Refuge of the Heart, page 20
She laughed and blushed, understanding fully. “You make me happy to be with you.”
“Good.” Reaching for another piece of onion, something at the door caught Mitch’s attention. He stood and waved, then dropped his gaze to Lena. “A friend of mine just came in. I’d like to introduce you, if I may?”
She looked uncertain, then acquiesced. “I would like to meet your friend.”
Striding across the room, he grabbed Dee in a quick embrace.
“Mitch!” she exclaimed, hugging him back. Then she cuffed his arm lightly. “This is how I have to see you, now? Running into you in a restaurant?”
“Better than not running into me at all,” Mitch returned. He held out a hand to the man at Dee’s side. “Mitch Sanderson. You’re Joaquin Banderas, right?”
Dee’s escort smiled and nodded. “Yes. A pleasure to meet you. Dee wears your friendship like a suit of armor. At one time I wondered if I had competition from the D.A.’s office.”
Mitch tweaked Dee’s hair. “Just friends from way back. I have someone for you to meet. You guys have a table yet?”
“Forty-five minutes,” groused Dee, frowning.
“Come join Lena and me. You can get to know her.”
Dee turned to her date. “Would that be all right?”
“If it gets me food sooner?” Banderas’s expression said the rest.
“We’ve got a fried onion on the table right now,” Mitch told him. “We can start with that.”
Joaquin grabbed Dee’s arm. “We’re with him.”
At the table, Mitch held out a hand to Lena. She stood, looking from him to the couple before her. “Lena, this is my friend, Deidre Emory and her date, Joaquin Banderas. Dee, Joaquin, this is my dear friend, Lena Serida.” With emphasis on the endearment, Mitch winked.
“I am pleased to meet you,” Lena said, offering her hand. “Will it please you to join us?” Without consulting Mitch, she nodded to the front door. “The line seems very long.”
“We’d love to,” assured Dee, flashing a quick smile.
Mitch re-arranged his place setting while Dee and Joaquin settled in their chairs. Then Mitch noted the other man’s look as he eyed the center-stage onion. The D.A. slid a clean bread plate to him. “Jump in, Banderas. We’ll never eat it all and the waitress is caught up at another table.”
“I will.” Joaquin tore off a piece of the onion, popped it in his mouth and savored the mix of flavors. “Lena, great accent. Ukraine?”
She shook her head. “Chechnya.”
Joaquin’s eyebrow rose a fraction. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “I have been here for some years. Your country is very special, yes?”
“It is, yes.” Joaquin’s glance went from her to Mitch, his look speculative. Mitch wondered at it, but Dee jumped in.
“I am so pleased to meet you, Lena. Mitch has told me about you and your sister. You’ve made him happy.”
Lena smiled. Her hand sought Mitch’s across the corner of the table. “We make one another happy.”
Mitch smiled and brought her fingers up, gently touching his lips to the back of her hand. “An understatement.”
Lena tilted her head. “Then we will say delighted. Mitchell is delighted with me.”
“And your little sister.” Mitch angled his head, looking at the couple across from him. “A package deal.”
Dee laughed. Joaquin smiled. Once again Mitch caught a thread of caution or discernment in the other man’s demeanor, but the waitress’s arrival interrupted the moment.
Later, once they’d said their goodbyes to the other couple, Lena laughed up at him as they left the restaurant. She passed a thoughtful hand across her stomach. “My stomach is quite pleased. Thank you, Mitch.”
“Good steak, huh?” He thoughtfully didn’t remind her of her earlier position on cholesterol and heart disease. What he wanted was to see a little meat on her bones. Grass and twigs weren’t likely to do that.
She nodded, then laughed again. “It was very good. Most delicious. And the sweet potato with honey was wonderful.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. But stop yawning. We still have the toy store and Wal-Mart to hit. Then I’ll take you home for a good night’s sleep. You’re working tomorrow?”
