Savage Cinderella (10 page)

His grandfather’s forethought had saved
Justin a lot of grief and given him a good start. He’d paid for
school, bought the Beemer, and settled into a nice condo in
downtown Atlanta on Grandfather’s dime. Making his own way now was
up to him. Thoughts of his grandfather reminded him of the Saint
Christopher’s medal he had given to Brinn. The girl’s odd reaction
and powerful emotional response had him frowning.

"Let me get to work on my story. I'll have
something for you to look at by the end of the day tomorrow."
Justin extricated himself from the clutches of his boss and headed
to his desk to start writing.

But the words wouldn't come. He couldn't
possibly make up anything that would be nearly close to or as
interesting as the truth, and he couldn't stop thinking about the
reality of what had actually happened. Brinn was like some mystical
creature that transcended reality—a feral child grown into a young
woman. Her survival in the mountains was beyond miraculous. As much
as he admired her strength, her tenacity, and her obvious iron
will, his heart still ached at the thought of her alone on the
mountain, facing a life of fear and desolation. Her story was too
important not to tell.

It was a story that could write his ticket as
a photojournalist—if he was willing to go back on his word. He’d
reluctantly promised Brinn that he wouldn't tell anyone about her.
The terror in her expression and her extreme physical response to
the idea of being discovered seemed disproportionate to the
threat—unless whoever hurt her found out where she was. And why was
she so freaked out about the police?

Whatever her story was, the fear in her eyes
overrode any argument he had. Finding out the truth about her
identity was his first order of business. Without pictures, and
only a first name to go on, he really had nothing to tell
anyway.

Justin drew a folded paper from his back
pocket. Other than a small tin of burdock salve, it was the only
evidence he had that Brinn even existed. He’d dropped off the tin
to a buddy at the crime lab that morning and asked him to ID any
fingerprints. It couldn’t hurt to check if she was in the system.
He unfolded the square and flattened it on his desk, discreetly
looking around to make sure no one else was watching. Brinn’s
self-portrait lay before him, the charcoal smudged at the creases.
Her forlorn expression and the deep sadness in her eyes called out
to him as she peered into the still water.

Writing her story could only help her, right?
It would free her from her lonely existence. She would be better
off in the world. But how would someone like her take to being a
celebrity? If he wrote about her, every nut job paparazzo would
comb the hills looking for her and she’d never be truly free. There
would be nowhere she could hide from whatever she was afraid
of.

He released a sigh of resignation as he
remembered a lesson learned from his grandfather when he was a
teenager on the verge of trouble: honesty and dependability will
get you further in life than ambition. Being that his own father
wasn’t what he would call honest or dependable, but most definitely
ambitious, Justin had stubbornly held, instead, to his
grandfather’s credo.

He wanted more than anything to believe he
could be a better man than his father. Loyalty and
self-respect—traits his father lacked—meant everything to him.
Those traits, he was finding, were often at odds with his chosen
profession. For now, his career would have to take a back seat to
doing the right thing. Brinn’s future was in his hands. Her best
interests had to be his first priority. He stared at the blank page
before him. Who was she, where had she come from, and what was he
going to do to help her?

Unable to fill the blank page before him and
losing focus on the task at hand, Justin surfed the web for clues.
He had access to government databases, police records, and old
newspaper reports that most people had no idea how to find.
Research was one of his strengths. He guessed her age to be around
eighteen. He couldn't be certain and Brinn didn't know. She hadn't
told him much at all about her past and couldn't or wouldn't tell
him how she'd come to be on the mountain—just that she had been
there for about eight years.

Justin’s heart ached with sadness as he
thought about the life she’d lived over those eight years. She
measured time by counting the winters she'd survived. The Georgia
mountain climate was fairly temperate and didn't get much colder
than the thirties or forties even in winter, but the higher
altitudes with unexpected snowstorms, heavy rainfall, and
precipitous winds must have been a brutal existence for a small
child. It could only have been by luck, the grace of God, and her
own sheer force of will that she had survived at all.

