Royce (21 page)

“He’s doing it. He’s really doing it. Oh, Royce, I want hundreds more just like him.” The doctor laughed and they both ignored him. Royce reached down and ran his finger over the baby’s tiny little head.

He was beautiful. Perfectly formed and pink. The nurse told him that his first reading was perfect and she expected no less of him when they did the second one. When they asked to take him to be cleaned up, Kasey watched with tears in her eyes as they took him away. Royce followed them to the little basinet in the corner.

“He weights seven pounds and ten ounces and is eighteen and three quarters inches long.” Royce pulled out his phone, snapped a picture of his baby, and put in the information as the nurse gave it to him. He wasn’t sure why anyone but he and Kasey would care what size his head or chest was, but he typed it in all the same. When she told him that he was perfect, as he’d already guessed he was, he put that in there as well and sent it to his family, including his newly acquired one with Jay and Suzy. He put his phone away and walked back to Kasey.

“I love you. Thank you for my son. He’s perfect.” He kissed her again and reached into his pocket and pulled out the blue box he’d been carrying around for three weeks. “I know that you don’t care for jewelry that much, but I thought you’d like this.”

He’d had it custom made for her. And when she opened it and she cried, he was sure he’d made the right choice. It had taken a lot of figuring and a great deal of help from her uncle Jay.

The bracelet was filled with small charms and pictures. There was a blue bootie that he’d had made with the baby’s initials on it and the year. A pair of rings like the ones they wore with their initials and the year they’d gotten married. The pictures were in small frames and that was what had taken the most time to get together.

Several of them were of them together. There was one each of them as a baby. Jay had found a whole box of pictures when he’d gone to clean out his sister’s apartment. He’d wanted to put all of them on there for her, but there were hundreds of them and he was sure she’d not be able to lift her arm with them there.

But the ones that he’d taken the most care with were the ones of her mom. Two of them were of Leah alone, one of her while pregnant with Kasey. The other when she’d been on vacation somewhere before she’d been ill, Jay had told him. Then there were the ones of mother and daughter together.

Leah had been a beautiful pregnant woman. Her face glowed with happiness, much like Kasey’s had. The other one was of Leah holding her daughter when Kasey had been around seventeen and had just graduated from high school. Jay had said that Kasey should have graduated the year before, but she’d thought herself in love with this boy and wanted to wait for him. Turned out he had only wanted her mind and not her heart.

“It’s beautiful. Oh, Royce, it’s so beautiful.” She ran her fingers over the blue bootie and then looked up at him when the frame was blank. “For Lee, I guess?”

“Yes. I did have them put this one there.” He showed her the one of the sonogram before he’d been born that showed he was a male. “But I wanted to get one of him, the one that I just took, put on there too.”

She pulled him down for a kiss and everything was right in the world for him. They gave them Lee back while they waited in recovery. The nurse asked and was granted permission to go and get the families. The room filled quickly with women cooing over the baby and the men slapping him on the back.

Yes, Royce thought, life was perfect.

Chapter 22

The trial continued on without Royce and Kasey until the ninth day. The day she was going to tell her side of the story. She wasn’t thrilled about her time away from her son, but since Annamarie was keeping him for them, she felt marginally better. She was sworn in and asked to say her name.

“Kasey Marie Hunter.” The room erupted in laughter when she had to stutter over her name twice. “I’ve only been married a short while, Your Honor, and I don’t have to say it often.”

“Don’t you worry about it, Mrs. Hunter. When you’ve been married awhile, you’ll remember it right quick.” He glared at White when he snickered. “You’d best be on your best behavior. I’ve had about all I can take from you this week.”

Kasey had heard how White had jumped from his seat to try and get to one of the other women who’d come to tell what had happened. A swift wrap on the head from the judge’s gavel had stopped his forward motion enough that the bailiff was able to get him into cuffs and out of the room. Connie McIntosh had finished her horrific tale to just the judge and the jury and Curtis as the judge had thrown everyone else out. White had been pissed to find out that she’d had a baby by him.

