Staking His Claim Read online

  "And his father?"

  "Hard to say. Kid's real protective of him, that's for sure. And Ryan talked to him, told me the meds he found were mostly painkillers, apparently for a bad back. Jacob's younger than I had at first thought, maybe in his late forties? Elijah swore his father didn't drink, and I'm inclined to believe him. The back keeps him in a lot of pain, but he's not in any danger of dyin' anytime too soon."

  "Any chance of his getting better?"

  "Have no idea. Jacob said his regular doctor's over in Claremore, he goes to him for his disability checkups and his prescriptions, but since he's otherwise uninsured, apparently that's about all anyone can do."

  Dawn's killer instincts came roaring to the surface. "Do you know if he got hurt on the job?"

  "He didn't say. Why?"

  "Then workman's comp should cover it. Sounds to me as though somebody's trying to cheat him out of the care that's due him. You tell Jacob to get some legal advice, find out what his options are…why are you laughing?"

  "Because I sure wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of a case you were arguin'. Whoo-ee—I can practically see your eyes glow from here."

  So much for his not teasing. She felt a dumb smile stretch across her cheeks—Oops. Teasing: not good. Liking it: let's not go anywhere near there.

  "That poor man, though," she said, bringing her thoughts to heel. "And poor Elijah, having to deal with that on his own. What happened to his mother…?"

  "You okay?"

  "Me? I'm fine. Why?"

  "Your voice got all funny, that's all."

  "Oh." She cleared her throat. "Dust. Or something. So. About Elijah's mother?"

  "Died when Eli was real little. No grandparents or other relatives that the boy knew of. Or that Jacob would admit to, at least. So it's just the two of them. But, honey, from what we could tell, there really doesn't seem to be any cause to involve the authorities. Might cause more problems than solve them, you know?"

  "You're sure?"

  "Trust me—if I thought the boy was in any real danger, don't you think I'd do something about it? Or Ryan would?"

  She let out a sigh. "I suppose. But…you'll keep an eye on him, anyway?"

  His laugh filtered down the line. "You know, that mushy side of you kinda takes the edge off the scariness."

  "Was that supposed to be a compliment?"

  "Nope. Just an observation." He paused. "Well. At the risk of venturing into dangerous territory…how're you feeling? Still gettin' sick?"

  "What? Oh. No. Well, just a little in the mornings sometimes. But I'm otherwise fine."

  "You eatin' okay? Gettin' plenty of rest?"

  "Yes, Cal. I really can take care of myself," she said at the same time she heard him say, "I would've checked up on you sooner—"

  "You don't have to 'check up on me'!"

  "—but I didn't want you to think I was getting in your face. But you know what? It occurs to me, what with this being my baby you're carrying and all, I don't give a damn whether you think I'm getting in your face or not. So you find a doctor yet?"

  After she peeled herself off the wall from where his tirade had plastered her, she said, "I'm still looking."

  "Dammit, Dawn! You're nearly four months along!"

  "I know how—" she lowered her voice "—far along I am, okay? Which happens to be ten weeks, if you're keeping track. Oh, Lord…does this mean you're gonna call every day from now on?"

  "Maybe. You gonna screen my calls?"

  "Of course not. That would be…" Tempting. "…childish."

  "That would be my take on it, but you never know with women."

  "And that, buster, is a sexist remark."

  "Only kind I know how to make, darlin'. And don't you go getting all pissy on me—you know I'm just messing with you."

  She decided against pointing out that "messing with her" was how they got into this particular mess to begin with. Fiddling with a paper clip on her desk, she asked, "How's things with the farm?"

  "Fine," he said in that clipped, don't-wanna-talk-about-it tone endemic to macho country boys. Then he said, "You know, I barely recognized you when you answered, but now you sound like yourself again."

  "You really know how to make a girl's day, don't you?"

  He laughed. Her toes curled. She could have stayed on the phone with him forever, she realized, which prompted both a reality check and a glance at the clock. And a mild coronary.

