Paradise for a Sinner (7 page)

A little shy in front of a woman he barely knew and clad only in his tighty-whiteys, Teddy asked if Adam could take him into the prepared bath. The big cornerback hefted him with gentleness and ease and completed the process of getting the boy into the tub. Leaving the bathroom door cracked just a bit in case Teddy needed him, Adam took a chair and talked to Winnie of their upcoming Samoan feast, what foods he would prepare. The only things Doug Hopper ever brought to a meal were a knife and a fork and a complaint if the dinner was not to his liking.

When Teddy called to get out, Adam took the pajamas laid on the bed, helped the boy to dry and dress. He didn’t flinch when Winnie administered the shot through the navel to activate the boy’s bowels, just simply carried him back into the bathroom to wait for the results. But then, Adam Malala never flinched. Despite his size, he could cross a football field with amazing speed, send his body flying into a receiver, and pop the ball out of his opponent’s grasp almost as an afterthought.

They had the boy settled in bed when a knock sounded on the door. Stacy in a ruffled and beribboned muslin nightgown fit for royalty entered and asked if she could say goodnight to Teddy. Such a nice gesture coming from her astonished the adults, but not so much the words she had to say.

“Look, Teddy. We’re the outsiders here. We have to stick together no matter what.”

“They have to keep you. You’re family. They don’t have to let me stay if it turns out Mr. Joe is not my daddy. The guys hardly talked to me at dinner. I make a step, or maybe a wheel, in the wrong direction, and I’m outta here. I have to be on my best behavior.” The boy’s eyes blinked heavily as if this day had run over him with a pair of cleats and left him exhausted.

“Well, the girls only like me for my dog and my clothes. I just wanted to say I’ve got your back if you have mine. Deal?”

“Sure, I guess.”

She fingered his ratty paperback copy of a Harry Potter novel on the nightstand. “Can I borrow this? Of course, I had a whole set of the hardcovers at the palazzo, but I never read them and couldn’t bring them with me on the plane. Can you believe I don’t have a television set in my room? Yours neither, I see.”

“Just bring it back in the morning.”

“Goodnight, then.” Stacy marched across the hall to her own room, probably intending to plague Brinsley with her demands until she felt sleepy.

“Nervy brat,” Adam said. “Don’t let her get you in trouble, Teddy.”

“I’ll try to be good. I think I should say my prayers now.”

Adam dropped to his knees at the bedside and folded his hands. Caught off guard, Winnie simply bowed her head. Sure, Mintay had embraced the Rev’s AME church, but her parents could only be described as secular humanists. Neither approach bothered Teddy. He closed his eyes and made a steeple with his hands over his stomach.

“Dear God, thank you for bringing me to this pretty house with a big gate and alarm buttons. I feel safe here. Bless my new family and especially Stacy who really needs it. Also Nurse Winnie and Mr. Adam who are taking good care of me and my mom wherever she is, okay? Please, let me be Mr. Joe’s real son so’s I can stay here. Amen.”

Without whining for a glass of water or a story or a few more minutes before lights out, Teddy worked himself over on his side, tucked his hands under his pillow, and said, “Night.”

Winnie turned out his light. “Teddy, I’ll be in the next room with the doors to the bathroom open. Call if you need me.”

The boy appeared to be asleep already. She walked Adam to the elevator. From Stacy’s room they heard Brinsley reading aloud from the Harry Potter book in his wonderfully appropriate British accent. Down the hall, Nell slipped from the triplets’ room and began making her rounds to issue goodnights and lights out warnings to the older children.

Winnie leaned against the wall as they waited for the lift to arrive. “That Tebowing you did by Teddy’s bed caught me off balance. I’ve seen you do your really intimidating war dance before a game, but never a prayer. Somehow, I thought Samoans were all about rough sports and well, love under the palm trees.”

“We are all of those things. The London Missionary Society really did a job on us. I hear a ‘let us pray,’ and I’m on my knees. If you are out in a village at six p.m. and the church bell rings, you’d better head somewhere for Bible reading and prayers and get off the street. The natives are friendly but don’t take sacrilege lightly. Church on Sunday, sometimes twice, no other activities on the day of rest. But, we do manage to offset that with an enormous Sunday dinner. It’s the Samoan way. I’d like to take you to the islands someday.”

