Bernie’s “handicap” had caught up with him eventually as well. I knew he was lonely, and I understood that women weren’t the solution. He’d left me in our small but immaculately elegant apartment that night. He’d given me strict instructions about locking the door and shuttering the windows, no matter how curious I became.
Even though he never told me, I had a fairly good idea where he was headed. His kind frequented one part of town. The night passed slowly, and he didn’t come back. As the sun began to rise, I defied his orders and went looking for him.
After hours of searching, I finally spotted the neckerchief he wore. It matched his eyes and he rather favored it. It was hanging from a branch in a shriveled laurel tree and I clutched it in my hand as I headed for the federales.
His bandana wasn’t the only thing they eventually found. He had been beaten so badly I could barely identify him. I ordered cremation; there was no money for anything better. I dropped his ashes into the muddy trickle of a river; the only water available for a hundred miles. The man who had become my parent, my tutor and my only link to the man I was born to be was gone.
I was alone then and scared shitless. Bernie had been the connection to my family, not to mention my sole source of income. He had parceled it out as needed. I think he was afraid I’d buy drugs or do something equally stupid. So, now, as rich as I was, I was also flat broke and totally alone. I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know how or even want to contact my father. If my parents had wanted me, they’d have brought me home long before. It seemed like they were more about rewarding Bernie for his selflessness than supporting me.
As it turned out, I happened across an American minister and his wife who had come to the country to start a mission. I knew I couldn’t use my own passport, but I managed to trade it for enough money to buy a phony American birth certificate, driver’s license and passport with my new name. The next time the minister went back to California, I was sitting in his back seat. They were good people, and I had a good story. It was enough to get me back into the country where I belonged.
California was a good place to begin a new life with a new identity. After all, three million Californians were illegal aliens, and that made a system in which it was easy to get lost. Looking back, those few years were probably the most formative of my life at that point. I had to learn how to survive. While I didn’t naturally fit the beach bum look, I took it on. Eventually, it was me.
I grew to just over six-foot-three with deep blue eyes. My hair had become a sun and bleach-enhanced head of curly blond. Working odd jobs at first, I tied in with a group of young people who crammed, all fifteen of them, into a retro-style trailer across the street from the ocean. While drugs were abundant, I’d seen enough of how they screwed with people’s lives in Mexico to steer wide.
I found a job with a beachside peda-cab company and eventually saved enough money to begin my own, and then to franchise. Bernie had tutored me to the equivalent of a high school diploma, enrolling me in every virtual school he could. With that advantage, I enrolled in the university and emerged with a pocket of degrees that were nothing more than alternate identities in a world where life was a series of passports to the opportunities you sought.
Not remembering a great deal about my parents, for whatever reason, I had to fill in some gaps with imagination. I remembered my father had a string of highly successful clinics, so I figured that’s where my head for business originated. I couldn’t remember him being at home very often, and when he was, he seemed caught up in some sort of “greater plan,” making him unavailable to me. I knew I should remember more from those years. After all, I wasn’t set aside until I was thirteen.
But I remembered one thing clearly.
I remembered the day I murdered my uncle.
CHAPTER TWO
Auggie
Sitting on the wrap-around porch of our farm-style house, I was deeply immersed in the past. There I was, surrounded by all the people and things that made my life the happiest imaginable. All but one person; my first-born son.
I suppose to the onlooker, I appeared content and complete. My long coppery hair was tied with a length of yellow ribbon, and the legs of my jeans were folded up, exposing my pedicured feet. While my freckles had faded somewhat, my green eyes still never missed a thing. I looked like a carefree farm girl although I was the wife of a multi-millionaire. I’d never known what it meant to be hungry or to yearn for the unreachable — with the exception of my child. He was gone from me in so many senses.
Ford had been a happy, normal child. We’d nicknamed him for my maiden name, Langford. Although he was the fourth Worthington LaViere, it was simpler. Maybe that’s where we made the first mistake; the first alienation.
Somewhere along the way, my baby boy changed. He began to idealize the crueler things in life. It was the dark side of his LaViere genetics. My husband, Worth, had managed to subdue that tendency within himself, re-directing the controlling, vindictive, lack of conscience onto the path of a psychology professional. He’d built a business empire and developed a soul. I like to think I had something to do with that, but perhaps I took too much credit. More likely the driving force had been a hatred of his own father. A man who had given in to the darkness Worth had banished.
Worth’s father had seized whatever he wanted, including my own mother. Together they had created a child, Linc, who inherited the worst traits of both parents. It was Linc and his fateful demise that had driven my own son from me. Kidnapped and held ransom by Linc, Ford had gripped the pocket knife intended for his father’s Christmas gift. He had coldly and without remorse driven it into Linc’s neck, watching as the blood seeped out over his grandfather’s heirloom desk.
There was no residual emotion. It hadn’t been a stoic response; it had been the cold and calculated murder of a man who threatened him. A man who would have been capable of the same act.
When Ford began to express jealousy and resentment toward his younger siblings, Worth and I switched into protective mode. We had to protect our twins, Marga and Mark. It wasn’t a place any parent wanted to find themselves, especially since Worth was a respected psychologist and our living parents were model citizens.
As I began to fear my son more and more, and as he became increasingly out of control, there seemed no alternative but to agree to the judge’s orders that Ford be institutionalized. But the nightmare didn’t end there. He had been beaten and managed to escape, and we knew it would only get worse if he were sent back. We had no idea what to do, then an unlikely savior stepped in.