But the DNA had come back positive, well, ninety-nine point seven percent positive. White, it seemed, had taken exception to the other point three percent. He said that the test had been rigged.

“She can’t be here. It’s a conflict of interest or something like that. She’s got the family tied up all in a neat bow to try and frame me,” White shouted. His lawyer had been “fired” three days before. “I don’t think she should be allowed to try and take me down with her being married to the man who is accusing me.”

The judge hit his gavel on the desk and made her jump. He apologized to her and looked over at Curtis. Both men were grinning. “Counselor, do you have any objection to me changing this proceeding right now?” Kasey wasn’t sure, but she thought that they’d hoped this would happen. “I don’t want the Hunter Corporation to come under fire for this. What do you say we change things up a bit?”

“I’m all for it, Your Honor. I would like to be a part of this if Mr. White doesn’t mind. I would really hate to be simply dismissed out of turn.” They both turned to White and the judge asked him if he cared.

“If it means that I won’t be tried by the Hunters, then okay. I guess. Would it mean that Shelia here doesn’t get to say her part to anyone?”

“Nope, Shelia can’t say a word against you. Not now, not ever.” When Kasey started to say she wasn’t Shelia, she saw Curtis shake his head slightly. He continued speaking to White. “Shelia will agree to whatever is necessary to get this moving in the right direction.”

“Well then let’s have at it. I would like to get myself home soon. Not that you all haven’t been really accommodating, but I have to find myself a job and all. Bills to pay, you know.” White nodded again as he continued. “Yeah, the faster we do this, the better I’d like it.”

Kasey noticed that when a folder was brought to the judge and Curtis was given a copy that White sat up in his chair straighter. He kept looking at her and grinning like a fool, but she simply sat there. When she’d tried to move back to her seat, she was told to wait. So wait she’d done.

“All right then, Mrs. Hunter, continue with your side of the story.” She looked at Curtis, who nodded at her when the judge had given her permission. Before she could speak, White jumped up.

“Now wait a damned minute. You said she couldn’t tell her side of the story. You said that you were going to make this go better for me. I don’t think Sally here is going to tell you anything different now than she’d been about to tell you.”

“Her name isn’t Shelia or Sally, you moronic idiot. Her name is Kasey. Kasey Marie York Hunter, the woman who is going to put you away for a very long time.” Curtis tried to continue speaking over White, but he just wouldn’t shut up. The judge finally had the bailiff draw his gun and point it at the man.

“You have got to be the dumbest man I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. What on earth made you think that I was going to do anything but try you and then sentence you?” When White started to speak again, the judge grinned. “I’d do what that man tells you. He retires in a few weeks and he’s just itching to take out someone before he goes.”

Kasey laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was wonderful to see White get what he deserved. She looked at the judge. “Can I talk now?” He nodded at her. “I started working for the Hunter Corporation right out of high school. I was working my way through college at the time and it was a good paying job. Not a great job, but it paid well.”

She looked over at Royce when he stepped through the door with their baby in his arms. He winked at her and sat right behind the table where Curtis had been sitting. She smiled then, the tension of telling this story going right out of her. She simply told it to him.

“I learned the job quickly and when things started to look like an opening would come up, I would apply. Every time I did, Mr. White would shoot me down. It was one thing or another, but ultimately, it came down to him telling me if I slept with him, he’d promote me without any problems.”

“Did you?” Curtis asked from his position near the desk. “Did you sleep with Mr. White?”

She looked over at the man who had terrorized her for years. Who’d kept her from her mother sometimes and who on more than one occasion had hit her. She shook her head before answering. “No. He wasn’t worth it. And I have much too much pride in myself to ever think that he’d be worthy enough to give me what he’d promised.”

“There were other women. Others like you that he’d lied to. Did you know that he’d hurt them? That he’d made the same promises that he’d made you?”

