Down and Dead in Dallas, page 10
“Yes, but why do you? Lots of people know others are in trouble, yet few do something about it. Why do you?”
He paused a long minute. “It’s not complicated. When I needed help, someone was there. An old man named Lester,” Jackson said. “I could have been headed for serious trouble. Rose was busy working, keeping food on the table, and Lester was a neighbor. He stepped in.”
“What did he do?”
“He taught me to fish, about faith, about compassion and how to change a tire.” A wistful expression accompanied what were clearly good memories. “He also made me think about things I should have been thinking about and wasn’t. Things like the sacrifices Rose was making to give me the best life she could, and how I could help her instead of getting into trouble.”
Jackson admired Lester, and so did Christine. “Was Lester a relative?”
“No, not by blood.” Jackson’s expression turned tender. “But he was more a father to me than I’ve ever known. Still is.”
“You love him.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“He sounds like a wonderful man.”
“He is.” Jackson chuckled. “Eccentric, and very strange at times, but he’s an extraordinary man.”
“So you helped me because, when you needed help, Lester helped you.”
“Yep. That about covers it.”
“Admirable.” Christine settled in her seat and let her gaze wander to the tree-studded terrain. Not a building in sight, just the headlights of light traffic. She gazed up at the stars. She and Caro hadn’t had a Lester in their lives. Lawyers and advisors, a guardian who was cold and distant but performed his duties to the letter. Still, they’d been provided for and monitored and no one had abused them. Jackson and Rose had survived so much more…
A couple hours of Interstate later, Jackson turned South and then East. The signs along the road were mostly for Tallahassee and Mobile. Jackson still hadn’t said where Sampson Park was located, but it seemed pretty apparent it was somewhere along the Gulf Coast. Florida maybe, or Alabama. She had offered to drive for a while, but he had refused. He still watched the rearview mirror closely, if not constantly, so despite the all-night driving, he was staying alert in case of trouble.
Now, he glanced her way more frequently. “You okay?”
“Fine.” She’d wanted to ask their destination’s location but battled the temptation. He was taking her to Sampson Park. When she got there, she’d know. Until then, she could speculate but refrain from asking in a show of trust.
“Is there something you want or need to talk about?” he asked.
Daisy. Where’s this park? “At some point, maybe, but not right now.”
“Do you mind if I talk, or do you need quiet time?”
“Of course, talk.” She liked talking with him. It kept her worries at bay.
He gripped the wheel with a loose hand. “The truth is, I’m still a little rattled. Rose scared the fool out of me, taking chances with her life.”
“Me, too.” Christine patted Jackson’s forearm. “But I’ve been thinking about it. She really didn’t seem out of control. Not for a second. You said she could drive anything with wheels and I have to agree that her maneuver seemed deliberate and measured.”
“Thanks for sharing that. I couldn’t see as well as you, watching through the mirror.” Christine had turned around in her seat. “I don’t remember a time when she didn’t drive.” He smiled.
Clearly he was reliving a fond memory. “What?”
“Oh, we were kids. Rose couldn’t have been more than nine. Wait… Eight. She was eight, because we were both living with the Grassley family then. Most of the time, we were placed with different foster families.” Jackson shifted and relaxed. “Anyway, Mr. Grassley loved his beer, and one night, he, shall we say, over-indulged.”
“He was drunk.”
“Falling down drunk,” Jackson admitted. “He ran out of beer so he grabbed his car keys, bent on making a beer run. Mrs. Grassley couldn’t stop him, and she couldn’t drive, so she tells Rose and me to drive him so he doesn’t get a DUI.”
“She thought it was better for Rose, at eight, to drive without a license than for him to get a DUI?”
“Better odds of not getting a ticket at all.” Jackson grinned. “Rose was so little she couldn’t see over the dash so Mrs. Grassley propped a pillow on the seat under her. Then Rose couldn’t reach the pedals.”
