Finding Mr. Right (14 page)

Byron returned home to find Andy engrossed in the monkey’s antics. “Daddy, he even grunts and sings. He walks, jumps, dances and says yes and no. I have to call Miss Tyra and thank her again. And I’m not going to let any of the kids play with him ’cause I can’t get another one unless you and Miss Tyra go back to Nassau. How far is Nassau, Dad?”

“Several thousand miles. Where’s Aunt Jonie?”

“In the family room watching reruns of
Matlock.
She said we’re having lasagna and a lettuce and tomato salad for dinner.”

He went into the family room and greeted Jonie. She turned off the television and looked at him. “Was it all that you wanted it to be, son?”

He sat in a chair opposite her, braced his elbows on his thighs and cupped his chin with his palms. “That and so much more. Thank you for keeping Andy for me.”

“I’m glad. Soon as I saw her, I knew she was the one. Supper’s ready and the table’s set, so we can eat.”

They finished eating, and he cleared the table, put the
dishes in the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen. After playing Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” for Andy, he trudged up the stairs. When a piece of music settled in his son’s head, the boy could listen to it repeatedly for hours, but the monotony of “The Entertainer” got to him, and after playing it the third time, he quit, telling Andy that the monkey was bored with it.

He noticed the red light flashing on his phone and sat down to check his messages. “It’s real urgent, Mr. Whitley, otherwise I wouldn’t call you on the weekend.”

“What is it, Mr. Tate?” he asked. Murphy Tate was forbidding his sixteen-year-old daughter to marry the boy whose baby she carried, yet he claimed he couldn’t provide for her and the child.

“Mr. Tate, I cannot force Social Services to take care of your daughter’s expenses when you say you’re going to sue the child’s father and his family for money. Social Services will expect you to use that money to care for your child and grandchild.”

“They can’t do that. I’m gonna sue for damages and for…for humiliation and things like that.”

“But what about your daughter? She needs medical care, and you say that’s not your responsibility.”

“It ain’t. It’s that boy’s responsibility.”

“Look. I have to put my son to bed. I’ll call you tomorrow from my office. Good night.”

He read a part of “Hiawatha” to Andy to satisfy the boy’s current craving for Native American lore, tucked the child into bed and went to his room. He could hardly wait to hear her voice.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said when Tyra answered the phone. “Did you have dinner?”

“Darlene heated individual frozen pizzas. Maggie’s at church, and neither of us wanted to cook or go out.” Her voice softened. “What about you?”

“We had lasagna and a salad. After all those calories I took in the past few days, I didn’t even need that.”

“I know. After four days of leisure and being treated like a queen, among other things, I dread being back at work tomorrow. I can’t think of anything but our…nights together.”

“If I think about that, I’ll be in Frederick as fast as that Cadillac will get me there. In any case, work was waiting for me when I got back home. I had a message on my business cell phone. You know I volunteer at the Legal Aid Society. The guy is self-centered and a beer guzzler to boot. His daughter’s pregnant. He refuses to let her marry the child’s father. He wants Social Services to take care of her, and he’s planning to sue the boy’s parents because having a pregnant teenage daughter humiliates him. It’s the damnedest—”

“Wait a minute. Is that drunk’s name Murphy Tate?”

He had a premonition that he wouldn’t like what came next. “Yeah. You know him?”

“I’ve never met the jerk,” she said in a decidedly cooler voice, “but I certainly know about him. His daughter’s boyfriend is my client, and that man won’t allow him to do one thing for that girl nor will he do anything for her himself.”

“Wait a minute. You mean you’re counseling one side of this case and I’m counseling the other. This won’t do,” Byron said. “Turn it over to one of your colleagues. The man may be a jerk, as you put it, but he has the right to decide what happens to his daughter, and he thinks she’s too young to get married. Besides, that boy is misguided. He’s underage, and that means he hasn’t the right to marry. Neither does she.”

“Sure. But she’s not too young to have a baby. How can you go along with such stupidity? That girl doesn’t even get checkups, because her father won’t let her out of the house to go to a clinic. You’re counseling that man to deny that boy his rights.”

He had phoned her because he needed to hear her voice, but he did not need to hear her ice-cold lecture. “Look. We’ll discuss this another time. Sleep well.” He hung up, stretched
out on the bed and wondered if what he remembered of the past few days amounted to hallucination.

