Jailbird (17 page)

No matter how busy I stayed, that didn’t make
bedtime any easier. It was amazing how quickly I’d become not only
accustomed to, but dependent on, Charlie’s presence to feel at
ease. I hugged his pillow close and closed my eyes, allowing his
scent to lull me to sleep.

The next two days were much the same, with
the addition of some time spent doing Internet research from
Charlie’s computer at work. It had been a long time since I’d used
the computer with any regularity, but I muddled my way through with
Gabrielle’s help and found what I needed.

In fact, I was so busy with preparations that
I was still scurrying to put the finishing touches on dinner when
Charlie pulled into the drive. Just as he’d predicted, the case had
wrapped up that afternoon. Now we would wait.

None of that mattered when I heard the crunch
of gravel under his wheels, though. I dropped the towel in my hand
and darted out the door to greet him. Cara was right on my heels
and Gabrielle lagged behind.

I flew into his arms, burying my face in his
neck as he swung me around. He set me down and kissed me thoroughly
before scooping Cara into his arms for her twirling hug. When he
set her down, she got a big kiss on the top of her head. Gabrielle
watched the scene with a bit of trepidation.

“Want a turn?” he opened his arms and smiled
at Gabrielle.

“No thanks,” she shook her head, her
expression clearly saying she thought he was nuts.

“Let me know if you change your mind,” he
gave her a half-hug and a wink.

“Sure….”

“How did it go?” I wrapped my arm around his
waist as Cara grabbed his hand. Neither of us wanted to let him
go.

“Well, I think. I’ll be glad to get the
verdict, though. I guess I’ll hang out there tomorrow and Friday so
I’m nearby if they call us back… wow, it smells good in here.”

“Thanks. Maybe they’ll come back tomorrow so
you can come home to stay for a while. Lord knows you’ll have more
wills than you can write if you don’t.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Probably not… so, do you know what Mary
plans to do if she’s acquitted?”

“Her family has been there all week. I think
they’re hoping to whisk her back to the bayou the second they
can.”

“Does she ever wonder why you appeared out of
nowhere to save her?”

“She knows Conrad and I are trying to clear
your name… she just doesn’t realize why.”

I tried to recall all of the details about
the turn of events that landed Mary in prison, wondering what her
case had to do with clearing my name. She’d been convicted of
felony theft—supposedly she’d made off with some guy’s fortune. I
wanted to push the subject, but the girls were vying for Charlie’s
attention and it wasn’t a conversation they needed to hear anyway.
It wasn’t until a few hours later that Charlie and I lay tangled up
in our sheets, finishing the earlier conversation.

“I think Mary fell in love with the wrong
guy. His family paid to have her removed from the picture—and in a
way that didn’t scream Chappaquiddick,” Charlie absentmindedly
stroked my still-flat stomach.

“So, did the public defender intentionally
throw the case?”

“I think so…Neena, her lawyer was Martin
Ross.”

“My attorney,” realization settled over me.
“I remember that. I guess I just never thought it mattered.”

“The guy is a public defender. Representing
both of you isn’t exactly a smoking gun. But then take into account
that both of you were poor women who happened to be inconveniencing
some very powerful families, and now we have another similarity.
When I consider the fact that he’s usually a fairly decent lawyer
but lost two cases a first-year could have won, then I think I want
to take a swing at the guy.”

“Wow. You sound almost angry,” I teased
nervously.

“I’m beyond angry,” his voice trembled as he
ran his fingers through his hair. “If I found out he did this to
you for money, I can’t promise I’ll behave rationally.”

“Hey, don’t do that,” I caught his chin and
forced him to look me in the eye. “These people stole my
humanity—don’t hand them yours, too.”

“I don’t plan on it,” he tucked a strand of
hair behind my ear. “And I would like to help you reclaim
yours.”

“So what else? What’s next?”

“Well, I am hoping that Mary’s acquittal on
the basis of improper representation will open up some of Marty’s
other files. I’ve asked a friend of mine to take a look at Todd
Winslow’s past. If you weren’t his first victim, it would help our
case.”

“Don’t say that,” I winced.