“Oh-oh. I’m seeing this adventure going in a very bad direction.”
“Actually, it’s not bad.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No,” Jackson assured her. “Mrs. Grassley told Rose to get her some rubber-bands. She used them to band chunks of wood to the pedals, so Rose could reach them. And off we went to the liquor store.”
“Mr. Grassley rode with Rose driving?”
“To get his beer, and get Mrs. Grassley off his back, he’d have ridden with me driving.”
Jackson was a couple years younger than Rose, so he’d been five, or at most six at the time. The irresponsible absurdity of the situation was totally inappropriate, but who would actually do something like that? Yet Jackson was deeply amused and laughing hard, recounting details of the ordeal.
Christine laughed with him until tears ran down her face. Jackson hadn’t had an abundance of good memories to draw from, bless his heart. At least, not until Lester had come along. She loved Lester for being a good man and stepping up for Jackson and Rose. How different their lives might have been without him. “So Mr. Grassley got his beer, and you all got home in one piece.”
“We did.” Jackson smiled. “And Mrs. Grassley kept the wood banded to the pedals and a pillow in the backseat so Rose could take her anywhere she wanted to go.”
“Mr. Grassley didn’t take them off when he sobered up?”
Jackson dipped his chin. “Mr. Grassley never sobered up.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I think Mrs. Grassley liked him better that way. He wasn’t as grouchy.”
“Rose was a gutsy kid, wasn’t she?”
“She had to be.” Gauging by his expression, Jackson resented that. “She did get stopped by a cop on a beer run once.”
“Oh, no.” Christine frowned. “What happened?”
“She told the cop there was no way she would let her baby brother ride with a drunk and took off. She wouldn’t stop, so he called for backup to clear the way. That cop followed us all the way home, and…”
“He arrested her?” Christine was beside herself. On the one hand, he had to keep her off the road, but on the other, Rose’s argument had merit.
“No, he didn’t arrest her. She was a pretty good driver by then. No violations, aside from the driving without a license. He warned her, though, to stop driving until she was old enough and got a license.” Jackson smiled. “She promised not to drive except in emergencies.”
“So what… Oh, wait. He issued her a written warning.“ When Jackson nodded, Christine gasped. “And that ended you two living with the Grassleys?”
“Unfortunately.” Jackson spared her a glance. “They got the boot. No more foster parenting.”
He passed a silver SUV, then moved back into the right lane. “We didn’t have your typical family life with the Grassleys, and it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination ideal, but at least Rose and I had been together. We were devastated at going back into the system.” Sadness settled in his eyes.
What being together had meant to him was evident in the timbre of his voice. Christine’s heart suffered a fierce tug. “You lived with a lot of different families, didn’t you?”
“We both did. But that was the last time we were placed together in the same home,” he said. “We stayed in touch, and Rose came to see me as much as she could. When I got old enough, I’d go see her. Like I said, it wasn’t as good for us as the Grassleys, but it worked out okay. Finally, Rose got set up on her own and she took over.”
She’d gone and gotten Jackson. “So Rose became your mother and guardian as well as your sister.”
“She always had been. Only mother or guardian I had—and that includes life before our birth mother abandoned us at the Piggly Wiggly. Later, we kind of adopted Lester.”
“Your mother abandoned you at a grocery store?”
He nodded. “She gave us each a Grant half-dollar then went to park the car.” Memories of that day had his jaw tight, his whole body stiff. “She never came back.”
“Did something happen to her?”
“She abandoned us, Caroline.” The betrayal of that burned in his eyes.
“That’s awful.”
“It was. We stood there, waiting for her until dark. Rose was sure she’d come back, but she never did.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“And she wasn’t hurt or killed or anything?”
“She was fine, just done with us. We never saw her again.”
“I’m so sorry.” Christine imagined how empty and scared they both must have been. “You were… how old?”
“Three.”
“Rose must have been scared to death.”
