The White Knight (26 page)

“This time it will be me. If I don't win, I'm going to throw a fit. Come on. Let's go back. They ought to be announcing the winners pretty soon.”

The two left the restaurant and drove back to the airfield. All the way there Luke held her hand. He did not say much, but the looks he gave her were enough—for now.

****

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” the voice said over the loudspeaker, “we will announce the winner of the aerobatic contest.”

Luke reached out and put his arm around Joelle. “Here we go,” he said.

“The winner is Luke Williams of Chattanooga, Tennessee.”

A thunderous applause and shouts of agreement went up
from the crowd. People were gathering around, beating Luke on the back, and Glenn Frasier said, “You did it, you son of a gun, you did it!”

“I'm so proud of you, Luke,” Joelle whispered as he embraced her. She had to put her lips close to his ear to make herself heard, and he hugged her more tightly before making his way up to the judges' stand.

The chief judge came forward, holding a silver cup in one hand and a check in the other. He made the presentation of the cup first and then said, “We realize that you pilots don't care anything about money, but here's the cash award that goes with the cup anyway.”

Luke took the cup and held it high. The crowd applauded and a photographer took his picture as Luke made his way back to Joelle. He handed her the check. “This ought to be enough to build whatever you need for boys,” he said. His eyes were shining, and he was thrilled with his accomplishment.

Joelle took the check and said, “I'm so proud of you, Luke. It was a wonderful—”

“Why, Luke Winslow, you scoundrel!”

Joelle turned to see a tall, well-built man in his early forties coming toward them with a smile. She waited for Luke to correct the man who had called him Winslow, but when she glanced at Luke, she saw his face had frozen and the smile had dropped away. The big man gave Luke a mighty hug.

“I never expected to see you here,” the man said. “I saw that name Luke Williams and never dreamed it was you. Why have you changed your name? Have you been a bad boy and gone incognito?”

“What's he talking about, Luke?” Joelle asked.

“This . . . this is Jack Thompson, an . . . an old friend of mine.”

Joelle was filled with confusion. She saw that Luke could hardly speak and that he was looking at her almost wildly. “I wanted to tell you, Joelle—”

“What's it all about?” Thompson asked. “How come you
dropped your real name and are running around masquerading as some stranger?”

Joelle saw that Luke was speechless, and she said, “Luke Winslow. Is that what you called him, Mr. Thompson?”

“Why, sure. We did our flight training together, didn't we, Luke? Had some pretty close calls there.” Thompson put his eyes on Joelle. “Are you two married?”

“No,” Joelle answered. “I want to know about this name Winslow.”

Thompson suddenly looked embarrassed and cast a quick glance at Luke. “I'm sorry, Luke, I didn't mean to give anything away.”

Something clicked in the back of Joelle's mind. “Luke Winslow . . . You're the one—” Suddenly it all came back to her. She had heard from others about how her brother had not been scheduled to take the flight he had been killed on. Rather, he had been filling in for a man named Luke Winslow who had been drinking and was in no shape to fly. She could see the guilt written all over his face. She thrust the check back at him, and when he didn't take it, she released it and let it fall to the ground. Without a word she turned and made her way blindly through the crowd, tears burning her eyes.

As soon as she cleared the crowd she started running toward the pickup. She could hear footsteps behind her and Luke was yelling her name. He grabbed her arm and turned her around to face him.

“I've got to talk to you, Joelle.”

“You're the man who killed my brother,” she said, and all of the anger and rage she had felt at the time returned. She had managed to put it out of her mind—or so she had thought—but now the sight of Luke and the discovery that he had deceived her was bitter to her very spirit.

“You killed my brother and you've lied and deceived me. Why did you do it?”

“I wanted to make up for what happened.”

“You killed Roscoe,” she said, and her voice was as hard as cool steel. “I don't ever want to see you again.”

