“Last chance.” She arches her eyebrow. “It’s a long story.”
If she’s trying to scare me off, it’s working, but I’m not letting anything stand in the way of the truth. “I’m all in.”
She nods. “We moved here when I was in high school. My parents needed a new place to work on their marriage. I didn’t know anyone. On the first day of school, I had nowhere to sit at lunch. That’s when William Foster first saw me.”
My heart picks up. She said they took what they wanted. What if Luke’s father wanted my mother? I’m not sure I’m ready to hear this story, but I need to understand the players in this game better.
Mom smiles softly. “Sean appeared and acted like we’re best friends, leading me to his table. He told me about the horsemen and how to survive in this town. Your father was amazing. I’d go over to his house and watch him tinker on motorcycles with his father and then we’d study in the evenings together.”
The look on her face is so familiar. The feeling almost radiates off her. She loved my father, but there’s pain there too. Pain that I hope I never experience.
“We spent every day together. I made more friends and got comfortable.” She pauses. “I forgot about William Foster and his friends because they didn’t pay attention to people like us.”
She looks down at her hands and then back up at me. Her eyes are cold. “But he didn’t forget about me. He waited while Sean and I got closer. There was something about the way he watched me that started to creep me out. When I told your father, he said he’d deal with it. To this day, I don’t know what he said to William, but William stayed away and that’s all I wanted.”
That icy cold gaze of William Foster’s still gives me chills. If he was anything like he is now, my mom was right to stay away. But what could my father have offered in return? My guys would never have let someone else talk them down. But their fathers are nothing like them.
Mom rises to her feet and paces the wood floor. “Sean and I graduated and went to Crowne Mawr. I went to school for nursing while he worked on his computer programming degree. We lived together and talked about finding jobs somewhere far away.”
“But you ended up here?” It’s all I can think about. If they’d gone anywhere else, would I still have a dad? Would Mom still have her husband?
“Sean never said, but I suspect William had a hand in that. He wanted your dad to work at his company, or at least with his company. Everyone knew Sean would go far. He had at least a dozen job offers and graduate school admissions, but Sean decided to come back here.”
“I thought you said he was working to get out of this place.” I twist my fingers together and hug my knees tight.
Mom smiles. “He was, but to do that, he had to unravel all the webs holding him here. Whatever Sean did in high school to get William to back off me made him indebted to that evil man. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know. The hospital hired me and I figured we’d be able to start our family here like we always talked about.”
She stops and wraps her arms around her as she thinks about the past.
“I enjoyed working as a nurse, but there were issues right from the start at the hospital. Drug inventories were notoriously off. Not once in a while, but every time. Shift supervisors told us the night nurses would forget to put down what they used on their shifts. No one was allowed to question it. I couldn’t stand up to them. By the time I was ready to say something, I was pregnant. We were starting a family and I couldn’t risk my job.”
Mom’s look implores me to understand what a difficult situation she was in, but she keeps going. She walks to the wall and leans against it.
“Then Luke Foster was born and his mother died. It was all kept very quiet and there was a lot of sympathy suddenly for William Foster. Left alone with an infant son. His wife dead.
“We all knew he didn’t care about either of them. She was from out of town. Some rich girl he met in college and dragged back here. She wanted out and never fit in. It was a tragedy, but no one was truly surprised she was gone. Rumors abounded about their explosive marriage. She came in frequently after she tripped or fell, but no reports were filed.”
She sits back and blows out a breath. “This town thrives on its rumors and there was talk when she was pregnant that she was going to leave him and take his son. There was also talk about him having affairs. Sean and I stayed out of it. We just kept on doing what we needed to do to get by.”
Sliding down the wall, she meets my eyes and smiles. “And then we had you, and things felt so much more urgent. After you were born, Sean became determined to leave. He wanted to have information that would blow this town wide open. I understood his desire, but I also knew we needed money to leave and somewhere to go. A guarantee that this wouldn’t follow us.”
That’s what the guys are looking for. A way to break free.
Her eyes take on that far off look. “Sean discovered the accounting errors. He told William and was assured they’d be looked into.” Mom wrings her hands. “But the same errors kept popping up. For a few years, your dad collected what he could, trying to find something that would stick and not be circumstantial at best, but he didn’t have any actual proof. Nothing that tied it all together.
“I was frustrated one night. I didn’t think and mentioned the missing drugs to Sean.” Her eyes lift to mine. “I’d been on night shifts and they swore the missing drugs were used during my shift, but they weren’t.”
“William was selling drugs?” I thought about what Zach and his crew talked about. They talked about a boss. Would that be William? “And used high school students to distribute it?”
Mom’s eyes narrow. “That’s what Sean thought, but he was wrong or only partially correct. It wasn’t long after when I was working the night shift, a woman was brought in. She was dirty, malnourished, and had cuts all over her. A man dressed in a black suit brought her in and stood guard over her. Wouldn’t even leave the room when the doctor examined her.
“He never left, so I gave her a small dose of ipecac and took her into the bathroom when she got ill. It was the only way I could think to get her alone. I asked her if she was being held against her will. She barely spoke English, but she had enough words to help me figure out she was being trafficked.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. You hear about this kind of stuff, but here? We’re not a huge city where it’s easier to hide, but maybe that’s the point. “What did you do?”
“I went to my supervisor, but when I came back, the guy had already left with her. I didn’t know what to do. My supervisor told me to let it go.” She rests her head against the wall and looks up at the ceiling. “I should have done as they said. Because suddenly I was in William Foster’s sights once again.
“By that time, Luke had been in the ER a few times. Whoever was his nanny at the time would bring him in. No one lasted long as a household employee for William Foster. Looking at that poor child, all I could think about was his dead mother and how she’d smile with her black eye or her broken nose and tell us she tripped. Here was this innocent child, and no one was there to protect him. I wanted to help him, but that wasn’t something I could do either. William was too powerful. His donations kept the hospital running.”
