Queen, page 27
“Lead away,” Allen said. “I’m already getting hungry.”
The boys shrieked with laughter as they pulled him through the house.
“Something smells wonderful,” he said as he unwound himself from his grandsons.
Queen turned, surprise spread across her face, and then her eyes lit up at the wide grin on the elderly man’s face.
“Allen…I mean, Mr. Whittier, it’s great to see you again.”
“Please, call me Allen,” he corrected her. “And now that we’ve settled that, how many may I have?”
She laughed and pushed the plate toward him. “With an offer like that, there are no limits.”
Allen hovered over the cookies, still warm from the oven, and chose one. He quickly admired the handiwork, praising each boy in turn, and then bit into one with relish.
“Uummm,” he said. “They’re even better than they look.”
Meanwhile Lenore had maneuvered Cody into a corner in the hall. Regardless of what she had promised Allen, she wasn’t budging from her intended mission.
“Cody…if you don’t mind, we need to talk.”
Cody frowned at the tone of Lenore’s voice. He didn’t like what he was thinking. He stepped aside as she walked past him into the living room. He followed her in and motioned for her to sit, but she shook her head.
“No, what I have to say needs to be said standing. Unfortunately I do not come bearing good news.”
Cody shoved his hands in his pockets and stood his ground, staring down at Lenore, waiting for her to continue.
“It has come to my attention that the woman you have hired to care for my grandsons comes from a less than desirable background.”
Cody inhaled sharply. The implied slur she used when referring to Queen as “that woman” made him see red. Queen had been right! Lenore had to have been behind Wally Morrow’s appearance in Snow Gap. How else would she now be in possession of any information regarding Queen?
“What you don’t realize, Lenore, is that none of this is your business. And what you also don’t know is that I know everything there is to know about Queen, right down to the fact that I love her and I’m going to marry her.”
“No! I won’t have it!”
Lenore’s shout could be heard all over the house. Allen jumped, dropping his half-eaten cookie back onto the plate, and made a dash for the living room. Damn her, she promised!
Queen should have known that their arrival meant trouble. She wondered if this was what she’d sensed coming over a week before.
“Boys,” she said, “let’s take a plate of cookies to your grandmother and your dad, okay?”
They nodded, but the frowns on their faces were imprinting deep worry lines across their foreheads, and Queen would have liked to march into the room and shake some sense into that witch. What was wrong with her, anyway? Why couldn’t she just sit back and accept the love that was due her as a grandparent and not try to meddle in the other facets of Cody’s life?
Cody too had to restrain himself from shaking Lenore. “I don’t care whether you like it or not. I’m past trying to work things out with you. No matter what happens, you don’t like it. You don’t want to try. You just want to cause trouble.”
Lenore glared at him; the total lack of emotion in his voice made her angrier. “Well…I don’t think you’ll feel so positive when you read this,” she said, and produced Wally Morrow’s latest report with a flourish.
Cody brushed aside the paper, refusing even to dignify her actions by looking at it. That only made things worse. Allen Whittier entered the room on the run, but Lenore went on before he could speak up.
“She’s nothing but white trash!” she shrieked, forgetting her proper upbringing in the fury of her tirade. “Her father was a no-account gambler. They lived in a terrible slum, next door to a bar, and across the street from harlots. Think of what she’s surely seen…think of what she’s probably done! Why, for that matter…they were all probably nothing but a lot of whores themsel—”
The sound of Allen’s slap reverberated across the room. Cody didn’t know who was more stunned—himself for having witnessed something he’d thought impossible, Allen for standing up to his wife, or Lenore for having suffered it.
And then a noise shattered the silence, and all heads turned toward the sound. Queen stood just inside the doorway with a boy on either side of her. The plate of cookies she’d been holding was at her feet, broken and ruined, just like her dreams.
Queen had walked into the room just in time to hear Lenore’s ugly accusations. And in the space of time it had taken for her brain to register the unfounded rumors of her immorality, something had happened. She’d felt the room tilt. Just a bit, and just enough for her to lose her grip on the plate.
It had crashed at her feet, shattering cookie and china alike, as well as the last of her hopes. No matter how far she ran, she couldn’t outrun her past. Judgmental attitudes had simply followed behind, waiting for her to let down her guard, to actually think that she could love…and trust…and not be hurt again.
She shuddered. The roaring in her ears got louder, and the room started to darken and then turn black. The last thing she remembered seeing were the shocked expressions on Will’s and J.J.’s faces as their grandmother shrieked and the cookies broke.
“Honey…” Cody never got to finish what he’d been about to say. He watched Queen’s face turn pale as she swayed on her feet, staring at the broken plate and cookies as if she’d never seen them before, and then, without a word, fell limply to the floor.
“Oh, no!” Allen’s gasp was nothing more than an echo of what was in all their hearts.
All, save Lenore, made a rush toward Queen, who was lying, unconscious, in the midst of the broken glass and food.
The boys were frozen with fear. All they knew was that their grandmother had yelled and then Queenie had fallen on the floor. J.J. started to cry, and Will turned pale and backed away from the onrush of concerned people hovering over her.