“Joelle, I was going to tell you who I was, but I didn't know how and then I fell in love with you. I was going to ask you to marry me. You know I was.”

“I'd never marry you. You're nothing but a liar and a murderer! I don't ever want to see your face again!”

Luke felt helpless in the face of her anger.

“Give me the keys!” she demanded.

He dug into his pocket and handed her the keys, knowing that this part of his life was over.

She got in the truck and drove off, leaving him standing in a cloud of dust. He had often wondered what it would be like to be shot out of the sky back when he had been flying against the Condor Legion, and now he thought he knew. He had often escaped the bullets of enemy pilots, but he was certain that the hatred that filled Joelle's eyes was worse than any bullets he might have taken.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Wisdom From Troubled Girls

As Joelle worked on the books, she was suddenly aware that someone had come into the office. Looking up, she saw Sunny, who was looking at her in a sullen fashion.

“What is it, Sunny?”

“I want to know the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“About why Luke left.” Sunny had been shocked when Luke had gathered his few belongings and left. Joelle had not witnessed the parting, but Sunny had come to her afterward and said accusingly, “Why did you run Luke off, Joelle?” Joelle had known it was futile to explain the situation to a thirteen-year-old, and she had put her off as best she could.

Now, however, Sunny was glaring at her with resentment. “You never tell me anything, and you lied to me about why Luke left.”

“I didn't lie to you. I just didn't tell you all the truth.”

“Luke was in love with you, and you were in love with him. Everybody knew it.”

“That . . . that's not exactly true.”

“What do you mean? You either love someone or you don't.”

Joelle knew she owed it to the girl to attempt to explain. Sunny had always been fond of Luke, and he had spent a great deal of time with her. In a way he had become both the father and the brother she had never had, and now she was terribly hurt.

“Sit down here, Sunny. Let me try to explain.”

Sunny sat on the edge of a chair, her resentment evident in every inch of her figure.

“It's true,” Joelle began. “I had feelings for Luke, but I found out he wasn't the man I thought he was. He lied to me from the beginning. He didn't even tell us his real name. It wasn't Luke Williams. It was Luke Winslow.”

“Why did he change his name?”

“Because . . . because he had done something very bad and he didn't want me to know about it.”

“What did he do?”

“Sunny, can't you just take my word for it? The man I thought I cared for never existed. He did something that hurt me so terribly I can't even bear to talk about it.” She twisted her fingers, locking and unlocking them, without realizing what she was doing. “It wasn't what I wanted, but we have to face facts. He did something terrible, and he tried to cover it up, and I couldn't feel the same toward him once I knew.”

“So if I do something bad you're not going to love me anymore?”

The question caught Joelle with the force of a bullet. She realized that every one of the girls who were under her care had done something horribly wrong, yet she had given her life to them. Joelle tried desperately to think of some way to answer the question, but her mind was a confused jumble of emotions. She cleared her throat and said, “I'm sorry you're hurt, Sunny. I was hurt too. Sometimes people aren't as good as we think they are.”

Sunny stood up. “That's right,” she accused, “you're not as good as I thought you were.” She turned and left Joelle sitting there staring after her.

“That's not fair!” she whispered. “She doesn't understand. She's just a child.”

In truth, in the weeks since Luke had left, Joelle had never recovered from the shock of her discovery. She had gone about her work methodically, even taking on more shifts at the
hospital, trying to bury herself in work so she would not have time to think about the man she thought she loved. At night she would lie awake for hours struggling with her bitterness. She would think about her brother, Roscoe, and then she would think about how he had died, and Luke was always there to blame. The strain had caused her to lose her appetite, and she had lost weight. It affected her mental and emotional attitudes too. All of the girls, she knew, were aware of a change in her, for she had not been able to cover it up.

Joelle yanked open the desk drawer in front of her and took out an envelope. She removed the check from it. It had arrived in the mail three days after she had found out the truth, with a note saying, “This is yours. I'm sorry, Joelle, for everything. Luke.”

