The Price He Paid Read online

  Her pleading tone grated on him, but her genuine fear was palpable. If he pushed too hard, in a matter of days, weeks at most, the lawyer and Callie could have his mother out on the street, with no place to go. All of them knew that.

  “Forget it,” he said, even though everything in him wanted to fight the threat they presented.

  But the lawyer was right. He was in no position to demand anything.

  He turned on his heel and walked away.

  The air, poisoned by the cloud of his fury, was too thick to breathe.

  “Being back here is hard for him,” David’s mother defended.

  Callie could relate. She wanted to be in Philly, not touring these properties, but Albert had insisted, intent on bringing these people alive for her so that she couldn’t easily walk away from her inheritance.

  In reality she didn’t want to walk, she wanted to run. Faster even than David had disappeared, she longed to put distance between herself and this place, between past and present.

  She’d worked hard to grow past the troubled teen, to prove herself worthy and to be a success. She hadn’t planned on the case of a lifetime coming her way or a bad break pushing her into a decision that now jeopardized the very foundation of the life she’d made.

  But the pale, thin woman before her was not at fault. “We’ll figure something out, Mrs. Langley,” she said.

  “Compton,” Albert prompted.

  “Langley,” David’s mother argued, raising Albert’s eyebrows with the unexpected vehemence. “David is trying, you have to understand. I let things get out of hand when he was—when he was away.” She shifted her gaze back to Callie, eyes pleading. “He’s a good man. You know who he really is.”

  Do I? Callie wondered. She tried to square the boy she’d known with the hard, angry man she’d encountered this time around. She knew what prison did to people—hadn’t she seen the revolving door often enough? To survive inside those walls required turning your back on every scrap of humanity you possessed.

  Delia Langley gripped her forearm. “Please. He’s doing all he can to get us back on solid footing. He only needs a little more time.”

  “Mrs. Langley…” I can’t do this. I don’t want the responsibility. Walking through the monk’s cell that was David’s room, the sense of wrongness, of trespassing had rolled through her stomach in greasy waves.

  What did missed payments matter to her when she would return to her life and her salary and her small but hardly-used apartment? They counted for much more to a woman who’d lost two husbands and, for all intents and purposes, a son she had adored. How could Callie tear Jessie Lee’s world apart or this woman’s or any of their neighbors? Life here was too hard without being tossed from their homes by some bureaucrat or number-cruncher.

  She didn’t want to stay for Miss Margaret’s thirty days, but she would remain here long enough to craft a solution and legally break her great-aunt’s provision, then she would be able to leave Oak Hollow and her memories behind, perhaps even put them to rest.

  “You won’t lose your home. Miss Margaret wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  The relief that rose brought a little color back into the woman’s cheeks. “She was always very kind to me, to a lot of folks.”

  “I know. I was one of them.” This was the closest she had ever come to a discussion of the past with the woman who’d despised Callie for luring her golden son to his downfall, dressing like a siren and acting much older than she was. David, though compassionate and kind, was also a teenage boy with all the attendant hormones, and Callie, with only her mother as an example of how to deal with men, had taken advantage of that.

  “I’ll see what can be done to give him more time to come up with the money.”

  “Thank you,” the woman murmured. “Thank you so much.”

  Callie led her to a rocker with soft, worn cushions shaped to fit the woman’s thin frame. She stayed longer than she wanted to, making sure David’s mother was calmer before she felt it was all right to leave.

  Once they’d left, however, she turned on Albert Manning and that satisfied smile on his face. She didn’t want this, any of it. Looking back never accomplished anything, only moving forward counted.

  She lifted her chin. “Let’s get finished. Where to next?”

  If the older man looked startled, maybe disapproving well, it meant nothing to her. Life wasn’t a popularity contest. She would take care of what she had to and move on.

  Chapter Five

  She couldn’t settle.

  After an endless day touring properties, the sight of all those anxious faces lingered. Exhausted as Callie was, she couldn’t seem to relax. She had washed the meager store of clothes she’d bought to tide her over until her assistant Anna could send her own things. Now she paced Miss Margaret’s house, flipped the television channels without seeing, picked up three different books from the shelves and none snagged her attention. She wasn’t hungry, and try as she might to focus on her career, not a single plan to rescue it would form.

  She slapped open the screen door and stalked outside. Down the front walk and out onto the road she strode, hoping exercise would take the edge off the restlessness that would not leave her alone.

  It wasn’t until a couple of miles later when she spotted the cemetery off to the left that she realized where she’d been heading without thinking.

  She’d have a word with Miss Margaret.

  And, if she could summon the courage, she’d visit that small grave she’d been running from for years.

  She entered between the columns of stacked stones that had been there for generations. Miss Margaret’s plot was easy to find—a high mound of fresh dirt covered with wilting blossoms. As Callie approached, she thought about how much had changed in only two days since she’d last stood here.

