Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles (14 page)

Most of them, not all. Phelma Jo wasn’t going to take any chances with her own children, if she bore any, or adopted several.

“You’ll also note that the mother has sued the state five times for racial discrimination whenever the girl went into foster care—even overnight while the mother was arrested for drunk and disorderly.”

Phelma Jo skimmed several pages until she found the report. The mother claimed one eighth Native American heritage. It could just as easily be Latina, African, or Mediterranean since she mentioned no tribal affiliation. The little girl—Phelma Jo preferred to keep these cases anonymous—had been found wandering the traffic lanes of a busy highway outside a bar in the middle of the day. The arresting officers hadn’t thought to look for a child left outside the bar when they hauled the mother off to jail. A schoolteacher on lunch break found the child and called Children’s Services. A formal complaint against the teacher had been filed for “disrupting the cultural imperative of deep poverty.”

“This is nonsense!” Phelma Jo almost screamed.

“Of course it is. All of it is. But the mother has made such a nuisance of these lawsuits that overworked and understaffed Social Services decided not to push her.”

Phelma Jo wiped sweat off her brow in growing agitation.

“Okay, where is the child now?”

“In my office, where I left her after a trip to the emergency room. With Mabel Gardiner in the hospital, I had nowhere else to hide her. You did hear about Mabel?”

Phelma Jo nodded briefly. She’d been with Ian when he got the call.

Growing dread left a lump in Phelma Jo’s gut. Her last cup of coffee wanted a rapid exit upward. She swallowed it back and asked the next question. “What brought the girl into foster care this time?”

“The girl stayed home from school for eight days, because her mother was too drunk to be left alone. She choked on her own vomit three times. The last two of those eight days had essential testing scheduled. I got called by her teacher and went looking. I couldn’t place her in foster care myself, because I got called home on a family emergency. My youngest boy had a burst appendix.”

“Your family has to come first. How is Jason?”

“He’s recovering nicely. The surgery went well.” Marcus grimaced and stared at his hands again.

Phelma Jo didn’t like the look of guilt that had flashed across his eyes just before he looked away. She flipped to the last page.

A familiar name jumped out at her.

“Why in hell are these people still allowed to foster children?”

“They are very good at hiding evidence of abuse and setting up situations of their word against that of a child known to lie.”

“Lying is a means of self-preservation. Survival.”

“My supervisor made the placement. She doesn’t know that family like you and I do.” He gulped and caught Phelma Jo’s gaze with pride and defiance.

“I’ve got photos of the bruises this time. Fresh bruises, blood, and tissue samples. DNA. She ran to me before they could force her to shower and blur the evidence. If I have my way, the man who beat you senseless for
asking
to watch television, and this girl for not knowing which prayer to say for grace on a Tuesday when the moon is half full and Mercury is in retrograde is going to jail. His wife, who cheered him on and watched, will never again have access to children. But you know the system. A good lawyer could get them off.”

“Meanwhile?”

“The girl needs a safe haven and a way out. She needs sanctuary far enough away that she can’t be intimidated into changing her story. She needs a friend.”

Phelma Jo gulped. “She needs a friend.” The phrase resonated as no other had in the entire debacle of her life. Thistle had tried to be her friend when she was seven. But Phelma Jo had been too angry to see that. Dick and Dusty had tried to be her friends in grade school. But then Dusty had betrayed her; called her “stinky-butt” out loud in front of the entire school on the playground.

The perpetual anger that had driven Phelma Jo to succeed and survive drained away.

“You know our rules. She has to be old enough and capable of taking care of herself; to pass the GED tests and get a job,” Phelma Jo said sadly. “With that low an IQ and so little education…”

“I know. I’ve got a family in Medford willing to take her, help her, get her tutoring and counseling. These are good people, already part of our network. They’ll bring her back to testify if it goes to trial, and I hope it does. They
will
show her the value of telling the truth and reinforce it with love. But we have to do this now so that the foster parents and their lawyer can’t trace her before the trial. We can’t let them intimidate her into changing her testimony.”

“Okay. I’ll get you what you need. Give me twenty-four hours.” Phelma Jo extracted the girl’s birth certificate, fingerprint card, and photo from the pocket in the back of the folder.

Marcus took back the file and slumped out of the office, too tired to demand illegal papers any sooner than tomorrow. “Off the record, I’m taking the girl home with me tonight. No one will know where she is,” he said over his shoulder.

Phelma Jo grabbed her purse and jacket. Tucking the official documents inside her briefcase, she exited without explanation. Some chores she had to take care of herself.

D
USTY GAZED AT THE EXQUISITE SILK wedding gown in Bridget’s Bridal Boutique window. The flow of silk cascading around the mannequin enticed her to reach through the glass and caress it.

“I never thought I’d get married at all, let alone to Chase,” she said on a sigh to Thistle who eyed the dress with equal longing.

She’d wasted almost half her lunch hour drooling over the gown.

“Which is more important, the wedding or the marriage?” Thistle asked. She sounded genuinely puzzled. She looked over her shoulder toward Dick, where he sat in his car across the street, talking on his cell phone.

“The marriage,” Dusty replied. “Definitely the marriage. Bonding with your husband lasts a lifetime. Or it should. The wedding lasts only a few hours, a day at most.”

