Forbidden Son (9 page)

“I’ll
deal with my parents, Carla. Once they meet Honey Belle and get to know her,
they’ll come to love her as I do.”

“Um-huh.
If that’s what you want to believe to make yourself feel better,” Carla
shrugged a shoulder, “you keep right on believing it.”

As
much as he hated to admit it, she was correct in her assumption. He’d been
raised in the caste system of the South, where family name and accomplishments
were often the most important consideration in marriage. As far as his parents
and South Carolina’s social registry were concerned, it was the only
consideration. Until meeting Honey Belle, he’d never rebelled against this
system of antiquated social snobbery.

Tripp
pulled a pen from his pocket and scribbled his phone number on a napkin. “If
Honey Belle contacts you, please give her my number. Tell her it’s important,
that no matter what, I love her.”

Carla
puffed her stout cheeks and blew a breathy, “Sure.”

An
uneasy feeling twisted Tripp’s gut. He held little hope of ever hearing from
the woman who had stolen his heart.

Chapter
Thirteen

A
few minutes later Tripp sat behind the wheel of his car, easing into traffic
and then turning on the street leading out of the city limits.

Half
an hour later he pulled his convertible up the oak-lined driveway to his house.
As he parked, the front door opened and his mother stepped out, a vision in her
green gardening slacks and floppy straw hat. She waved a glove-covered hand, a galvanized
tin watering can in the other.

He
got out of his car and walked toward her for a hug.

“Welcome
home, son. I’ve missed you.”

“You
are pretty as a picture, Mother.”

She
gave a playful slap to his shoulder. “In my gardening clothes? You are a dear boy.”

“Is
Dad home?”

“In
his study.”

Tripp
kissed his mother’s cheek. “Excuse me, Mother. I need to speak with him.”

“If
it’s about the engagement party, I’ve given it a lot of thought. Perhaps you
should bring the young lady to meet us before we go forth with plans.”

He
touched her cheek, happy his mother’s mental faculties had returned. He drew a
deep breath. “We’ll discuss it later, Mother. Right now, I have business with
Dad.” And then he smiled.

“Of
course, you do, dear.” She tipped the watering can toward a pot of colorful
flowers adorning the porch.

As
an afterthought, he cast his mother an impish smile and sang, “Mary Alice, Mary
Alice, how does your garden grow? With kitten tails and puppydog tails all
wagging in a row.”

His
mother giggled and clapped her hands like a happy child. “I thank you for the
rhyme, but I do believe your version is quite different from the original.”

“Mine
put a smile on your face, and that’s all that matters, ‘Mary, Mary, quite
contrary—’”

The
aroma of frying chicken greeted him, and something baked with nutmeg, as he
opened the front door. The thought of approaching his father settled in the pit
of his stomach like soured buttermilk.

Long
strides carried him down the hall. He stopped at the massive oaken door to his
father’s study, raised a fist, and rapped once.

“Enter.”
Judge Hartwell looked up from the folder that lay in front of him. He rose with
an outstretched hand. “Tripp, my boy, how was Massachusetts? Get the
registration glitch taken care of?”

Tripp
pushed the greeting aside. He didn’t hide the allegation in his voice. “Honey
Belle and her family left town. What do you know about it?”

The
Judge spoke sharply. “If you’re making an accusation, it’s damn well not
appreciated.”

Tripp
answered in a tight voice. “I’ve had a bellyful of lies, Dad. You made it quite
clear how you felt about Honey Belle and my marriage proposal to her.”

Without
going into detail about his visit with the owner of the house on Barrington
Street, Tripp simply stated he’d visited Honey Belle’s workplace only to
discover she had quit without notice, and a neighbor had witnessed her and her
parents leaving with suitcases.

His
father tossed the folder aside. “I don’t expect you to believe me when I say I
know nothing of this young woman or her family leaving town. Granted, I’m not
in favor of a union with a girl we’ve never met and know nothing about, but I’m
hurt to the bone that you’d think I was in any way involved.”

Hearing
that admission, Tripp looked into his father’s eyes and thought he saw remorse.
Doubt dragged Tripp down. He sighed.

His
father walked around the desk and draped an around Tripp’s shoulder, hugging
him close. “Disappointment and confusion is written all over your face. We’re
all susceptible to bad judgment calls, son. Like I said, I don’t know where
Miss Garrett and her family went. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”

Though
Tripp had his misgivings, his father had never given him reason to believe he’d
stoop to shady, covert dealings. And yet he still wanted to believe in Honey Belle.
He moved away from his father’s embrace.

