Bringing Baby Home Page 5

  “Here you go,” he said, ripping off her copy.

  She turned suddenly and with her back to David, yelled, “Don’t be late, Eli.”

  David looked past her and spotted a kid peddling away as if the devil were on his tail. The boy, a hulky, wide-shouldered kid in his mid-teens, maybe fifteen or sixteen, was dressed in a black-and-gray football jersey and denim jeans that were easily three sizes too big. The kid’s baseball cap was on backward. David couldn’t make out the logo, but noticed it matched the color of his bike—bright red.

  Crissy heaved a weary sigh. “My stepson. Lives with his mother in Phoenix, but his school is off-session, and she’s working so we have the pleasure of his company.” Her tone made it clear the pleasure was anything but.

  “He was such a sweet kid when his dad and I first married. Then the evil teen fairy took away his brains and left a snarling, surly, hormone-driven mouth in his place,” she said, laughing humorlessly at her joke. “I honestly don’t know how his mother stands all that attitude and rudeness on a regular basis. A month is almost more than I can take.”

  He noticed her husband’s name didn’t come up. Probably because the guy was never around. Either he left before dawn and returned well after David was done for the day, or the gossips were right and the guy was a real jerk. David had overheard two women talking the day he was hired to do the landscaping.

  Three board members had been required to approve his bid and sketches. When Crissy left the room to talk to her daughter—a fashionably dressed princess in pink at least five years younger than her half brother, he’d overheard the other two women discussing Crissy’s family.

  “That boy is a terrorist waiting to happen,” the gray-haired woman in the Sam’s Town Windbreaker had predicted.

  “His father needs to step in now or they’ll lose him to a gang. Too bad the man is always away on business.”

  David had never had the liberty of being a rebellious teen. His grandmother would have castrated him. Or kicked him out. Maybe people who knew unconditional love could afford to thumb their noses at the ones giving it, but that hadn’t been his experience.

  He started to clear his throat to get her attention back on the receipt he was still holding when a flash of purple caught his eye. He turned toward the house where he’d shared a glass of tea earlier. A slender woman in navy shorts and a royal purple tank top sprinted across the lawn and took off jogging down the street.

  He used his sleeve to wipe a bead of sweat out of his eye. Running? In this heat? Was she nuts?

  “Ugh,” Crissy said, her gaze following Liz. “Self-discipline is one thing, but self-abuse? No, thank you.”

  When David didn’t comment, she added, “Early evening is a terrible time of day to run. Traffic is bad. The pollution in the air is ghastly. And visibility is worse than at night. I sure hope she doesn’t get run over.”

  David was surprised by her concern. He almost changed his opinion of her, until she added, “I don’t know what would happen to her place if she were killed. Probably her family would sell it, but I suppose there’s a chance she might have willed it to those women who are living with her.”

  Her disapproval of Liz’s roommates was obvious. Curious, David asked, “You don’t like them?”

  She snatched the receipt from his fingers. “They don’t belong here. This is a family neighborhood, not a refugee camp. Did Liz tell you what they did for a living before they snuck into America? They were prostitutes.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I have prostitutes living next door to me. Not that I’m planning to sell, but can you imagine what that kind of information would do to the property values around here?”

  Her tone positively dripped with repugnance.

  He slammed the door of his truck with such force the bang made her jump. He didn’t say anything. This wasn’t his problem. Besides, he didn’t know why he was surprised by her attitude. Snobs abound in this world, he thought, even in relatively ordinary neighborhoods like this one.

  “Oh, I almost forgot, the association approved the extra expenditure for the vacant lot around the corner. I put together a couple of sketches of what I think might work. Do you mind coming in a minute?”

  Yes, he did. But money was money.

  STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.

  The word repeated in her head every time her right heel hit the pavement. Only a stupid person would take off jogging at this time of day in this heat, Liz thought. If not for the wind, she probably would have melted into a puddle before she was ten blocks from home.

  Normally, she ran in the morning. The earlier the better. But she’d overslept this morning and had had to race to her breakfast meeting with her sisters. Now she was running to get the frustration of not being able to help Prisha out of her system. So far away. So little she could do.

  A soft cry escaped from her lips. Liz set her jaw and picked up the pace. Whimpering and moaning wouldn’t help. Staying focused on her goal would. She’d made several online acquaintances who had undertaken a challenge similar to hers. One, a single woman like Liz, had recently celebrated her daughter’s fifth birthday with a trip to Disneyland.

  Happy endings do exist, she reminded herself.

  There were differences in their cases, of course. Her friend was an executive with a prominent fast-food chain. Money was not a problem. Also, the child she’d adopted came from Calcutta, which didn’t fall under the Central Adoption Resource Agency boundaries. That adoption had been faster than normal—a mere eight months, start to finish. Liz had been told to expect the process to last at least a year, if not two.

  Liz could only pray that Prisha would survive that long. The child was a fighter, but how long could the spirit flourish when the body faced so many obstacles? If Prisha were here—receiving daily, one-on-one encouragement and treatment—her medical condition might not be life-threatening. But she wasn’t here, and Liz couldn’t do anything to help.

