Love Is Patient and A Heart's Refuge (32 page)

Leanne and Colette were draped over the worn couch. Leanne was filing her nails and Colette was talking on the phone while flipping through a magazine.

Sam lay stretched out in his recliner, his head tipped to one side, faint snores issuing from his mouth.

“Coffee’s on,” Cora announced, setting the tray on the table. “And we have company.”

The girls looked up at Rick. Leanne’s smile blossomed and Colette gave him a quick wave.

“Come sit over here,” Leanne said, jumping up from the couch. “Letty, get off the phone. You can talk to Nick some other time.” Leanne tugged Rick’s arm, leading him to the empty spot Colette made for him by pulling up her legs. “Nick is Colette’s boyfriend. She’s trying to decide if she should marry him or go back to school or travel. What do you think she should do?”

“I’ve never had to make that kind of decision before,” Rick said. “So my advice isn’t worth much.”

Leanne sighed and pulled him down onto the couch. “I think I’d travel.”

“Becks says you’ve done a lot of traveling,” Dennis said, dropping onto the floor by his father’s chair. “So you have any advice? I want to head out someplace next spring. Someplace different.”

“I liked Thailand, though many parts of it are really commercialized. Bangladesh was interesting, but a very sad and hard place.” He paused, trying to articulate emotions he could still feel when he thought of that country. “I’ve been there twice and each time I come back, I feel such a mixture of emotions. Gratitude and at the same time…”

“Guilt?” Cora put in, pouring the coffee from a carafe.

“Exactly. The gratitude I know what to do with. Never the guilt.”

“The only reason I know about the guilt is we have a friend who goes to Bangladesh each year,” Cora said, handing him a mug of coffee and a warm muffin on a tray. “He collects money and brings it to an orphanage there to help them purchase things they need. He says the same thing, but he does feel that what he does makes a difference. That he’s helping.”

“Maybe I should go with him next time,” Dennis said, stirring some sugar into his coffee. “That way I could travel and help at the same time.”

“He’s always asking people to come along.” Cora shook Sam’s shoulder lightly and set his coffee by his side. “We have company, Sam.”

Sam stretched and looked around the room, his eyes vacant. Then he blinked, focused on Rick and smiled. “Welcome to our home, Rick. Good to have you here again.”

And Rick felt a surge of warmth. Three times this family had so easily taken him into their home. Made him feel welcome. He wondered if Becky realized how fortunate she was.

Colette got off the phone, grinned at Rick and took a muffin off the tray. “Where’s Becks? She was in such a dither after supper ’cause Rick was coming. I thought she’d be here already.”

“Colette!”

“Letty.”

Leanne and Cora reprimanded her simultaneously. Colette just winked at Rick. “It’s the truth, ain’t it? She couldn’t decide what to wear, how to do her hair. I’ve never seen her like that.”

The pleasure Colette’s comment gave him surprised Rick. He couldn’t imagine Becky in a dither. Especially not in what appeared to be a dither over him.

He took a sip of his coffee and as he set his mug down onto the table he looked up. And there she was. Her hair loose, just the way he liked it. A peach-colored shirt brought out the flush in her cheeks. She wore low-riding blue jeans and her feet were bare.

She looked beautiful.

“I’m sorry you got corralled into my family’s coffee time.” She walked over to the coffee table and toed her brother in the ribs. “I thought I asked you to bring him to Dad’s office?”

“You did, dear Becks,” Dennis said, catching her by the ankle. “But Mom’s a bigger boss than you. And if you have a problem with that, I’ll pull you down.”

“Why am I not surprised? You’re always pulling someone’s leg,” Becky said, shaking her foot loose. Dennis’s groans were joined by his sisters’.

“Oh, that’s nasty, Becks.”

She flashed them each a saccharine smile that melted away when she met Rick’s gaze.

“Have some coffee and a muffin, dear, before you get back to work,” Cora said.

But Becky shook her head. “I’ve got too much to do.” She gave Rick an apologetic smile. “Do you mind if we get at it right away?”

Rick shook his head as he picked up his mug and plate. “Can I finish this in the office? I haven’t had homemade muffins for years.”