She stared at the handwriting and remembered how bitter she had felt when she'd received it. She knew Luke was flying for a small transport company in a nearby town, for Glenn Frasier had informed her of that. As she stared at the check, she said to herself,
He thinks he can buy his way out of what he did, but he can't. I'll never cash it. I won't give him the pleasure.

She kept the check in the drawer, half expecting Luke to come back to beg for forgiveness. If she had an address, she would mail it back to him. She had even gone so far as to write a letter to go with it. It was a harsh, bitter letter—short but as cutting as she knew how to make it. Now she stared at the check for a long time, then thrust it back into the drawer. “I'll never use his money—never!” she said bitterly.

****

“I'm sorry, Glenn, but there's just no work at this time of the year. I can't keep you on.”

Glenn Frasier shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Yeah, I saw this coming. It's always that way with crop-dusting. You nearly kill yourself during the season, and after that's over you sit around and wait for the next year. Don't feel bad, Joelle.”

“I'm sorry. I wish it were different.”

Glenn had said very little to her about Luke, but now that he was leaving, he felt he had to say something. “Me and Luke have been out to eat together a couple of times.” He watched her for some response but she was keeping all emotion out of her face. “I don't know what went on between you two, and he won't talk about it. You want to tell me what happened?”

“I found out that he's not Luke Williams. He's Luke Winslow.”

“Yeah, he told me that. He's gone back to using his real name again. I asked him if he was running from the law. He just said no. He wouldn't tell me anything else.”

Joelle felt the bitterness inside boiling over, and she found herself telling the entire story to Glenn.

He listened until she had finished and then he said, “Well, that was a bad thing. I know you loved your brother, but Luke feels terrible about it. Aren't you going to give him a second chance?”

“Who's going to give my brother a second chance, Glenn?”

He looked embarrassed, but he gave her a critical look and said, “Let me just say one thing, Joelle. You're putting Luke down pretty hard for something he did that was probably wrong. But you'd better be careful.”

“Be careful about what?”

“Be careful that you never make a mistake. That you never do anything wrong. If you ever do, you might find out that we're all human. I ain't much of a person to preach. You're the expert at that, but there oughta be something in that Bible about a thing like this. Giving a guy a second chance.”

“Good-bye, Glenn. Let me know if you need work again next summer.”

“All right, then. I hope it works out. Luke's hurting pretty bad.”

Joelle watched the man disappear out the door and then sat at her desk for a long time. She thought about what Frasier had said and knew that he was right about some of it. The
Bible did speak about giving second chances.
Maybe I could forgive him, but I could never feel for him like I did before. He gave that all up when he decided to lie to me. I could never believe anything that he said.

****

“Well, here she is. We caught her about to get on a bus.”

Deputy Sheriff Anderson stood at Joelle's door, his hand on Audrey Carpenter's shoulder. “She hasn't broken any laws, but we kept an eye out for her, just like you said.”

“Thank you, Deputy. I appreciate it.”

Anderson turned to the young girl who stood beside him, eyeing him sullenly. “Audrey, you be nice. Don't make me have to run you down again.”

“Next time you ain't gonna catch me.”

The deputy shrugged. “You better keep her locked up for a while, Joelle.”

“Thank you. I'll watch her pretty closely.”

As soon as the sheriff had left, Audrey turned to face Joelle squarely. “You ain't no better than that no-account daddy of mine.”

Joelle knew that Audrey Carpenter had been victimized by her father. He had beaten the girl severely and had been arrested for it. The girl had been removed from her family and wound up at the Haven.

“Come into my office so we can have some privacy, Audrey.” The girl followed her down the hall.

“Go ahead and lock me up. That's what you're gonna do anyway.”

“No, I'm not going to lock you up. I know that wouldn't work.”

“Yes you will. That's what my daddy did, and sooner or later you'll beat me.”