Tyra stared at the phone. How dare he! She didn’t care what kind of magic powers he had in bed, damned if she was going to take that from him. Hang up on her, would he? She dialed his house phone number.

“What do you mean by hanging up on me?” she said without preliminaries when he answered. “That was rude.”

“I did not hang up on you. I said good night, and I am not going to argue with you about that or anything else. If you think I did, I’m giving you the chance to hang up on me, and you’ll be even.”

She stared hard at the phone, getting madder by the second, dropped the phone into its cradle and burst into tears.

When she reached her office the following morning, it did not surprise her to find that she had three calls from Jonathan. She phoned him at once. “What’s going on, Jonathan?”

“Miss Cunningham, we have to do something before Becky starts showing, and she needs to be seeing a gynecologist. If we could get married, she could stay with me and my folks till I finish school. Dad said he’d take care of her medical bills. Her old man’s ignorant. He doesn’t care what happens to the baby, but what about Becky? She said he’s going to sue my folks for punitive damages, because she’s pregnant and because that humiliates him. He humiliates
her
with his boorish behavior.”

She thought for a few minutes. “The first thing we have to do is ensure that she has proper care. Then, we have to see what your rights are. I suspect that means getting a lawyer.”

“Miss Cunningham, you know I can’t afford a lawyer.”

“I won’t expect you to. Just leave that to me, and I’ll do my best.” But what lawyer would she get? In Byron, Murphy Tate had one of the best lawyers around, and he didn’t even have to
pay him. Surely Byron didn’t countenance the man’s position; it was inhumane. She resisted the urge to call Byron. I ought to chew him out, but that would only make things between us worse than they are, provided they can get any worse.

Thinking of the way in which their relationship had plummeted to a halt, she feared sinking into depression. “Damned if I’ll let it kill me,” she said to the gray wall that faced her. I know I love him, and he loves me, but he’s a stubborn as I am, and he’s as loyal as I am. So he’ll do everything he can for his client, and I’ll do everything I can for Jonathan. In the meantime, we’ll grow farther and farther apart.
What did I do to deserve such a blow to my psyche?

She wrestled with the problem for most of the morning, and by noon a decision began to take shape in her mind. She phoned Darlene and gave her an account of the problem. “It’s a matter of human rights and women’s rights, straight down your alley.”

“Let me get this straight,” Darlene said. “You’re telling me that you’re going to fight Byron over this?”

“I am not fighting Byron, Darlene. This is not time for drama or for rose-colored glasses. We’re talking about a girl’s rights and maybe her life, not to speak of the well-being of that baby.”

“I’ll be delighted to take it on. Apart from granting permission for those kids to marry, that man doesn’t have a leg to stand on. In fact, if he prevents her from getting health care, I could guarantee him a vacation in the slammer. I can’t see Byron going along with that.”

“He may be unaware of it. As Tate’s counselor, he’s only getting one side of it, and maybe not even the whole truth.”

“And you’re not even going to straighten him out?”

“Darlene, you know that would be unethical.”

“Unethical my foot. If he was kissing me the way I saw him kiss you, I’d straighten him out. Heck, I get weak in the knees thinking about it. You seeing him tonight?”

“I haven’t spoken with Byron since last night when I hung up on him.”

“You did what? Have you lost your mind?”

“Probably. But when he suggested that I turn the case over to one of my colleagues, I saw red. He didn’t consider doing that. Why should I?”

“Gosh, Sis. I’m beginning to think I don’t know you. You hung up on Byron Whitley? Whew! Girl, you got guts.”

“Cool off. He may look like Adonis incarnate, but he’s a man, and you should never let a man walk over you, not matter how much you love him.”

“Yeah. Well, I’ll ask my supervisor if I can handle this case gratis. If you’ve got any more shocks, wait awhile with them, I’m not sure I can handle any more surprises today.”

“Thanks for helping my client. Dad would be proud of you.”

“I know. He was always doing things for others. See you tonight.”