“Queen, honey…”
But she had no answer for Cody as he knelt and gently cradled her head upon his knees. His fingers were shaking, his voice deep with concern, as he touched her clammy skin. It was evident she was in shock. “Damn you, Lenore,” he muttered without looking up.
“That wasn’t my fault,” she said, suddenly aware of other implications. What if the stupid woman had hurt herself? She wouldn’t be to blame.
“Tes! Yes, it was!” Will yelled.
His cry startled everyone. He was backing into the hallway and pointing a shaking finger at his grandmother, his face suffused with anger.
“It was your fault. You said bad things about Queenie. You hurt her feelings. I hate you! I hate you!” he screamed.
“There! You see!” Lenore’s exclamation did nothing to calm the mess in progress. “She’s already turned him against me. I told you, Allen. They have no business being exposed to her kind. They should come live with us like before. There we can give them—”
Cody erupted. “Dammit, woman. Just shut the hell up!” The look he gave his father-in-law was telling. “Allen, for God’s sake, please…get her out of here.”
It was all the urging Allen needed. He got to his feet, leaving the care of Queen to those who loved her best, and grabbed his wife by the arm, leading her from the room, ignoring her protests.
Cody lifted Queen into his arms and carried her to the sofa. “Donny, go get me a wet cloth, will you, son?” he asked as he smoothed her curls away from her pale, silent face.
Donny did as he was told.
“J.J., you and Will go get a dustpan and a broom from the kitchen and sweep up the cookies and broken glass before someone gets cut, okay?”
Tears were puddling in J.J.’s eyes as he leaned over Queen’s inert body and patted her cheek with a smudgy hand that had missed getting washed. “Is she going to die?” he asked.
Cody’s heart skipped a beat. Of course that’s what they would think. The last time they’d seen their mother had been at the funeral services, lying in a coffin. She’d been just as still…and just as pale.
“No, son. Of course not. She just fainted. It’s something women do sometimes, and it doesn’t really hurt them at all, I promise.”
“You swear?”
“I swear,” Cody said. “Now run along and get that broom. Queen will be proud of you for helping, okay?”
J.J. smiled a little. Just hearing that his Queenie would approve made him rush to do his father’s bidding.
Cody’s hand cupped her face. “Oh, love. What else will you have to go through because of my family?” And then a thought occurred to him that was so frightening, he couldn’t even say it aloud. Will you love me enough to stay…or will you finally be wanting that bus ticket after all?
Donny ran back into the room, handed his father a damp cloth, then sat on the arm of the couch and watched, his blue eyes wide, his cheeks red with anger.
Like his father, he was enraged at the unjustness with which Queen had been treated. He remembered weeks ago hearing her tell the bedtime story about the gambler’s little daughters and what a sad and ugly life they’d had. He wasn’t stupid. He’d known then that Queen was trying to tell them about herself. But it hadn’t made him think less of her.
In fact, he’d come to think of her as something of a savior. After all, she’d saved her little sisters from starving to death, maybe even worse…and then saved him and his brothers from being taken away.
His fingers curled into fists as he watched his father pressing the damp cloth across her forehead. No one better say anything bad about her again, Donny swore to himself. If they do…they’ll be sorry.
“Queen, sweetheart…can you hear me?”
Cody’s voice was as soft as his touch, and yet somehow they both threaded their way into Queen’s subconscious and gently pulled her back.
Even before her eyes opened, Cody knew when she came to. Her chin began to tremble, and as hard as she might, she could not stop the tears that slipped out from beneath her eyelids.
He pressed his forehead against her arm and squeezed her hand gently, resisting the urge to scoop her into his arms and just run with her and never look back. But he couldn’t, and he knew it.
One of the reasons was sitting at the end of the couch, watching his every move. And from the look on his son’s face, Donny wouldn’t have let him get out the door with Queen. He was his father’s son all the way.
“Dad, is she going to be all right?”
“Tes. Why don’t you go check on Will and J.J.? I think Queen probably needs some time to herself, okay, son?”
Donny nodded, giving them a last backward glance as he left the room. On the way out he bent down and picked up a bit of china that J.J. had missed sweeping up, then held it carefully as he went in search of his brothers.
“Oh, Cody.”
Those two small words held so much despair. Queen opened her eyes and, without waiting for the invitation, sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I don’t know why I did that,” she whispered. “I never faint.”
“Stop it, sweetheart,” Cody said. “Don’t you dare apologize. In fact, you’ve got a big apology coming. From the way Allen looked when he dragged Lenore out of the room, it’ll be a doozy.”
Queen tried to smile but didn’t quite make it. Instead her mouth reshaped into a wry, bitter twist. “And she won’t mean a damned word of it. Why bother? I don’t need to hear it, and she’ll hate me for having to say it.”
Cody hugged her, then, unable to stop himself, kissed her, removing the taste of anger and despair from her lips.
“I love you, lady,” Cody said. “And you’ve got quite a rooting section. The boys nearly took their grandmother apart, especially Will.”
Suddenly she remembered the look on their faces just as she fell. It was a combination of fear and helplessness to stop what was happening in their lives.
A familiar feeling of dread began to resurface, and she remembered the terror she’d felt days ago when she’d gone running to Cody’s room in the middle of the night.