“I didn’t say I was hoping for it, just
stating a fact,” he reminded me gently. “Anyway, I have a few
directions I want to head once I can give your case my full
attention. First, I have to deal with Julie.”

I resisted the urge to hiss. Instead, I chose
to do something more productive. “What can I do to help?”

“Do you have any dirt on her?” Charlie
half-laughed. “I seriously doubt she’s quite the saint she’s
portraying herself to be.”

“It shouldn’t matter. She walked out on the
two of you. Period. Her rights should have ended there.”

“But she says she did it to make a better
life for herself and Cara because I refused to make more
money.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever
heard,” I snorted. “I don’t like that woman.”

“I know. Me either,” Charlie traced my lips
with his finger. “But I have to thank her for giving me Cara.”

“The stork brought Cara,” I informed him
solemnly. “I refuse to believe Julie ever held your heart.”

“I was a really young and stupid kid,” he
leaned closer, causing my breath to catch. “The best thing she ever
did for me was to leave. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here with you
now. And being here with you now is the reason God gave me
breath.”

It was a while before we got back around to
conversation after that. It was way past my bedtime when we finally
drifted off to sleep. The next morning, Charlie fed the girls
breakfast while I went through my morning ritual on the bathroom
floor. The bouts of sickness came and went. First thing in the
morning was the one time I could pretty much bank on being ill. The
rest was a coin toss.

By the time I was well enough to talk, he was
on his way back to Louisiana and I needed to get Cara to school.
Gabrielle and I spent Thursday morning much the same as the three
before it. Only now, we’d made enough progress that we were able to
head home after lunch.

As always, before venturing outside we
wrapped our faces in scarves and jammed knit caps on our heads. If
there was a reporter lurking around town, I didn’t want them
catching a snapshot of me. The winter wear was hot and itchy, but
we endured it—even as we exercised the horses in our own field.

As a Coushatta, Gabrielle knew her way around
horses; I didn’t need to tell her what to do. Cara’s little pony
was a breeze compared to the animals she was used to working with
on the Coushatta Ranch. I enjoyed my time with Gabrielle; she was
so much like Conrad.

Maybe it was masochistic of me, but there
were times I tried to see some of Todd in her. As hard as I looked,
it just wasn’t there. Maybe the stork brought me Gabrielle after
all. As I succumbed to her charm, it became easier and easier to
forget what was fair to Conrad.

The afternoon flew by. Gabrielle offered to
groom the horses and put them back in their stalls while I went to
get Cara. I was on my way out the door to pick her up when the
phone rang.

“We won,” Charlie’s smile shone through the
phone. “She gets to go home, Neena. We won.”

I know I thanked him, I smiled with him, I
cried, but I still couldn’t fully process the fact that after all
of that time Mary O’Donnell would just walk out of that place—free
to live her life again.

I wondered what kind of life she’d find
waiting for her. Would she still sleep lightly as I did? How long
would it take her to stop tensing up for a fight whenever another
person got within a ten-foot radius? Would she have nightmares,
too?

These were the thoughts that filled my mind
as I waited on a bench for Cara to emerge from the school. I was so
preoccupied I nearly missed the glint of sunlight off of glass
coming from the trees across the street. I cocked my head to study
the tree in question. The bell rang and students began pouring out
of the building.

“Neena!” Cara waved excitedly at me. A light
flashed just as she reached me. I smiled at her as I grabbed her
hand and started back towards the house at a near-trot.

“Hey baby… good to see you. How was your
day?”

“Why are we walking so fast?”

“I’ll explain later,” I glanced over my
shoulder. I didn’t see anyone following us, but that didn’t mean we
were alone. Someone had taken our picture. Someone knew Cara was
Charlie’s daughter. Suddenly I was very glad for the itchy
scarf.

I startled every time the sun glinted off a
car bumper. Poor Cara was completely bewildered by the time I
crashed through our front door. Charlie came home to a quiet house
with every shade pulled tight. The girls had given up on talking to
me; I was driving them crazy with my pacing and peeking out the
windows. They’d long since retreated to Cara’s room with Beau.