When Justin had questioned Brinn about her
family, she became sullen. “My mother and father are dead and no
one else would ever want me after...” She had refused to finish and
whatever she could not say haunted Justin, confirming to him more
than ever that she needed his help. An uncomfortable twist of his
insides made him wonder whether he would be able to protect her
from whomever she was afraid of. That is, if he could convince her
to come down from the mountain.

It didn’t take him long, searching through
archives and news clippings, missing persons’ reports and death
notices, when his attention was captured by an article in the
Atlanta Times from ten years earlier, reporting a missing girl. Her
name was Briana Hathaway, the only child of then-Senator John
Hathaway and his wife, Dr. Shannon Hathaway. They reported their
daughter missing from Piedmont Park on August 28th.

The words blurred and Justin's eyes focused
only on the picture of the little girl. The teardrop-shaped face,
the full-lipped smile, and the wide, gently angled eyes that stared
out to him from the page were undeniably that of a much younger,
chubbier, Brinn. She had long, straight, shiny black hair and held
a teddy bear in the picture. Justin smiled at the little girl on
the screen before him. "Hello, Briana Hathaway. It's nice to meet
you. Now, let's see what really happened to your parents."

Old Friends and New

Brinn made her way into town. The full-day
hike had her breathing heavy by the time she reached the alleyway
of the General Store. The sun had dipped below the horizon an hour
ago and she rushed to reach her destination before full-on darkness
took over. Thursday wasn’t her regularly scheduled night to work,
but Mr. Hoffman was used to the oddities of her comings and goings.
He’d eventually stopped questioning her on much of anything since
they’d come to know each other three summers before. It quickly
became clear that trust and privacy were equally important to both
of them. Brinn proved herself a hard and honest worker and the old
man rewarded her with respect for her secrets and an open door
policy that meant everything to her.

It wasn’t long before Mr. Hoffman had set up
an old cot in the store room for her twice monthly visits and
allowed her to come and go as she pleased, a blessing on frigid
winter nights or especially lonely times.

She slid her pack from her shoulder and dug
for her key. She would spend the night in the comfort and warmth of
the storeroom, the scent of old wood and bags of grain there to
break the monotony of sleeping all alone in her musty cabin.

The alley, with its smelly dumpster, reminded
her of how different life was before meeting Mr. Hoffman. When he
first found her scrounging through his trash, he tried to convince
her that he wasn’t angry; he just wanted to help her. He said that
his wife, Mary, would never forgive him if he allowed a child to go
hungry or eat from the trash. When he explained that Mary had died
back in the late nineties and that, after that, life seemed
pointless, Brinn decided to take a chance. Maybe they had something
to offer each other.

With no children, and only a few distant
relatives remaining, he seemed to have found in Brinn, a reason to
go on. They were both on a first name basis with loneliness and
both of them knew it was a hard friend to have. They’d been drawn
together by the common bond of a broken heart and their
relationship had turned into one of mutual respect and a deep
friendship.

In return for her help around the store, he
agreed to let her take whatever supplies she needed. She chose
carefully and took only small boxes of grains and dried fruits,
items she could easily carry and that would last for some time. He
always added an extra treat to her pack, shoving handfuls of
sourballs or penny candy into the side pouch. "Every kid deserves a
sweet treat now and again," he’d said, even as she argued that he'd
given her enough already. Sometimes he would add a book from the
shelf after catching her reading. He would smile at her ability to
repeat interesting passages back to him.

Unlike her attachment to the written word,
her math skills left much to be desired. He taught her to take
inventory as she stocked shelves, and spent extra time at first
reminding her how to write her numbers and count accurately. To her
credit, she caught on quickly and became proficient over time. As
the years passed, she took on new responsibilities around the
store. She organized the shelves, took over the inventory, and even
handled filling out purchase orders.