Tyra hung up and began preparing a brief for her sister. She was confident that Darlene’s supervisors would allow her to take the case gratis, for its merits would be as clear to them as to her. She wished Byron would call and apologize for suggesting that she turn the case over to one of her colleagues. How could he ask her to do so unprofessional a thing? She went to the closet-size nook that she and her colleagues referred to as the coffee room to get a cup of coffee and encountered Matt, who slouched against the door jamb drinking coffee.

“Hi, Tyra. How was your long weekend? Go any place interesting?”

If she told a little, she’d have to tell all. “Yep. I had a bang-up weekend. It’s good to do that at the end of summer. Kind of prepares one for the coming cold weather. How was your weekend?”

“Fantastic.” The memory of it seemed to brighten his face.
“Never before in my life have I spent two whole days doing absolutely nothing. I put peanut butter and jelly on some bread, got a glass of milk and had my breakfast. When I got hungry again, I duplicated that. For dinner, I added a tomato and an apple. That was Saturday, and I was so happy with the way that day went that I did the same thing Sunday, with one exception. I found a piece of cheese in the refrigerator and added that for lunch. I feel de-stressed, rested and rejuvenated.”

She enjoyed a good laugh. “Where did your body hang out while the time passed?”

“On the hammock in my back garden for most of the day. I had my radio, and that was all I needed. Try it sometime.”

“I may do that, although I think my siblings would have me committed. They think I’d never do anything frivolous.”

“They’re probably right, Tyra. By the way. My ex-wife met someone, and she’s been spending some time at his place. So I may be a free man earlier than either of us thought.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re going to charge her with adultery?”

“She’s still married to me, and we are not legally separated. My mom always said, ‘The Lord Will Provide,’ and looks like she was right.”

Tyra walked back to her office deep in thought. How quickly one’s fortunes could change. In the week since she last saw him, Matt had gone from despair to hope, and in the meantime, she’d gone from euphoria to misery. She shrugged. “It was great while it lasted, and I don’t intend to shed another tear over it,” she said aloud as she walked into her office.

Her grandfather’s words pounded like drums in her head. “Talk’s easy done, it takes money to buy land.”

Why couldn’t she talk with Byron and have some assurance that they still meant everything to each other? She needed evidence of the love he’d lavished on her the previous weekend. But Byron didn’t call her, and each time she reached
for the phone to call him, she hung up without dialing, telling herself that he had started the problem and he should straighten it out.

Tired of waiting for Darlene’s call confirming that she could take Jonathan’s case, Tyra took the brief on which she was trying to work and went to the staff lounge in the hope that a change of scenery would alter her mood.

“Don’t tell me the princess deigns to join the common folk,” Christopher Fuller sneered. “What’s the matter, your weekend didn’t pan out?”

“What do you know about my weekend?”

“Plenty. Not that anything you’d ever do interests me.”

“Of course not,” she sneered right back at him. “That’s why you’re always sniffing around.” She went back to her office and got busy. Anger always seemed to energize her, and a couple of hours later, she completed the brief, e-mailed it to her sister and received an immediate answer that Darlene would take the case.

“Byron is a heavy-duty attorney,” Darlene said when she called Tyra. “I’ll do my best, but I’m not in his league.”

“Your best is all I need. Both the law and human decency are on Jonathan’s side.”

“Not about marrying the girl, but about everything else. You hang in there, Sis. I’ve got to get busy on this. Imagine me tangling up with Byron Whitley! I must be dreaming.”

Tyra telephoned Jonathan. “I’ve engaged a lawyer for you, Jonathan. She’s attorney Darlene Cunningham, and I want you to call her right now at this number.” She gave him Darlene’s phone number.

“Is she your sister or your mother?”

“She’s my sister. Go on and call her.” The boy thanked her and, for the first time, she heard hope in his young voice.

Her feeling of relief about Jonathan was short-lived when she saw on her desk calendar that she had an appointment with Erica
Saunders. Dealing with that woman was surely payment for her sins. Half an hour with Erica was nothing less than torture.

Byron read the letter for a third time. Tyra had declared war and enlisted the firm of Lawson, Myrtle and Coppersmith as an ally. Furthermore, her sister was representing that powerful firm. But hell! He’d handle it. A man had the lawful right to say what happened to his underage children. Still… He threw up his hands, then leaned back in his chair. Should he phone Darlene or Tyra?