The Major's Wife (Jubilant Falls series Book 2) (12 page)

Suddenly, Kay wasn't a long-held romantic dream any more; she was a package deal.

I would be a father—a stepfather, really, but a father just the same. Andrew and Lillian Armstrong would look to me for everything they had looked to the major for, would want from me all those things that kids wanted from their father.

Father. I would be their father, responsible for every aspect of their lives. Like my father had been.
"I'll have no pansy-ass fairy writers in this house. You understand that, boy?"

I had spent a lifetime living up to his conviction that I, with my regal name and outlandish dreams, would never escape my working-man's background, would never amount to anything more that a puddle of warm spit.

I felt his hard, calloused hands squeeze my face again, like they had so many years ago.
"You understand that, boy?"

Yes, now I understood. I could be stepping in for a man, who—except in his behavior to his wife— had been more than I ever could be: a hero, a god in the eyes of his country and family.

How could I replace that? Who could except John Wayne?

But more than that, I looked back at the damage my father did to me and knew I couldn't even risk doing that to Kay's children. An eerie mantle of complete responsibility hung invisibly on my shoulders, pushing down against my lungs, forcing air out in a long, slow heave.

The whole thing could turn into a real nightmare. I heard more than one story about stepchildren who made marriages collapse, or made life a living hell. Even as adults, children from first marriages could do more damage to the second marriage until love splintered and died.

A lawyer friend once told me that, when a woman had to choose between a boyfriend and her children, the kids always lost. But when it came to choosing between the second husband and the kids from the first marriage, the husband always lost. Always. There was a tie there deeper and more primal than anything on earth, a mother protecting her babies.

What if that happened to me? To us?
What if Andrew and Lillian Armstrong hated my guts? Was I up to it? Was the love I felt for Kay worth the possible assault from the major's children? What if I didn't like them? What if they were spoiled little brats, destructive little shits that worked every minute of every day trying to come between Kay and me. I couldn't stand it.

You're making all these assumptions on the grounds she even marry you, I told myself sternly. She said no before. She might say it again.

Would she?

Could I take that chance?

What other choice did I have?

* * *

In the meantime, as my uncertainty over Kay and her children grew, my star began to rise in the newsroom, thanks to Elizabeth Kingston’s situation, which was dragging slowly through the courts. The story had bounced its way through the newsroom.

After I was done with the first story, I handed it off to Addison McIntyre, our city government reporter. A short, stocky woman in her mid-forties who smoked too many cigarettes and worked more hours than I thought humanly possible, she was whispered to be Jess’s successor in the likely event he moved on to a bigger paper. It was no secret Jess harbored dreams of sitting in Ben Bradlee’s chair at the
Washington Post
one day. We even joked he slept with a picture of the
Post’s
famed editor emeritus under his pillow at night.

Addison was more than competent; she was driven. She came into journalism when having a ‘girl’ in the newsroom was a rarity. Sometimes I wondered if her short brown hair, her bitten, nicotine-stained nails, and her colorful use of expletives were an effort to blend in with the boys or just a facet of her own rough-cut personality. She lived in Jubilant all her life; her dad was a former state trooper.

Addison had followed the story through the city housing authority’s investigation, and then our cops and courts reporter John Porter was slated to pick up the story when the trial began later in February in municipal court. Once Aurora had refused to comply, attorney Martin Rathke had continued to delay and obfuscate and had probably perjured himself.

We hadn’t put it on the wire yet, so it still remained a local story. Surprisingly, the television stations from the next town hadn’t stayed on it beyond the day my first story had splashed across the front page. And the story involved more than just Elizabeth now. We had some fifteen tenants who came forward and whose complaints had been verified.

I was covering fluff less and less frequently; many of the silly events I spent days covering were farmed off to stringers or part-timers. I was working my way back from failure, and, damn, it felt good.

It was late January, when John, Addison, Jess, and I sat in the paper‘s conference room with copies of our Aurora Development stories spread around us.

