Hidden away, p.18
Hidden Away, page 18
part #2 of Hearts of Montana Series
Russ set down his mug and crossed the room. He pulled her into his arms. “Of course I don’t hate you, girl. I love you as if you were one of my own. I’m disappointed in how things are turning out, but whatever happens, I want you to know that I love you, darlin’. And I love Sam.”
Sam opened the bedroom door and pulled the overflowing laundry basket into the living room. “All right, I got everything off the bed. If you need anything else, you’re gonna have to start a new basket.”
Russ laughed and crossed the room to help Sam carry the full basket out to Cherry’s VW Bug.
Cherry wasn’t laughing.
The sad reality was that she didn’t have another basket. She didn’t have a basket, a bag, or a pot to piss in. She was flat broke and ready to engage in a war against her cousin.
A cousin who had money, power, and influence.
She’d never had money, but Taylor had helped to give her power and influence. And now he was gone. This was all up to her now. She was all that Sam had.
And she couldn’t let him down. She fought back the tears that threatened to spill again.
She wouldn’t cry, damn it.
Sam didn’t need a crybaby for a mother.
He needed a warrior.
A woman of strength.
She pushed back her shoulders and took a deep breath. She could do this.
She might not have much more than the clothes on her back, but it was a strong back, and she wasn’t afraid to work.
She had never been afraid of hard work, and she knew that hard work was what she faced now.
Heading for the front door, her woman of strength pep-talk playing in her head, she thought she just might have to punch someone yet.
Eight hours later, she wondered if the recipient of her punch was going to be the motel clerk. “What do you mean you’re full?”
She was bone-tired after spending the day at the diner alternately cleaning up and spending hours on the phone with the insurance company.
Dark had settled in as she and Sam pulled into the hotel, and all she wanted to do was take a hot shower and crawl into bed. To close her eyes and forget about the fact that she wouldn’t be lying next to Taylor tonight.
That she might not ever lie next to him again. But she couldn’t think about that now. She needed to focus on her and Sam and getting them a place for the night.
The clerk couldn’t have been much more than eighteen, and she looked at her phone more than she looked at Cherry. Her nails had been manicured, and her brunette hair fell in perfect wavy curls onto her shoulders and the ample amount of cleavage she was sporting. “What do you not understand about that? We don’t have any rooms.” She spoke in a slow, loud voice dripping with sarcasm.
Cherry wanted to take her phone and shove it down her pretty little neck.
She took a deep breath and tried to calm her frustration. “I understand what full means. I’m just surprised to hear that the motel is completely out of rooms.”
“Well, my dad is renovating three of them and there’s a rodeo or something in Great Falls, and so our other three rooms are full.”
Her dad was the owner of the motel. That explained it.
Cherry couldn’t figure out who else would hire this silly twit to manage their front desk. “Look, can I just talk to your dad then?”
The girl shrugged. “Whatever. He’s working on the rooms now. I think he’s in room five or six. You can go over there if you want.”
Cherry took Sam’s hand and led him out the door. The motel was small, a sad U-shape of tiny rooms. It had been around forever, and Cherry was glad to hear the owner had plans to renovate. Anything that made the town more prosperous helped her business, too.
She and Sam trudged across the dirt parking lot, Rex following at their heels. They followed the sound of loud rock music, and she poked her head into the open door of room five.
A dark-haired man in his mid-forties stood on a ladder, using a small paint brush to trim the top edges of the wall. The paint was a soft khaki color and quite an improvement over the current dingy beige of the wall. He wore jeans, tennis shoes, and a paint splattered T-shirt with the remnants of a Van Halen logo on the front.
He waved and climbed down from the ladder. Still holding the brush, he turned down the little stereo that had been blasting the eighties rock. “Hey there. It’s Cherry, right? From the diner.”
Small towns.