Surely he didn’t mean it, but Winnie pushed off from the wall closer to his broad, brown face. Adam leaned in, so close she could feel his body heat and the tickle of his soft curls touching her cheek. Nell came trotting down the hall. They moved apart.

“I wanted to see how Teddy managed tonight.”

“Already asleep. He had long, hard day,” Winnie reported. “I think Anastasia is still up.”

“Yes, ready or not, I should check on her, too. Something tells me she isn’t going to like our lights out at nine rule. Adam, you’d better get going. Corazon has the cottage ready for you, and Joe wants to set the alarms. Ever since Tommy was kidnapped, he is really careful about locking up every evening.”

“I understand, Mrs. Joe. I’ll take the stairs and meet him by the front door. Sleep well, Winnie.”

Sure, sleep well. No matter how pretty and airy the room the only thoughts on her mind were of the little boy who needed her help, and the big, strong man who probably only wanted a roll in sand—and she was perfectly fine with that.

Chapter Ten

At breakfast, Winnie marveled at Nell’s precision in getting her family of eight off to school. Corazon had a hot breakfast of oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar ready to serve, pitchers of milk and orange juice on the table, and bowls at the ready as each child appeared at the table. The eldest came first while Nell who rousted them stayed upstairs to help the triplets dress. School uniforms made that just so much easier. Compared to this regimen, getting Teddy into the bathroom, strapped into his braces, and dressed seemed almost easy. The boy tried to be as independent as possible and helped in any way he could.

After breakfast, the Billodeaux kids boarded the white van, girls in back, boys in front since they were dropped off first at the parochial school in town, and the girls at the Episcopal country day school farther out of town. Knox Polk made sure each and every one had their backpack and appropriate attire down to belts and the right color of socks. Being a former military man, the task suited him eminently. He added his own son to the load. Away they went.

That left Adam and Joe in peace putting away man-sized portions of oatmeal and a stack of whole wheat toast slathered with strawberry jam. Nell nibbled plain toast and coffee while Stacy played with her food and voiced her preference for croissants in the morning. Brinsley refused to sit down until everyone else had eaten. With some coaxing, Winnie got Teddy to eat a piece of toast and some of his oatmeal before escorting him to the gates to wait for his bus. From social worker to Nell, all agreed for the time being he would be better off with his regular routine and an aide at the public school who knew him.

Winnie warned him in the afternoon, she would meet him with his crutches and expect him to walk at least half way back to the house using them. Noting his worried expression, she brushed the fine, blond hair out of his eyes and gave him some reassurance.

“Never fear. No one is going to kick you out. You have a home here as long as you need it.”

She watched him safely board the bus and turned to go back to the house. Joe’s farm truck, the one he had reclaimed in Mexico five years ago, pulled up beside her. Adam leaned out from the open window. “You ready to help me find some lava rocks?”

“Sure, if Nell doesn’t need me.”

“She’s taking that Stacy over to the day school for admission testing. The girl had a private tutor, if you can believe that. They don’t know exactly what she learned—except whining, complaining, and lording it over everyone else. In Samoa, I was grateful to sleep on my auntie’s screened porch in Pago Pago in order to go to school in the city, me and Sammy Tau and four other boys, too.”

Winnie climbed into the high cab of the once silver truck. The finish had worn down to gray, but Knox Polk kept it in good running order and used it for the dirty work around the ranch. She knew the harrowing story of its recovery and always had the urge to look for bullet holes in the chassis. The iron gates of Lorena Ranch opened and closed behind them.

“Sounds like a rough way to get an education.”

“Not so bad. Only the smartest and most athletic boys got the chance to leave the village. If we did well, we got scholarships to the mainland colleges, guys like me to big universities with football teams, the others to church-run colleges maybe, to become ministers, doctors, teachers, the kind of people who get a lot of respect back home.”

“And football players?”

“Not as much as you’d think. Now a nurse, she has some prestige.”

“Really? All I’ve heard for years is that I should have been a doctor.”

“What stopped you?”

“My ex, he had to get his training first.” Winnie vowed not to mention Doug again in any way if she could help it. Just what a guy wanted to hear, stories about her ex.

