Families and Other Enemies Read online

Kellen asked, “What’s your plan for tonight?”

  Sophia sobered quickly and shrugged. “Dunno. I’ll figure something out.”

  “I can help you with a slightly better plan. Will you let me?”

  Sophia shrugged again. “I guess.” She looked over at Ralph. “Will he be there?”

  “He knows this area better than I do. But you can trust him. I promise.” Kellen stood and put her hand down to help Sophia up.

  Sophia took it, yet hesitated. “You’ll come along, right?”

  Kellen squeezed her hand. “Yes. I’ll come, too.”

  * * *

  RALPH LED THE two women into an alley on the other side of the church. Kellen noted the alarming number of cardboard boxes laid out like beds, some with threadbare blankets and old sleeping bags draped over them. “This is where I sleep.” Ralph indicated the second to last cardboard shack. “I can keep you safe, Sophia.” He moved one shack past his own and pointed at a long, flattened mattress box with a clean, fleecy blanket folded at the end.

  No wonder Ralph was so adept at understanding the homeless and downtrodden folks who came by the food bank every day.

  Sophia looked dubious. “What’s the matter?” Kellen asked.

  “Nothing. Really. The bed looks amazing! I slept next to a fountain in the park last night. It was the only place I could find that was well lit, but then I, um, I got attacked.” Sophia indicated the black eye and the bruises on her arms, turned to Ralph and spoke to him directly for the first time. “I don’t know if I can trust you to protect me.”

  “I won’t hurt you.” Ralph’s voice was so soft and gentle; yep, he was a people whisperer.

  “Maybe not. But you’re old.” Sophia wasn’t being mean; she was sixteen, and she was making a flat statement of fact. “If that guy from the fountain comes back and brings friends, like he said he would, what are you going to do about it?”

  Ralph laughed, a brief, amused sound that trailed off into a wince. Reaching inside his shack, he pulled a baseball bat out from under his blankets. “Does this make you feel safer?”

  Sophia shook her head. That wasn’t good enough, yet she had no alternative.

  Kellen thought briefly of her attic with the king-size bed and the electric blanket, of the soaking tub and the heated towel rack lined with fluffy white towels and of tomorrow’s scrumptious breakfast she had been promised. She straightened up, looked at Sophia and—

  Ralph shook his head once, firmly.

  Of course not. Kellen couldn’t ask every person at the shelter to come home with her, and the sad truth was, if she tried, Sophia’s mother could try to sue her, and probably succeed.

  Kellen sighed. Modern life was complicated, indecipherable and sometimes ugly. “Sophia, would you feel better if I stayed here with you, as well?”

  Sophia looked so grateful that Kellen smiled. “Okay.”

  Kellen bid a sad farewell to a great night’s sleep. Oh, well. From deep inside, she heard the echo of Rae’s voice. Kellen had responsibilities and duties. Solemn ones.

  “Come with me, Sophia,” Ralph said, nodding at Kellen in way of thanks. “We need to find you some useful employment for the daytime.” Ralph and Sophia walked back toward the food bank.

  Kellen followed in their wake.

  When the small group reentered the food bank, a petite woman stood in the doorway of the office.

  “Mrs. Soderquist.” Ralph nodded in greeting. “This is Sophia. We’re going to the prep kitchen to wash dishes and learn other useful kitchen skills.”

  Mrs. Soderquist gestured them forward, then offered her hand to Kellen. “I’m Bridget, director of the food bank.”

  BRIDGET SODERQUIST:

  FEMALE, MIDTHIRTIES, 5'3", CAUCASIAN ANCESTRY, THIN, TONED, WELL DRESSED. BROWN SKIN, BLACK HAIR, GREEN EYES. SELF-ASSURED, PROUD OF HER POSITION, CLEARLY COMPETENT AND A LEADER. COOL SMILE; KELLEN FELT JUDGED.

  Kellen shook hands. “Kellen Adams. Good to meet you. Sheriff Kateri Kwinault sent me here to work while I handled some family problems. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course. We always need volunteers for the food bank. I am surprised Ralph came for you to help with Sophia. He doesn’t usually trust so quickly.” Her words were a critique.

