A Son's Tale

Staring straight ahead, Morgan felt a cold calm come over her. She would get through this hearing.

Julie cleared her throat. Morgan reached out a mental hand to clasp the one she knew Julie would be holding out to her if she could.

“The day my grandson was born, life changed for me, Your Honor. I think of him all the time as I make everyday decisions that could someday affect him. He is heir to everything I build. He will have to live with the legacy I leave. To that end, I watch every step I take, every single word I say, so that I do not, in any way, leave my grandson to face hardship or shame.”

Even Morgan heard the truth in this part of her father’s testimony. He wasn’t an evil man. Just a calculating one. He analyzed and added up every move that was made. By himself, and others.

And only a man with George’s ego would live every moment of the day based on the legacy he would leave behind. Most people wouldn’t think themselves so important as to believe that every move they made would influence those around them.

The courtroom was deathly

quiet as her father’s voice finally faded away. Morgan wondered if she’d even get a chance to speak. She didn’t know what she could add that would in any way mean anything to Judge Marks.

And then she heard her father’s voice again. “As with everything else I do, I did not take this step lightly, Your Honor, but, rather, after much introspection and many deep conversations with my wife. We have met with professionals, spoken with our daughter and grandson and sought counsel on the decision to appear before you today. After our scare of two weeks ago, our fear for Samuel’s welfare has grown to the point where we feel we have no choice but to protect him in this way.”

Was her father speaking for her mother because that was what he did, or was her mother really in on this? Had they really had deep conversations about it? Conversations that went beyond her father telling her mother what had to happen and why?

Certainly they’d had no family conversations as his words implied. No family counseling, either. Her father wouldn’t hear of that. Morgan knew that firsthand, too, because she’d asked for them to go to counseling before she’d married Todd.

“The second issue I bring for your consideration, Your Honor, is longer reaching. My daughter, Morgan Elise Lowen, is a woman who bets on the underdog every single time. She sees the best in people, Your Honor, and while that is an admirable trait, it is also a very dangerous one. My daughter trusts unconditionally—and in so doing, she puts herself, and consequently her son, in precarious positions.”

He was really doing it. As much as Morgan had known that her father would win at all costs, she’d still held out hope. He was her father. Privy to her most private failures. The man who was supposed to protect her. And he was crucifying her.

Her father had always been hard on her. But he’d never stabbed her in the back before.

“My daughter has refused the help of our security team,” her father continued. “She believes that she and Samuel can live what she calls ‘normal’ lives. Without security supervision, Samuel was able to walk out of his school, board a public bus and walk for miles, and all of that time he was exposed to any number of people in this city who would not find it unpalatable to kidnap or kill him for a piece of my fortune. Samuel is not an ordinary child. He is heir to the Lowen fortune, Your Honor, which makes him prey to a lot of immoral people. And yet his mother refuses to protect him from them.”

Her father’s voice was as stern as always and Morgan couldn’t help but steal a glance at him. He was dressed impeccably, his gray suit and white shirt expensive and crisp, and his expression bore the calm and the control she knew.

Morgan looked away. But not before she saw her mother, dressed in a pink linen suit Morgan had never seen before, sitting at the table next to George Lowen with a look of compassionate support turned on her husband.

Because George spoke the complete truth.

In Morgan’s determination not to expose her son to the emotionally cold and removed life that she’d known as a child, in order to preserve his freedom to be whomever he wanted to be when he grew up, not just his grandfather’s clone, she’d put her son’s life in danger. Sammie was a Lowen, no matter where or how they lived. And, as had dawned on her the night of Sammie’s disappearance when she’d had to take those horrible phone calls, Sammie was possibly prey to creeps who wanted to hurt her father.

There was no sound from behind her, as though Julie were as frozen as Morgan felt.

Filled with stark cold fear, Morgan barely heard her father take his seat. She knew the judge thanked him before asking if her mother had anything to say, but because she expected the negative response, she didn’t even know her mother had replied in the affirmative until she heard her begin to speak.

Grace’s first words struck at the ice around Morgan’s whole being, thawing just enough of her to allow her to feel. Grace told the court what a good daughter Morgan had been and was to her, and what a good daughter she’d tried to be to her father.

Listening intently, Morgan waited, hoping that her mother was finally going to do what Morgan had been begging her to do her entire life—stand up for her. Tell the world, or at least her father, that he was cold and heartless and unbending where Morgan was concerned. Let him know that she was a person in her own right, with enough sense to make her own life decisions.

Or, at least, enough sense to be listened to instead of merely brushed aside like a wayward ant at his picnic.

“I love my daughter as only a mother can love a child, which makes what I have to do the most painful thing I’ve ever done, and I hope and pray, Morgan, that some day you will understand and forgive me.”

Her mother’s voice cracked. And then she started to speak again. When Morgan heard the woman who had given birth to her, who had given her the only emotional nurturing she’d known during the first years of her life, giving the judge intimate details of her life, chronologically exposing her deepest shames, the foolish mistakes she’d made, when she heard her mother speak of her inability, even now, to see the bad in people, she wanted to lay her head on the table before her and die.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“THANK YOU, DR. WHITTIER. I can’t believe it, but it looks like I’m really going to graduate.”

Rising from the chair in front of Cal’s desk, Shane offered his hand.

Standing to shake hands, Cal smiled at Shane Arnett, a young man in his mid-twenties who’d been in and out of his classes for more than six years. “It’s been a long haul, Shane, but you had it in you.” As soon as Shane completed one more paper in Cal’s English Lit Review class his graduation application would be approved. “Do you need any help with your job search? I know some people. I can put in a good word for you.”

Shane shook his head. “No, sir. I know it’s hard to believe but I’m ahead of the game on this one. I put in applications last spring, did all my interviews and just this week was offered a one-year teaching position at Silmore Junior High, contingent on obtaining my degree.”