“We’ve got one month before this thing goes to trial, and we really need to keep this story on the front burner in everybody’s mind.” Jess inhaled on his cigar and exhaled toward the ceiling. “What would it take to really dig into the ownership of Aurora Development?”

“A trip to Wilmington, Delaware, where the original incorporation documents are filed,” I said, spinning my pencil between my fingers on the table’s shiny surface. “Aurora is owned by something real nebulous called Land Management Limited that’s tied into another corporation and another and so on. All of them are what’s called a Delaware Business Trust, which is like a corporation, but with more privacy for the owners. I don’t think that whoever is behind Land Management Limited is local, but you never can tell. Delaware’s got one of the most widely used corporate laws in the country. You can be anywhere in the world and file as a Delaware corporation.”

“Like the old man would pay for that, the way advertising revenues have dropped,” Addison nodded towards the back wall, where a painting of our publisher J. Watterson Whitelaw hung; it had been painted sometime in the mid-sixties, when he’d taken over the place from his father.

“But why would somebody from out of state come to Jubilant Falls to be a sleazy landlord?” Porter looked up from doodling on his notepad.

About medium height with thinning-but-curly hair, Porter had the dimpled cheeks, cool, gray eyes, and devilish arch to his eyebrows that women found irresistible—or at least that was the rumor.

Unfortunately, Porter was proof that even the best writers could go stale if left on the same beat too long. He could make a story shine when he wanted to. These days that happened less and less, and I had some real fears he ignored some of the big clues that might be found at the Plummer County courthouse because he was more interested in romancing the judge's secretary.

“That doesn’t make good sense." Porter shrugged his shoulders like a vulture adjusting his wings.

“But most people don’t work so hard to hide the fact they’ve got a bunch of rental property, either,” I countered.

“How about this?” Jess leaned forward. “How about the three of you profile every one of the complainants? One or two a week, until the trial starts?”

“And Rathke will sue us up one side and down the other for poisoning the jury pool, if it ever goes to trial,” Porter replied.

Jess frowned.

“Besides, it’s going to be the same story over and over again,” I said. “I used to work at Traeburn Tractor. I got laid off. I lost my house.”

“That’s a possibility.” Jess furrowed his brows together in thought. “We need to find out who’s at the bottom of Aurora Development and put together a story that just sums the whole thing. Here, let’s do this: three of you put together a story that will go on Sunday’s front page and on the wire. Porter, I want you to dig through court records and see if there’s ever been any other complaints filed against Aurora, anything you can find, no matter how small or insignificant. I want it in a sidebar. I’ll put a call into the AP bureau chief in Delaware, promise him the story if he can dig anything up.”

“It’s worth a try,” Porter shrugged.

“Get going then, folks,” Jess stood up, and we gathered the newspapers together and began to file out. “Marcus, wait.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “I need to talk to you.” He shut the door behind Addison and Porter.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“The old man wanted me to tell you what a good job you’ve been doing,” he said, smiling proudly. “I have to say, this has been the biggest story to hit us in a long, long time, and you’ve been on it like a pro, a real pro. I know things have been tough professionally and personally for you for a while….”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Well, the old man wants you doing less of the lifestyle stuff; says we need to be more competitive in the investigative stuff.”

“No shit?” I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

Jess nodded. “He’s seriously thinking of establishing a special projects editor, kind of an investigative thing, you know. And he mentioned your name.”

“What kind of special projects are Watt thinking of doing? It sounds great, but how much investigative journalism can you do in Plummer County?”

“Some of the things he specifically mentioned were looking at the living conditions of the migrant workers coming into the area, welfare reform, that kind of thing. He thinks you can do it—and I agree with him.”

“Thanks.”

“Now, nothing is definite right now.”

“Oh, I understand.” The fact that somebody realized I wasn’t a total journalistic failure was enough for right now.

“I just wanted to let you in on what was going on.”

“Sure. Hey, thanks for believing in me.”

Jess opened the conference room door. “Everything except your taste in women, Marcus. I never doubted you for a minute.” He slapped me on the back and we walked back into the newsroom.