  "I hate to do this, but I'm really pressed for time—"

  "Just one more thing and then I'll let you go—you thinking about coming home for Christmas?"

  "What? Oh, geez, I don't know, I hadn't really thought about it. Depends on how much work I have to do—"

  "Because I'm thinking of coming there."

  Her breath left her lungs. "What?"

  "I've always wanted to see New York, after hearing Mama talking about it so much. You could show me around. And we can start discussing names. Damn, Frank's bellowing about something out by the barn, I'd better go see what's up. Anyway, I'll talk to you later, okay?"

  And he was gone before she had a chance to decide whether it was okay or not. Although at the moment, "not" was winning, hands down.

  Cal in New York? The idea was as preposterous as…as his putting one of his horses on a plane and sending it here. The thought of him striding down the streets she walked every day, seeing for himself what she took for granted…sitting on her Macy's sofa in her tiny Upper Westside apartment, his long legs stretched out half way across her Turkish rug…

  Wait. Names?

  Well, yes, when a couple has a child, the couple usually names it.

  She made a face. She'd be six months pregnant by then. Really pregnant.

  Pregnant enough that—if she could believe some of her colleagues who'd already been this route—she might not mind a reenactment of The Night We Made Baby.

  Oh, man. Was she screwed or what?

  * * *

  Cal leaned back in his office chair, one foot propped up on the edge of the sorry old desk that still smelled of his father's pipe tobacco whenever he opened the middle drawer. Talking to Dawn had sent a thousand memories skedaddling through his brain, memories from way before last summer. When they were kids, little kids, her presence in his life had simply been a fact, like the earth being round and that two plus two would always be four, no matter what. That they never saw eye-to-eye on anything, that she seemed to think it was her mission in life to piss him off on a regular basis, was beside the point. Her existence alone was enough. When she was around, things were just…good. Right. The way they were supposed to be.

  When had that changed? When had she stopped being simply there, like air or sky or the smoky blue Ozarks in the distance? And why had it changed? Even after his mother's death, when Ivy no longer had as much reason to bring Dawn out to the farm to visit, they were still in school together, in the same classes, even, until high school, when Dawn took extra classes so she could graduate early.

  Had she pulled away?

  Or had he let her go?

  "Lunch is on the table," Ethel said from the doorway, her tightly curled hair the color of a brand-new penny today. "If you can drag yourself away from your daydreaming long enough to eat."

  Cal's boot clomped to the wooden floor. "I'm not daydreaming."

  "No, you're plotting to go to New York City to see Dawn."

  "How the hell'd you know that? You been standing at the door?"

  "I was passin' by on my way to the john, and your voice carries." She crossed her arms over a red sweatshirt with beads and junk stuck all over it. "Don't tell me you're thinking of dragging her back here like some caveman."

  "Ethel, believe me…" Cal stood, stretching out his back to make the vertebrae pop between his shoulderblades. "Even if I was dumb enough to entertain that idea, I'm sure not dumb enough to think it'd work."

  A minute or so later, seated in front of his sandwich and potato salad, he said, "You were around when Ivy was carrying
Dawn, right?"

  "Honey, some days I feel like I was around when Eve was carrying Cain and Abel. Why?"

  "You got any idea who her father is? Or was?"

  Pouring his tea, she shook her head. "None at all. Ivy never so much as dropped a hint. My guess is, he wasn't local. Or maybe he was married. Or both."

  "How'd people feel about that? Ivy being an unwed mother, I mean."

  Ethel came over and sat down across from him, peeling the shell off a hardboiled egg. "What do you think? Some took it as a personal insult, especially those predisposed to thinking Ivy was a little on the strange side to begin with. Bad enough when word got out she was a registered Democrat. Others, like your mama, didn't take it one way or the other." She dispatched the top half of the egg and said around it, "What brought this on?"