She stepped into the room, careful to not disturb the tarp covering the floor. “Um, yeah, that’s right. Cherry Hill. And you’re…”
He gestured in apology to his paint-covered hand. “Mike. Mike Ferguson. I think you went to school with my little sister, Julie.”
Cherry nodded. She remembered Julie Ferguson. When a graduating class had less than fifty people in it, you tended to remember all of them. “Listen, Mike. We’re in a bit of a jam and we need a place to stay. I don’t know if you heard about the fire at the diner?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I did hear about that. Glad to hear nobody got hurt. I’ve been watching for the place to open up again. You’ve got the best coconut cream pie I’ve ever tasted over there, and I have surely been craving some pie lately.”
“Well, Mike. Like I said, we’re in a bit of a jam, and if you could see your way to help us out, you can have a piece of pie, any flavor, on the house, every day for the next month.”
His eyes lit. Bingo. “What can I do to help?”
“We need a place to stay and your…um…friendly receptionist seemed to think the hotel was full.”
“The hotel is full. The rodeo’s going on in Great Falls this weekend, and with me working on these rooms, I’m out of space. I’d like to help you out, though.” Mike scratched his head and appeared to be thinking quite hard.
The man must really like pie.
He shrugged. “I haven’t really started work on room six yet. I probably wasn’t gonna get to it for another couple of days. It’s kind of a mess in there, and there’s no television. But you’re welcome to stay in there, I guess. I could probably knock off twenty dollars a night for putting up with the mess.”
His words were music to her ears.
She could put up with a mess and no television if it saved her twenty dollars a night. “That sounds great, Mike. Can we get into the room now?”
Mike looked down at Sam and the little dog at his feet. Rex happily wagged his tail and gave an excited bark at being noticed. “The only problem is we don’t allow pets. Especially dogs that bark. This hotel has too thin walls as it is. Customers tend to get real unhappy when their sleep is disturbed.”
Shit.
She hadn’t thought about the dog. Poor Rex. He was such a sweet mutt, and yet everybody seemed to have it in for him. Reed was giving her hell about getting rid of the dog, and now they might not get a place to stay because of him.
“Listen. You’re a reasonable guy. We’re staying in a room that’s going to be gutted anyway so the dog hair won’t hurt anything. And we’ll be in the far room so no other guests should hear him.”
“And we’ll keep him real quiet,” Sam said. He was smart and must have recognized the desperation in her voice. “He won’t be any trouble.”
“Just for tonight,” Cherry said. “And then we’ll figure out something else tomorrow.” Right now she just needed to make it through this night. “And I’ll bring you over a whole pie, as soon as the diner is back up and running.”
He tilted his head then grinned. “All right. Just for one night. I really like that little dusting of graham crackers you do on the edge of the crust.”
“Extra graham cracker dust, you got it.” Relief washed over her. “And thanks, Mike. This means a lot.”
He waved toward the door. “Go tell my girl to give you the key to room six, and we’ll figure out the rest tomorrow. But the dog only stays for one night. Agreed?”
She couldn’t look at Sam. She knew he’d be crushed. “Agreed.”
She grabbed Sam’s hand and headed out the door before Mike changed his mind.
Big surprise. Mike’s girl was still glued to her phone when Cherry entered the office and asked for the key to room six. “I guess you weren’t really full after all.”
The girl gave her an indifferent look, and Cherry’s feeling of triumph deflated like an old balloon.
“That room is pretty bare because of the remodel. I can come over and make the beds for you if you want, but it might be a while.” The girl stacked sheets, two thin orange bedspreads, and a handful of travel-sized toiletries on the counter.
“It’s okay, I’ve got it. Besides, you do seem pretty busy.” She couldn’t help the sarcasm dripping from her voice.
All of her life, her grandparents had instilled in her that treating people with kindness and offering great customer service were the most important part of your business. She made a mental note to start teaching Sam those same lessons.
He was already a pretty great kid and his thoughtfulness of others continually surprised her. Stacy and Greg had done such a wonderful job with him. She saw so much of her kind-hearted cousin in Sam.