“You have to take some home,” Cora announced. “Becky, you make sure you package some up for him before he leaves.”

Becky just nodded and, turning, led Rick down a narrow hallway to a spacious room, just off the family room. In the center of the room was a large flat-top oak desk. Bookshelves lined one wall, the other held a collage of framed pictures that covered every square inch of space above a long credenza that held more portraits.

She closed the door behind him. “Just put your stuff on the desk. I thought we could work there.”

Rick did as he was told, but his eyes were on the framed photographs. Children of all ages and groups looked back at him.

“These must be of your family,” he said, irresistibly drawn to the wall. He glanced them over, then pointed to one of a young girl sitting on a horse, grinning a gap-toothed smile. “I’m guessing this is you?”

“Not bad,” Becky said, coming to stand beside him. “One of the other times I was on a horse. That was taken at my grandmother’s new place.”

Rick glanced over the mélange of pictures, his gaze snared by a couple standing self-consciously in front of a mass of flowers. “You and Trevor?”

“Grade twelve graduation.”

“The cowboy and the editor.”

Rick glanced back at Becky who was avoiding his gaze, now busy with a stack of papers on the desk. “I’ve made a word-for-word transcription of our interview with the premier. That way we can decide which angle we want to take.” She was all business now and Rick took her cue, though he kept thinking about what Colette had said. Becky. In a dither.

“Do you mind if I skim through them first?” he asked, picking them up. “Did Trixie type them for you?”

“No, I did them myself. Just finished them now. They might be a bit hard to read. Dad’s printer is a bit low on ink.”

She leaned back on the desk while Rick took an empty chair. It didn’t take him long to look it over. He had made his own notes on his part of the interview after their “chat” in the Jeep. When Becky had kissed him.

And he had kissed her back. And they had talked. And she had come so close…

Focus, Rick, focus.

A few minutes later he put the papers down and bit his lip. “You’ve got some good stuff here to work with. I like the gardening angle. Gives the piece a personal touch. I know that’s not been done before.”

“How would you know?”

Rick glanced up from the notes. “I’ve been covering this guy for a while, trying to get an interview. I’ve read
just about every interview that’s been archived on the Net, every report on him in every major newspaper in Canada and quite a few abroad.” He looked back at the papers. “The interview isn’t complete, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t go much past what I heard before I took the phone call from Terry at the bank.”

Becky shrugged his comment aside. “We discussed personal stuff after that.”

“On or off the record?”

“Off.”

Rick saw the tape recorder beside the computer and pulled it over. “Can I listen?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea. It was personal.”

“But it’s on the tape. You were still recording it.”

She nodded, edging up onto her father’s desk.

“Then it’s not personal.” Ignoring Becky’s protests, Rick hit Play and listened. He fast-forwarded the tape, but didn’t have far to go. Becky had stopped transcribing shortly before the phone call. Just at the point in the interview when the atmosphere had changed. When Jake started to talk about a girl named Kerra. He listened while Becky fidgeted restlessly in front of him.

“Kerra and I parted ways a long time ago,” Jake was saying, his voice quiet. “It is the one regret that I have.”

“Why do you say that?” Becky’s softly modulated voice came across on the tape, and Rick remembered the way she leaned closer, her gentle features expressing a concern that made Rick himself want to confess every secret he held.

Jake hesitated, his innate caution seemingly holding him back. “She was the only woman I truly loved. She was the only one…” Another long pause.

Rick hardly dared to breathe sensing a moment of disclosure.

“I loved her but I treated her wrong. So wrong,” Jake whispered finally. “I was young and ambitious. I had an advisor even then. An advisor who saw in me the potential to move higher and higher. He gave me bad advice.”

Another silence. “What kind of advice, Jake?” Becky asked.

“He told me to get rid of her. And I did. And after I did, I found out she was expecting a child. And I didn’t do anything about it. I left her on her own and didn’t take responsibility.”

Elation thrilled through Rick at his confession. This was what they were waiting for. The big breakthrough.

But as he thought about the young girl, anger chased away his jubilation.

This man had done the same thing to this Kerra girl that his own father had done to his mother. Left her a single woman trying to raise a child, dependant on family. Dependent on a cold man whose shame kept Rick at arm’s length.