“Tripp,
son, listen to me, right now you feel as if your world has fallen apart. At
some point, you have to move beyond the hurts, or anger and bitterness will
keep you from accomplishing your goals in life.”

Tripp
slumped into a leather chair. He sighed heavily. His “Yeah, sure,” didn’t sound
convincing.

When
he rose to leave, his father said, “This past week your mother has been her old
self. Let’s keep it that way.”

“I
know. She greeted me, saying we needed to discuss the engagement party. After
her last episode, I didn’t think she’d remember.”

The
Judge frowned. “Nor I. We’ll not upset her with this nonsense about Miss
Garrett. Discreetly explain to your mother you’ve decided to put marriage on
hold until after graduation. Tell her you’d prefer an old-fashioned barbeque
with all the trimmings because you’ll miss Pearlie Mae’s home cooking once
you’re at Harvard. I believe that will sufficiently pacify your mother.”

“What
if she asks about Honey Belle?”

The
Judge cast his son a wink. “You’re almost a lawyer. You’ll figure it out.”

Over
the next few days, Tripp packed books, clothing, ski poles, skis, snow boots,
and other personal belongings. Deciding to leave the convertible in South
Carolina, he loaded one of the spare station wagons with his gear.

He
planned to submerse himself in his studies, and hoped to erase Honey Belle
Garrett from his heart.

Chapter
Fourteen

Valdosta,
Georgia

On
a sweltering September afternoon, Honey Belle sat under a canopy listening to a
minister speak words over her father’s grave. Her mama’s ragged sobs tore at
her heart. She reached over and clasped the blue-veined, bony hand.

“Don’t
be sad, Mama. He’s in a better place.”

“Your
daddy weren’t much. Dang it, he was all I had.”

You
have me, Mama. Don’t I matter to you?
Honey Belle nearly choked on the
words stuck in her throat. It seemed even in grief her mother bore no kind
thoughts toward her daughter.

Three
weeks after arriving in Valdosta, Jack Garrett’s health had turned for the
worse. He’d passed quietly in his sleep the day after he was admitted to the
hospital.

A
week after her father’s funeral, Honey Belle sat on the bathroom floor, hugging
the commode. Regular as clockwork, when she’d skipped her monthly, she hoped, then
prayed she wasn’t pregnant. As she hung her head over the toilet bowl and
wearily mopped her face with a damp cloth, beads of sweat lined her top lip.

Her
stomach continued to heave. She tried to spit out the taste of bile as it
clawed her throat.

Lying
with her head against the cool porcelain tube, she didn’t bother to look up
when the bathroom door opened.

Sarcasm
laced Delilah’s voice. “I knowed it. I knowed it all along. You’ve got the look
about you.”

Honey
Belle kept her eyes closed. Hoping to settle her stomach, she drew several deep
breaths. “What is it you know, Mama?”

“You’re
green as a gourd. Don’t take no rocket scientist to figure out you done got
yourself knocked-up.”

Honey
Belle opened her eyes and shifted around to turn on the faucet. She ran cold
water over the cloth, rung it out and wiped her face again.

“We’ve
just buried daddy. I didn’t even get a chance to tell him about the baby. For
once, Mama, please this one time, can’t you be happy for me? It’s your
grandchild.”

“No,
it ain’t. It’s your bastard.”

The
bite in her mother’s voice caused Honey Belle to look up. Her jaw firmed as she
spoke. “Leave me be, Mama. I’m too sick to argue.”

With
each passing day, Honey Belle watched her mother grow frailer. “What can I do,
Aunt Tess, short of forcing her to get in the car and driving her to the
doctor? She refuses to go for a checkup. I’m worried about her.”

“Delilah
always was as hardheaded as a stubborn mule. If I have to pitch a hissy-fit to
get her to the doctor, then that’s what I’ll do.”

A
few days later, true to her word, Honey Belle’s Aunt Tess pitched an
old-fashioned, Southern hissy-fit and said she’d drag Delilah by the head of
the hair to the doctor, if she had to. Honey Belle had never seen her mother
back down to anyone, but back down she did.

The
diagnosis was bad. Stage four breast cancer had spread throughout her mother’s
skeletal system.

“What
can we do, Doctor?” Honey Belle dreaded his answer.

“Along
with chemotherapy and radiation, we can pray for a miracle.”

Though
the prescribed treatments amassed a wad of doctor bills, in the end, the
treatments didn’t save Delilah. Honey Belle thought her mother was too tired
and worn out to fight for her life.

Five
months later, on a frigid January morning, Delilah Garrett closed her eyes and
passed from this world without a kind word to her daughter or for the
grandchild she’d never know.