She took a deep breath and picked up the stack of towels. There was no time to dwell on that now. She had beds to make, and the thought of a hot shower practically made her knees weak. “Can you grab that key, Sam?”
He smiled at the teenage girl then took the key and led them back across the parking lot. After unlocking the door, he pushed it open, and they got their first look at their accommodations for the night.
The room was bare except for two double beds and a built-in counter/desk affixed to the wall. An ancient lamp sat on the faded and scarred nightstand tucked between the two beds. An aluminum ladder, several new cans of paint, and a canvas tarp were stacked in the corner of the room.
The air smelled faintly of stale cigarettes and mildew. Cherry wrinkled her nose in disgust and opened the window to let in the late summer night air.
Neither Sam nor Rex seemed to mind as they raced into the room to explore.
She dropped the sheets on to the bed closest to the door. “Let’s get our stuff out of the car, then we can both get cleaned up.”
“Ah, do I have to?” Sam asked. “I just had a bath yesterday.”
She grinned. The boy could always make her laugh. “Yes, you have to. There’s enough dust in this room to fill a slop bucket, the least we can do is get ourselves clean.”
They carried their few things in from the car, Cherry grimacing at her laundry basket luggage.
Mike’s daughter crossed the parking lot and handed her a stack of clean towels and a tub full of paper towels and cleaning supplies. “My dad said it might be a little dusty in the room. I can come clean it for you but it might be a while before I get to it.”
Yeah, this seemed to be a pattern for her.
Cherry took the tub. “It’s all right. I’ve got it.”
Truth be told, she’d rather clean the room herself anyway.
Sam and Rex wrestled while she scrubbed the tub and shower area with an abrasive cleanser. When she was satisfied that the bathroom sparkled as much as the old fixtures could, she ran a tub full of bubbled water for Sam.
Thankfully she’d packed enough of their bathroom supplies to cover them, because the sample bottles of shampoo and lotion they’d been given at the front desk weren’t going to last long.
While Sam soaked and splashed in the tub, she dusted and cleaned the rest of the room and made up the beds.
Hearing the water draining from the tub, she hollered toward the bathroom. “You need any help in there?”
“No, I got it.” Sam emerged from the bathroom, his pajamas stuck to his still wet body. He’d made a half-hearted attempt to comb his sopping hair, and droplets of water ran down his neck and into the collar of his pajama top.
Cherry laughed. “Geez, kid. Did you even use the towel at all?” She marched him back into the bathroom and toweled off his hair then combed it down again.
The smell of his shampoo filled the damp air of the bathroom and caused her heart to ache with the love she felt for him.
She knelt down and wrapped her arms around his tiny body. She spoke against the side of his wet head, her throat thick with emotion. “I love you so much, Sam. Don’t ever doubt that. I always have, and I always will. I love you to the moon and back.”
He grinned at her reference to the children’s book that she used to read when she visited him at Stacy’s. They had played this game since he was a toddler. “I love you to the moon and back. One thousand times.”
She tickled his sides, loving the giggles she elicited from the small boy. “I love you to the moon and back, seven hundred and four thousand times.”
“Wow, that’s a lot.” Sam wiggled free of her grasp and jumped onto the clean-sheeted bed. “But I love you to the moon and back. One thousand gazillion-trillion times.” He fell over in mock fatigue, as if quoting the tremendously large number had worn him out.
Rex jumped on the bed and licked at Sam’s face.
“Sam, we need to talk about Rex.” Her voice was gentle. She knew how much the dog meant to him.
The fun, giggling moment passed, and Sam’s expression sobered. His arm wrapped tighter around Rex’s neck. “I don’t want to talk. He’s my dog now, and I’m not giving him away.”
After the dog had bit Taylor, Cherry had talked to Zack and Charlie about keeping the dog with one of them, just until all the legal stuff was settled.