  “You have some nerve,” she began. “What do you expect me to do? This is crazy. I don’t belong here. You can’t possibly think—” Her shoulders sank on a sigh. She couldn’t seem to sustain her fury after all, and a wry smile wouldn’t be stifled. “I loved you, you know. I have no idea what you saw in me—” Callie was shocked at the choking rush of emotion. She’d never understood why Miss Margaret would go to so much trouble for her. They were the most unlikely of companions yet now, years later, Callie realized that in many ways, Miss Margaret was the best friend she’d ever had. That she’d loved Callie, too, even though tender words hadn’t come easily to her.

  “You lived your words instead, didn’t you?” She’d taught by example, and a powerful one it had been. Margaret Jennings might have borne no children and married no man, but in her own fashion, she’d nurtured a town, nonetheless.

  “I’m not like you,” Callie murmured. “I can’t—”

  Can’t or won’t? she could almost hear Miss Margaret challenge, just as she had so often back then, over big things or small. Can’t sew? Here, fix this button, hem these pants. Can’t cook? Knead this dough and next thing you know, you’ve got bread.

  Can’t go back to school and finish? How do you plan to keep this baby if you can’t feed it? Don’t you dare expect that boy to take care of you both.

  Miss Margaret had no use for the word can’t, and no patience for won’t.

  After Callie’s mother had dragged her back to South Carolina once she’d lost the baby, she’d run away, yet Miss Margaret’s voice had followed her. Be practical, child. A woman’s got to take care of herself, and you can’t do that without that diploma.

  For all that Callie had neglected Miss Margaret for so many years, she realized now that she’d carried the older woman with her as she’d worked her way into community college, then university and, at last, law school. Callie’s mother had understood can’t all too well—her whole life had been spent depending on one sleazy man after another rather than taking care of herself. If the search for a way for the world to make sense had driven Callie to law school, it was Miss Margaret who’d made her stay and finish.

  Yet Callie h
ad still let Miss Margaret go. She’d never been the type to navel-gaze; introspection got in the way of accomplishment. Looking back at the most painful period of her life would have hamstrung her, would have anchored her in the land of regrets.

  But she’d never even said thank you, and admitting it now nearly brought her to her knees. How could she have neglected Miss Margaret all these years?

  Her mind darted in search of a solution, some way to undo this grievous wrong. Her gaze landed on the spot where a headstone would stand, and she vowed that it would be a special one that she would provide herself.

  Still, it was not nearly the legacy Miss Margaret deserved.

  In that moment, what Miss Margaret was asking of her with her bequest struck Callie with force. Take care of my people, she could almost hear her asking. That was a legacy that would appeal to the woman who’d quietly given so much to so many.

  Including Callie herself.

  A woman is as strong as a man any day, Miss Margaret had told her often, we just don’t beat our chests or flex our muscles to show it.

  How, then? A skeptical Callie had asked.

  We endure, Callie Anne. We are the backbone.

  Backbone. Callie had been known for being tough on crime, for being ruthless, but she’d taken a shortcut in Philly rather than risk losing her high-profile case.

  She’d had almost three weeks after the end of the trial to stew over her failure, then to worry about complications when the defense counsel had gotten wind of a conversation Callie had had with the sister of one of the witnesses for the prosecution. The sister had told Callie that the witness had an axe to grind with the defendant who, the witness claimed, had raped and beaten her and gotten away with it. Whether or not that was the case, crucial evidence had already been excluded from the trial because of procedural errors made by the police, and Callie badly needed the witness’s testimony to connect the defendant and the murder victim.

  So Callie hadn’t told anyone. Had let the woman testify. In the end, Callie’s ethical lapse hadn’t affected the outcome of the trial—the defendant had gone free—but the D.A. had found out what she’d done, and she’d had to face both him and her own conscience, that she’d been so desperate to win that she’d started down a very slippery slope.

  That was when, out of the blue, the news about Miss Margaret’s death had come. Now she was being forced to deal with her past…and all these people and their problems she felt unequal to solving.

  How could she do that when she wasn’t even sure she could solve her own?

  Her gaze lifted and looked across the grass. She’d never faced the child whose death she still believed, in her heart of hearts, was her fault, no matter that the midwife had assured her that these things just happened.

  Callie couldn’t stay in Oak Hollow, that much was true, but wasn’t there some way to do right by the people who’d depended on this woman without miring herself here? “I’ll figure something out, Miss Margaret. I won’t let you down.”

  Then Callie straightened and took the first step toward living up to that promise. As the shadows lengthened, she made her way across the grass.

  She saw the angel first.

  No cherub, nothing soft or sweet or cloying—this sculpture evoked the fierceness in the word guardian. First curious, then entranced, Callie was drawn to the marker for its very difference from everything around it. Not until she stood a few feet away did she realize that it was not made of stone but wood turned silver by the force of the elements.

  She knelt and reached out to touch it, but before she could, the stone lying flat on the ground caught her.

  Froze her.

  Hunter Langley, she read.

  Callie rocked back on her heels, struck to the heart. Hunter…Langley. She’d been too dazed to name the child who’d never drawn breath. Who…?

  Her gaze rose to the angel, and she knew.

  David had done this. He’d had a gift with wood, but never had she seen anything he’d carved to match the powerful beauty of this.

  When, though? The marker must have been here for some time, and David was only recently out of prison. He’d been a mere boy when all this happened, still open and trusting. Able to hurt, to grieve.

