Theo rolled up the mats on the basement floor of the shelter. Five women had come to the class today. Three more had watched from the hallway. He hadn’t approached them and asked them to join in. This was something they had to decide to do on their own. Until they were ready to walk through the doorway, all the training in the world wouldn’t help them.
He felt good about the class. Two of the five women told him they had moved out of the shelter. They even had jobs. Not ready to totally go it alone, they had decided to rent an apartment together. He had agreed it was probably a good idea. This way they would have each other for moral support. He hadn’t added, when their husbands or boyfriends found them, or started calling. They needed positive reinforcement, not negative reminders. There were plenty of reminders of that everywhere around them.
As he finished securing the last mat he felt someone watching him. Thinking it was one of the women he didn’t whirl around as he would somewhere else. The women weren’t the only ones still fighting the effects of abuse. He didn’t think he would ever totally erase those memories.
Standing he stretched and slowly turned toward the door. Surprise had him dropping his arms from over his head to his sides. “Pastor James?”
Gabrielle’s father stood just inside the doorway to the basement.
“Why am I not surprised?” the pastor said, walking further into the room.
“I certainly am,” Theo said then frowned. “Did something happen at the restaurant? Is Gabrielle alright? How did you know to look for me here?”
The pastor smiled and shook his head. “Slow down. As far as I know Gabrielle and the restaurant are fine. As to looking for you here, I wasn’t. I come over to lend a hand now and then. Not that I’m much good right now, but I’ve found that my being injured makes them feel, I don’t know, useful I guess. They seem to enjoy baking me treats and helping me around. And since my daughter is not the most accomplished baker, I enjoy the treats.”
Theo knew he was right. Feeling useful made a big difference in the healing process of these women. Many had been told for years nothing they did was good enough. Being appreciated for something as simple as helping someone to a chair helped build their self esteem, much as his first dishwashing job had done for him.
He nodded in understanding as he grabbed a towel and scrubbed it over his face. “So, why aren’t you surprised to see me here?”
“The coordinator told me a young man had offered to teach self-defense classes here. After what Gabrielle told me about your apartment added to your reaction at the community kitchen earlier, I had a feeling it might be you.”
Theo held the man’s gaze. Nope, he wasn’t buying it. There was more. “And?”
Her father grinned. “Okay, okay, I’ll come clean if we can sit down and have a cup of coffee while I do.”
“I need to grab a shower and change. Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll meet you upstairs.” Theo wasn’t sure how he managed the easy tone. His nerves were vibrating from the tension filling him as her father nodded and turned toward the stairs.
Curiosity and being honest with himself, a little fear, had him racing through his shower. In less than ten minutes he climbed the basement stairs. He found Pastor James in the play room with the kids. They were sitting around him listening to him tell a story. A little boy, about the age his son would have been, sat to the side watching the other kids. He turned his head, smiled, and ran to Theo, hugging him around the legs.
Theo bent down and picked the boy up. The boy immediately wrapped his arms around Theo’s neck and hugged him tightly. Choked by emotion as much as the boy’s hold, for a moment he just held the child. It happened every time he came to the shelter. At some point the boy would find him and then refuse to leave his side.
At first Theo had been surprised since most of the women and children here were abused by spouses or boyfriends. Then he had learned this particular child had been abused by his grandfather when his mother had returned home a young widow with nowhere else to go. The mother explained that the boy’s father had been tall and quiet like him, she’d said with a melancholy smile.
She said the two had been inseparable whenever his father was home. But he’d been killed in a hit and run accident. They didn’t have any life insurance and she lost everything and had to move back in with her father. One night she’d returned home from work to find her son crying. That first time he wouldn’t say what was wrong. It was weeks later when she was sent home sick that she found her father beating her son, then he turned on her.
She swore he had never hit her before. That night he locked them in their bedroom. She and her son climbed out the window after her father went to sleep. Bewildered and badly beaten she had walked downtown to a diner. A waitress had befriended them, made a call and the next thing she knew they were at the shelter. A few days later Theo had started his classes, and the smile came back to her son’s face. The story filled Theo with awe every time he replayed it which was every time the little boy found him.