Sophie had overheard the conversation and excitedly offered to keep the dog for Sam. She hadn’t shared that information with Sam yet, knowing how much it would upset him to lose the dog.
She’d hoped that it wouldn’t come to this, but with the pressure of the motel manager and Reed, she felt like she had no choice. Her cousin had texted her twice in the last week or so to check on Sam and asked if she’d taken care of getting rid of the mutt. She hadn’t answered either text.
She’d thought about asking Russ to keep him, but figured she’d caused enough trouble for the Johnson family. And Sophie was actually excited about keeping the little dog.
“Sam, I’m so sorry. I know how much you love Rex, but we can’t keep him here with us right now. You heard the motel manager say we couldn’t keep him, and your Uncle Reed is claiming that it’s dangerous for you to be around him.”
“Rex isn’t dangerous. He loves me.” The dog’s head rested in Sam’s lap.
“I know he does. And I know he’s a good dog.” She reached out to pet Rex’s head, and the dog softly licked her hand. “Sophie has offered to keep him out at their farm, just until we get everything settled. You like Sophie, right?”
Sam nodded.
“You know she would love Rex and take good care of him. And he would be so happy out at her farm. He could run around and chase rabbits, and Zack would be there to help take care of him, too.”
“But he’ll be sad without me. And I love him.” His bottom lip quivered slightly but he didn’t cry.
“I know. And I know you’ll be sad without him. But you have to think about everyone that’s involved and do what’s best for Rex. Sometimes you have to love something so much that you’re willing to let it go. You have to love him enough to want him to be happy too.”
Deep emotions rose to the surface for her. Memories of similar discussions with her cousin and her grandmother filled her head. She remembered being scared and alone and feeling so much like this child across from her who seemed so innocent and young and yet had to make an adult decision.
She laid her hand gently on his arm. “I know it’s hard to let go of something that you love so much.” Boy, did she ever know how hard that was.
She had given up the thing that she loved the most in the world. Given him up in hopes that he would have a better life. That he would be surrounded by love.
And he was.
Actually he was still surrounded by love. The intensity with which she loved this child was like a fierce ache in her chest. Like something bigger than she’d ever felt before.
Letting Rex go live with Sophie for a while would be hard, but it would be worth the sacrifice if it meant she had a better chance of keeping Sam with her.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” she asked.
Sam nodded. “Yeah, I get it, but I don’t like it. Not even one little bit.”
She smiled. “I know. I don’t like it even one little bit, either. But at least Rex will be with Sophie, someone we know and trust. And we’ll be able to visit him all the time. Every day if you want.”
“I’ll still get to see him? You promise?”
Cherry leaned down and kissed Sam on the forehead. “Yes, I promise.” She patted the bed next to him. “I need to take a shower. You going to be okay?”
He nodded and snuggled closer to Rex.
Cherry grabbed a T-shirt and gym shorts from her laundry basket luggage. She pointed at the door. “I locked the door and set the chain. Don’t let anyone in. You understand me?”
The boy nodded solemnly. “I won’t.”
“All right. It will only take me five minutes.” She nodded at the wall across from the bed. “I would tell you to watch TV, but they didn’t provide one in this luxury establishment, so you’ll just have to imagine a show in your head. Or better yet, make up your own story. You can tell it to me when I get out of the shower.”
“Okay.” Sam twisted around to rest his head on the pillow, his face wearing a thoughtful expression.
She was pretty sure he was taking her instructions seriously, and she fully expected him to have a story ready by the time she had finished in the shower.
Ten minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom, wearing the clean T-shirt and shorts, a towel wrapped around her wet hair.
She plopped down on to the bed next to Sam. The shower had done wonders for her, and now she just wanted to pretend today never happened.
“Did you think of a story?”
Sam grinned. “Yep.”
“All right, let’s hear it.” She pulled the towel from her head and blotted at her wet hair. She’d found her hairbrush and cautiously pulled it through the tangled, wet strands while she listened to Sam’s story.
