Queen, page 20
She tore it open and sighed with pleasure, smiling as the skeins fell across her lap in royal profusion. The yarn was precisely what she’d ordered—ten skeins—and the exact color of his eyes. The knitting needles she’d asked for had been poked safely into a thick skein of the deep blue wool, and the pattern book was at the bottom of the pack, just as she’d hoped.
“You gave me one of yours,” she said, fingering the wool and remembering the sweaters that he’d outgrown and passed on to her. “I’ll give you one of mine.”
She ran through the house, quickly setting things to rights and starting the laundry she’d abandoned earlier. In no time she was through with the hasty cleanup and ready to sit down and begin her own special project.
She could hardly wait for it to take shape as she started a chain, knitting with quick, sure flicks of the needles, then turning at the end of the chain and beginning the purl back across. When Christmas came he was going to be so surprised.
The days fell into a calm routine. The boys went to school. Queen took care of the mundane details of the house and, when the mood struck her, drove into Snow Gap in Cody’s Blazer to go shopping. Dennis and Cody dealt with the project at hand.
And gradually, Cody’s sweater, and their lives, began to take shape.
“Are you gonna tell Dad?” Will asked J.J.
“What if it makes him mad?”
A sigh accompanied the snort before Will’s comment. “He won’t get mad, stupid. He always told us not to talk to strangers, remember?”
“Yeah, but we didn’t talk to him. He talked to us, remember? We just ran away, right?”
There was little Will could say in argument to J.J.’s rebuttal. “I know, but if we hadn’t run, what would that man have done? Maybe he’d have snatched us like that bad guy did Queenie. Then what, stupid?”
J.J. got quiet.
Queen’s heart skipped a beat at the tone of their conversation. She stood in the hallway and continued to listen to the boys’ conversation, unashamed of eavesdropping when their safety was at stake. What on earth had been happening to the boys that would make them not want to tell Cody? She’d never known them to be reticent with their father before and couldn’t imagine what would be at the root of their fears. Then she got an answer she didn’t want to hear.
“But if we tell him the man asked about Queenie…what if he makes her leave so the man won’t bother us anymore? Then what, yourself, stupid?”
Queen sighed and buried her face in her hands. Oh, God! Who on earth could be asking questions about her? And why ask them of children who knew little to nothing about her past?
And then a thought occurred to her. Maybe it did not have to do with her past in Cradle Creek, but with the present. A swift vision of Lenore Whittier’s angry face and bitter words crossed her mind before she knocked once and then pushed aside the partially opened door.
“Hi, guys. Get through with your homework yet?”
“Teah, we’re through,” they replied together.
“Where’s Donny?”
Will shrugged. “Maybe playing Nintendo…we don’t know.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and wished Cody were there. “So, what’s new with you?” she asked. “School going okay?”
They both looked away. “Fine, I guess,” Will said, unable to completely ignore the woman who’d filled his life with peace and comfort.
“Making many new friends?” Queen asked, persisting in the hope that they’d open up to her instead.
“Some,” J.J. said. “There’s a neat guy who sits next to me in homeroom. He can burp anytime he wants. All you have to do is ask him…he’ll do it for free.”
“Wow!” Queen smiled and tried not to laugh, remembering the purpose of the conversation.
“That’s stupid,” Will said, poking J.J. on the arm.
“It’s not, you’re just jealous ’cause you’re bigger and you still can’t burp like Weeber.”
“Weeber?” Disbelief colored Queen’s voice. “Is that his real name?”
“Yeah,” J.J. said. “Weeber…Michael Weeber.”
“Oh.” She’d forgotten about the male thing to call peers by their surnames instead of their given names. It was a whole new world every day just waking up in a house full of men, no matter their ages. “Well, maybe he can come out and play with you sometime,” she offered, and then added, “If your daddy doesn’t mind.”
“That’d be cool!” J.J. said.
The boys got quiet. Queen saw a quick look pass between them.
“Did your daddy ever tell you not to talk to strangers?” J.J. asked her.
“He sure did,” Queen said. “And we didn’t…ever. Not me. Not any of my sisters. They might hurt you.”
Will nodded. “See, I told you so.”
“Why?” Queen asked. “Has someone been bothering you?” She sensed J.J. withdraw, and yet she persisted. “You can tell me,” she said. “I’ll understand. Besides, that’s what grown-ups are for…to fix what little guys can’t.”
J.J. gave in. “There was this man at school…he asked me my name, and when I told him, he asked me if I knew you. He asked me if you were nice. I ran away.” J.J. ducked his head. “I didn’t answer him. But if I had…I would have told him yes. I would have said you were nice, Queenie, honest I would.”
She hugged him, angry beyond words that someone had interfered in a child’s world enough to terrorize him, however innocent it might be. “Did he touch you?” she asked.
“No!” Will intervened. “We were inside the schoolyard. He was outside the fence. He can’t come in, right?”
“He’s not supposed to,” Queen said. “Did you tell your teacher?”
J.J. shook his head.
“If it happens again, you must run and tell your teacher that a man is bothering you. Will you promise me that?”
J.J. nodded. “I promise,” he said, relieved that he’d been given a solution and that no one was angry.
