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“I don’t really know. Something to do with funding and stocks—money matters. I never bothered to ask.”
So what did she do? Just suck up the bucks the brother brought in?
He tried again. “I imagine he left you well provided, seeing you’ll be raising his son.”
“I wish. It appears what he did leave is a mountain of debt. I have to meet with the bank and…” She gave a vague wave. “I don’t know what you call them. Financial planners? Advisors? Money men, okay?”
“There must be insurance, though.”
“Yes, there is, and it’s a large sum, but if the debts are as serious as the money men say, then it might not stretch far enough for me to keep the house.”
“Then what will you do with your nephew? I mean, I imagine you’ll have to get a job again.”
“Probably. But Mark is in preschool these days. I hope to find a teaching position at his school or another one nearby.”
“That would be nice.”
They fell silent for a few moments, and David tried to come up with an effective way to ask what he needed to know. But in the end, he had no luck. He leaned forward and blurted it out.
“So how about you tell me what really happened last night? And don’t give me that ghost stuff. Where is your brother? Did he die? Or did he pretend he did? Did he try to run you over? And if he did hit you with that car, why? What does he have against you? Why would your brother want to kill you?”
She gasped.
“No!” the little boy yelled from the parlor door. “My daddy dinn’nt do that to Aunt Lauren. I don’t like you. Go ’way! Leave my aunt alone, you ugly…um…nasty…ah…monster!”
And right then, David did feel like an ugly monster. Especially when he saw the pain in Lauren DiStefano’s tear-filled green eyes.
There were times he really hated his job.
FIVE
Lauren ran to Mark’s side. “Hush, honey. It’s okay. It’s Mr. Latham’s job to ask questions, even—” she shot David a poisonous glare “—nasty ones.”
By then, David did feel as nasty as dog slobber and even less welcome. He went to defend himself, but Mark proved quicker to the draw.
“You gotta go do time-out in the corner, mister.” He pointed toward the back of the room. “That’s what Miss Green does at school.”
David took the chance to lighten the moment. “So Miss Green spends lots of time standing in the corner. Wow, Mark. She must sure be a greeny-meany.”
For a heartbeat, the boy seemed to weigh the sincerity of David’s joke. But David saw victory at the quirking of Mark’s mouth. Then he burst into a full-blown grin.
“Hey, Aunt Lauren! He made a good funny.”
“Yes, Mark. He did.”
The look she sent David this time made him feel too many things, too many to identify at once. Yes, she saw the humor in his dopey comment, which made him ridiculously proud of himself. But she didn’t trust him any more than she would an angry rattler, which for some reason made him want to prove himself—to the subject of an investigation. Go figure.
And she hadn’t forgiven his blunt and hurtful questions. Questions he still needed answered.
He sighed. He couldn’t very well badger her with the boy in the room. He’d lost his opportunity, and he’d have to bide his time. Because the opportunity would arise again. He’d make sure of it.
He rose. “I see I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
“Hey!” Mark cried. “Aren’t you gonna stand in the corner?”
The boy’s frown broadcast what he thought of David shirking punishment.
“Ah…sure,” he backpedaled. “I’ll check out the corner of my office. And I will think about all those nasty questions I asked.”
Two pairs of green eyes studied him, very different messages in them.
“You gonna ask ’em again?” The boy’s wisdom caught David by surprise.
Lauren smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “Oh, I’m sure he won’t, Mark. He’s going to come up with new, nastier ones, I’m afraid.”
The boy planted his fists on his slim hips. “You’re gonna spend lots a time in time-out then, mister. You better like your corner a whole bunch.”
David’s cheeks tingled again. “From the mouths of babes…”
“Let me show you out, Mr. Latham.” Lauren’s otherwise polite voice had that nip back again. “Mark and I are busy this afternoon, and we must get ready.”
The boy’s eyes grew big and round. “We are?”
“Of course, we are.” A touch of pink brightened her creamy cheeks. “We’re going to the library.”
“Sudden need for a good book, huh?”
Her chin tipped up, and she strode to the front door. “Always. Reading is an absolute necessity, Mr. Latham. You’d be surprised by how many take the ability to read for granted and don’t even make use of it.”
A blast of frigid air rushed in the open doorway—it matched the temperature of her voice as she added, “It’s by far the best road to true wisdom.”
“Hmm…and here I thought that road ran through God’s Word.”
“And how does one access the Father’s Word, Mr. Latham?”
“Touché!” He stepped past her and into the cold. “But there is one thing you really, really have to do—or stop doing.”
He didn’t let her ask. “It’s that Mr. Latham thing, okay? I keep looking over my shoulder to see if my dad’s standing somewhere behind me. My name’s David, okay?”
She shrugged. “I’m hoping not to have to use either one again.”
“Ouch!” He struck a theatrical pose with a hand over his heart. “You wound me so, Miss DiStefano. And me, a poor wandering soldier on a mission.”
Her snort caught him off guard. “Someone’s called you charming much too often, but you won’t charm me. I’ve seen you at work.”
“Which is where I need to be,” he conceded. “Have a good afternoon at the library. See ya, Mark!”
The little boy turned to his aunt. When she nodded, he faced David. “Bye, Mr. Latham.”
David loped down the front steps, careful to avoid globs of heavy slush here and there. He knew trouble when he saw it; he could lose his heart to the little fellow.
Once in his car, he looked back at the mansion, and caught the curtain’s movement in the front window. He hadn’t seen her, but he didn’t need to. He knew Lauren had watched him get into his car.
Something about that woman intrigued him.
And it had nothing to do with her brother. Or her nephew. Not even his job.
David’s gut told him he was in trouble—big trouble.
He started to pray.