  Her breath suddenly left her and she had to stop. Bending at the waist, she rested her hands on her thighs and tried to draw in enough air to keep her tears at bay. Prisha will be fine. She’ll get through this. And sometime within the next year, I’ll be flying over there to pick her up and bring her home with me.

  “Hey, whaswrongwithyou?”

  Liz lifted her head. Three boys on bikes. Not little boys. Young men, actually. They were too far away for her to see them clearly. Singly, none of the three would have appeared at all menacing, but as a group they gave off a sort of gangster vibe that made her wary.

  Liz didn’t answer. She took a breath and started jogging again, giving them wide berth. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been paying attention to where she was running and had wound up in the middle of a large and completely empty church parking lot. She passed by the building nearly every day and there were always cars around. But not today.

  “Damn,” she muttered.

  The church occupied about a third of a block and was surrounded by residential neighborhoods, but the closest houses were well out of shouting range. She headed toward the intersection where there was bound to be traffic at this time of day. People on their way home to dinner. Busy, hungry people. Lots of them.

  “Hey, you. You’re that Gypsy, ain’t you?” One of the boys called after her.

  There was no missing the kid’s denigrating tone. Gypsy scum, she’d heard some boy say in the fourth grade. Her first introduction to prejudice.

  Words can’t hurt you, her mother had said when Liz came home from school in tears. But Yetta was wrong. Words could be the precursor to violence. Liz had seen firsthand the tragic repercussions of ethnic hatred. Death and destruction had left a lasting impression on her mind.

  She stopped running. She hated confrontation of any kind. The smart thing to do was to walk away, but she’d learned the hard way that ignoring the problem often led to bigger problems.

  In Bosnia she’d noticed the small group of surly, smoking, angry men that gathered every day at a certain street corner. Sy
mpathetic to all the horrors and losses the locals had incurred, she’d never reported them—even when one or two made lurid comments and taunting gestures.

  She’d paid a high price for minding her own business. These boys are young. Maybe, I can still reach them, she thought.

  She turned around. She had to hop over a low, white chain that directed foot traffic away from the newly seeded yard encircling the playground the church had recently installed. She could smell the scent of cedar from the red-orange shavings under the jungle gym.

  One of the boys swung his bike around to face her. He was biggest of the three and something about him seemed familiar. I’ve seen him before. Which made sense, she realized. He must know who she was since he’d called her a Gypsy.

  All three were wearing sloppy, oversized jeans that were belted almost below their butts. Their ball caps were pulled low over their foreheads making their chins, uniformly adorned with acne and half a dozen whiskers, their most prominent features.

  The glare of the setting sun put them in shadow. She blinked and stepped to one side. She wanted to see their eyes when she talked to them. She wasn’t afraid, even though she probably should have been. But this was broad daylight in a relatively public place, she reasoned.

  Plus, after what happened to her in Bosnia, she’d learned self-defense. When she’d finally recovered sufficiently—physically—to travel, she’d gone to New Zealand to stay with a friend. The woman, a former relief worker Liz had met on her first tour in Bosnia, taught yoga and meditation at a youth hostel on the South Island. Her friend believed all women should know how to defend themselves.

  As the boys murmured to each other, Liz unconsciously prepared—hips square to her body, knees flexed to take advantage of her lower center of gravity. She consciously braced her shoulders and said, “Is it Gypsies you hate or women?”

  The leader slouched on the seat of his bike and grunted something she couldn’t make out. The smaller boy fidgeted and looked ready to hightail it. All three were white. The bikes they were riding probably could have fed the children at the orphanage for a year.

  “We heard about you—and the two hos you got livin’ with you. You got some kind of kinky sex thing going?”

  The last brought an edgy giggle from the other punks.

  Yep, neighborhood kids, Liz decided. This one, at least. They probably overheard their parents gossiping. The idea made her slightly ill. She’d done a good thing by opening her home to two desperate young women. How could that possibly be cause for scorn and ridicule?

  Anger made her take a step forward. “I know you, don’t I?” she asked, pointing at the leader. “You live near me. I’ve seen you riding your bike around. What’s your name?”

  His barely audible curse wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. A small-minded bully with a trashy mouth. Nothing new there. She decided to ignore him. “Is that what you think?” she asked his two friends. “That because my family is Romani, I’m an inferior person? Well, I’m not the one standing in a parking lot calling people names, am I?”

  The smallest boy, who was obviously younger than his friends, turned his bike in the opposite direction and took off peddling. The middle-sized kid groaned and tried calling him back. “Joey, get your ass back here, you coward.”

  Liz took a step closer. “He’s not the coward. You are. All bullies are cowards deep down. They take advantage of someone else’s weaknesses to harass them because it makes them feel powerful. Calling a girl names. Yeah, that’s real brave.”

  The boy she’d been addressing flushed scarlet and looked down. His pal, the leader, shoved his bike to the ground and advanced toward her. Although not full-grown, he was several inches taller than Liz and a good thirty pounds heavier. And she could tell by the vitriolic flow of curse words that spewed from his lips, this kid was in a rage.