Part
of Honey Belle felt as if the world had crashed down around her. She wondered
if it was wrong for the other part of her to feel relief.

A
few days after her mother’s funeral, Honey Belle and her Aunt Tess were in the
parlor. January had brought a rainy winter, and Honey Belle sat in front of the
fireplace sipping hot cocoa and enjoying the warmth. Her aunt’s home was
everything she’d dreamed of, with its sprawling front porch supported by huge
columns, a porch swing, and a neatly groomed yard surrounded by a white picket
fence.

“Honey
Belle, it’s time you and I had a serious woman-to-woman talk.”

Honey
Belle nibbled on crackers topped with peanut butter. “Whatta you want to talk
about, Aunt Tess?”

Her
aunt pointed at the little mound beneath Honey Belle’s shirt. “You have some
important decisions to make.”

“Like?”

“Marrying
your daddy was the death of anything good for my sister, and I don’t mind saying
so. You know it as well as me. Not even forty years old, she was used up and
wrung out like an old dishrag.”

Though
Honey Belle’s parents had shown little affection toward her, she’d loved them.
“Mama was always telling me she’d made a mess of her life. The thing she never
told me was why she chose to marry my daddy at such a young age.”

Tess’s
voice took on a hard edge. “Delilah had a wild streak in her. She was always in
a hurry to grow up. Our mother constantly warned Delilah about sashaying her
behind like an open invitation to the boys. Said she’d get caught. Delilah ran
away. Mama called the law. Cops caught up with her and brought her home.
Delilah hated mother after that. She skipped school, started smoking, drinking,
staying out all night. She was the bane of our mother’s existence.

“And
Delilah did get caught—with you. Jack Garrett was a sweet-talking, handsome
good-for-nothing. He promised my sister the moon. All she got was pregnant.
Barely sixteen when you were born, she suffered in hard labor for three days.
The doctor said you were too big and she was too small. After you came a string
of miscarriages, until the doctor said she needed a hysterectomy. That was a
blessing in disguise.”

“Why
didn’t you ever marry, Aunt Tess?”

Her
aunt moistened her throat with a sip of coffee. “Who says I never married?” As
if wanting to change the subject, Tess hastened on. “That’s neither here nor
there. As I was saying, you have some important decisions to make, Honey Belle.
You can choose to educate yourself and raise this child proper, or you can
follow in your mama’s footsteps, scrimping and pinching and always dreaming
about what you’ll never have.”

Honey
Belle caressed the small protrusion beneath her shirt. Inside her womb grew a
baby whose life she was responsible for. The decision was an easy one. “After I
quit school, it was difficult listening to the kids at the Burger Bin talk
about what colleges they planned to attend, their future careers. I always
planned to get my GED. But both mine and mama’s paychecks were needed to keep
us going, especially after daddy got sick and couldn’t work anymore. After
awhile, time slipped away, and the GED never happened.”

Aunt
Tess stretched her feet toward the fire, her voice matter-of-fact. “After the
baby is born, if you choose to get your diploma, and perhaps attend college,
I’ll help you with the finances, and this will be your home for as long as you
care to stay. If you choose not to get an education,” she shrugged her
shoulders, “you’ll have to find your own place, and take care of the baby as
best you can.”

Honey
Belle choked on the cracker that seemed to grow inside her throat. She’d used a
good deal of the blackmail money from Tripp’s father to pay for her parent’s
medical and funeral costs. Funny how, at the time, she’d thought ten thousand
dollars would last a lifetime, when in fact it disappeared almost as quickly as
water down a drain.

“I
don’t want my child growing up poor and illiterate, Aunt Tess.” She heaved a
sigh. “Living in South Carolina, the way we did, I didn’t see much wrong with
my life.”

Honey
Belle glanced around the cozy room with wall-to-wall carpeting and not a speck
of dust anywhere. “If you’ll drive me to the vocational school, I’ll start
working toward my GED next week. Maybe I can get finished before the baby is
born.”

Aunt
Tess clapped her hands together. “That’s the spirit.” Then she turned serious.
“You’ve never spoken of the baby’s father. Is there a reason?”

“If
there were, I wouldn’t care to discuss it.”

Honey
Belle knew she could never divulge Tripp’s identity, for more than one reason.
First, there were those horrid blackmail photographs to contend with, and, most
importantly, she feared what Judge Hartwell would do once he found out she’d
had a baby and decided to keep the child.

Her
aunt’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Don’t you think the father has a right
to know? At least notify him so he can pay child support.”

“Let
me repeat, Aunt Tess, I don’t care to discuss it.”

“You
don’t think this man or boy has a moral obligation to you and the child?”