“What did he look like?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Just a man. But all weird.”
Queen frowned. A child’s version of weird might be quite different from an adult’s. “Weird, how, honey?”
J.J. thought. “Well…he had on a long droopy coat, you know…the kind like Columbo on TV wears? And he had a big pointy nose and a real funny mouth. And the goofiest thing was his throat poked out when he talked.”
Queen listened, absorbing his description and realizing that it was, for a child, quite thorough, even down to the description of an oversize Adam’s apple that bobbed as he spoke. “Did he tell you his name?” she asked.
“Naw…I ran away too fast.”
“Good boy!” Queen said, and hugged him, including Will in her praise. “Now promise, if it happens again…what do you do?”
“Tell the teacher!” they shouted in unison.
“Right! Now, if you’re through with homework, I left a snack on the kitchen table. Don’t make a mess…and don’t fight. There’s plenty for two, okay?”
“Okay!” they said, and burst from the room, leaving Queen alone on their bed, absorbing the news.
“Oh, Lord,” she muttered. “Cody…where are you when I need you?”
But she knew where he was, at Lowry AFB completing the last of the proposal for the building site of the survival training camp. All she could do was wait for him to come home, and she already knew that it would be tomorrow at the earliest before he would.
She walked into her room, dug out Dennis Macon’s card from her dresser drawer, and fiddled with it as she tried to decide if this was emergency enough to call Cody home.
Minutes later she decided that first things came first. Tomorrow she’d go to the school herself and talk to the principal, warn him that a man was lurking around the schoolyard. Then when Cody came home, she could tell him what J.J. had said, and what she’d done, and let him take it from there.
With the decision made, she went in search of Donny to tell him what she’d learned and ask him to be on the lookout as well. It wouldn’t hurt to have extra bodyguards for a trusting seven-year-old.
Donny Bonner had inherited more than looks from his father. That night, after his talk with Queenie, he went to bed with a whole new attitude toward his two little brothers. They’d gone from being little pests to precious possessions. No one was going to bother his brothers. Not if he had anything to say about it.
Long after the boys had gone to bed, Queen sat staring into the embers of the dying fire and tried to remember her life before Cody and his sons. The more time passed, the harder it became to remember the ugliness of Cradle Creek and the mean, unforgiving way in which she and her sisters had often been treated. Her life was being filled now with something she hadn’t known existed until she’d met the Bonners. Trust.
They trusted her to take care of them and, in turn, loved her for it. She loved them for the fact that they trusted her to do it. It was a good deal all the way around.
The phone rang, startling her out of her musings. She picked it up on the second ring and waited to hear the sound of his voice.
“Queen?”
She forgot she hadn’t answered. “Hi,” she said, and laughed softly. “I knew it was you. I forgot to say hello.”
He chuckled. “As long as you don’t forget about me, we’re okay.”
“I think you’re safe,” she said.
“If I were there, you wouldn’t be,” he said, and sighed as he heard her breath catch. Just listening to her talk made him hard. “Anything new?” he asked.
Then she remembered. “Yes, there is,” she said. “But I think it can wait until you get back. You’re coming home tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“You’ve got my promise,” he said, and then he thought about the hesitancy in her voice. “Are you sure you don’t need to talk? The boys aren’t sick. You’re not afraid, are you? If you are, then I’ll—”
“Cody, I’m fine, they’re not sick, and what I need to tell you can wait. Okay?”
He sighed. “Okay. But I hate like hell not being there when things like this happen.”
“You’ll soon have everything in working order, and things like this won’t happen. Besides, I can take care of things all by myself.” She felt compelled to add, “Most of the time. Remember, that’s why I’m here, so you can be there.”
“No, lady. That’s not entirely true. You’re in my house because you’re in my life. I love you, honey. Sleep tight. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“‘Night, Cody. I love you, too.”
She hung up before he had time to answer and then smiled. That hadn’t been nearly as difficult to say as she’d imagined. Of course, the fact that she hadn’t had to face him when it came out had influenced the decision.
The phone rang. She picked it up with a grin.
“Damn you, woman. You wait until I’m hours away and the only connection between us is a telephone line? My God, my lady…do you know how long I’ve waited to hear you tell me that?”
Cody dropped back onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling, aware that if wishes could fly, he’d already be airborne.
Queen closed her eyes and absorbed the texture of his voice as it wrapped around her soul. “No, but if you hurry home, I might be tempted into saying it again…sometime soon.”
“Ah, Queen, my heart is already there,” Cody said, and disconnected as suddenly as he had called.
Chapter 14
An unwelcome sensation of déjà vu came over Queen as she entered the principal’s office at Snow Gap Elementary School. She took a seat in the outer office and absorbed the ambiance. Schools seemed to have one thing in common, a lingering odor of chalk dust, floor sweep, and the sweaty bodies of children hard at work and play.
But this one differed drastically from the school in Cradle Creek that Queen and her sisters had graduated from. It was clean and updated, and she could hear the purr of electric typewriters in an adjoining office as well as a copy machine kicking out paper with smooth regularity.