She stifled the yawn. “Yes. Eight to four while Mariel has Anna with some friends from church. Then I have an appointment tomorrow evening.”
“On a Saturday? That’s odd.”
“Our church panel often meets then.”
“Church meetings are at the mercy of availability, I guess. What’s it for?”
“Once a year I appear to the council and tell them how I am doing. How Anna is doing. They are nice people, very kind. They are looking for another refugee family to sponsor now, because I am almost independent.”
“And then some.” He didn’t mask the wry note in his voice.
“I meant, of course, in matters of finance.”
“That, too. Have you decided where you’d like to do your clinicals?” he asked as they hunted for a parking spot outside the toy store up the road.
“I have applied to several local adult living facilities and the university hospital. They are my first choice. And the first thing I will do is move to a new apartment in a safer area. This will be good for us. My change in income will allow more choices.”
He wanted to be one of those choices. Smiling up at her, he helped her down from the cab, then caught her in a hug, ruing the thinness beneath the big coat. “Thank you for tonight, Lena. For letting me be a part of your Christmas. And Anna’s.”
She put a hand on his arm. “It is most special to do this together, is it not?”
He grinned, thinking that as her language skills grew, he’d miss her odd colloquialisms. For the moment, he would treasure each and every one. He tucked her arm through his and turned her toward the store. “Yes.”
“Hal, you called last night. What’s up?” Mitch finished an online order for Christmas movies and closed the website as his campaign manager picked up the phone.
“I’m looking for progress on the Dailey case.”
“Nothing to report. We’re gathering evidence and weighing things as they come in. Why?”
“Why? You know why.” Hal’s voice took the sharp immediate downturn that seemed intrinsic to his job. Campaign managers hated variables, they lived in a wannabe world of controlled informational flow.
Unfortunately the D.A.’s office didn’t control who killed whom and when. “It’s a time-consuming case, Hal. You know that. And you also know there’s a distinct slowdown of things in December. Judges take time off. So do other normal people.”
“Not you and not me,” Hal rejoined. “We need this one resolved, Mitch. Halstead, Taddeo, they’re scum, the world doesn’t like murder and they really hate greed, so those guys have no sympathetic quotient in the voting world.
“But Dailey? The camps are squaring off and boldly marked. One side says we failed her, the other is voting for full prosecution to the extent the law allows and some are shouting death penalty. Make her take a deal.”
Mitch wanted to sigh.
He didn’t. “I can’t make Jeannine Dailey do anything. What I can do is my job. We’ll assess the evidence provided by the investigation, evidence that may be tainted by a neighbor’s intervention that night—”
Hal swore under his breath.
“Hal, you’ve got to relax about this. This woman deserves justice and you and I can’t say what that is. That’s why our country uses a jury of our peers. Let’s not forget that.”
“How about we not forget the election in eleven months,” Hal shot back. “If this case follows normal timelines it will be front-page news mid-summer. Which means every woman in this county will be marching to the polls in early November with this on her mind. This one case can dictate how women will choose, and that puts you in the cross-hairs of a split female vote.”
“I can’t help that, Hal. If I could, I’d have figured out a way to keep Jeannine out of his house eighteen months ago.”
“Not our fault.”
“Not legally. But the more I look back, the more warning signs I see that he was able to contact her illicitly despite her protection status. I can’t say more, but this cut and dried case is anything but cut and dried.”
“Do what you can, Mitch. It’s important.”
Mitch sat straighter in his chair. Taller. “I’ll do what’s right, Hal. And that’s all you can ever expect of me.”
“Francine?” Lena peeked through the slightly open door, and saw Francine asleep in her chair. She started to step back, but a movement drew her to push the door wider.
Looking more closely, she realized Francine wasn’t asleep at all. Two thin streams of tears found their way down her cheeks, wetting the collar of her drab, pink housecoat. “Francine, what is it?”
The old woman shook her head, eyes pressed shut.