  "I'm not sure. Just playing around with the puzzle pieces, I guess, seeing which way they go. I always thought Dawn left because she had bigger plans for her life than she'd ever be able to realize around here, but now…Hell, I don't even know why I'm thinking about any of this. It's not like it changes anything."

  Ethel finished her egg—which she would undoubtedly call "lunch," only to polish off a slab of cake or something later in the name of not letting it go to waste—her brows dipped behind her glasses as if she had something to say but had decided not to. For the moment. Then she waved her hand. "Oh—I almost forgot—Sherman Mosely called, said to tell you that paperwork's all ready to go. It's gonna be a real pain when he retires, and that's a fact. Who the heck wants to trek all the way to Claremore just to make out a will or something? I mean…" She got up to carry her plate to the sink, dumping the eggshell into the garbage. "Might be just the ticket, you know, for a bright young thing who's looking for something part-time after she has a baby? Or something."

  "Excuse me? What was that about not dragging her back here like some caveman?"

  "There's a difference between forcing someone back against her will and dangling a little bait in front of her."

  "The bait's been dangled, Ethel. The she-wolf isn't interested. She left Haven for a reason, you know."

  "Oh, I have no doubt she left Haven for a reason. I'm just wondering if she really knows what that reason is. Or if you do, for that matter. You finished with that plate yet?"

  "You can see I'm not and what the hell's that supposed to mean?"

  "I mean, I don't think that gal left because of her ambitions, or because of what some narrow-minded people might have said or done to her because her mama wasn't married. I think she left because of you, I think she's staying away because of you, and I think if there's any chance at all of the two of you raising this baby together, you're gonna have to figure out what that is."

  Cal let the glass of iced tea thunk back onto the table. "I didn't drive her away, Ethel."

  "Didn't say that. Although her seeing you cozy up to everything with curves and a willing smile all through high school probably didn't help matters any."

  "You think Dawn was jealous?"

  "Didn't say that, either. But I saw the way she used to look at you when you two were little. Like Donna Reed gawking at Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, only in the early part when they were kids, so it was different actors playing Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart."

  Cal knew better than to even try to straighten that one out. Besides, he was having enough trouble straightening out his own thoughts at the moment. "I did ask her out, once," he said. "She turned me down."

  "When was this?"

  "I don't know. Ninth grade, maybe?"

  "And you mean to tell me you actually think she meant that no?"

  "Well, let's see…I said, 'Wanna go to the movies with me on Saturday?' and she said, 'Why would I want to do that?' If there's any other way to interpret that, I'd sure like to know."

  "How about you probably took her by surprise and those were the first words to come out of her mouth? For the love of Pete, Cal—how many foals've you raised that took to the bridle right off, either?"

  Cal frowned. "So you're saying I should've tried again?"

  "Boy, you have just set a new record in the 'better late than never' category."

  "So where the hell were you sixteen years ago, when your advice might have done some good?"

  They both fell silent, remembering exactly what they'd been doing—watching Henry Logan, Sr., fade away after Cal's mother's death, five years earlier. Not two weeks after Cal's ill-fated attempt at taking his and Dawn's relationship into new territory, his father died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack.

  "All the Logan men love real hard," Ethel said quietly. "In some cases, like your daddy's, maybe too hard. When they hurt, they hurt deep. So deep, sometimes, they find it easier to give up than to try again. Ryan and Hank, both, nearly let the pain of losing, of living, stop them from finding the happiness that was theirs by rights. And your father…" She sighed.

  "Lord knows I thought the world of that man, but grieving's a process. Not a destiny."

  "I'm not grieving, Ethel, if that's your point. You can't mourn something you never had. Or never would've had. What if I had asked her again, and she'd said yes? What would've come of it? Seems to me our getting close back then would've only made things worse when it came time for her to leave. Because she would've still left, Ethel, no matter what she and I might've had going."

  The old woman shrugged. "If that's what you wanna believe, nothin' I can do to stop you."