“But it’s an important ritual to start the bonding. So why not endure your mother’s idea of an ideal wedding and just get on with the marriage?”

“Because it’s my mother’s idea and it’s grotesque.”

“Juliet does grab hold of an idea and not let go. Sort of like Mrs. Spencer’s dog. His teeth won’t chew bones anymore but he still defends them fiercely.”

“That’s my mother, more obsessive-compulsive than I am. Unfortunately, Shakespeare has so much rich material to draw from that she’ll never get bored and move on to something else.”

“Until we give her grandchildren.” Thistle held her ring up to the light. It sparkled with life and promise.

Strange how well it fit Thistle’s hand, almost as if custom-made for her, no resizing needed at all.

“I don’t want to think about what Mom’ll do to… to her grandbabies.” Dusty returned her attention to the dress. “It would be so much easier to elope without telling her.”

“Wait a minute.” Thistle grabbed Dusty’s arm, keeping her from moving down Main Street. “Isn’t that the meaning of elope, you run away without telling anyone?”

“In this case, Chase has made it mean go get married with minimal ceremony, but
I
have to tell Mom what we are doing and why. He’s right of course. I’ll hide in the basement and let her continue running my life for me if I don’t.”

“Oh.” Thistle sounded as deflated as Dusty felt. “Well, we can’t do anything right now. Juliet has gone to Portland for a meeting.”

“Wedding photographers and a cake. As if we can’t get good ones here in Skene Falls.”

“So, let’s look more closely at that dress you love, and see if we can find something glittery and light for me. Dick said he’d buy any gown I chose.” Laughing, they entered the shop. Thistle paused only long enough to wave toward Dick. He waved back with half his attention still on the cell phone. Almost a distracted dismissal.

Dusty began counting up the balance in her checking and savings account. Could she possibly, maybe with a little bargaining, buy the dress she truly wanted? She had enough. But would that leave enough to add to Chase’s savings for a down payment on a house? They couldn’t plan on the gift of Mabel’s house. She
wouldn’t
plan on the old woman dying. Mabel had to get better. She just had to. And soon.

Phelma Jo drifted down Main Street in a wondrous glow of new love, the morning’s trauma forgotten while she took a break. She refused to think about her illegal activities outside her home or office. If she didn’t think about them, then she wouldn’t slip up and mention them.

The tall man beside her, Ian McEwen, had entered her life with a clipboard and a hard hat. Now he held her hand as they strolled past shops and offices decorated with ghosts and cobwebs, witches and pumpkins, banners painted with harvest motifs hung from street lamps. Posters in every window advertised the parade and haunted maze. Outlying farms showed maps to the biggest pumpkin patches with hay rides, games, and fresh produce. The All Hallows Festival was as important a town fund-raiser as the summer Pioneer Days Festival and the Christmas Festival and the Spring Flower Festival. Actually, she thought All Hallows brought in more money and tourists than any of the others. Everyone wanted to party this time of year. Costumes and pranks only added spice to the mix.

She ignored the reminders that she’d never been allowed to dress up in costumes or go trick-or-treating as a child. All that mattered was that she and Ian walked together to file the building inspection at the courthouse, almost a couple.

She dared, for the first time in her life, to imagine a comfortable future without the drama, betrayal, and heartache of reality.

Her building, the one with Bridget’s Bridal Boutique anchoring the ground-floor corner space, had passed inspection, of course. She wouldn’t let it fail. A well-maintained historical building commanded higher rents than the ramshackle semi-derelicts other landlords owned.

Ian had complimented her on the state of the wiring. Then he’d asked her out to dinner. They were headed back to her penthouse condo by mutual consent when he’d gotten that damned call to rush to his aunt’s side.

At first Phelma Jo had resented the interruption to
her
plans for the evening. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized Ian McEwen honestly cared about his aunt. If he showed such devotion to a woman who refused to speak to him, how much more loyalty would he show to the woman he loved?

Phelma Jo planned to become that woman.

Neither of her two previous marriages had worked because she had chosen older husbands for money and prestige. And escape from her past. Now that she had money
and was earning prestige, she wanted a man that
she wanted
, not someone who could get her what she wanted.

She squeezed Ian’s hand and brushed her shoulder against his. He smiled down at her but did not stop his long-legged progress toward the courthouse. He had a job to complete, and it wasn’t complete until the last paperwork was filed with the city and the insurance company. Then they could go to lunch.

She liked that. He was almost as driven as she to finish a job and get it done right. Of course her definition of right didn’t always mean right for anyone but her own profit.

A wasp buzzed her ear. She swatted it. A wasp in October? She froze, hoping the bug would find a more attractive target. It strafed her again.

She thought she heard someone whisper, “Dusty.”

“Phelma Jo, what’s wrong?” Ian asked. He still held her hand.

“Bug,” she said quietly through clenched teeth.

“Don’t tell me you walked through cobwebs in your basement without a second thought, but a little old fly frightens you.”

“Wasp, you idiot. There is a wasp getting ready to sting me.”

“This beautiful bug?” A monstrous winged creature rested on his palm and nearly filled it. “It’s just a moth. Pretty thing with all that red on its wings. Unusual to have a random pattern, though. I’ll have to look it up later. Moths aren’t dangerous.”

“Looks more like a dragonfly to me,” Phelma Jo said. “A biting dragonfly.”