  “I was in the military. He knows that. And an officer. That’s kind of a bonding thing between us.” Kellen waited to see if Bridget would respond with the information that Ralph wasn’t a veteran.

  Instead, Bridget looked Kellen over from head to toe, a cynical twist to her mouth.

  My God. Bridget didn’t believe her. In a fury, Kellen snapped out, “Captain Kellen Adams of the US Army. Served in Afghanistan, Germany, Kuwait.”

  “Oh!” Bridget straightened her shoulders. “Of course. You really are a veteran. Sometimes I forget that there are... Sorry. Thank you for your service.” Words that were nothing but a platitude, but were an acknowledgment of Kellen’s background.

  “Ralph asked me to go talk to Sophia because of my experiences in the military, I think.” Kellen knew better, but she wasn’t about to confess any of her troubled past to Bridget. “Either way, she’s going to need plenty of help.”

  “They usually do.” Bridget gestured Kellen toward the back. “Let’s get back to work. I have boxes of onions that need to be sorted.”

  More onions. Kellen suppressed a heavy sigh.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AN HOUR LATER, the prep kitchen was empty except for Ralph and Sophia, and Kellen, who used a scrub brush under her fingernails, trying to get the smell of onions off. “How did the odor permeate the gloves?” she asked aloud.

  “I know.” Sophia wrinkled her nose. “I like soup, but I don’t know if I want minestrone for a while.” She added hastily, “Not that I’m complaining!”

  Ralph nodded. From all that Kellen had seen, he was a serious man, not given to smiles or words, but he did lift a brown paper bag and say, “Bridget gave us dinner, so we won’t starve. Not tonight, anyway.”

  That was a somber reminder of the hardships Sophia faced.

  Ralph and Sophia stood waiting for Kellen, so she put down the brush, dried her hands and walked with them toward the street.

  “Good night, Mrs. Soderquist,” Ralph called as they passed her office.

  “Good night, Ralph, Sophia, Kellen,” Bridget called. “Take care out there.”

  “Always,” Ralph answered.

  As they stepped out into the late-summer afternoon, cool gray clouds rolled in off the ocean, and the light had a pale misty tint.

  Sophia’s shoulders slumped and she looked down at her feet. The kid was scared.

  As she should be. Kellen remembered the fear that homelessness had brought. It had accompanied her every step, made her view every person as a potential threat. A pair of scissors became her best friend. A handout was something to be guarded. She had choices now, but even so, the old habits kept her wary and watchful.

  They made their way into the alley. Ralph returned greetings from the other homeless, and they continued back to Ralph’s cardboard box. He crawled inside, dragged out a grubby old bathroom rug and a torn sleeping bag. He placed them like welcome mats, opened the paper sack and put out the roll of crackers, three small cans of tuna, two overripe pears, a carton of wildly colored cherry tomatoes and a wrapped set of plastic utensils. He then gestured to Sophia and Kellen to sit.

  One of the men, skinny and dirty, shambled past and asked, “Man, can you...?”

  Without hesitation, Ralph gave him a can of tuna and a pear. He watched as the guy walked on, around the corner and down the street.

  Sophia, who had been viewing the cans of tuna eagerly, said, “But—”

  Ralph said, “He should be on meds. Goes weeks without eating because he thinks someone is trying to poison him. This has been a good week—he’s come by for food every day. Don’t worr
y.” He pushed the cans of tuna toward her and Kellen. “You can have them.”

  Sophia popped the top on one can; the smell of tuna rose to scent the air. “In my family, it’s all for one and one for all.” She handed him the tin and a plastic fork. “We’ll share.”

  Kellen and Ralph looked at each other. Damn, she was a good kid, and she deserved better than this.

  As they ate, a woman who looked too old for her years came by, and soon they were down to one can of tuna, a few crackers, a pear and some tomatoes. They finished dinner—it didn’t take long—and Sophia asked, “Now what do we do?”

  “Usually we try to get some sleep while it’s still light,” Ralph said. “It’s safer than sleeping at night.”

  Sophia’s bright eyes widened. “But I’m not sleepy!”

  “Of course you’re not.” Kellen was pooped after working all day in the prep kitchen, but she wasn’t sixteen years old with limitless energy.