“At first. But the longer we stood there, the bleaker she became. She wouldn’t let go of my hand. Kept telling me, ‘Don’t worry, Jackson. I’ve got you.’ If she said it once that day, she said it a hundred times.”
“Were you worried?”
“Not really. It was dark before someone in the store called the cops, and late at night when we were taken to the police station. They found our mother, but she refused to come back. Was I worried? No. Even before she dumped us, it was Rose who took care of me. I don’t remember my birth mother doing a thing. Not saying she didn’t. Just saying it was always Rose seeing what I needed, worrying about me, teaching me right from wrong.”
“Mothering you?”
“Yes.” He chewed at the inside of his cheek. “I wonder sometimes how Rose managed. When she came and got me, she was only sixteen. We had nothing, lived in a dive, and money was always tight. But not once did I put my head down without a pillow under it and a roof overhead, and I never dozed off feeling unloved.” His voice went thick and he cleared his throat. “Looking back, I know Rose didn’t have that luxury. Oh, she knew I loved her, but I can’t say I did much to help her. She was so busy all the time, scrambling to provide for me and keep a roof over our heads. I didn’t think about what she needed back then.”
“She let you be a kid.”
“She did, at great personal cost.”
Christine swallowed a knot in her throat. No wonder Jackson and Matthew bowed to Rose’s every wish and would rather cross a bed of hot coals than refuse her anything. “I understand now.”
“What?”
“Why you were so afraid of losing her.”
“You know exactly why,” he said.
Her parents. “I wish I didn’t,” she said. “But I do.” Awful as it was, hers had been a far smoother road than the one he and Rose had journeyed. Christine’s parents had died not abandoned her and Caro. And they’d had money, were always well cared for. Never having to worry about rent or food or any physical need. Emotional needs were another matter, but she and Caro had never been separated. She admired Rose immensely. “Well, Rose did a lot right. You both turned out to be extraordinary people.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Jackson tapped the vent. “I would say, the day she came and got me, I made up my mind I’d never ask for anything else and I’d try to never do anything to bring a tear to her eye. No matter what.”
“Which proves I’m right. You are extraordinary.”
“We try to be ordinary but, like everyone else, we have our moments.” He passed a Ford truck poking along, then signaled and moved back into the outside lane. His stomach growled. “We’ve got a couple more hours to ride. You hungry?”
So they were a couple hours from Sampson Park. “Perpetually hungry.” She smiled. “I love to eat.”
“Do you cook?”
“Not at all, but I have a healthy appreciation for good food.”
“Music to a chef’s ears.” He smiled. “There’s a diner about three miles up the road. We can have breakfast there, and I’ll tell you a little about Sampson Park.”
Finally! Christine’s heart hammered. It took effort, but she kept her tone in check. This was too important for her to come across as overly eager. “Sounds great.”
Thirty minutes later, they sat across from each other in the back booth at a bustling truck-stop type of diner, eating omelets stuffed with bacon, mushrooms, cheese and tomatoes, and fresh biscuits slathered with real butter.
“So,” Christine attempted to clarify. “Miss Emily owns the Park and her adopted daughter, Darby, runs it?”
Jackson chewed and swallowed. “With a lot of help. Staff at the house, staff that works the ranch, in the village, the medical clinic and such. It’s this whole little community.”
Clearly, he was giving her details, hoping to trigger her memory. Of course, Christine had no memories to be triggered. “So why isn’t it on any map?” she asked, adding strawberry jam to half of her biscuit. If she kept eating like this, she’d have to be rolled out of here.
“Can’t figure why it would be on a map. It’s private property.”
“A privately owned park?”
He nodded. “Actually, it’s a privately owned estate. Sampson Park is just its name. The only way you can get into it is by invitation—well, except for the village. But access to it is controlled, too.”
Her and her techie friends’ failure to find Sampson Park now made sense. “So what you’re saying, is aside from associates’ meetings and such, Miss Emily built and maintains the Park to help people like me?”
Again, he nodded. “To help all kinds of people start fresh.”
“Wow.” Christine was impressed. Never had it occurred to her to use her money for something like this. Considering Caro’s position during her marriage to Martin, that shamed Christine. “Was Miss Emily… in a situation like Caro?”
Under the guise of chewing, Jackson didn’t answer. By the time he swallowed, he’d thought over what he wanted to say. “In the Park by a footbridge, there’s this enormous bronze statue. It explains everything.” He spooned more jam on a half biscuit. “I’m sure you saw it when you were there—you can’t talk to anyone in the Park until after you read it. I can’t quote what it says, but the upshot is Sampson Park exists to aid people the rest of the world’s given up on. Miss Emily never gives up on anybody.”
Jackson’s knife stilled mid-air and he studied her. “You still don’t remember anything about it, do you?”
“I’m afraid not.” Worried he’d stop talking, Christine added, “I’m trying to, though. What you’re telling me is helpful but, so far, no images of from there are coming to my mind. That is why I’m asking so many questions.”
“Looking for triggers.”
She nodded.
“I’m sure not recalling makes you nervous, but you don’t need to fret. An entire group of professionals are there, ready and willing to help,” he said. “They figure out what you need to get right, and then provide it.”
“That’s reassuring.” It was. She and Nell had worried about this very thing with Caro. “Like counselors?”
“And doctors, chaplains—whatever you need. If they aren’t already there, Darby brings them in.”
“How does Miss Emily fund all this?” Caro couldn’t be the only person there. Not with the setup he was describing.
“I wondered that, too,” he confessed. “You’d never know it, especially if you met her away from the Park like we did, but according to Lester, Miss Emily’s always been richer than Caesar.”
“She’d have to be to fund an undertaking on this scale.” That set Christine to thinking. “So do I pay her to be there?”
“Nobody pays Miss Emily for anything.” Jackson’s glance slid to the wall and his eyes went unfocused. “The Park’s a serene place. No phones or clocks, except for the one in the village square they need to conduct business. No televisions or computers—you know, all the things that are supposed to make life simpler but only keep people busier.”
“Why no TV?” Christine popped the last bite of biscuit into her mouth.
“Unnecessary stress.” Jackson dipped his chin. “When’s the last time you saw anything good happening on the news?”
“I see your point.” She frowned. “How many people are out there?”
“A couple hundred.”
Surprise rippled through Christine. Sampson Park was indeed a community. “So when I left Martin, you took me there?”
“When we met, you had been in Dallas for a while. When you left, it was with me. We went to Rose’s first. It was Christmas, and I wanted to see her and Matthew. Then you and I went on to the Park.”
“I see.” A hitch in his voice warned her he had left out something between Rose’s and the Park. Had they gone somewhere else, to see someone else? Maybe to see Lester? Christine felt certain Jackson had deliberately omitted something, but she didn’t dare ask what. Not with the elusive Sampson Park only hours away.
“Okay, enough about me. It’s my turn to ask a couple questions… if that’s okay.”
She clenched her hand into a fist around the napkin in her lap. “Of course.” He had been so open with her. How could she refuse?
Jackson put down his fork, picked up a tall glass of ice water. “Why were you in Even?”
His simple question ignited a war in Christine. She didn’t want to lie to Jackson, but she didn’t dare to tell him the truth. The only reason he—or Rose and Matthew, for that matter—was helping her was because they all believed she was Caro. If they realized she wasn’t her sister, they’d jettison away from her so fast she’d drown in the backwash and her head would spin indefinitely. Christine would never find Sampson Park. She didn’t even know Miss Emily’s full name.
He took a long drink of water, set the chilled glass down on the table. It sweat a ring of water under it. “It’s not a hard question, Caroline.”
“For me, right this second, it’s a more difficult one than you might think.” She frowned, deciding to stick as close as she could to the truth. “It was on my phone bill.”