If only his mother had loved him enough . . . no, he wasn’t going there anymore. Blaming others for the troubles in his life didn’t change anything.
Kissing the boy’s cheek, he pulled him back so he could see his face. “So, what are you doing today?”
The boy shook his head.
“Nothing?” Theo asked, and the boy nodded. “You’re just sitting around like a lump of – hmmm, a lump of . . .” It was a game they played, a way to get the boy to talk.
“Pudding,” the boy said with a smile.
“Pudding? Oooo, that’s a messy lump,” Theo said, tickling the boy’s belly. He squealed with laughter as his mother came down the hall.
“There you are. I should have known you’d be with Theo now that class is over.”
Theo smiled at her as he assessed her condition. She looked a lot better than two weeks ago. The split lip was healed. The stitches in her forehead and cheek were gone, but there would be scars. What bothered him most was the cast on her arm. Her own father had broken her arm. A full grown woman.
“You’re squeezing me,” the boy laughed, wriggling in Theo’s tight hold.
Realizing his anger with the boy’s grandfather had taken hold of him, Theo took a deep breath. “I’m just trying to see if you’re as squishy as pudding,” he said. Kissing the top of the boy’s head he set him on the floor. “Go help your mother. I’ve got to go. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
Theo turned back toward the play room. “Are you ready?”
A couple of blocks down from the shelter they stopped in a coffee shop. Theo gathered their order and joined Gabrielle’s father at a table.
“You were good with that little one. He won’t come near me.”
“I remind him of his father. I’m afraid you probably remind him of his grandfather, that’s who she’s running away from. I just hope I’m not causing more trouble by getting close to him. It’s going to be hard enough on her when they leave the shelter.”
The pastor nodded. “His mother, despite this unexpected bump in the road, seems to be pretty smart. From what little I’ve talked to her, the father’s behavior is totally out of character. I’m trying to see if there’s a way to help him. He may be ill.”
Theo’s anger was instantaneous. He stopped just short of slamming a fist on the table. Leaning forward he knew the man saw how he felt. “You’re making excuses for an abuser? I would hope you were smarter than that.”
Instead of being shocked, or scared, or anything Theo expected, the man calmly shook his head and sipped his coffee. “I don’t make excuses for anyone. The woman asked me to check on her father. She believes something is physically wrong with him.” He held up his hand, holding off Theo’s rebuff. “She won’t put her son in danger, but she is worried about her father as well. But that’s not what we came here to talk about.”
Theo’s chest still heaved with the effort to control his anger. Anger at the woman for caring about a man who beat her to a pulp, and with the man sitting across from him for being so understanding about it. From his point of view the man deserved to be hung by his toenails, not helped. Preston James just sat there calmly sipping his coffee. There wasn’t a doubt in Theo’s head that the man knew how upset he’d made him. Boss’s father, pastor, he didn’t care. He had to make sure the man understood what was at stake.
“Anyone hurts that little boy again, and I promise you they will pay.”
“Which little boy are we talking about? The one in the shelter?” The pastor tipped his head to the side. “Or the one inside you?”
“Don’t try and play your social work games on me, Pastor. I don’t play well.”
The man smiled. He actually smiled at him. “And don’t patronize me. I’m not some stupid little kid. I know how it works. I was probably in the system before your sweet daughter was a twinkle in your eye. And just because it was a lifetime ago, doesn’t mean anything. Little has changed from what I see. Men are still bastards, and women and children pay the price. Now, I’ve had a helluva day, so if all you want to do is mollycoddle the sorry excuses for men that cause the problem, I think I’ll take off.” He started to rise.
“You know the man who killed your mother is dead, right?”
Theo stopped halfway to his feet. That was definitely not what he’d been expecting, but satisfying none the less. He smiled. “Hopefully it was a very slow and painful death.”
Returning to his seat he grinned across the table. “Does that bother you, Pastor? That I don’t feel any grief over my father’s death? That I don’t have any compassion for him? Well, I’d apologize, but then I would be lying. I’m glad the bastard’s dead.”