“Do you know where she is now?”

Rick pulled himself out of his own emotional quagmire to concentrate on Jake’s reply.

“She changed her name, stopped singing and moved away. Her mother was an alcoholic and either didn’t know where she was or wouldn’t tell me. She died a couple of years after Kerra left town. She was my last
and only link to Kerra.” Jake drew in a deep breath. There was a long pause and Rick wondered if the interview was over.

“Of course you realize all this is off the record, Becky,” Jake said, his voice changing back to the stern and controlled politician. “I should never, ever have told you this.”

“
Going West
is not aiming to be a tabloid magazine,” Becky replied.

Then a click and the tape was finished.

Rick leaned back and released his breath in a long slow exhalation. This was the scoop he’d been waiting for. This was the breakthrough that was going to make the difference he needed.

“We’re going to use this, Becky,” he said, tapping the papers into a neat pile and laying them carefully on the desk. “His comments. At the end of the interview. I want to use them.”

“They were off the record.”

“He only said that at the end.” Rick glanced up at Becky, who was frowning at him, her arms folded over her chest.

“That’s really splitting hairs. He told me that in confidence, Rick. While you were away, talking on the phone. And while he maybe didn’t follow so-called correct procedure, this wasn’t a police interview.”

“No. It was an interview conducted, for the most part, in front of two people and quite publicly recorded on tape the whole time.” Rick leaned forward, as if trying to force his will on his reluctant editor. “This is the article I’ve been waiting for. The one that will turn
Going West
around.”

Becky pushed herself away from the desk, pacing around it, her head bent. “And that’s all that counts, isn’t it? No matter what the cost.”

“It was my job when I came here. You knew that.” Rick could feel her frustration pushing at him, and for a moment he hesitated. The magazine was floundering. The money was getting tight. Now more than ever he needed the boost this article would give the magazine. “You need the job, too. If this magazine fails, what will you do?”

“I’d sooner lose my job than put this out for everyone to read.” Becky placed her palms down on the desk. “I’m not going to allow it, Rick. It’s not right.”

“He knew what he was doing when he allowed us to do the interview. It’s the truth and I think we have a responsibility to print it.”

“It’s his own private pain. We have a responsibility to leave that alone.”

“It’s the truth. And sometimes truth hurts. And as for his pain…” Rick paused, fighting his rising anger. “What about the pain of the girl and the child he left all alone? He abandoned both of them. Abandoned his responsibility to them. Doesn’t Kerra have any rights? Doesn’t their child?”

“That’s not the point.”

Rick banged the flat of his hand down on the transcript of the interview with an angry slap. “It is exactly the point, Becky. He holds a public office, and what he has done directly reflects on that office.” He spun around and drew his hands over his face, trying to pull his emotions together. Focus. Focus. But he couldn’t keep his emotions out of this. It was too close. “He has
no right, had no right, to leave that woman and that child in the lurch. Their story needs to be exposed, as well. It’s the truth. And truth is part of what good reporting is all about.” He sucked in a long slow breath, willing his pounding heart to slow its erratic beat. Willing the storm of his own pain to stop hurting.

“This truth will hurt and break down, Rick.”

“It can also be liberating. Have you ever thought of that?” He walked slowly to the wall of pictures again.

Becky came to his side. He could feel her resistance, measure the tension in her body.

“Why does this matter so much? I’ve never seen you this emotionally involved in any article we’ve ever done.”

Rick let his gaze flick over the pictures. Pictures of parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters. Posed family pictures. Candid pictures. A legacy and a heritage. How could he explain to Becky why Jake’s mistake mattered so much? Becky who came from such a loving family. Would she have even an inkling of what he’d had to deal with?

He picked up a family picture. Becky flanked by her sisters and brothers, mother and father hovering over them all, grandparents on either side. His lack of family was no deep secret.

But his pain was. As was his dislike for his grandfather and the control he exerted over his life. His anger with Colson had been his constant struggle on his slow return to faith. And his anger translated into anger with God. Would Becky, sweet loving Becky, even begin to understand what emotions swirled beneath his smile? “We need to tell the truth.”