Lena withdrew a handful of tissues from the box nearby. Gently, she blotted the woman’s tears, then pressed the remaining tissues into the hands. “I’m here if you need me.”
Silence reigned. The tears slowed, then stopped, but it was many minutes before Francine opened her eyes. Blotted them dry. She blew her nose, then thrust the tissues into the small plastic garbage bag attached to the arm of her chair. “I want to know why, Lena.”
Lena sat quiet and still, silently praying.
“Why me? Why did I survive? What was there about me, a simple girl of no merit, nothing special? Why me?”
Unsure what Francine meant, Lena chose her words carefully. “I don’t know all of God’s ways, Francine. Only that he is there, always, infinite. And that he loves us.”
“Do you believe in the devil, Lena?”
Believe in him?
She’d seen his evil face every night for months. “I do.”
“And the choice of good over evil. Why is that difficult for some?”
Again, Lena had no idea where this was leading, or what spurred the questions. “Power is temptation to some. And ultimate power can corrupt absolutely, Francine. But I believe you know this.”
“I do.” Francine clutched the wad of tissues. Her pale eyes looked more tired than usual. Worn. And so very sad. “Is it right to give up a child?”
“Sometimes it is the best for the child, so yes. It can be the right thing to do.”
“What if it is driven by fear?” the old woman pressed. “What if you make a big decision like that because you’re too afraid to trust God? How does one face their maker when they were too afraid to believe in God’s good will? To trust?”
Lena’s heart ached in reflection.
Trusting God... that came easily as a child. Not so easily after being in the hands of Russian soldiers for months. But the grace of her new friends, people who believed in her, who reached out helping hands, knowing what she’d been through. That was the hands and feet of Christ on earth. She recognized that now. “It is not easy to trust when bad things shake our faith.”
Francine’s head lolled back against the padded chair. The tears began once again, but slower. So much slower. “I don’t think I can be forgiven my weaknesses, Lena. How much better would life have been if I had the strength I see in you? Coming here, raising your little sister. Why wasn’t I strong like you? Like my parents?”
“Oh, Francine.” Lena placed gentle arms around the old woman’s shoulders and held her. “Do you not know that God waits for you? That right now his heart and his arms are open to you? That when he calls you home, you will rejoice in the embrace of the Lord, our God.”
Francine started to shake her head, but Lena drew back and shook hers first. “God wants his children happy, as your parents wanted their child happy. As you wanted your children happy.” She lifted her gaze to a picture of two beautiful toddlers, a rugged, dark-haired little boy and a smaller child, just walking age, a girl with light brown curls. “Theresa and Paul surely appreciate the sacrifices you’ve made.”
Francine’s face darkened. She clutched the tissues tighter and turned her face toward the wall. “Their safety was my first concern. Always.”
“As is mine with Anna.” Lena sat back and patted Francine’s hand. “It is good to put them first, no?”
But Francine didn’t appear to take much comfort in that idea. She glanced up to their photos, sitting on the small dresser between her chair and the window. “I did put them first, Lena. But out of fear, not faith. And I’m afraid that has been my undoing.” She made a face, squared her shoulders, then noted the time. “You must go and do your work, better than listening to an old lady’s lament.”
“I will always have time to listen,” Lena promised. “Do you feel all right? There is nothing you need?”
“Nothing.”
Her pinched face said more than the single word. She wanted peace and resolution before she went home to God, and while there was no physical reason to point to a quick demise, Lena had witnessed many patients suspecting death was near.
Francine had that look now. “Would you like to pray with me, Francine?”
“Do you know the psalms, Lena? Psalm one-twenty-one?”
She knew it well, it had dripped from her tongue countless times in Russia. “I lift my eyes up to the hills; Where does my help come from?”
“My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth,” Francine finished. She gripped Lena’s hand, then let it go. “Thank you, Magdalena. You bless me with your patience, your presence. I believe the Lord our God brought you here, to this place, to be with me in these final days.”