She looked away from Royce, knowing that she’d made a mistake in not encouraging them to go to someone above White’s head. “Yes. I’d had a few conversations with them. Not all of them, but a few. I…I, like them, believed that there wasn’t anyone to help us. That we’d be lucky if we didn’t lose our jobs or, worse yet, be black balled out of the kind of work we were good at.” Kasey looked at the four women who had been there every time she’d been in the court room. “We were good at our jobs. Very good. What he did was…what White did to all of us was wrong. Not just because he’d raped and hit, but that we’d allowed it to happen to us. We should have been braver. Smarter even. I’m so sorry.”

Gurt stood up and a hush came over the room when she did. “You saved me. He could have killed me that day, but I knew that I’d be letting you down if I died. You told me to kick his balls the next time he did anything to me. I tried. I lived because you told me that I was stronger than him.”

May stood too and nodded. Then Shawna Parks. Kasey didn’t know much about her other than she’d had a child before working there and had almost lost custody of her when White had told someone at the welfare office that she was a whore. Of course there was no evidence to say it, but her reputation had been blackened and she’d left town. She’d only been found when Kasey had remembered her father lived here still.

At the end of the day White was taken away and the jury was sent to deliberate all that they’d been told. Kasey went to her husband and new baby and cried all the way home. She wanted something from the Hunter Corporation and she wasn’t sure how to get it. She called the only other person she knew who would understand her.

Bobbie met her at the office the next morning and the two of them started to work. By the third day of meeting, first there then at her home, the two women had a proposal to give to the board.

~~~

Annamarie knew when she saw Kasey that the woman was going to blow them out of the water. She had an air about her that said “fuck off.” Annamarie thought maybe she’d put her new daughter-in-law on the next committee she had to form. The woman looked like she could hold her own.

“In the past several weeks I’ve noticed an expansion in the security department. I think that as a company Hunter Corporation should work at—”

“You’re the Hunter Corporation now too, sweetheart. You own as much of the company as I do.” Annamarie looked at Royce when he cut his wife off. “If you want to try something here then by all means, simply tell me what it is and I’ll make it happen for you.”

“No. I mean thanks, but no. I want to make you make this happen as you said, but not because I want it but because it’s a sound idea. And unless you make the company move more to the twenty-first century then I’m not so sure I want any part of it.”

Annamarie laughed when Royce and Daniel sputtered. She wasn’t surprised when Jesse just leaned back in his chair. “Oh come now. You can’t be upset with her for voicing her mind. I, for one, would like to hear how we’ve lagged behind. Go on, Kasey. Tell us what we can do.”

“What is it then? Are we not hiring enough females? Do we not have enough female bathrooms? Come on. Tell us how we’ve gotten so antiquated.” Curtis rubbed his forehead as he continued. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Kase. Please, tell us.”

“She thinks we should educate our employees. And not just the security team, but all of us. Had we been better equipped to handle someone coming to us, none of this would have gotten out of control.” Jesse got up and took the folder from Kasey that she was using. “I’ve been looking at what you’ve put together. You’re a smart cookie.”

“Have you been going to Jesse and not me?” Royce sounded hurt. “Kasey, you know I would have helped you with anything.”

“No, I didn’t go to him.” Kasey jerked her folder from Jesse. “And I may have to put him through the privacy classes twice. Where the hell did you learn about this?”

Jesse winked at her. “I’m learning how to observe and report. You know that nothing goes on around here that I’m not at least partly aware of. Besides, you had to log the computer time in. Shouldn’t have looked on all those sites without checking to see whose computer you were using.”

Annamarie looked at Bobbie when she said, “damn it,” and then laughed when she glared at Jesse. “Remind me next time a girl calls in for you that I tell her your home phone number. Ungrateful child. You should be horsewhipped taking her thunder away like that.” Bobbie smacked at him before she smiled at Kasey. “Go on, Kasey, tell them.”

Nodding, she continued. “Those women should have been able to go to someone higher than White. I should have gone to someone, but who? There’s no list that tells us who to go to. There isn’t anyone that is there for us on our level, not HR or even a member of management. Most all of those women worked third shift, as did I. White could pretty much do what he wanted because there was no one on those shifts that we could talk to that had anything to do with him. I’m not saying that you need to hire someone that would be there on the off chance—”