  “I wish I’d brought my book.” Sophia lifted her knee and leaned her elbow on it. “I left home too fast. My mom is probably going to find it and flush it. She always does that when she sees me reading. The librarian is good about helping me get really old books that don’t need to be returned, but she gets mad about the flushing. She wanted to talk to my mom, but I told her no. My mom would beat her up.” She lightly touched a yellowing bruise on her jaw.

  At that moment, Kellen resolved to stop whining about her relationship with Aunt Cora. Things could be so much worse.

  “What is it about some people? Why do they have kids? It’s not like the olden days when women had no choice. Take my mom. She didn’t have to marry my dad. She didn’t have to have us. She could have slept around with no responsibility. Why didn’t she?”

  Kellen looked at Ralph. Did he have an answer? Because she sure didn’t. It was something she’d wondered herself about some parents.

  Then she thought about Rae, about her own daughter. “I guess sometimes mothers are selfish.”

  “Be selfish before you have kids!” For Sophia, it was so simple. “My mom got us kids, one right after another, three of us. My dad, he was there. He helped. Maybe they made a mistake the first time, with me. But why didn’t they know after one that they didn’t want the other two? They’ve got a family. That was their choice.”

  Ralph made a grumbling noise, as if he had indigestion.

  Sophia paid him no heed. Perhaps she wasn’t really talking to them, or perhaps she knew they didn’t have an answer. “What is it with some people that they take something that should be good and easy, and all they want to do is break it?”

  As her questions made his heart hurt, Ralph groaned and rubbed his chest, then with the air of a man making an announcement, he said, “I’m going to tell you a story.”

  To distract Sophia from her frustration, Kellen supposed, and fondled the car keys in her pocket. She needed to get her bedroll, anyway, and maybe it was cheating, but she could pick up something to eat while she was gone.

  “When I was a kid, eighteen years old, I joined the Marines, because I couldn’t get a job. Besides, I was the toughest, the strongest, the best fighter in my neighborhood. I thought I would be the best Marine ever. I was such an awesome tough shit. I got into battle—Kuwait, Desert Storm—and I was still a tough shit. Dodging bullets, throwing grenades, eating sand for breakfast and liking it.” Ralph looked up, saw Kellen, held her gaze. “Then my buddy, as tough a guy as me, got hit. Head blown off into my arms.”

  Car keys forgotten, Kellen took her hand out of her pocket.

  “It was my fault,” Ralph said. “I didn’t see the enemy until it was too late.”

  No one spoke. No one breathed.

  “I wanted to storm their position, make them pay for his death. But I couldn’t. His eyes...they stared at me. I dropped to my knees. He stared at me. I threw his head away, into the sand. His head rolled, and he stared at me. I crawled away.” Ralph returned his attention to Sophia, frozen in horror. His voice gentled. “I wasn’t as tough as I thought. I wasn’t tough at all. Everything I thought I was, was a lie, and I went crazy. Literally crazy. The Marines wanted a fighting man, not someone who cried and begged to go home. I came back to the States, I wandered the country, I did every drug, I drank every bottle, I begged, I stole.”

  “That’s bad.” Sophia’s lower lip trembled for him.

  “Worse than you know,” Ralph said. “I was married. I had a kid.”

  Kellen should have been surprised. But this explained the way Ralph watched over Sophia without expecting anything in return—very parental.

  “Oh.” The tenor of Sophia’s voice changed, grew strong with contempt. “That’s so much worse.”

  “Yes. After I was discharged, I went home...for a little while. Couldn’t handle having a wife and a daughter and all that responsibility. So I abandoned them. Sometimes I forgot about them. Mostly I was ashamed for them to know I was alive. I told myself they were better off without me.”

  Sophia snorted rudely.

  Ralph kept talking. “Then one day, there was this little girl, about the age I thought my little girl would be. She was alone, crying on the curb, and I... I didn’t do much. Gave her some of my sandwich. Made sure she didn’t freeze. Sat with her until the cops came and got her. I think that was in Chicago. Really, I didn’t do much, but it made me feel better, you know? Like I wasn’t such a coward, such a loser. After that, I started helping if I could. People helped me, too. I went into drug rehab. Got clean. Got a job, thought about finding my wife and daughter, facing them, apologizing, being a man. But as soon as I thought about that, I got scared. I was back on the street, back on the liquor and the drugs.” He looked up, locked eyes with Sophia. “Don’t ever try cocaine, not even once. From the very first moment I tried it, I was a slave. I wasted my life and snorted fifty thousand dollars up my nose.”

  “You think I would? Do that? After seeing my mom—I don’t even know her anymore! After listening to you? After seeing that?” Sophia gestured toward the corner where one of the homeless was holding a conversation with the trunk of a street tree. “No. I’m stronger than you.”

  Ralph could have taken offense. He didn’t. “Good.”

  “What happened?” Sophia asked.

  “I went to prison for theft. Worked in some pretty lousy prison jobs. You don’t want to be incarcerated in Texas. They like to send you out to hoe the fence lines. Ninety-five degrees, a hundred percent humidity, fire ants, meanest mosquitos in the world.”

  Something tickled Kellen’s neck, and she slapped at it. Probably it wasn’t really a bug, but all he had to do was mention mosquitos and she felt things crawling on her.

  “I served in the kitchen when there weren’t any fences to hoe, so when I got out a couple of years later, I was clean, no drugs, and I knew how to cook. I started working in food banks. I wandered around the country, lived on the streets.” He gestured around at the alley. “It’s rough, but it’s home. And I helped people when I could. That’s the important thing. That’s what keeps me going, makes me not hate myself—offering a hand when I can.”

  “But your daughter?” Sophia asked. “Did you talk to your daughter?”

  “No.” Ralph moved his shoulders uncomfortably. “No. I can’t do that. She’s an adult. She’s got a job. She’s got a life. She doesn’t want to meet me. She doesn’t want to... No.”

  “So you saw her?” Sophia insisted.

  “What?” Ralph realized he’d fallen into a trap.

  “You know she has a job and a life,” Sophia said, “so you tracked her down.”

  “It’s not hard to do these days,” he said. “A few minutes at a computer, and I found her. She looks like her mother. She’s beautiful. She’s happy. I don’t want to change that.”

  Sophia stared into his eyes. “You’re wrong. You need to talk to her. Every day, she’s got a hole in h
er gut because her father abandoned her, and he didn’t even care enough to check on her to see if she’s alive.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.” Ralph was trying to dismiss Sophia.

  Sophia was having none of it. “My father did that. When my mother went bad, he ran away. Packed up and left us kids with her. I loved him. He was my daddy.” Sophia’s voice rose. “And he abandoned us as if we didn’t matter at all.”

  “Aren’t you angry?” Ralph asked.

  “I’m furious! But I still want to know where he is. I still want to know he’s alive.” Sophia stuck her finger in Ralph’s face. “You’re a coward!”

  Kellen interjected. “Um, Sophia, he’s helping you out here.”

  Sophia turned on Kellen. “Well, he is a coward!” She sat back on her bottom.

  “I know,” Ralph admitted. “I am. But I’m trying to help my daughter by helping the world she lives in. Don’t that count for anything?”

  “Yes, it does,” Kellen said firmly.

  Stubbornly, Sophia crossed her arms over her chest. “She needs to know you’re alive.”

  “She’ll reject me.”

  “Maybe so. That’s her right. But in the end...she won’t be so angry. She won’t be so hurt. You hurt her. You owe her.” Sophia took a breath, went on more calmly. “I know what I’m talking about. My dad skipped town. My mom’s a walking hulk. But my brothers and sister—they’re my family. I’ve kept them together, and I’m going to bring them through, somehow. Maybe they’ll screw up, like Mom, but they’re going to have the chance to be...to be like you. To help people because they understand what it’s like to be down.”

  “Yes,” Ralph said. “Pass it on.”

  Wow. Kellen hadn’t seen this coming. Ralph talking about his life, baring his soul, showing all the ugly stuff to help Sophia. She really hadn’t expected to see that little downtrodden girl come to life, state her opinions, be so strong and sure. That kid was going places.

  Kellen knew there was a message in there for her, too. Right now, she didn’t want to contemplate it. She stood. “I’ve got to get my bedroll. It’s at the bed-and-breakfast. Shouldn’t take me too long.” She looked hard at Sophia. “You’ll be all right?”