“Then this is good for both.” Lena leaned down and kissed Francine’s soft brow. The thinness of the skin, the lack of color, the muted eyes, the restless spirit...
All of these spoke to Lena, touching her heart, her soul with the old woman’s worries. “But I would like very much to keep you around for a while. No one else plays cards with your level of enthusiasm.”
“Another day, perhaps?”
“Another day, Francine.”
She left the room, conflicted.
The pictures of two beautiful, healthy children. A woman of means, not poor. Why didn’t they come to visit? Were they selfish? Spoiled?
The other staff supposed so, but something in Francine’s manner, her gaze, when she spoke of the children, said more. But what that was, Lena didn’t know.
She made note of Francine’s condition before she left for the day. The charge nurse saw the note and nodded. “I don’t think death is far off for our friend.”
“And her worry is preventing a peaceful passing.”
The older nurse considered that, then shrugged. “But if she passes into God’s arms, then her peace will be complete.”
“Without seeing her children? Saying goodbye? I think that would help ease her way, don’t you?” It made sense to Lena, but the look on the nurse’s face said otherwise. She pulled up a computer file, clicked it open and motioned for Lena to step inside the small area. “There are no children, Lena. She was the wife of William Green, an attorney from the firm that used to represent Eastman Kodak in its day, he was part of a team of patent attorneys who specialized in camera and film technology, but look.” She pointed to Francine’s file. Under the word “children” a blank spot lay wide open.
“But she has pictures.”
The nurse made a face. “Nephew and niece, maybe? Or pretend. You know how this disease goes, Lena. It affects the mind so differently, one to the next. Perhaps these are the children she longed to have and couldn’t.”
Lena didn’t agree, but there was no reason not to agree. “Perhaps it is like that, but when she spoke, Megan, it was with a mother’s voice. A mother’s knowledge.”
Megan closed the file. “And yet, nothing in the file. But with her status, I see no reason to put a damper on her fantasy. Whatever makes her happy works for me. She’s been a wonderful patient. Especially when you’re on duty.”
Lena gathered her things, clocked out, and drove home, but the thought of Francine’s face, her longing, hung with her.
Francine was a mother.
Lena read the look in her face, the regret in her eyes. No matter what the agency forms detailed, at some point in time Francine Green had been a mother. But if that was true?
Where were those beautiful children now?
Chapter Seventeen
Mitchell stared at the various parts of magenta and chrome, then rubbed his chin in thought. Once more, his eyes scanned the directions, then flitted back to the bike. “Okay,” he muttered to no one in particular. “I think I’ve got it.”
“This you have said many times, I think.” Lena eyed him from the comfort of her chair. “But in the store, you said...”
“I know what I said, and it looked like a piece of cake until I opened this never-ending bag of nuts, bolts, and washers.”
“It is important to use them correctly, yes?”
“Unless you want the bike falling apart in the street.”
“I prefer it does not.”
“Well, then.” He stared at the directions, trying to orient himself. For a man who’d worked night and day on the intricacies of building a home, he was not about to let one sixteen-inch bicycle ruin his good standing. With a soft exclamation, he grabbed the directions and turned them around, nodding in satisfaction.
Lena looked at him strangely. “What was wrong?”
“They were upside down. Now we’ll be fine.”
She laughed and set her needle aside, sinking to the floor beside him. “They were not upside down, but they are now. May I help?”
“You may kiss me and go back to your knitting. I’m man enough to do this with minimal cursing.”
“No cursing,” she reminded him, lifting her face for his kiss. The kiss grew, and it was long moments before Mitch raised his head, smiling. Cradling her head, he dropped his forehead to hers.
“Nice,” he whispered, then gently set her away. “Back to your chair. I can’t think of anything as cold and unyielding as steel bolts when you’re next to me. My mind drifts to softer things.”