The three of us spent the afternoon putting the story together. Jess sent the photographer, Pat Robinette, out to get a few shots of Elizabeth’s place. We held the story, waiting for the Delaware AP reporter to call us back.

Three days later, he did.

“No can do, my man,” the reporter said. “Whoever filed this baby filed it under seal.”

“So what’s all the secrecy for, then?” I asked Jess, after I hung up.

“Who knows? Somebody somewhere feels they’ve really got something to hide.”

* * *

"Marcus, this is hardly the place for kids. This is pure, first-date territory." Anxiously holding Andrew and Lillian by their hands, Kay looked around the palm-filled dark interior of Jubilant Falls’ most posh restaurant, the Emmett House Inn. It was the Friday after we ran the preview story on the hearing and, feeling confident after hearing my publisher’s compliments, I decided it was time to introduce myself to Andrew and Lillian. Kay warned that it might not be a good time just yet, barely a month after their father’s death, but I was determined not to let this five-year-old boy and this nearly two-year-old little girl come between their mother and me.

If I could win the approval of my publisher, how hard could a dinner with these kids be, anyway?

"Well, isn't this almost like a first date?" I turned and smoothed my hair in one of the restaurant's many gilt-framed mirrors. Here I am, I wanted to say, a man so deeply in love with these kids' mother that I spend a week’s wages just to win them over.

"Well, yes, but…"

"I want to make a good first impression, that's all. So, Andrew, how do you like school?"

The boy looked at me sullenly. "Fine."

"I color, play dollies…" Lillian began to tick off her day care curriculum on her fingers.

"You don't go to a real school. You go to a baby school." Andrew leaned around Kay and stuck out his tongue.

"Mommy! Andy call me baby!" Lillian squealed.

"Stop it, you two. That's enough. Marcus is being very nice to us, by taking us out to dinner. The least you two can do is be nice to each other."

"How many in your party, sir?" The maître d' sniffed imperiously, sensing the impending disaster. "Do you have reservations?"

"Four. The reservations are under Henning."

"Ah, yes. Follow me, please."

He seated us in a circular booth in an even darker back corner of the dark restaurant. Two enormous oriental vases filled with palm fronds hid us from the other diners.

"Why so dark, Mommy?" Lillian asked, moving along the chintz upholstery on her knees. Finding a seat, she picked up her fork and began pounding a singsong rhythm against the empty water goblet. "I wanna win-dow. I wanna win-dow. Window, window, window."

"Lil, please don't do that." Kay took the fork from her and tried to divert her attention. "What sounds good for supper? They have all kinds of wonderful things here, honey."

"This place is stupid. They don't have any cheeseburgers," Andrew interjected loudly. "Mom, I want a cheeseburger."

"Mommy, I can't see over the table when I sit on my butt." Lillian moved to stand on the expensive upholstery, but Kay caught her by the hand and made her sit still.

"When the waitress comes, we'll get you a booster seat."

“Can we get cheeseburgers, Mom?” Andy asked. “I’m not eating anything but cheeseburgers.”

“Like nuggets? You like nuggets, Marcus? Daddy liked nuggets, but he’s dead.” Lillian began to wiggle back and forth in her seat.

“Lillian!” Kay held a finger to her lips.

“I’m not eating anything but cheeseburgers,” Andrew repeated.

“Andrew, I’m not saying it again. They don’t have cheeseburgers. They have grilled cheese or chicken legs or a small plate of spaghetti. You can choose one of those.”

“I don’t want those.” Andrew’s lower lip poked out, and he folded his small arms across his chest.

"My God, is every meal like this, Kay?" I asked, pulling the candles, the salt and peppershakers, and the sugar bowl from Lillian's ever-growing grasp.

"Not if you carry your own tray to your seat, and there's a free prize with your Happy Meal."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Look around, Marcus. How many other children do you see here?" Kay asked gently.

"Honestly?"

"Honestly." She patted my thigh reassuringly.

"I haven't seen so many geriatric diners, since lunch time at the Happy Times Retirement Home."