubled, and he slid an arm around her shoulders. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Apprehensive," she admitted. "Maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew."