A Son's Tale

“Another man went to jail?” Cal asked, beginning to feel as though he’d stepped through Alice’s looking glass and wondering why he was still stepping. Were the prisons filled with men who’d known Morgan Lowen?

“No, Greg’s venture wasn’t illegal. It just wasn’t as altruistic as he’d made it sound. No one got hurt. Daddy made sure I knew what had happened. And Greg was history.”

No one got hurt? Looking at the clouds in Morgan’s eyes, Cal didn’t believe that

for a second.

And he saw how hard it had been for her, the young, beautiful, only daughter of one of Tyler’s richest men. Her mere existence made her prey to the scum of the world.

Her plight called out to him. He would be her friend. He would listen and offer support wherever he could. And when she came through this with the dignity and class she exuded everywhere she went, when she’d secured her son’s future, he would see her graduate and wish her well before they went their separate ways.

What he was not going to do was touch her again. Ever.

Not even to help her up from the couch.

As soon as Morgan left, Cal picked up the phone and dialed a number that a new professor in the art department had slipped to him during a faculty meeting at the beginning of the summer. Professor Kelsey Barber was a vivacious, cute, redheaded free spirit. Cal asked her if she liked Italian food, not that the type of food mattered, and then asked her to dinner. She accepted.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MORGAN WAS LYING in bed, trying her damnedest to make herself sleep, when the phone rang. It was only ten o’clock. Sammie was already asleep. She could hear his breathing over the monitor she’d installed that evening despite her son’s vocalized displeasure.

Not wanting Sammie to waken, she grabbed the phone. There was no one she wanted to speak with. After her argument with Sammie, one in which she heard her father’s voice-over, repeating verbatim the words she used with his own negative connotation given for the benefit of the judge, she was in a pretty vile mood.

The LED screen showed a number she didn’t recognize.

“Hello?”

“Morgan?”

She recognized his voice immediately.

“Yeah?” She couldn’t get involved right now. Couldn’t trust herself, or her son, to any more upheaval.

But God, his voice sounded good.

“Were you asleep?”

“No.” She sat up in the dark, keeping her voice low for the sake of the sleeping boy across the hall. “I’m wide awake. What’s up?”

Did he have any idea how much she’d been thinking about him?

“I hope it’s not too late. I’m just getting in. But I wanted to know how your meeting went tonight with the counselor?”

“We didn’t go.”

“Why not?”

“We had a call from Sammie’s new court-appointed counselor. We have a meeting with her tomorrow and I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to have to counsel with more than one person at a time. I discussed my concerns with both women and they agreed with me.”

Why was she explaining herself to him? Like he was her father and she had to justify her actions.

Something she’d stopped doing with her father when she was about thirteen.

Cal’s opinion didn’t matter to her. It couldn’t. Not now. She couldn’t afford a single misstep. A single mistake.

“So you talked to this new counselor?”

“Yeah. Leslie Dinsmore. She’s a certified counselor and a caseworker, too, so she’s used to dealing with troubled kids. She seemed nice.” But then, she thought everyone seemed nice, didn’t she? According to her father, anyway.