  Confused and agitated and just plum annoyed with life in general, Cal pushed himself up from the table. "Okay—since you're so all-fired smart about all this, I don't suppose you have any suggestions about Dawn's and my current situation?"

  "Me? Hell, no. Far be it from me to stick my nose in where it doesn't belong."

  "I've got work to do," Cal muttered, slamming his hat on his head and heading for the back door.

  "You can say that again," she yelled behind him.

  Chapter 5

  The woman sitting across from Dawn's desk in the no-frills storefront legal clinic in East Harlem was just like dozens of others Dawn had helped over the past four years. Oh, their skin colors varied, and some were so overweight they barely fit on the seat of the thirty-year-old molded plastic chair while others were thin to the point of emaciation, but the how-did-this-happen-to-me? look in their blue or black or brown eyes was always the same.

  At twenty-two, Valerie Abernathy already had four kids. The last one's father had walked out three months ago. She was there because some collection agency was calling her ten times a day about a bill she didn't know anything about, she said.

  "I don't get it," Valerie said, jiggling the fussy six-month-old in her arms while her other kids ransacked the toy bin on the other side of Dawn's cubicle. "Things was good between him and me for a long time. I mean, he'd talk so pretty, and bring me all kinds of little treats and stuff, swearin' up one side and down the other ain't nobody for him but me. Then he goes and pulls this crap."

  Their stories were all the same, too, each recital scraping off another piece of Dawn's heart. She thought of the divorce clients in her eastside firm who'd practically come to blows over who got which house, the Miro and/or the Peugeot. Did any of them even have a clue what it might be like to have to fight for a few dollars a week so your kids didn't go hungry? Still, rich or destitute or hovering somewhere in the infinite middle, the upshot was the same:

  I thought I could trust him.

  I thought I'd made the right choice.

  Trust me, honey, no matter how good the sex is…it's not enough.

  Nope, class or society or whatever you wanted to call it knew no distinction between women who'd hooked up with men for the wrong reasons—or even, sometimes, for what sure looked like the right ones. In the end, they all came looking for help to straighten out the mess love had left them in.

  "Miss Gardner—you okay?"

  Dawn jerked herself back to the present. Latesha, a round-cheeked three-year-old with a dozen chubby
braids sprouting from her head, lifted her arms to crawl into Dawn's lap. Hauling the toddler up and giving her a pencil and piece of scrap paper to scribble on, Dawn said, "Yeah, sorry. Now, look—next time one of these turkeys calls, you tell him in no uncertain terms that it is illegal to harass you like this, and that furthermore you are not responsible for your boyfriend's debts in any way, shape or form, whether he put your name down or not. And if they call again, they will be hearing from your lawyer."

  Valerie's eyes got so big, her pale-blue eyeshadow was obliterated. "Couldn't you just call 'em for me?"

  The fear in the young woman's voice nearly toppled Dawn's resolve, but she shook her head. "They know what they're doing is against the law. But they hear a young woman on the other end of the line, and they figure, what does she know? This really isn't something you need a lawyer for," she said gently. Along with dispensing cut-rate—or, more often, free—legal advice, the lawyers who worked here often found themselves acting as social workers and mentors to these women, many of whom lacked both self-confidence and basic coping skills. "Besides, remember what we talked about before—" this wasn't the first time the young mother had come to them for help "—that you can do more for yourself than you think you can, right?"

  The young woman made a face, then sighed. "I s'pose. But I sure am tired of cleaning up after this dude." Then she beamed. "You see where we all signed that petition to get Crown Management to finally fix up that dump we livin' in?"

  "I did. And I think you've got an excellent case. Now see, there's where you need a lawyer to act as the heavy."

  "You know nobody been able to win against 'em yet?"

  "There's always a first time," Dawn said with a grin.

  The young woman stood and called her brood, then cocked her head at Dawn. "You somethin' else, Miss Gardner, you know that?" she said as Latesha slid off Dawn's lap and went to her mama. "You don't take no crap off nobody, do you?"