Chapter 14

© Copyright 2006 by Elizabeth Delayne



The afternoon Julie went home to New York, Jason took Dusty out with Trisha. It was Dusty’s last week with them. He would be going to the school for the deaf the next week, and though he would have the weekends with them, it still seemed a little soon. So they went shopping and ended up eating out at a lively kid’s restaurant. The lights and colors fascinated Dusty, and he seemed to respond somewhat to the overbearing noise.

It was a new experience for them all. Dusty hadn’t been to Spartanburg, the larger city closest to them, and Jason hadn’t been out with Dusty without Nicole or Julie to run interference.

He wasn’t alone. He had Trisha with him, and if anything, Trisha was good with Dusty. She smiled easily—possibly easier with Dusty then she had even with him. They sat and talked and laughed, even though communication was difficult and somewhat limited.

He tried not to worry about Nicole. The Lewis’s had taken her under their proverbial wing. The Reverend had her up at the church working on putting together a library. Mrs. Lewis, who was taking classes online, might have Nicole over at their house helping her with the computer by the time it was all over. It not only gave Nicole something productive to do, it also gave her some steady, healthy relationships.

A mother and father figure.

After she’d told her story to Gabriel, they’d gathered together with the Lewis’s as the Reverend led them in a prayer. Mrs. Lewis had slid her arm around Nicole. Jason hadn’t been able to take his eyes away from them—the way Nicole just turned into the woman and slowly began to weep.

He began to wonder about Sarah Brown and what that woman had really meant to Nicole.

What his father had helped to destroy.

What Jason had been part of destroying by leaving her there with him.

Nicole had always looked to him as a father figure, not just a brother. He’d broken her heart when he’d left. And he’d left her with Joe.

Jason swallowed and looked up when Trisha placed a hand on his own. The look in her eyes was understanding.

You’re thinking about Nicole, Dusty signed.

It took a moment for the words to process, even though it came through two signs; think and the now familiar Nicole—the sign for family mixed with the N.

She’s O.K., Jason signed and told himself it was true. He knew Dusty was worried about her—about leaving her and being away for the bulk of the week.

Still, Dusty would soon be away from them, away from Joe Rossi.

Jason had spoken with the school about security concerns. Gabriel had made some progress there as well. The FBI was looking for Joe Rossi. They had placed someone to watch outside Jason’s house at night, and they were also placing someone at the school just to watch after Dusty. If Joe Rossi wanted to get to Nicole, it was clear his easiest shot was to get to her younger brother.

Come on Jason signed as he stood and handled the phrase he had practiced the night before, having wanted to give Dusty a surprise. We have one more stop to make.

At his sign, Dusty smiled, and Jason felt a little weight lift from his heart. At least he was making progress with his brother.



The trip home, Dusty played with the hand held game Julie had left with him. It gave him and Trisha time to talk. Funny, with a kid around, he felt closer to Trisha then he had in a long time.

“You can’t blame yourself, Jason.”

“But I wasn’t there.”

“You told me you were a mess then. What good would the two of you been together? You were both children.”

“I wasn’t a child.”

“A teen—someone who needs a parent’s direction. You’re someone’s child.” Julie looked out the window. “I think of Nicole ... and I think of my relationship with my parents ... especially with my dad. I have something she’s never had. Something you never had. I don’t know that she would have gotten it from you. You’re her brother and girls need a father. Fathers ... good fathers ... have a way of making you feel like a princess. Not just loved, but beautiful.”

Jason thought of his kid sister, the girl in pigtails, the girl that haunted his dreams. Had he ever thought of her as beautiful? Did he even now?

“I wonder if anyone had ever made her feel beautiful,” Trisha murmured. “If there has ever been anyone who has helped her feel loved, or loving.”

Jason briefly look his eyes off the road and looked over at her. She was beautiful herself. He wondered if he’d ever made her feel that way either.

He reached over, took her hand. “One day, I’m going to figure out how you got to be so special.”

“You’ll have to ask my daddy. He’s always made me feel that way.”

* * *

Nicole came into the livingroom surprised to find Jason on the floor with Dusty, in front of the big screen TV. Both had game controls in their hands. On the screen was a motorcycle race.

She flinched a little. It seemed fast and violent, but the way her brother—brothers—were laughing made her smile. It was a male thing. She’d played enough with the boys in the neighborhood, with Dusty herself, to understand that.

