The Child Comes First (10 page)

S
IMON DIDN'T WANT TO HEAR
what Jayda was saying to him as they drove together to Tiffany's old neighborhood. She made no sense. “Are you telling me that the rest of the world assumes that any bachelor who wants to be a father may be a pedophile, without any evidence whatsoever?” The very idea made him furious.

She sighed. “No, that's not what I said.”

“But it's what you're implying. You said that Social Services would never let me, an unmarried heterosexual male, adopt Tiffany. But that policy is so wrong. She has no other prospects of finding a family—a kid with her record and temperament and now with a murder rap to her name, no matter how the case turns out. So the system would rather have her in an orphanage or bouncing from one foster home to another than allow her a real home with me. Besides, statistics show that having a woman in the home is no guarantee a kid won't be abused.”

“Believe me, I know,” she said softly, and her tone made Simon wonder again if there wasn't something in her own background she hadn't yet shared.

“Sometimes it's the women doing the abuse,” he added.

She sighed. “That's true. But, Simon, be serious. Are you going to move in with your mother and raise Tiffany as your daughter?”

He hesitated. Until now, he'd been more or less arguing the point without really considering all that adoption would entail. “Honestly, I need to give it more thought. But it sounds right to me, now that I'm talking about it aloud. She's a great kid and she deserves a home. As soon as you said she was thinking of us as her family, I thought, ‘Yeah, that's how it should be.'”

In his heart, he knew it would be an intense and difficult thing to see through. But he also believed that taking Tiffany into his life as his daughter would be good for her—and for him. He'd already learned so much from her about resilience and determination and hope. Every day, when she'd hugged him at the end of their time in court, he'd open a little more to her. Even when her temper got out of control, he felt he understood where she was coming from and knew he could handle it. This ability to accept someone just as she was and to welcome her gift of love had been missing from his life for as long as he could remember. Only his mother had been able to slip past the defenses he'd built around his heart during his adult life. Until Tiffany.

“The more you tell me I can't do it, the more I want to,” he said.

“That's certainly no reason to make the attempt to adopt her. You'll just get her hopes up, and it'll be so painful when it doesn't work out. You wouldn't do that to Tiffany just to prove a point, would you?”

“I hope you think more of me than that. I don't want to just prove a point. I
want
to be Tiffany's dad.” He stopped and thought about those words. Did he really want that, or was he simply reacting to the sadness of Tiffany's life and what she'd been through? Was he latching on to this as his next challenge just because Jayda said he wouldn't be allowed to do it? Was he trying to find meaning for his own life through Tiffany?

Jayda pulled the car to the curb and turned off the engine when they reached their destination. She sat staring ahead a moment, then reached over the console and put her hand on his. “Please think about this some more. Try to find that dispassionate attorney inside you and let him help you. I know you want to do what's best for Tiffany, but this isn't the way to accomplish that. Just win the case for her. That'll be enough.”

“And what happens to her if we win?” He paused, and then dared to voice his worst fears. “More to the point, what happens if we lose?”

Jayda remained silent, not judging his rare lack of confidence. not answering the unanswerable questions. After a moment she got out and led the way to the house where their potential witness lived. She knocked on the door and a dog began to bark furiously. A scuffle could be heard inside, as someone told the animal to shut up. Finally, a harried-looking brunette responded. Children's toys were strewn across the floor behind her.

“Mrs. Karowski, I'm Jayda Kavanagh. We talked on the phone the other day. You had some information about the three-year-old boy who was killed on this street. I brought along one of the lawyers on the case, Simon Montgomery.”

The woman eyed him as if he was a juicy steak she wanted to taste. She smiled and some of the years disappeared from her face. He revised his estimation of her age from forty to thirty-five or so. Needing her cooperation, he smiled back.

“Come on in,” Mrs. Karowski said, stepping aside. “Don't mind the dog. He'll get over himself in a minute.”

But the large animal insisted on sniffing crotches. Simon chuckled as both he and Jayda did a dog-snuffle dance until finally the dog padded away, and, with a huge sigh, threw itself onto a worn and lumpy bed in the corner. They took the seats they'd been directed to, and it crossed Simon's mind that Tiffany would probably like having a pet.

“You told me you thought you saw a man near the Amity house a day or so prior to the boy's death. Someone you didn't recognize.”

“That's right,” she said. She turned to Simon. “Can I get you two something to drink on this hot day? I have lemonade, if you like.”

At the exact same moment, Jayda said, “No, thanks,” and Simon responded, “Yes, please.”

He smiled at their host while also giving Jayda's shoulder a quick squeeze. “We'd both love some lemonade, if you have some made. Thank you.”

Mrs. Karowski disappeared into the kitchen of her little row house.

To Jayda, Simon whispered, “Let's ease into our questions slowly. I'd like to get a feel for how she'd be on the witness stand.”

She nodded. When the drinks were served, in mismatched glasses on a 1950s-vintage tray, Jayda sipped away at hers and let Simon take the lead with their questions.

“Would you recognize the man again if you saw a picture of him?” Simon asked.

“I might,” Mrs. Karowski said. “He was looking for a woman, and I think the kids were somehow a connection between him and her. I'm not sure. You got pictures to show me?” She sidled a bit closer to Simon, as if to look at photos he might produce from a pocket.

“No pictures today, but we'll work on getting some based on the description you gave the police. Did you get the impression that he was related to any of the kids in the neighborhood?” Jayda asked.

“Might've been,” she agreed. After thinking about that for a moment, she added, “He could have been one of them's father. But he wasn't looking to come back into his kid's life. He just wanted to know where some woman had gone off to.”