If Charlie was surprised to hear that we’d
had a reporter tailing us, he did a good job of hiding it. Not that
we’d had much time to talk. He gave each of us a quick kiss,
inhaled his dinner, and went straight to his study to work on a
response to Julie’s petition.

I couldn’t blame him. I understood his
urgency. Still, that didn’t make our bed any less lonely when I
fell asleep with only his pillow for company yet again.

Even with Charlie back, Gabrielle and I stuck
to our new routine and went to his office after dropping Cara off
the next morning. He was distracted, but happy to see us. His nose
was buried so deeply in case law that he didn’t seem concerned with
any of the progress we’d made around the place in his absence, so I
took up my newly assumed spot at the front desk and continued with
my own research. Gabrielle sat curled up in the big bay window at
the front of the office, working on the math assignment I’d given
her in attempt to keep her from falling behind at school.

“Wow… she’s pretty.”

I looked up at Gabrielle’s observation and my
heart skipped a beat. “Gabrielle, grab your things and come with
me.”

“What?” confusion etched her brow.

“Now,” I hissed, my heart now pounding
double-time to make up the beat it’d skipped previously.

“What’s going on, Mom?”

“Charlie… I think your fan club is here to
see you… Gabrielle and I will be hiding out back until she’s
gone.”

“What?” he poked his head out of his office
just as we rushed by. He sighed when he saw her. “That woman never
gives up.”

“I thought that might be her…she looked out
of place in Hampton. Just get rid of her and let us know when we
can come back in.”

“Sure,” he scowled, not at all happy with the
distraction. A few months ago, it would never have occurred to me
that my affable Charlie would even look crossly at another human
being. Now I almost felt sorry for the persistent reporter. He
looked ready to bite her head off.

We startled a cat routing through his trash
when Gabrielle and I slipped into the alleyway behind Charlie’s
office. I wished for something to do so we didn’t look so out of
place, but there really wasn’t anything once I’d replaced the lid
on the trash can. We sighed at each other and leaned against the
door.

We earned a few odd looks from other shop
owners and employees as they came and went from their own back
doors, and I could just imagine the gossip I would garner for this
stunt, but I considered it a win that Elena didn’t see me and no
reporter-boogey-men appeared out of thin air to snap my photo. It
didn’t occur to me to move away from the door until Charlie tried
to open it, though.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, rushing past him to
reenter the building once he’d given us the all-clear.

“You’d better let me pick Cara up today,” he
informed me once we were alone in his office. “She thinks she
caught a glimpse of you and is just dying to meet you now.”

“Great,” I plopped into a large leather chair
tucked into the corner. “So, am I a prisoner in our house now?”

“For the time being, it looks like it,”
Charlie sat on the edge of his desk facing me. “Sorry, babe.”

“What about our Christmas shopping? What
about delivering my jewelry orders?”

“I’ll just have to do those, too.”

“Because you aren’t spread thin enough
already,” I rubbed my temples, fighting the headache I could feel
coming on. “Do you have any idea how long this will go on?”

“Not really. But once she’s gone, that means
she’s ready to run her story. That could be even worse.”

“True,” I acknowledged. It was frustrating,
but true. With everything going on around us, it looked like the
only thing I could do for the time being was hole up in my house
and wait.

Chapter Seventeen

The next weeks were long ones. Anjelita was
busy trying to help Manny complete the last of the Christmas
orders. Gabrielle was crabby about being stuck in the house with
me. Even crabbier when she realized that one of the few things I
had to keep myself busy was schoolwork with her.

Conrad came up on his days off and always
left too soon. One trip, he brought me my first cell phone. It was
a pay as you go phone which I immediately stuck in my travel bag. I
sent him home with explicit instructions and enough money to do my
Christmas shopping for me. It was the first Christmas I could
celebrate in a long time—I wasn’t about to let it slip by because
of this.

Even though Rachel had disappeared from our
lives, it was decided Gabrielle should stay close to me. If the
reporters came back, it was best to have kept her tucked out of
sight. While the men were concerned about reporters, I was
terrified Todd Winslow’s family would catch wind of her.