A small understanding smile pulled at the pastor’s lips. Theo frowned.
“No, son, it doesn’t bother me. It makes total sense knowing what he put you through.”
“Don’t call me son,” Theo said in a harsh whisper. He was no one’s son. “And just what do you know about that? Come to think of it, how do you know my father’s dead?”
“I told you I checked out what Gabrielle told me about you. Your last name kept niggling at my brain. I remembered it from somewhere. After a couple of days with it popping in my head at odd moments, I Googled it. The very first link I clicked on brought it all back.
“I remembered the headlines and lead stories on the news about your mother’s death. Then there was the trial. I hate to admit that even I couldn’t look away from the television when they showed you in the courtroom. It wasn’t the sensationalism that drew me in. It was your fat lip, stitches, and most of all your empty staring eyes. When we met outside the church the first time, something about your eyes bothered me. I think that’s why I couldn’t let go of the idea I’d seen you before.”
Theo didn’t remember most of what the pastor was talking about. He remembered hitting his father’s legs, trying to make him stop hitting his mother. His father had simply kicked him hard enough to slide across the floor under the kitchen table. His mother ran toward him screaming for his father not to her him. His father grabbed her and wrapped his hands around her throat. He remembered her clawing at those hands and kicking with her feet. Then he remembered his father releasing her and watching her fall to the floor like an old rag doll. The last thing he remembered was his father grabbing him and pulling him out from under the table.
“It’s okay, Theo.”
Jerking his arm away from the pastor’s hold, he spilled his coffee. Thankful for the excuse to focus on something else, he stood and went to the counter. The girl at the counter gave him a couple of towels and he cleaned up the table and floor. After apologizing when he finished cleaning up the mess, he returned to the table.
“So, now what, you want to warn me to keep my hands off Gabrielle? I can assure you, I have no intention of getting involved with your daughter. All I want from her is a job.”
The pastor shook his head. “No, this has nothing to do with Gabrielle. And I haven’t told her about it. You’re right, it all happened before she was born. I’m telling you I know to explain why I wasn’t surprised to find you helping at the shelter.”
Theo could feel the wrinkles in his forehead. The man didn’t make any sense. What man would want someone with his family history within a hundred miles of their daughter? None, that’s how many. Then the pastor started explaining again, and he tried to focus.
“It’s obvious you’ve remembered what happened that night, probably started remembering a long time ago. And those memories have spurred you to help teach women to defend themselves so the same thing doesn’t happen to them. From what I read about your trial, you were trying to stop an abusive man that night, too. As laudable as all that is, it’s not going to help you get over your past.”
“I am over it.”
“Theo,” the pastor said, with a shake of his head. “You’re not a stupid man. You know better. If you’d moved on, this wouldn’t bother you to the point of putting yourself in danger of going back to jail.”
Since he’d pretty much had the same thoughts earlier, he couldn’t deny it to the man’s face. Looking out the window, he saw something that made the matter worse. Gabrielle was walking toward the coffee shop. He turned back to her father. “What’s Gabrielle doing here?”
“Hmm? Hunting me down probably,” Preston said, as he glanced out the window and waved “She thinks I need a babysitter. But I told you, I haven’t said a word to her about your past. That’s your business to tell or not.”
“Hi guys,” Gabrielle said coming to stand by their table.
Theo offered a smile, but from the less than happy look on her face, it wasn’t a convincing one. Suddenly, her eyes grew wide before she narrowed her gaze.
“I can’t believe you would drag my father into this.”
“Excuse me?” Theo asked having a hard time switching gears from his discussion with her father. Then realizing what it looked like to her given their earlier run in with her ex, he gave a slight shake to his head.
“Drag me into what?”
Seeing a blush start to rise on her cheeks, Theo took pity on her. “We had a disagreement this afternoon on the way back to the apartment. I guess, seeing us together she figured I was bending your ear about it.”
“Gabrielle, I ran into Theo and asked him if he’d join me for a cup of coffee. My guess is he didn’t want to chance making his boss mad by refusing her father and took pity on me. So, what were you two arguing about?”