“It finally happened, didn’t it, Cody?”
He nodded. He didn’t have to ask what she meant. He could tell by the look on her face that she was remembering.
“Yes, honey, I guess it did. That’ll teach me to ever doubt your powers again, right?”
He smiled and ran a thumb across her lower lip, trying to tease her out of the panic he saw settling in her eyes.
She caught his hand and held it to her breast, needing the pressure of his touch to calm the thunder of her heartbeat. “But I’m still scared, Cody. I don’t think it’s over. What if Lenore tries to take the boys away? What if—”
“Hush. She can try until the moon turns blue, but it won’t happen. We won’t let it.”
He sealed his promise with another kiss and then held her, confident that with Queen at his side, he could conquer anything…even Lenore, the wicked witch of the South—south Florida, that was.
Allen was shaking. He all but flung his wife into Cody’s den and then slammed the door behind him.
“You’ve gone too far,” he said. “I warned you, Lenore. Damn you to hell, I warned you.”
As usual, Lenore wasn’t listening. “Did you see her? She couldn’t even face the truth about herself. She passed out from shock, knowing that her ruse was all over.”
She began to pace the floor, thumping a fist against her palm as she conceived another plan of action. “When we get back home, I’ll call our lawyer and start proceedings at once. It won’t take long for a judge to see my point of view. I’m certain I’m right!”
Allen sighed and wiped a weary hand across his face. She would never change, but it wasn’t too late for him. He still had some years left in him, and he suddenly didn’t want to waste them any longer by living in her shadow.
“While you’re at it,” he said, “you’d better contact a divorce lawyer as well. I’m sick and tired of this. You lie and you manipulate, and I refuse to be a part of it anymore.” At that moment he would have given anything to take a picture of Lenore’s face. “And…you’d be well advised to rethink your position on claiming custody of someone else’s children. I don’t think there’s a judge sitting on the bench who’ll award custody of a teenager and two prepubescent boys to a woman of your age.”
“Allen!” It was all she could think to say.
“Actually, you’ll play hell even getting your side of the story heard, because if this ever comes to court again, I’ll be testifying on Cody’s behalf, against you.” His finger never wavered as he thrust it within inches of her nose.
“Allen!”
“You already said that, Lenore. Surely for once in your miserable life you’re not out of things to say?”
With that parting shot, he walked out of the room, leaving his wife with nothing but the lingering bitterness of his words. Suddenly she began to shake. She staggered backward, reaching out blindly behind her for the chair she knew was there, and then, when she felt the arm, dropped onto the seat with an undignified plop.
“Allen…”
But as he’d so rudely reminded her…she’d already said that. She dropped her face into her hands and, for the first time since she’d buried her daughter, cried…and they were true tears of remorse.
“Dad!”
Donny’s desperate, wild-eyed look as he burst into the room stopped Cody’s heart. Something was wrong!
“What is it, son? Did Lenore—”
“Dad…I can’t find Will.”
Queen was standing before she ever knew she’d moved from her reclining position on the couch. The total fear in Donny’s voice was spreading to her own warning system. Will! Where had he gone?
“But he and J.J. were just here…sweeping up the—”
“J.J. did it. He said he couldn’t find Will and did it by himself.”
“Oh, God,” Queen said, and started up the stairs. “Will! Will!” she cried, and began opening doors and searching through closets, shoving clothing aside, praying that she’d find him hidden in the depths. He was nowhere to be found.
Her cries were an echo of Cody’s own shouts as he started his search downstairs. He burst into the den, startling Lenore so badly that she didn’t have time to hide her tears.
“Have you seen Will?” he shouted.
At the shake of her head, he left so quickly that she didn’t have time to ask why Will would be missing. She got to her feet and ran out the door, joining in the now frantic melee of Bonners who were all but ransacking their home in search of the missing child.
“Will!” Queen shouted as she ran into her own room, hoping that he had taken refuge there. But he had not. Pressing her fingers to her lips to stop the trembling, she had a sudden idea. He and J.J. were inseparable. Maybe he knew something he wasn’t telling.
“Did you find—”
Cody didn’t have time to finish his question as Queen grabbed him by the arms. “Where’s J.J.?” she asked.
Instantly he understood the reason for her question and turned to his eldest son. “Donny?”
Donny led the way into the kitchen, where Allen sat holding J.J. in his lap.
Queen ran to them, knelt, and then took a deep breath, aware that she’d get nothing out of him by increasing his own panic. He’d already endured more than a seven-year-old child ought to.
“Honey…” He looked up at her and then crawled from Allen’s lap into her arms without a word.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m fine, now.”
J.J. sighed and laid his head on Queen’s shoulders, patting her cheek as she cuddled him against her.
“I told you, son,” Cody said, stroking J.J.’s hair as Queen held him. “Your Queenie is okay, just like I said she would be.”
“Honey,” Queen said when she could feel J.J. beginning to relax, “Will didn’t help you sweep up my mess, did he?’
J.J. shook his head. “I couldn’t find him, so I did it by myself.”
“And you did a good job, too,” she added, looking to Cody for support.