“If it weren’t for mine, I’d be in Pago right now.”

“You have an ex, too?”

“Ex-fiancée. She wanted another man. Now I don’t feel like going home so much.”

“Hard to believe she’d want anyone else but you.”

“You think?” A grin wiped the momentary seriousness from his face.

They entered the small town of Chapelle and immediately left it, making a beeline for the highway and the sprawling Home Depot that sat at the intersection with the country road. Adam drove carelessly, one hand on the wheel, a heavy foot on the gas pedal pushing the old truck ten miles over the limit.

“Um, Adam. You’re speeding.”

“You see a cop?”

“No, but…”

“Then, no worries, lovely Winnie.”

Taking no risks, she always drove slightly under the speed limit. Despite her fears, they did get to Home Depot alive. Adam parked near several chicken wire pens of rocks and started looking them over. “Louisiana has lots of great stuff, but it doesn’t have good rocks,” he remarked as he held up a specimen. “Imagine having to import rocks. We need a bunch of lava stones the size of a coconut for the
umu
oven.”

Despite having dressed in white slacks and an emerald top she thought made her eyes look greener, Winnie joined in the search for the perfect rocks until they created a small volcano-shaped mound. Adam paid for the stones and heaved them one by one into the truck. She didn’t mind watching him one bit as his muscles bunched and his buttocks strained tight in a pair of jeans. Back in the truck, they stopped at the light preventing people from leaving the lot to carelessly stray onto the highway. Adam glanced left, then right.

“Palm trees,” he said and tore out onto the highway the second the light changed instead of heading toward Chapelle.

Winnie braced herself. “What?”

“Palm trees. Lorena Ranch needs some palm trees and a beach. Right over there, a nursery with palm trees, good-sized ones, too.”

“Are you sure Joe wants a beach and palm trees?”

“Doesn’t everyone? I’ll pay for them as my gift to Camp Love Letter—and to you.”

“I’ve been to the beach before. You shouldn’t do it for me.”

Winnie denied the grand gesture though her words were not entirely true. Her parents preferred learning vacations to big cities with streets full of museums and cultural opportunities on every corner. The couple of times she’d gone to north Florida with her college friends, a call from Nana preceded the trip. “Stay out of the sun. Mind you don’t make your complexion darker.” That advice sucked a great deal of fun out of the experience.

Adam took his hand off the wheel and made an expansive gesture. “Louisiana beaches are nothing. I do it for everyone who comes to the camp.”

He appeared to do everything with enthusiasm, whether running down a receiver or in this case cutting recklessly across traffic to reach the nursery. The rocks in the truck bed rolled and banged against its sides as they came to a crossover and turned sharply to gain access to a gravel lot rimmed with towering palm trees, their bulbous bases wrapped in burlap.

Winnie followed Adam in awe as he told an ecstatic nurseryman exactly what he wanted: all the palm trees, large and small, sand fine as sugar to cover an acre of land, maybe some plantings of hibiscus for tropical color. Could the man draw up a landscaping plan and a cost estimate by Friday and have the whole project completed by Super Bowl Sunday? The owner nodded like a bobblehead doll that should have had little dollar signs for eyes and scribbled down all of Adam’s directions.

Back in the truck, Winnie sat dazed by Adam’s impulsiveness. She doubted she’d ever done anything without thinking it through first, even marrying the white college boy who told her she was smart as well as beautiful and the hardest worker he knew. That had turned out very well for Douglas Hopper, not so well for her, so why not throw all caution to the trade winds and have a fling with the big, happy, uncomplicated Samoan? She still pondered that question when Adam swung the truck into a burger place by the highway.

“You interested in an early lunch? That oatmeal really didn’t stay with me,” Adam said.

“I guess I could eat a salad with an iced tea, unsweetened.”

He sent her to get a seat while he ordered for both of them. Minutes later, he returned bearing a tray crowded with two premium burgers, a super-sized sleeve of French fries, a sweet drink as big as a quart of milk, and of course, her salad and tea.

He attacked a half-pound burger and after swallowing a mouthful, remarked, “Did I tell you Samoans love their junk food?”

“No, but I think I could have guessed.”

Adam shoved the fries her way. “Here, share. My mother would say you are too skinny. Can’t I afford to feed you?”