  Whoever said rape was about anger, not sex, knew what they were talking about, her self-defense teacher had said. If you keep your wits about you, you can use blind rage to your advantage.

  When he charged, Liz used his forward momentum to trip him. The kid did a sprawling belly flop on the pavement. His friend, who’d finally screwed up his courage, let out a cry of outrage and rushed to his buddy’s aid. Together, they probably could have knocked her down and done enough damage to warrant a trip to the hospital—something she couldn’t afford.

  Liz turned to run, but the kid on the ground grabbed her ankle, twisting with both hands. His friend lunged at her from the side and latched on to her wrist. The sense of captivity triggered a memory so vivid it felt ripped from her womb. Old fear…and a burning fury that she’d tamped down for years surfaced, too.

  “No,” she cried, fighting them off with all her might. “I am not your victim, you snot-nosed little bastards. You’re gonna think twice before you ever do this to another woman.”

  Chapter Five

  David wasn’t in a hurry. He had a cat to feed. Big deal. A solitary meal and some seedlings to replant. Another boring night in one of the hottest travel destinations in the world. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

  He slowed to a stop and looked in both directions. Just as he took his foot off the clutch, a kid on a bike shot out of a driveway and raced across the street as if the devil were on his tail.

  By failing to step on the gas, David killed the engine. “Damn.” He started the truck and eased forward, but a flash of color caught his eye. A commotion of some kind was taking place in the parking lot of the church. Curious, he turned to the right, instead of the left. The truck chugged slightly as he inched forward for a better look at what was happening.

  Three people were involved in a confrontation. Two kids—big kids—and a woman. In a purple tank top…

  He let out a curse and punched the accelerator. He didn’t look to see if there was oncoming traffic or a curb. A thick white chain kept him getting as close as he would have liked.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he yelled, jumping out of his truck.

  Both boys turned to look at him then took off running. One was smart enough to grab his bike. The other clambered up a Dumpster to reach the top of a concrete block fence and slither into somebody’s backyard. David didn’t try to follow either of them. He’d gotten a good look at the big kid’s face. The same boy he’d seen not a half hour earlier leaving his stepmom’s house. He was Liz’s neighbor.

  “Liz. Oh, shit, are you okay?”

  She was on one knee, leaning over, breathing hard. Her hair was half out of the ponytail she’d had it in. Her running clothes were a little scuffed looking, but fortunately she was still in one piece.

  Or was she?

  When she lifted her head, he saw the feral look in her eyes. The kindhearted healer he’d had tea with was gone, replaced by a stranger—a warrior who’d vanquished the enemy.

  He watched her get to her feet, keeping his hands close to, but not quite touching, her shoulders. He saw a tremor pass through her body. Anger? Fear? Dread? He wasn’t sure what.

  “Liz,” he said bending slightly to make eye contact. “Do you need a doctor? Do you have your cell phone with you? We should call the police.”

  He wanted to take back the words the instant they left his mouth. He didn’t do cops. Good Lord, the last thing he needed was his name on some police blotter.

  She didn’t respond to his questions, but a quick scan of her body told him she wasn’t carrying her phone. “Can you make it to my truck?”

  His question apparently connected. She blinked twice then looked around, as if coming back to her body. Her hands returned to a clenched state. “Where are they?”

  “Gone. You’re safe.” He gingerly took her elbow. “If I hadn’t shown up, I’m pretty sure you would have whupped their butts.”

  He wasn’t sure that was true. There had been two of them, after all. But she didn’t need to hear that. Not now.

  She stopped suddenly and looked over her shoulder. “I…I wasn’t expecting them to react like that. They were so yo
ung. I thought they’d listen. But then the bigger boy got in my face and this time sorta got mixed up in my head with the other time.”

  The other time? A sick feeling started to churn the acid in his stomach. “I’m going to take you home, and you can call the cops from there, okay?”

  He wasn’t sure if she nodded or not. Twilight was pressing in. A fleeting thought hit him. What would have happened if he hadn’t come by? He swallowed hard to keep the bad taste from climbing up his throat.

  He closed the passenger door and raced around to the driver’s side, stopping only long enough to toss the abandoned bike into the bed of his truck. Yep, same bike he’d seen Crissy’s stepson riding that afternoon. He and that kid were going to have words.

  “Do you need to see a doctor? There’s an out-patient clinic not far from here.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not hurt. Just embarrassed. I knew there was a reason I never preached from soap-boxes—the fall from one hurts like hell.”

  He made her explain.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve been called names before, but this time, something just sorta snapped. I honestly thought if I talked to them—made them see me as a person, not as a member of a minority deserving of their scorn—I might actually make a difference. As if lecturing kids that age would do any good. Am I a fool or what?”

  “More idealistic, than foolish,” he said. “But sometimes you have to put your foot down. Smart or not.”

  She took a deep breath and turned slightly to look at him. “You’re right. Damn it. I was thinking like a victim. I did that once before and promised myself never again.”

  He was glad to hear the spunk in her tone. He nodded. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, from what I could see, you weren’t behaving like a victim. Where’d you learn to fight like that?”