  To name their baby for both of them. Oh, David… She mourned that boy along with their child.

  Was there a scrap of him left in the man who’d wished her to hell as she’d breached his privacy a few hours earlier?

  At last she let herself touch the wood, the pads of her fingers gliding over the silken curves. How could the hands that had created this—for she had no doubt at all that his had—also take the life of another man? She couldn’t square the two.

  He turned into someone none of us knew.

  Had they all romanticized him? she wondered now. She’d been fourteen when they met. Had she made him into a hero because she’d needed him to be? The prosecutor in her had learned hard lessons about reality.

  He definitely wasn’t that hero now. Maybe he never had been. There was no question, however, that she’d torn through his life like a cyclone.

  After you…left.

  How much of the blame for David’s fate rested squarely with her?

  Shorthanded tonight, the bar’s owner Carl Hodges had asked David to come in early to bus tables and help out in front. The bar was crowded, and the mood was ugly. People were worried and muttering about what would happen to them now that the Yankee had a knife to their throats. How would they live, where would they live, if she demanded that they catch up on the missed payments? Life was hard in these parts, most people were just getting by. Folks were scared, and scared makes a person mean.

  Mickey Carson, who’d fancied himself Ned Compton’s bosom buddy when he’d only been a tool, needed only to breathe to be mean. He’d been hurling insults at David since the moment he’d walked in tonight, obviously itching to force another confrontation.

  David would relish nothing more than to oblige, but Mickey Carson didn’t have a criminal record to slow his fists down. David gave the man wide berth, however much that stuck in his craw.

  “Hey, boy!” Carson slammed his beer bottle down on the table late into the night. “Another round over here. ’Less you’ve got a crapper you oughta be cleaning.” He laughed uproariously, and his two dim-witted buddies joined in.

  David glanced over at Carl, but he was occupied. “Get it yourself.” Most people did, as a rule. The bar was nothing fancy, and Carl hired no waitresses.

  “I’m sitting here at Ned’s table, you murdering sonofabitch, and you—”

  David moved away. Closed his ears and let their taunts slide right off. Busied himself filling a tray with empties and headed to the kitchen. There he set the tray down with a thud and grabbed a trash bag to carry out to the dumpster in back. He needed this job, but if he didn’t get his head clear, something bad was going to happen. He was still simmering over the afternoon’s humiliation, and he shared the same worry others were voicing.

  What would she do, this Callie he barely recognized? She hated Oak Hollow and everything it stood for. He couldn’t really blame her—the way she’d been treated back then had been shameful.

  And then there’d been the heartache.

  He was nearly to the dumpster when he heard the door slam against the wall. He whirled to see Carson with a gleam of metal in his hand and two of his drinking buddies by his side.

  “I have just about had enough of you, boy.”

  Chapter Six

  The sun streamed through a gap in the pale cream curtains. Callie awoke and stretched, surveying Miss Margaret’s bedroom. Her bedroom now, she reminded herself, though it couldn’t look less like her barely decorated apartment in the city. She only slept there; most of her waking hours were spent at work.

  An oval rag rug in shades of rose and green covered golden oak flooring. A maple vanity with a big round mirror sat on the wall to her left. A matching chest, its glow soft with the patina of time and much polishing, stood
opposite the cedar hope chest at the foot of the double bed where Callie snuggled beneath the log cabin quilt Miss Margaret had been piecing back when Callie lived with her.

  The breeze from the open corner windows still held the cool of morning, and for the first time she could remember, Callie had nowhere to be, no jam-packed schedule waiting. She was tempted to roll over and fall back asleep.

  Until she heard the singing.

  She sat up and parted the curtains. In the garden, Jessie Lee held a hose while she sang in a high, sweet voice. The tune sounded slightly familiar, but Callie couldn’t place it immediately.

  Then she realized where she’d heard it. A hymn, an old one she’d first listened to when Miss Margaret had dragged her to church. Callie’s mother would never have darkened the door of such an establishment, so Callie’s religious education had been lacking even the basics. She’d gone under protest and only because Miss Margaret wouldn’t hear otherwise. Callie hadn’t cared much for the curious glances, especially as her belly grew ever rounder, but attendance, she’d figured, was the price she had to pay to stay near David. He’d been there, too, moving from his mother’s side to stand as a sentinel beside Callie, a bulwark against the muttering.

  Callie hadn’t listened a lot to the sermons or paid much attention to the scriptures, but she’d been transported by the music. Miss Margaret’s church had no piano or organ; everything was sung a capella, the congregation dividing into harmonies automatically. Somehow, on those Sundays, all her fears and worries had taken second place as the music of old-time gospel hymns wrapped themselves around Callie’s anxious heart and soothed her like a soft, warm blanket. They’d lifted her spirits and made her feel a little hope that maybe she wouldn’t be the world’s worst mama, that perhaps everyone was wrong and she and David could overcome the odds against them.

  Those bits of hope had shattered on that night Callie never let herself think about. She ran one hand over her flat stomach now, felt the lean body she’d fashioned through daily workouts. Impossible to believe that once this belly had been filled with a growing new life. That her childish dreams of a fantasy family had actually seemed possible.