I grabbed my suitcase from the back seat of the car and dashed inside the house. Vera came running out of the kitchen. “Baby girl!!”
“Aunt Vee!” I fell into her open arms.
“Ellie, baby, let me take a look at you.” She backed up a step and gave me a tip-to-toe look. “Lord have mercy. I swear if you grow any prettier, I’ma have to take a baseball bat to all the boys sniffing after you. Come on and sit down with me on the sofa for a spell.”
I peeped around the room. “Where’s Sam?”
“Come on, baby girl. Sit.” Vera was already on the sofa, patting the spot next to her.
“Okay, I just want to see Sam first. Is he upstairs? Sam!” I yelled.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Sit down.”
Aunt Myrtle walked through the front door and headed straight for the kitchen without stopping to joke with us like she usually did.
Something was wrong. “Is Sam okay?”
“He’s fine, sugar.” Vera patted the spot on the sofa again.
I eased onto the sofa beside her. “What’s going on?”
“Sam couldn’t come this time. He—”
“Is everything okay. Is he sick?”
“No, Ellie, baby. Nothing like that. Seems Sammy got into a bit of trouble. He been running around with some older boys. They got caught in a stolen car in Augusta.”
“What?! Sam’s only thirteen.”
“I know.” Vera shook her head.
“So where is he? Is he with Martha?”
“They sent him to the juvenile detention center there in Augusta. Uncle B got a friend down that way. He’s helping us out and we think we can get Sammy home by the new year.”
I slumped back onto the sofa and leaned my head on Vera’s shoulder. “How did this happen? I thought he was with you. I thought he was doing so good in school.”
“He was with me, but then Martha . . . well, you know your momma. She said her demons were back. I think Sammy felt bad for her. He went back out to her place to stay. I couldn’t convince him to stay with me. Anyway, the next thing I know, Sammy calling me from jail. He said he couldn’t find Martha.”
I began to cry, not so much because Sam was in trouble but because I was the reason he was in trouble. I’d left him behind to fish Martha out of the Blackjack Tavern, to argue with Vera and leave her house to tangle with Martha and her many moods. I’d left him and he needed me. The guilt consumed me. How could I enjoy private school and Christmas presents when Sam was locked up and alone?
Vera put her arms around me. “I know what you thinking, but you ain’t got nothing to back that up. God give everybody a path and you can’t walk Sammy’s path no more’n he can walk yours. Just because he made a mistake don’t mean he can’t right himself up. Mistakes don’t make nobody bad. It makes ’em human.” She hugged me, her strong arms trying to reassure me everything would be okay. “We’ll help him. He’ll be okay.”
As much as I wanted to believe Vera, I knew Sam’s trouble was my fault. I had been selfish to leave him behind. I thought I had fixed things before I left Chillicothe, but I’d only made it worse. Why couldn’t I ever get things right for me and Sam?
Chapter 17
Early Tuesday morning, I arrived at my office to the heady aromatic scent of Anita’s garden medley bathing the entire office. Bless you, Anita. Maybe she was right. Maybe I did need something in this office to show the Houghton clan I was part of the family.
I flung my tote bag on the desk and hung my coat in the small closet near the office door. I had a full-out closet in my new office where I could hang my coat on a hanger like a civilized person, instead of on a hook on the back of the door. Since moving to the executive suite I’d developed some new habits too. The first, I no longer dumped my bags in the guest chairs like I’d done in the Legal Department. These chairs were too expensive, too pristine. They were like pricey white reminders that maybe I didn’t really belong here.
My head still ached from last night’s attack. Although the knot at the back of my head didn’t hurt as much, the bruise on my face was vivid in all its black and blue and green glory despite forty-dollar Laura Mercier concealer and a hefty slather of foundation. I reached inside my desk drawer and pulled out a small bottle of Tylenol Extra Strength, dropped three of them in my mouth, and chased them with a can of Diet Coke sitting on my desk from the day before. I clicked on the computer and gobbled down a banana as I emptied the contents of my tote bag onto my desk. I started in on a cinnamon-raisin bagel and opened the manila envelope Anna had given me the day before. I read the email thread in the documents again. Geoffrey Gallagher’s response in the email signaled some sort of problem with Libertad. Whatever the problem, it was big enough to make Michael not only keep it a secret from me, but to also resign over it. It ticked me off a little that he’d kept secrets from me.