Dusty was stretched out on his stomach. Though he was clearly concentrating on the on screen road, he had a smile on his face. And on his head, slightly off kilter, was a big pair of earphones.

No wonder the only sound she’d heard was laughter.

She sat down on the sofa and watched. Not the game; it seemed to matter little. But this ... this scene of family delight was what had sent her down on an old Greyhound bus. This was what she wanted for Dusty.

As the game ended, and Jason’s motorcycle apparently exploded, he looked over at her. The look on his face was just ... Jason’s, she thought. Here was her brother.

Here was her family.

It made her ache and hope and want, even more so now that she’d disclosed about Sarah Brown.

The rest of the evening went by in the same fashion. Dusty got off the floor and they talked. About his new clothes, his new shoes, a new soccer ball. He signed quickly in his excitement, and she tried to translate, but she was pleased that Jason was finally picking up a few words on his own.

Trisha came in with dinner from her father’s restaurant, and the four of them sat around and watched a movie. Jason had hooked Dusty’s earphones up to the surround sound and her brother fiddled around with them, holding them on his leg, the around his head and on his cheeks. She supposed where he could feel the vibrations better.

The movie was purely male, and chosen for Dusty’s enjoyment.

Still by the end, he was asleep.

Then Jason did something that completely surprised Nicole, and brought tears to her eyes. He picked Dusty up and carried him to bed.

Across from her, Trisha stood. “I guess I should be going.”

Nicole looked over at her. “I’m sure Jason will want to say goodbye.”

She shrugged, “This is family time. You’re time.”

Nicole got up and went to give her a hug. They held on, for a long time.

“You’re part of the family,” she said at last.

Trisha laughed as she stepped back. “Not yet ... but maybe soon. Jason has a lot to deal with before he can take me on. You coming here has opened up a lot of possibilities.”



Jason found Nicole alone in the livingroom. “Where’s Trisha?”

“She went on home. I asked her to stay,” she said, but then frowned as she looked down at her hands. “But there was something I needed to talk to you about. So I guess ...”

She just simply shrugged.

He sat down beside her. She’d been quiet since last Sunday. “You’re not going to tell me you’re leaving, are you? Or that you want to leave.”

She shook her head. “You put out quite a lot of money for me to stay. You don’t have to say anything. I know what lawyers can cost.”

“Is that the only reason?”

She shook her head again. “No. I want to be here.”

“I wanted you here as well,” he stared across the room where Trisha had placed a picture from last Sunday of him, Dusty and Nicole sitting on the Lewis’s deck. It had been taken before Gabriel arrived. Before the fear had returned so fervently to her eyes.

“I just ... I need to get a job. Not just volunteering, but a real job. Rev. Lewis has offered to pay me for the work at the church, but it seems ... wrong to think of being paid when he’s done so much. And it’s church.”

“He gets paid to work there.”

She grinned, though briefly. “That’s what he said ... but still. I want to do this for him. But that doesn’t change the fact that I need to get a job. What can I do around here?”

“There’s no hurry.”

“But I ... I just—I’ve always wanted to pay Sarah—Mrs. Brown back. To give her back what I took. And I need to go back to school. And then there are ... other things.”

“Well, I had thought working with Mrs. Lewis on the online classes was giving you a few ideas of your own,” he reached over, ran a hand down her back. “And as for Mrs. Brown, I talked to a lawyer about what we could do.”

When she looked at him, he shrugged. “I figured it was something you would want me to do.”

“I don’t want to give her your money. You didn’t take it from her.”

“But I could have been there for you. Maybe things would have been different,” he thought of what Trisha had said. “Maybe they wouldn’t. I was pretty messed up. I got out. I was not only rescued from that life, but I was blessed—immeasurably—with money I don’t even need. I use it to play. I use it as a game. I would like the opportunity to use it for you.”

“But I’ll never be able to pay you back either. Don’t you see what you’ve already given me?”

“Don’t you see you’ve given me the same thing? A family? My family back? My sister with her braids and her sad eyes? What we had tonight—that was what I wanted. You were brave, when I wasn’t. That’s what you’ve brought it my life.”

He thought again of what Trisha had said, and wondered if there was something else, something more important that he could give Nicole.

“Wait right here.”

When he came back downstairs, she was still sitting there. Looking sad and alone, and still—even without the braids—so much like the little sister he’d left behind.

He sat down by her side and handed her the large jewelry case. He watched her hands tremble as she opened it.