Simon stayed there with Jayda for another twenty minutes, gathering as much information as Mrs. Karowski could give—a vague description, a possible time frame, a muddled recounting of what the man had said when he'd knocked on her door looking for kids in a foster home. Mrs. Karowski hadn't given the roaming man any information, but someone else from the neighborhood might have. Could this man be Derek's killer? Sure. The hard part would be planting that possibility in the minds of the jurors and then backing it up.

As they returned to the car, Simon asked, “Would you drive me to my mother's house? I know it's out of your way but…”

She held up a silencing hand and said, “I'd be happy to. Maybe that will give me a chance to talk to Tiffany about what she thinks of the trial. As I told you before, so far she's refused to discuss it with me. Maybe if you're there…”

Once they were on their way again, sitting close enough so that he could tell she'd used a lavender-scented shampoo that morning, he marshaled his courage and risked an invitation. “Stay for dinner. There's always more than enough when my mother is cooking.”

Jayda hesitated, shifting in her seat behind the steering wheel. “Let's see how things go after we arrive.”

He shrugged, pretending it didn't matter one way or the other, but inside he felt like a rebuffed high schooler. Hiding his disappointment, he reverted to light conversation until they got to his mother's house. But when they arrived, things were not as they'd expected.

Tiffany was throwing up in the bathroom, and his mother was rubbing her back, a cup of stomach-soothing ginger tea in her free hand, waiting for a moment when Tiffany might be able to sip it.

“She has a fever, too,” his mother said. “She didn't feel well on the ride home, and then she just went downhill from there. She hasn't eaten a thing since lunch.”

“Do you think it's food poisoning? Should we take her to the hospital?” Simon asked.

“I don't think so. If it had been the food, she would have been sick long before this. I think she caught something that's got to come out of her one way or the other. The fever might knock it out, so let's just wait and see.”

“Can I do anything to help?” Jayda asked.

“Simon isn't much of a cook, I'm afraid. So if you can fix us something for dinner, the three adults need to eat, even if Tiffany can't. I'd like to stay with her and make sure things don't get any worse.” His mother attempted a weary smile. “I'm hoping she just needs some tender loving care.”

“I can whip something together,” Jayda said.

Simon piped up then. “I'll be down to help in a minute. I'm not completely useless in the kitchen.” Just the other day he'd managed to boil water for that cup of tea. If Jayda needed hot water, he would heat it for her. Beyond that, he feared he might be out of his league. All he knew was that he couldn't bear to see Tiffany so ill, and neither could he cope with the sense of helplessness that swamped him as he brushed her hair off her flushed face, then helped her rinse out her mouth and get back into bed.

 

B
Y MIDNIGHT
, J
AYDA WAS
sitting with Tiffany, Barbara and Simon in the emergency room of the local general hospital. The three adults had had soup and sandwiches for dinner, but Tiffany hadn't been able to eat anything or even manage tea or water. And her fever had gone up, despite a dose of Advil. Finally, the on-call doctor at Simon's boyhood pediatrics office urged them to take her to the ER. Once there, they were told to take seats along with all the other people waiting. The place was packed with men, women and children, coughing, wheezing, bleeding, moaning.

Simon had carried Tiffany into the hospital from the car. He'd seemed strong and capable with her small, listless body in his arms. Now she sat quietly on his lap. Leaning against his broad shoulders, she looked small and weak and miserable. As they waited, Jayda noticed Simon sometimes put his cheek on the girl's forehead. She figured that he was trying to check for a rise in her fever without worrying her more.

“She's really hot,” he murmured to Jayda, after they'd been waiting about a half hour. “Isn't that dangerous?”

“I think they'll take her temperature soon,” she answered. She didn't want him to panic, despite her own concern. Patience would be their ally at a time like this.

“Should I be insisting that someone look at Tiffany, Mom? She's so hot.” Simon sounded exactly like any other worried father. Watching him care for this sick child, Jayda could see that he'd make a great dad someday.

Barbara put her hand on her son's shoulder. “We already told them her temperature was over a hundred and three when we got here. You'll have to be patient—that's all we can do. I sat in this very emergency room with you a few times and I can assure you there's nothing you can do to make things go faster.”

Simon seemed to fume, but he stroked Tiffany's hair in a comforting paternal gesture.

Jayda's cell phone rang. She reached to turn the thing off, but then noticed the caller was Marla. She couldn't imagine why Marla would be calling her so late at night, unless something else had gone wrong. “Hello?”

“Tiffany's ELMO has gone off,” Marla said. “According to her device, she's not in the house and no one is answering the phone there. Has she run away? Is her foster mother out looking for her? Has anyone called you?”

“Slow down, Marla,” Jayda urged. “I'm with Tiffany now. We had to bring her to the emergency room. She's had a really high fever since she got home from the trial today and a local pediatrician told us to bring her to the hospital.”

“Oh.” And in that single syllable, Marla conveyed an awful lot of meaning. She seemed to say, ‘Okay, crisis over, but you're there with Tiffany at the ER and that's a problem, since I specifically told you not to become too involved, and you must be if you're there with her at this hour.' This was followed by a deep sigh. Then she said, “I'll straighten things out for her with the home-detention people. But before I do that, I want to know why you're with that family in the middle of the night. If you were like this with all your kids, you'd be a wreck in no time.”

Jayda gave Simon and Barbara an apologetic look and walked a few yards away to have it out with Marla. “I'm here for moral support. Tiffany got sick while I was at her house checking on her.”

“Jayda, you're too involved with that child and that family. I have a sinking feeling you're too involved with that attorney, in particular.”