She closed her eyes, remembering vividly the day she and her sisters had gone to enroll at Cradle Creek and the fear of rejection that had accompanied her.
That day had been a turning point in Queen’s life. She would never forget Jedda Willis’s kindness. The principal of Cradle Creek had been an extremely sensitive woman, one who’d immediately seen the defenses twelve-year-old Queen was struggling to maintain. Mrs. Willis had let Johnny Houston’s daughters maintain what dignity they could in the face of their adversity.
“Miss Houston?”
The secretary’s voice startled Queen. She stood with a jerk, fumbling for her purse, smoothing down her hair and clothing in a sudden fit of anxiety, and then she remembered that she wasn’t in trouble. J.J. was the one with problems. But in Cody’s absence, it was up to her to fix them.
“Yes,” Queen answered. “I’m coming.”
Stanley Brass looked up in pleased surprise at the woman who entered his office. He stood up and came around his desk with an outstretched hand. “Queen Houston, isn’t it? We met at the bank.”
Queen smiled. “Yes, we did. I’m glad you remember me. It makes my visit here easier.”
Stanley nodded as he ushered her to a seat. “Now, what brings you to my office? Are the boys having problems of which I’m unaware?”
“You could say that,” Queen said. She began to repeat the boys’ conversation that she’d overheard as well as what J.J. told her.
Stanley’s expression grew serious. He fiddled with a pen and made periodic notes as she continued to talk, pausing only now and then to interrupt to clarify the description she was giving him.
“…and that’s about all he would say regarding the man’s description,” Queen finished. She leaned back on the chair and sighed, relieved to have given part of the responsibility of this problem to someone else.
Stanley frowned. This wasn’t the first time something like this had occurred. With the influx of strangers in town every year during ski season, they often had an oddball or two pull such stunts. Unfortunately, when it involved children, it involved him. The world had changed drastically since he was a child, and he often felt a sense of helplessness in relating to it.
“I can’t thank you enough for coming to me with this,” he said. “I’ll take instant precautions, of course. I’ll meet with my teachers this evening after school. And…I’ll notify Sheriff Miller immediately. He will need to be on the lookout for this man. He could be preying on other children outside the school system.”
“I know that you’ll do all you can,” Queen said. “But my concern still rests on the fact that the man was asking about me. I can’t help but feel responsible.”
Stanley shook his head. “No, Miss Houston, I tend to disagree. I learned long ago in this business that you can’t be responsible for other people’s shortcomings. You do what you can when the opportunity is presented, and then mourn for what you can’t. But you never…absolutely never…feel guilt. You can’t heal the world. Remember that.”
Queen nodded and stood. “And I’m sure you’ll be hearing from the boys’ father just as soon as he returns. I didn’t think I was stepping out of line by coming to you in his stead. I felt this was too pressing an issue to wait.”
“I think you were right,” Stanley said. “And thank you for coming. Please keep me informed of any developments from your end; I’ll do the same.”
Queen left the office with an entirely new appreciation for Stanley Brass. What had been most assuring of all was that he’d taken her seriously, treated her as a respected citizen, and believed her implicitly. It was a new and heady experience for her.
She walked down the hall and was about to exit when the bell rang for classes to change. She stood aside as children swarmed out of the rooms like drones in a hive, hunting for the next place in which they needed to be.
J.J. spotted her instandy. It would have been impossible not to. She stood heads above the children and most of the teachers, her vivid coloring and height a beacon to any who chose to look her way.
“Queenie!” His shriek of delight was heard by several other children as he broke ranks and ran toward her.
She grinned and caught him on impact, ruffling his hair and pulling at his collar as he danced around her feet, thrilled that someone special was available to show off to his friends.
“This is my Queenie,” J.J. said as his teacher came through the crowd.
Queen smiled at the woman who had come to check on her wayward pupil. “Mrs. Barrett, isn’t it?” she asked. “I’m Queen Houston. J.J.’s—”
“Oh!” Lisa Barrett’s face broke into a wide, infectious smile. “Miss Houston! I’m so glad to finally meet you. J.J. talks of you constantly. It’s Queenie says this and Queenie says that. You’ve made quite an impression on this young man, no doubt.” And then on a more serious note, she added, “And may I say we’re all extremely glad that you came out of your ordeal unharmed.”
Queen’s eyes filled with unexpected tears as she nodded, then looked down at the unabashed adoration J.J. was giving her. Her hand slid gently across his forehead, then came to rest on his shoulder.
“Well, he made an impression on me, too. I’d say the feeling is mutual. Actually, the entire Bonner family has pretty much claimed my heart.” She blushed the moment she said it. “I mean, the boys are special…you understand…”
Lisa Barrett grinned. “Oh, don’t bother to explain. I met their father. I know exactly what you mean.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Well, I’m happily married these last fifteen years, but if I weren’t…and if…” She laughed. “You know what I mean.”
Queen grinned. There was no need to reply.
“J.J., say good-bye to Queen, and quickly, please. You need to get to your next class,” Mrs. Barrett said. “Miss Houston, it’s been a pleasure. I hope we meet again soon. We have a yearly tradition of Halloween parties in the elementary. If you would like, we always need sponsors to bake—”
