at ease. Alicia picked up her knife and buttered a piece of bread, handing it to Jancy, who shook her head and turned away. Alicia sighed and set the bread down.
“Abby,” she began, taking a napkin and twisting it nervously in her hands. “I meant it when I said I didn’t know where else to go. I had a little…problem…in Carmel, and I remembered that you were here in the Valley, and that the Prayer House was kind of hidden…” She paused. “Out of the way, I mean. I thought you might put us up for the night.”
As she talked, Alicia kept looking around. Once, when a cupboard door in the kitchen closed a bit loudly, she jumped.
Abby leaned forward and kept her voice low. “What happened? What’s going on?”
Alicia shook her head. “Please, just trust me. Jancy and I need a safe place to sleep tonight. If you help us, I swear I won’t bother you after that.”
“You’re not a bother,” Abby said. “But tell me this, at least. Is it about Gerry? Has he…” She looked at Jancy. “Has he done something?” It was the most obvious question to ask a mother on the run, and came out without her thinking about it.
Alicia looked blank for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Oh, God no! How could you ask that?”
“Well, we haven’t talked on the phone or seen each other in a long time. People change.”
Alicia’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Abby. It’s just that I’ve been so damned busy. But you’ve always been the kind of friend I felt I could turn to if I ever needed help. You’re the most solid and dependable person I know.”
Clearly, my friend doesn’t know me all that well anymore, Abby thought—at least, not the insecure me that had grown out of searching two years ago for my friend Marti’s killer.
But as for Alicia’s plight, Abby had learned through her work with Paseo to be cautious in these kinds of situations.
“I need to know what’s going on before I can decide whether I can help you, Allie. One thing I can’t do is put the nuns and other women living here in jeopardy.”
Alicia stood and walked back to the fire, although the reception room was quite warm now. She paused there a few moments. When she turned to Abby, the expression in her eyes was that of strain, fatigue and a touch of something else. Fear?
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think of it that way,” she said, her voice trembling. “I had no business coming here and bringing trouble into your home. I’ll leave, Abby. I’ll leave right now. I just…I mean, could you just…” She crouched down beside Abby and put a shaky hand on her arm. “Could you just keep Jancy a few days?”
Abby stole a glance at Jancy and saw that, though her chin was up and her lips drawn tight in a defiant expression, tears had spilled onto her cheeks. She wiped them away with the sleeve of her black jacket, the gesture of a five-year-old.
“Go ahead, leave,” she said sullenly to her mother. “You always do. And you know what? I don’t even care anymore.”
Alicia sighed. “Honey, I wouldn’t leave you if I didn’t have to. But you’ll be safer here with Abby—alone, I mean. Without me.”
“Oh, sure, that’s the point, isn’t it?” Jancy laughed shortly. “No, Mother, the real point is, if you foist me off on your friend here, you’ll be free as a bird. You won’t have me to bother with anymore.”
Alicia frowned and stood, folding her arms as she addressed her daughter. “I don’t know about free as a bird, young lady,” she said with an edge, “but I will have less worry if I know you’re safe.”
She sighed, and her voice shook. “Honey, I need to be on my own a few days. There are things I need to do. Please try to understand.”
The bowls of creamy soup had become cold and glutinous. Abby carried them over to a sideboard to remove herself a bit from the argument. She needed a few moments to figure out how to respond to all this. Two phrases rang in her ears “Go ahead, leave…you always do…” And, from Alicia, “I will have less worry if I know you’re safe.”
What on earth had been going on in this family since she’d seen them last?
“Allie,” she said, turning back, “if this isn’t about some problem with Gerry, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t rather have Jancy stay with him.”
“No,” Alicia answered quickly, shaking her head. “Trust me, that wouldn’t work right now.”
“The thing is, I just don’t think I can help you with this.”
“Abby, please! I—it’s just that he’s in New York, and he’s up to his ears in major business negotiations.”
“But surely he’d want to help.”
“Absolutely not!” Alicia said even more vehemently. “I want Gerry kept out of this as long as possible. Believe me, Abby, it’s for his own good.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Jancy said angrily, “why don’t I just stay at the house in Big Sur alone? I’m sixteen, after all. I’m not a kid.”
Alicia said, “Jancy,” reprovingly, while Abby just looked at the girl until her gaze fell away.
“Okay, I’m fourteen,” Jancy snapped. “But I’m more grown up than most kids my age. If you only knew…”
Alicia looked at her in desperation, as if to say, “See what I have to put up with?”
Jancy turned away, her angry gaze pretending to examine the air.
Abby studied the two of them and thought a minute, while Jancy fidgeted and Alicia looked over her shoulder, as if expecting someone to jump out from a corner at any moment.
Despite whatever other factors there might be, Abby’s strongest urge was to help. Alicia and Gerry had supported her when her job at the Los Angeles Times was on the line, years ago. Abby had written a story about a brilliant fifteen-year-old boy who, after having been orphaned at the age of five, had lived alone in an abandoned tenement building. The little boy had taken care of himself by stealing food off the streets and living with homeless adults who took care of him as best they could. Still, the situation he’d lived in was undeniably perilous.
The kid had talked to her only on the condition that she promise never to tell anyone who he was. Abby made the promise but vowed to do everything she could to help him after the story broke. She’d get a promotion and have plenty of money then, she reasoned, to do whatever was needed for him: high school, college…who knew what heights a kid that bright and self-sufficient might reach?
Abby shook her head now at the memory of those youthful fantasies. Instead of being promoted, she was fired for not giving up the boy’s name, and accused of making the story up. Stone-cold broke, she was on the verge of being homeless when Gerry, a young legal aid attorney at the time, represented her in court pro bono, while Allie took her into their house until her salary started coming in again. Abby won the case against wrongful firing, kept her job, and once the story hit the wires she won awards around the world. Not only was her career saved, but she was able to help the kid just as she’d hoped. He was now a resident MD at Swedish Hospital in Seattle.
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