Their mother’s jewels ... jewels that had been in their family for centuries ... were now clean and sparkling on the white satin fabric. Her hand trembled over them as she started to touch, but stopped herself.

“I had them cleaned and I wanted to give them to you. I don’t have use for them, and ...” he shook off the statement. It wouldn’t be what Trisha would have thought he should say. And he wanted to say it right. It was time Nicole heard the words from someone.

“I remember the night that mama was so sick and you asked her if she would put on her jewels. We got them out and sat around her on the bed, as she wore them and told us some stories of her mother and her mother’s mother ... and the long ago queen who wore them for Leonardo. I remember thinking, she’s beautiful. My mama’s so beautiful.”

Tears glistened in Nicole’s eyes. “When I look at you, I see mama. I see a beautiful woman she would have been proud of.”

“She wouldn’t have been proud of me.”

“Maybe not of what you’ve done, but of what you’ve become. She would want you to pay Mrs. Brown back, would want to know that while you took the locket, you just wanted your father’s love. She wanted it herself.”

He took her hand, drew her down the hall to the simply decorated guest bathroom. He took out the necklace and placed it around her neck, took out the earrings and fastened them to her ears, all the while watching the fear and doubt in her eyes. He fumbled with it all, but she said nothing at first, and neither did he.

“Take them off,” she said as she shut her eyes and tried to turn away. “Take them —I can’t—“

”Just look,” he petitioned. “For one time, just look.”

He watched as she opened her eyes, stared uncertainly in the mirror. Her breathing uneven. Heavy.

He stood behind her and grasped her upper arms. His eyes met hers in the mirror.

“You’re beautiful, Nicole, prettier then mama. So very beautiful.”

Even though it had been Trisha who’d suggested the words, he was surprised at how desperate he was for her to believe them.

“There’s a verse in the Bible that ... it got me out... It helped me get out. You have to understand, I was on my way to the bottom. I didn’t come back to you—not at first—because I didn’t want you to be where I was. I wanted to believe you were better off. Later it was different. Later I made the wrong choices, but I first, I wanted to believe ... it was better for you.”

She only looked away. He wondered if she had just as hard of a time picturing him there as he did thinking of her in prison.

“This verse, it says, ‘before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.’ it says that God knew us. He knew both of us before our mistakes. He knew us. And he loved us. The same as ... or so much more than mama, as she held us in her womb. The same as now. He didn’t make you to feel this way. He formed you so you could know Him. He formed you and He knew you.”

Jason met her eyes in the bathroom mirror. “Look at yourself, Nicole. See who you are. A princess. A child of the King.”

She thought of the children in Narnia, kings and queens of a distant world—who were children, acted as children, shaken by the onslaught of war and aggression in their own world.

Even with their mistakes, compared to her, they were pure. So much more pure and deserving.

“I’m no princess.”

“You were created by God and He’s the King. You are a princess.”

“I can’t even pray. I don’t know how to pray, who to pray to.”

She shook her head, took of the necklace and thrust it into his hand. She did the same with the earrings, but this time he caught her hands.

“Nicole, look at me,” he watched as her chin trembled. Watched her lift her eyes to him.

“What are you so afraid of?”

She started to shake her head, but it was as if the words tumbled out. “Of me. Of this being too easy. I don’t deserve it to be too easy.”

“It won’t be easy, either way. And easy or not, it doesn’t change who you are.”

“I know ... but ...” she looked down at the jewels that he held in their joined hands. “I know where I’ve messed up. Those are worth millions.”

“They’re a set,” Jason confirmed. “They could easily fetch 25 million at auction. The jeweler figured more.”

“And you trust me with them?”

“I know you Nicole, and they’re yours. What are you going to do with a single earing—or Dusty with his, for that matter. If you want to sell them ... if you want to sell mama’s treasure, they’re yours to sell.”

She pushed his hands away from her and wrapped her arms around her middle.

“I don’t want him to have them.”

“We won’t let him get them,” Jason confirmed. “But they’re just jewels. They’re not worth much more than that.”

She laughed, though it came out as a chocking sound. “Just jewels. Words coming from a Rossi. You must have more of mama in you than I do. Or maybe I just have more of him...”

“Nicole—“

”Hide them ... hide them where I can’t find them. He knows how to get to me. He always knows. If I know where these jewels are, they are as good as his.”

“Nicole—“

She thought of the children, kings and queens of a distant world that she’d discovered in Narnia, and figured she would never measure up. She was no princess.

”Just hide them, Jason.”



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