Brinn usually left just before dawn, giving
the illusion that the General Store had been visited by elves
overnight, the shelves fully stocked and the floors cleaned to
perfection. Windows gleamed, and Mr. Hoffman delighted in Brinn's
creative arrangements consisting of pyramidal stacks of cans at the
end of each aisle, or the vase of wildflowers that graced the front
counter and lilies that scented the room.

At first, he didn’t seem to understand her
refusal of money or her insistence that she work at night so that
she might remain unseen by customers. But after several incidents
of kids teasing her about her limited and ill-fitting wardrobe, and
adults gawking at her as if she were a misfit toy or a dirty old
boot, he did whatever he could to help her avoid customers as much
as possible. He made excuses when they would ask about her, and
told people that she was his grandniece on his sister’s side. That
seemed to satisfy the busybodies and the local sheriff who seemed
curious, but otherwise disinterested in a grubby teenager with hair
hanging in her eyes and a mistrusting scowl on her face. Eventually
people stopped asking. Brinn decided early on that it was best to
keep out of sight.

It took some fast talking, but Brinn
convinced Mr. Hoffman that she had a home in the hills, that she
was safe, and that she wasn’t completely alone. She was adamant
that she could take care of herself. He seemed satisfied when she
said that someone named Kitty looked after her and he shouldn’t
worry.

To ensure his cooperation with keeping her
private life secret, she convinced him that if he reported her, she
would be hauled off and given to one of those foster families, if
she wasn’t left in some godforsaken orphanage—a plight he assured
her he would have no part in bringing about. Once she convinced him
that she would have no choice but to run away and never come back
again if they tried to take her, he agreed to respect her privacy.
Fred Hoffman was a man of substance—someone who valued trust and
integrity—a man Brinn had come to care deeply for and trust with
her life.

The wooden screen door squeaked as she
slipped into the storeroom. Tonight, Brinn had a specific reason
for her visit. Justin had only been gone a day but the emptiness he
left behind ached like hunger, and she missed him already. That
awareness had her emotions spinning. She shook her head as she
recalled her response to his offer of the gift of a chain with a
little oval medal hanging on it. She’d reacted badly and regretted
it, but she couldn’t help it. The thought of wearing any kind of
chain around her neck made her skin crawl and her throat tighten.
He said it was meant to offer protection. She found that impossible
to believe. Chains were not for protection.

Her shoulders relaxed as she closed and
locked the door behind her. Mr. Hoffman’s General Store was a
sanctuary away from her mountains—a place she could go to feel the
warm cloak of a trusted friendship. To the rest of the world, Mr.
Hoffman was an old codger. To her, he was family. Nothing as
inconsequential as grumpiness would deter her from being his
friend.

Besides, she needed to know if Justin made it
home safely, and just as importantly, if he’d kept her secret. She
called out to see if Mr. Hoffman was still there. If he thought she
was coming, he might have stayed late.

"Are you here, Mr. Hoffman?"

A shuffling of feet followed by a bellow from
the other room sounded in acknowledgement. "Hello, Brinn!" He
rounded the corner, a box of canned dog food weighing heavily in
his arms. Brinn grabbed the box, relieving the huffing man of his
burden. He leaned on the counter to catch his breath. She
considered the possibility of coming into town to help him more
often. Chores like this wore on him and made him seem frail.

"Thanks, young lady." He smiled his crooked
smile, false teeth filling his mouth awkwardly, making his baggy
cheeks slightly rounder.

Brinn set the box down on the counter. "I'll
take care of stocking the shelves, but would you mind if I watched
something on your television first?" She asked shyly, knowing how
he felt about television being a waste of precious reading
time.

Bushy eyebrows shot up and a frown spread
across his ruddy face. "You've never wanted to watch TV before.
What's going on? You're not planning on watching one of those
violent police shows or ridiculous reality series, are you? The
kids today are rotting their minds with that crap.”