Somehow, I’d figured there’d been much more thought to this decision he’d roped me into. Obviously, almost anyone would have done. I cracked my knuckles and stared out into the street, but Win was all business.
“But hold on. Now that I think back on it, I remember one woman, Marjorie Biddlesworth, I believe. Just before she walked into that annoying glare of a light, she said that you were railroaded. Does that have to do with what you’re about to tell me?”
My memory of Margie was a fond one, making me smile. “Margie was an adorably cranky quilter who wanted to be sure Sissy-Sue Leeland didn’t get any of her originally designed quilting patterns. She was adamant Sissy-Sue would steal them and call them her own.”
“So what did Marjorie mean when she said you were railroaded?”
“Aside from my medium duties, I was a 9-1-1 dispatcher in my small town of Paris, Texas. One night I took a call from a very frightened little boy…” I bit the inside of my cheek to keep tears from forming in my eyes.
“And then?” Win asked with a much gentler tone.
“It was a domestic dispute, and when we take a call from the home of an authority figure in the coven, we’re supposed to notify a superior immediately. Which I did, but I didn’t do as I was told when handling the call.”
My stomach began that infernal rumbling of turmoil and the wave of nausea not even a purging spell would rid me of.
Belfry rustled a wing, his indignant tone in full swing. “Those crackpots told her to tell the poor kid help was on the way and then hang up! To this day, I still can’t believe they dismissed all the good Stevie did all those years just because she wouldn’t leave a freaked-out seven-year-old in a state of hysteria without anyone to comfort him.”
I nodded my head. “Belfry’s right. They did tell me to hang up because the caller, a little boy named Peyton, was a council member’s son. He was hysterical, sobbing almost so uncontrollably I couldn’t figure out what he was saying, but it was clear he was petrified. I couldn’t just leave him like that. Not even for a second. Help was well on its way, but he kept begging me to help him—to stay with him. Even when I told him someone would be there in seconds. I heard his mother screaming in the background and his father yelling…and Peyton was so terrified. He made me swear on my favorite candy I’d stay on the phone with him…”
There was absolutely no way I was letting go of a connection with a little boy who’d likely seen more in his seven years of life than I had in over thirty-two on this plane. So I did. I stayed right until the bitter end. And make no mistake, the end was indeed bitter.
“So you disobeyed a direct order and stayed on the phone with the little chap. Then what?”
My hands tightened into fists, the way they always did when I retold this story. “I did, and I damn well won’t apologize for it. I hung up the official line, but I dialed him right back on my personal cell. He was so, so scared. At that point, I’d managed to calm him enough that he explained he just didn’t want to be alone anymore when the ‘bad’ things happened. He said he usually hid in the closet when they fought, but this was the ‘worstest’ fight they’d ever had. He said his mommy always had bruises on her and broken bones from his daddy ‘playing too rough.’ It was all I could do not to snap my fingers and summon him from that despicable pig, but…”
“But council business is council business.” Belfry chirped his mocking disdain.
Shaking off my reverie, I nodded. “Yes. That’s the rule, but there was just no way I was hanging up. He never had anyone he could trust all his life, but in that moment of sheer terror, I vowed to be the first. Anyway, to make a very long, gruesome story short, help arrived just a little too late.”
I had my suspicions about why help arrived so late, but that was neither here nor there at this point.
“Please don’t tell me the little fellow was harmed, Stevie. Just don’t. I’ve been to hell and back. I’ve seen things that would curl your pretty toes. But children are sacred. They must always be protected at all costs.” Win’s voice was thick with emotion, surprising me.
I wondered about his vehemence on Peyton’s behalf and what incident in his past had brought him to such strong words, but then, I felt the same way he did.
“No. Thank the goddesses, he wasn’t harmed,” I reassured.
I heard him release a breath in my ear, his presence once more warm. “So what happened next?”
“During the course of the call, Peyton’s father had no idea he’d called 9-1-1 and—”
Now Win gasped. “His father caught him, didn’t he, the slimy arse?” he growled low and feral.
Gulping, I nodded once more. “Yes. He caught him talking to me. Something he was strictly forbidden to do. Tell…he wasn’t ever supposed to tell,” I whispered with a shiver.