Finding the Dream (Dream Trilogy 3)

"What's this?" Susan's face paled a bit. "Michael was in jail? How do you know?"

"I hear things. He was locked up for fighting. In a bar. Oh, they didn't keep him but overnight, but they locked him up right enough. The man likes to use his fists."

"Oh, for heaven's sakes, I thought he'd robbed a bank or killed someone. I may not approve, but I can't condemn a man for sleeping in a cell overnight because he punched someone in a bar. You don't even know who started it, or why, or—"

"How can you make excuses?" Suddenly furious, Ann sprang up. "How can you? The man is with your daughter night after night. He'll use them on her eventually. She'll do or say something and he'll use his fists on her the way he did on his own mother."

"What are you saying?" A jiggle of fear settled low in her stomach.

"A man who will strike his own mother, bloody her mouth and blacken her eye, won't think twice about doing the same to another woman. She's so small and delicate, Mrs. T. I can't bear the thought of what he could do to her."

"You believe Michael Fury beat his own mother?" Susan said slowly.

"She told me so herself. Came looking for him here with her poor face all black and blue. I took her into my room and did what I could for her, and she told me Michael had come home the night before, drunk, and had hurt her, had driven her husband off, then left her there alone. I wanted to go to the police, but she wouldn't have it."

She whirled away, emotions choking her. "Ah, he belonged in a cell. He belonged in a cage. If you had only seen her face. If that man raises a finger to Miss Laura, I—"

"Annie, I did see Michael's mother." Susan rose. "I did speak with her."

"Then you know. He ran off to sea just after that rather than face what he'd done. Mrs. T, we have to make him go away from here. We can't have a man who's capable of what he is near Miss Laura and her babies."

"I'll tell you what she told me, Annie, after she came to shout at me for keeping Michael here after that night."

"Here?" Ann had to press a hand to her outraged heart to keep it in place. "That man was here? You let him stay here in this house after—"

"He slept in the stables until he shipped out. He never laid a hand on that woman."

"You saw her. She told me—"

"She blamed him. She couldn't blame herself, not then. But I had the truth out of her. It was her husband who beat her, and who had done so before. She had come to

work with black eyes before, and Michael didn't put them there."

"But she said—"

"I don't care what she said," Susan shouted. The memory of it still made her blood burn. A mother blaming a child for her own failings. "That boy came home and saw his stepfather beating his mother. And he protected her. The thanks he got for giving that beast what he deserved was having his own mother kick him out of the house, tell him he had no right to interfere, that he was to blame."

She stopped for a moment, struggled to calm herself. "And when Michael was gone, when she knew she'd lost him, she sat right here in this room and broke down. She told me everything."

"But she told me… I believed…" Ann sank down in a chair. "Oh, sweet God."

"She begged me to help her find him, to persuade him to come back. She was alone, you see, and Michael's mother was a woman who didn't know how to be alone. I want to believe that somewhere inside, she regretted what she'd done, what she'd said to him, and she loved him. But all I saw was a miserable, selfish woman who was afraid to be without a man, even if the man was the son she'd driven away."

"Oh, Mrs. T." Ann pressed her hand against her mouth. The tears that swam in her eyes were tears of guilt and pity. "You're sure of this?"

"Annie, forget what she told you, even what I've just said, and tell me, honestly, what you see when you look at him. As if you knew nothing more about him than what you've seen since he came here."

"He works hard." She sniffled and tugged a tissue from her pocket. "He's good with children and his animals. He's kind to them. He's got the devil in his eye, and something hard comes into it. He doesn't watch his language as he should around the children, and I don't think…" She trailed off, wiped her eyes. "He's good to them. And he's been good for them. I can't deny it. And I'm ashamed."

"There's no shame in worrying over the ones you love. I'm sorry you were living with the fear that Laura had gotten herself involved with the kind of man you thought he was."

"I've hardly slept since he's been here. I kept waiting for him to—Oh, the poor boy. What a terrible thing to go through. And him barely old enough to shave regular."

"You'll sleep better now," Susan murmured.

"But I'm still keeping my eye on him." She managed a weak smile. "Men who look that way, they're not to be trusted around a woman."

"We'll both worry." Susan squeezed Annie's hand. "We know our Laura, don't we? She needs home, family, love. When everything else is brushed aside, that's what she is. I don't know if she'll find that with Michael, or what it will do to her if she doesn't."