Cruel Intent

“Very well,” Leland said. “I have all the keys. I’m more than happy to handle that for you as well.”

“Thank you,” Ali said. She was incredibly grateful to have the unflappable Mr. Brooks backstopping her every move. “Depending on what happens in Cottonwood, I should be back in plenty of time for the search warrant.”

A few minutes later, when Ali stopped in front of Nelda Harris’s duplex, the woman herself hurtled through the front door and came rushing to meet her.

“We’re not having a good morning,” she said, gripping Ali’s hand. “Not at all. Thank you so much for coming.”

“Where is she?”

As Nelda led the way into the house, Ali’s ears were assaulted by the sound of wailing. Liam was clearly unhappy. “They’re both still in her room,” Nelda said, pointing toward a closed door. “She won’t come out.”

Ali went over to the door and tapped on it. When nothing happened, she tapped louder. “Haley?” she said. “It’s Ali Reynolds. I’m here with your grandmother. We need to talk.”

“Go away,” Haley said, raising her voice to be heard over Liam’s screeching. “I don’t want to see you, and I don’t want to talk.”

“What’s wrong with Liam?” Ali asked. “He sounds upset. Is he all right?”

“He’s tired. He needs a nap. He didn’t sleep last night, and neither did I. Now go away and leave us alone.”

Ali felt her heart constrict. She remembered those early years when Chris had been little and when everything to do with him had fallen on her shoulders. She’d had some help from babysitters during the day, but she also recalled those long sleepless nights when Chris had cried for hours on end and hadn’t cared at all that his weary mother needed to stagger off the next day to school where she’d had to fight to stay awake during class.

“Please come out, Haley,” Ali pleaded. “Let’s all talk about this. Your grandmother is here to help you, and so am I.”

There was a pause filled only by Liam’s plaintive wailing. At last the bedroom door inched open to reveal Haley standing there in a pair of sweats with her sobbing child perched on one hip. Without a word to Ali or her grandmother, Haley marched into the kitchen, filled a sippy cup with milk, and then went over to the couch. When she sat down, Liam reached for the cup.

“Help me with what?” Haley demanded as Liam settled back against her. “With him? Have a ball. Welcome to my stupid life. And you think we should talk? What’s there to discuss? I thought the two of you had it all figured out, that you’d decided everything about my future without bothering to consult me.”

As Liam drank from the cup, a sudden silence filled the room. He hiccupped a little and then handed the cup back to his mother. Exhausted, he leaned against her and stared up at her chin. Within a matter of moments, he fell fast asleep.

“Great!” Haley exclaimed. “Maybe I can sleep now, too.” She slammed the still-full cup down on the end table beside her, whacking the cup hard enough that a few drops of milk spurted out, but the noise wasn’t loud enough to disturb the sleeping baby. Without a word, Nelda picked up the cup and put it in the fridge, then went back over to the table and sponged up the spilled milk.

“So talk,” Haley muttered defiantly, staring at Ali. “Isn’t that what you came here to do-to tell me what a terrible mother I am and order me around?”

“I didn’t come here to tell you anything,” Ali said. “I came here to help. And believe me, I know how hard it is to think about going to school when you’ve been up all night with a fussy little one.”

“Sure you do,” Haley retorted. “Other kids get to go to football games and basketball games and dances. I get to come home, do homework, and take care of Liam. That’s it.”

“Once you go to work, it’ll be the same thing,” Ali pointed out. “You’ll go to work. You’ll come home. You’ll take care of your baby. How will that be different from what you’re doing now? And how would it be different if you were going to school instead of going to work?”

“I wouldn’t have to do homework, for one thing,” Haley said. “And I wouldn’t have to put up with all the other kids at school. You don’t have any idea what it’s like. Neither does Grandma. School is hell. The kids treat me like I’m some kind of freak because I have a baby. They’re all busy talking about what it’ll be like when they go off to school-what school it’ll be, what dorm they’ll live in, what clothes they’ll take along, who their roommates will be, stuff like that. As far as I know, none of the schools have dorms for girls with babies.”

That one exchange was enough for Ali to get it. Haley Marsh’s disinclination to go on to school or accept the scholarship had far less to do with ability or ambition than it did with her having been treated as a social outcast in high school. She had claimed she wanted to stop going to school and to get a job in order to give her grandmother a break. Maybe that was partially true, but it wasn’t the whole story. Haley wanted to give herself a break as well.

Meanwhile, Haley turned away and ducked her head, letting a screen of long blond hair obscure her face. Ali wondered what else the girl was hiding.

“High school is hell,” Ali agreed quietly. “There’s nothing as mean as high school girls when they turn on someone who doesn’t fit in.”

Ali paused, waiting for Haley to respond. She didn’t. Instead, she ducked her head even lower, but Ali caught sight of the single tear that rolled down Haley’s cheek and dripped onto her shirt. Ali saw it; Nelda didn’t. And in that moment, Ali understood something else about Haley Marsh. During the last two years, she had somehow managed to conceal her desperate social status from her caring and loving grandmother.

“The kids at school treat you like crap?” Ali asked.

Haley looked up and met Ali’s gaze. “Pretty much,” she admitted.

“College is different,” Ali said. “For one thing, not everyone is the same age. It’s a bigger pond with a lot more fish, so it doesn’t matter so much if you don’t fit in with one group, because there are plenty of others. And some of the people you meet there will already have kids. I did.”

“But you were married, weren’t you?” Haley asked. “That’s a lot different.”

“Not as different as you might think,” Ali told her. “By the time my son was born, my husband had been dead for two months. He died of a brain tumor. Admittedly, I wasn’t a freshman at the time. I already had my B.A. and was working on my master’s, but still, going to school and looking after a baby was desperately hard. Going to high school with a baby must have been awful, and going to college would be tough. I won’t try to pretend otherwise.”

Haley nodded. “But at least you had a husband,” she said wistfully. “You weren’t doing it all alone.”

“You’re not alone, either,” Ali pointed out. “You have a grandmother who would do anything for you and has been doing it all along. You also have your son. Regardless of how Liam came into being, you chose to have him, didn’t you?”

There was a pause before Haley nodded.

“You could have had an abortion,” Ali added. “Under similar circumstances, I think many people would have, but you didn’t. Why not?”

“Because I don’t believe in abortion,” Haley said quietly. “It’s against my religion.”

“You also could have given him up for adoption,” Ali suggested. “But you didn’t do that, either, and why not? Because no matter what, he’s your baby, and you love him, all of which means that you really are a good mother.”

Haley ducked her head again, and another tear dribbled onto her shirt.

“But part of being a good mother is being good to yourself, Haley,” Ali continued. “I didn’t come here today to tell you what to do about going on to school or to beg you to accept a scholarship you don’t want, but I did come to tell you something important. Your grandmother came to me to see me yesterday for one reason and one reason only. She loves you. She wants you to have a chance to live up to your potential. And why does she want you to do that? Because she wants you to give your son a better life than her daughter-your mother-gave you. By being good to you, your grandmother is being good to herself.”