After she told David she and Mark were library-bound, Lauren couldn’t not go. Although she came up with the idea as a way to get the man out of the house, she often did take Mark to Story Hour in the children’s section. It was an every-afternoon event at their small local branch, so her nephew didn’t need much of an explanation.
While the children were busy, Lauren usually satisfied her hunger for fresh reading material. She read all the time—even the jokes and stories on the back of a cereal box made do in a pinch. But that day Lauren just wandered the racks. She didn’t bother to search for anything. She couldn’t focus on her surroundings.
What had really happened on that dark, slushy street? In that moment when the car hurtled toward her, she saw a face she knew almost as well as her own. But it couldn’t have been Ric. And now she had to wonder if stress really had taken over her common sense, as she’d told David.
Her brother’s death had come as a complete shock. True, Ric had been a lot older, but he’d also been in her world her entire life. As a child, she’d always seen him as the hero brother any little girl could want. He’d spoiled her, treated her like a princess. But then he’d finished high school, headed to college, and she’d been left behind.
She hardly ever saw him after that. Sure, she was in his wedding, she visited when Mark was born, but other than that and the occasional holiday, as years went by, theirs became a card-here-and-there relationship. That’s why, after her parents’ deaths, and then that of her sister-in-law, when Ric called and asked if she’d be willing to devote herself to little Mark, she hadn’t hesitated.
“Aunt Lauren, Aunt Lauren!”
She turned, saw him and the other Story Hour kids burst from the room like a circus of fleas run amok.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.”
On the way home, Lauren bought a copy of the evening paper. She did have to start that job hunt. The words of the headmistress at her former school lingered in the back of her mind. “You’ll always have a position here, Lauren. We want you back.”
But to get to that school she had to drive all the way across town. She didn’t think it would be in Mark’s best interest to uproot him from the preschool he liked so much just because she had to commute to work. She hoped to find something closer to home.
If she managed to hang on to the home.
But gloom and doom wouldn’t get her anywhere, so she turned to the Lord in prayer. She asked for wisdom, for strength, for guidance. She couldn’t see how she was going to pull it all off, but she had faith the Father would see her through.
At home, she made a simple meal of grilled chicken, salad and savory seasoned rice. She watched a children’s video with Mark, listened to his prayers, and then tucked him into bed. From the doorway, she watched him doze off, a wealth of maternal love in her heart.
She couldn’t love him more if he were her own.
Lauren frowned. She’d told David those very words, or some very much like those, not so long ago. And just that fast, once again, thoughts of her troubles returned. But the events of the last month had left her tired, drained, exhausted. And then that car…
She pushed the concerns of the day to one side, changed into a nightgown, washed her face, brushed her teeth and crawled under her blankets, Bible in hand.
After a good, long while with the Lord, she set the Holy Book on her nightstand, and turned off the light.
But later on, much later, she didn’t know quite how long, a child’s cry pierced her sleep. Lauren sat up with a start, heart racing, head whirling, temples pounding.
Mark!
“It’s okay, honey!” She grabbed her comfy old chenille bathrobe and ran from the room. “I’m coming.”
His cries didn’t ease, but rather intensified as she approached his open door. She always left it ajar, just in case he needed her—as he did right then.
By the soft glow of his robot night-light, Lauren saw him sitting in the middle of a puddle of blankets. His little boy’s eyes looked enormous in his pale face, and tears shone on his cheeks. Mark leaped right up into her open arms.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did you have a bad dream….”
Her words trailed off when she felt the wetness soak through where his legs wrapped around her waist. Uh-oh!
Mark hadn’t wet the bed in years. “Oh, sweetheart…let’s get you cleaned up.”
She went to put him down, but his arms tightened in a stranglehold around her neck and he burrowed deeper into her embrace.
“No!” he screamed, his warm, sturdy body shaking. “The lights…they’re coming, Aunt Lauren! They’re coming….”
Sobs overtook him again, and nothing could have budged his hold on her. Not that she really wanted to let go of him, but the night was cold, and by now, they both were soaked. Still, something far worse than wet nightclothes and linens had gone wrong here. And it didn’t take a psychiatrist to figure it out.
“Mark, honey. The lights—the car—didn’t hurt us. Mr. Latham’s car blocked the other one, and it only gave me a little bump. But I’m all right, and you didn’t get hurt one bit. It’s okay. We’re home, and no one’s going to hurt us.”
She hoped.
He shook his head—hard. “No! No-no-no-no-no-no-no!”
Tears flew from his eyes, cheeks, and struck her. His misery was so deep, his fear so intense that her own eyes welled up in sympathy. She perched on the edge of the bed, aware of the soaked middle.
“It’s okay,” she murmured yet again, her voice little more than a croon. “I’m here, and I won’t let the car hit you. You know Aunt Lauren always takes care of you, right?”
Her gentle rocking motion must have helped. His muscles no longer felt like short steel ropes in her arms, and his sobs didn’t sound as though ripped right from his soul. But he didn’t answer her. Evidently, he still couldn’t.
She began to sing. “Jesus loves me, this I know…”
Lauren sang her entire repertoire of children’s tunes, praise and worship songs, and even a hymn or ten, before Mark’s tears ran dry. Finally, even though he’d stopped crying, she knew he hadn’t fallen back asleep. His eyes glowed their clear green in the dark of the quiet room.
“Think you might want some clean pj’s now, kiddo?”
His fingers fisted in her robe.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, a hint of humor in her voice. “At least, I’m not going anywhere without you—you got that?”
His lips took on a slight upward curve. “Promise?”
“Absotively, posilutely, babe. You and me…we’re a team.”
He giggled. “You got it wrong again, Aunt Lauren. It’s abos-No, no! Not abos. Absolittle, pos…posilately!”
“So, tell me, Mark. Are you ready for those clean jammies now?”