“Aunt
Tess, I respect you with all my heart, and I’m forever grateful you’re
providing me with a home, and the opportunity to get an education.” She stared
down at the cup in her hand. “Trust me when I say the baby’s father couldn’t
care one way or the other. He’s not someone I want in our lives.”

With
the damning evidence his father possessed, Honey Belle had convinced herself
there was no way Tripp Hartwell the Third would want his name connected to her
or to a bastard child.

“So
be it, Honey Belle. I’ll ask no more questions.”

Honey
Belle stretched and yawned. “I think I’ll call it a night, Aunt Tess.”

With
a quick peck to her aunt’s cheek, Honey Belle climbed the stairs to her
bedroom. It had become a nightly habit to sit in the rocker and stare out the
window at Orion and the Big Dipper, twinkling in the winter sky. Settling in
the chair, she cradled the small mound of her belly. She rocked back and forth,
picturing herself in maternity clothes, with swollen ankles, needing help to get
out of a chair.

She
managed to forget, for a few minutes, how drastically her life would change in
the spring. When she thought about it, and about raising a child alone, her
heart didn’t know how to react. Then she reminded herself she wasn’t alone. She
had Aunt Tess.

By
habit she looked upward. “Look, baby, a shooting star.”

It
was as if the unborn child had heard her voice and rewarded Honey Belle with a
fluttering kick. She hadn’t expected it, that jolt of excitement, that maternal
surge of protectiveness.

She
gently caressed the little lump poking her in the side. “Your daddy taught me
the names of the stars. When you’re born, I’ll teach them to you.”

She
brushed back the rush of tears and fought the melancholy threatening to engulf
her as she sat alone in the darkened room.

Her
mind drifted to the night on the beach when Tripp had pledged his love to her.
She’d made a wish on a shooting star that night, too. It had come true—Tripp
had asked her to marry him.

She
bent her head toward her stomach and whispered, “I wish upon this shooting star
that someday you’ll get to know your daddy.”

Wiping
a tear from her cheek, she was lost in thought for a long moment. “I promise
I’ll never be cold and distant toward you. I’ll never treat you the way my
parents did me.”

And
then she added, “I don’t care if you’re a little girl or a boy. I’ll love you.”
Secretly she yearned for a son—a tiny version of Tripp.

Honey
Belle gathered her senses, because she couldn’t let her heart go in the
direction it wanted to go.

****

The
next morning Aunt Tess drove Honey Belle to the vocational school. Honey Belle
walked through the glass doors and couldn’t deny her stomach was doing
flip-flops. She rubbed her sweating hands down the sides of her jeans as she
and her aunt walked across the tiled lobby.

“Aunt
Tess, what if I’m not smart enough?”

Her
aunt laughed a little. “You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, Honey
Belle.”

“And
that’s another thing, Aunt Tess.”

“What
is?”

“My
name. I’ve never liked it. When I was thirteen, I asked Mama if I could change
it. Of course, you know her answer.” Judge Hartwell’s sneering contempt of her
name echoed inside her head—
Sounds like a fifty-dollar prostitute.

“Takes
money to change your name, and think of all the rigmarole you’d have to go
through to change your driver’s license and your Social Security card. Is it
really that important to you?”

Honey
Belle looked up, meeting kind eyes with crinkled lines of age and experience at
the corners. “When you put it that way, I guess it sounds rather pathetic. Back
in South Carolina my friends called me H.B.”

“Then
call yourself H.B. and others will, too.”

“I
can’t avoid giving my
real
name when I fill out forms.”

“Don’t
make things complicated. Simply fill them out, then in large bold letters write
‘Prefer to be called H.B. Garrett.’”

Honey
Belle ignored the impatience in her aunt’s voice and followed her through a
door marked Registrar’s Office.

****

On
the way home from registering for classes, Aunt Tess offered to treat them to
lunch. They stopped at the Silver Bullet Diner.

“Why
aren’t you eating, Honey Belle?”

Honey
Belle ignored the cheeseburger sitting on her plate. “I’m eating.” She smiled
and bit into the burger. She ate a bite, swallowing in a way that looked
painful.

“Are
you sick?”

“I
thought pregnant women were supposed to have morning sickness, not afternoon
sickness.”

“Happens
that way, sometimes.”

Honey
Belle scooted back her chair on the linoleum floor and stood up, feeling a
little green and a whole lot wobbly. Perspiration beaded along her forehead and
above her top lip.

“I’m
going outside. I need some air.”

Aunt
Tess called for the waitress to put their food in to-go boxes. “I’ll be back
after I see to my niece.”