Chapter 17
Mitchell Gaines grimaced as he banged his arm for the third time as he wandered the house behind the real estate agent. Jasmine, his wife was in a short skirt and jacket of pale lime. With her dark hair and blue eyes, she was sexy enough to make him drool if his damn head and arm hadn’t awakened with a vengeance. He barely remembered the crash, only woke up in the ambulance on the way to Walter Reed. The EMT said he missed a deer and swerved head-on into a venerable old maple tree on the curve to his house out in the Maryland wooded burbs. Apparently, he was on the way to or from his boss’s office with important news. Couldn’t remember that either.
He was on medical leave, pending a competency hearing, his ruptured rotator cuff and broken humerus might be bad enough to retire him on full disability. A job offer had materialized in Dallas, someone wanted to buy his house and in weeks, he was whirl-winded somewhere he’d never dreamed of living with an income that promised a Beamer, speedboat and dream house.
Jazzy was ecstatic, a friend had mentioned a special needs child that was up for adoption, and she’d reluctantly agreed to meet him. And fallen in love with the shy, blue-eyed boy with the blonde curly hair and sweet vacant face. He spoke French perfectly, understood a little English and didn’t interact with anyone or anything. Yet when he saw Mitch’s lab, Sassy, he grabbed the dog’s neck and refused to let go. The dog nuzzled and licked his face; it wasn’t until she lay down at his feet, that he released her.
“What’s his name?” Jasmine asked the woman Social Worker.
“Daniel Defreaux. He was abused as a child, suffered both mental and physical damage. The neurologist believes with the right couple and home life, he’ll come out of it. He was a brilliant child before the incident.”
“Incident?”
“His father murdered his mother in front of him, forced him to cut her body up and bury the pieces. He sold the boy to a Nice sex ring to pay off a drug debt. The French police raided the warehouse on a tip, and found him hanging from chains in a room set up for sado-masochistic films.”
“Oh my God! How old is he now?”
“Thirteen.”
Every time Mitch thought about the boy, his stomach burned. He turned to the real estate agent and said, “Show us old country houses. Out in the country, with acreage. Maybe a pond. Big old trees and no neighbors closer than a quarter-mile. A two-story with a big wraparound porch. If it needs work, all the better.”
Jasmine grinned knowing Mitch’s mindset better than he did himself. Money settled the deal in less than fifteen days, the mortgage went through like clockwork. Between the sale of the house in Williamstown and the equity, the ridiculously low price of the old farm, his mortgage payments on the ten year note were less than five hundred dollars, leaving him nearly 450 K to put into CDs and savings.
With his new salary and retirement, he brought an extended 4 x 4 pickup for him and an Audi SUV for Jasmine, with all the room in the world.
The old house was a soft rose color, two-story Texas colonial with dormer windows, wraparound porch and a front parlor. A big old kitchen that opened with French doors on a garden, back pasture, barns and century-old oak trees. Cedars that loomed like giant fingers pointing to a sky as big as, well, Dallas.
Mitchell loved the old house at first sight, even with its obvious needed repair work. The porch was wobbly in places. Several windows needed replacing. The whole structure needed painting, the floors inside wide planking that years of neglect and spurs had gouged deep holes into the wood. The kitchen appliances were fifty years out of date and he shuddered to think of the state of the furnace.
It was warmed by propane, and wood, had a modern generator in the tool shed, the well was a spring and several frost-less faucets lined the yard and barn aisles. At one time, the barn housed horses and beef cattle. You could still smell the faint aroma of horse.
They’d decided to ship all their furniture as Mitch’s new job had a generous allowance for moving. In a week, Jasmine had managed to paint, wallpaper, and arrange everything to her satisfaction, including the second bedroom of the four upstairs. The room she’d done for a shy, introverted boy who liked nothing but animals.
They took the SUV into Dallas to meet the social worker and start the adoption process. Like the sale of his home and the move, everything fell into place with astonishing ease to which Jazzy replied it was as if it was meant.
Mitch asked if she would be happier with an infant and her reply was instant, she’d fallen in love with Daniel and wanted him.
The boy sat in the back with Sassy, seat belted and mum, his eyes down, wearing jeans and a jacket over a new shirt with the package creases still showing. He shivered constantly, his delicate wrists sticking out of the too short jacket.
He was tall for his age, but he hunched, making himself seem both shorter and younger. Even the sight of Sassy did not comfort him. Because of his special needs, he needed to have psychological treatments once a week and part of the adoption agreement was to continue the therapy. Luckily, his doctor was in the same high-rise where Mitchell’s new job was situated, and both Jazz, Daniel, and he checked out both places on his first official day at work.
Mitch liked the head shrink, a woman named Marian Cohen. She was kind and seemed to have a real insight into the boy. She spoke French and understood the little Daniel did speak. Both Mitch and Jazzy had downloaded the Rosetta Stone programs on their laptops. Within a month, they could hold a conversation with the boy and each other.
Danny slowly came out of his shell, he would never be a popular jock, but after a year of therapy both at home and with Doctor Cohen, he was able to be enrolled in the local high school and makeup classes.
He was intelligent, he caught up with an astonishing ease that amazed the couple, but he refused to join any after-school activities. He would not ride the bus, instead, Jazzy drove him and picked him up from the door of his own room.
Red Hill was a small town outside of the Dallas Metroplex, the high school held only a hundred students, neatly attired in regulations starched and creased blue jeans, Justin Ropers and George Strait, creased Stetson’s. Their hobbies were barrel racing, team roping and tubing, drag-racing their pickup trucks on the sand or caliche back roads.
Drugs were available, but Danny had neither the money nor interest, his hobbies ran to reading and helping on the property. He dug post holes and built fence, hoed the garden and ran Sassy around the fields, went riding with Jasmine on her spotted Paso Fino trotting behind her on his own two feet. She wasn’t able to get him on the horse, he said he ran with her at night and that was enough.
At fifteen, he hit 6 foot two, with crystal pure blue eyes under his contacts, a solemn, quiet, watchful face that when in repose was curiously beautiful. His hair had darkened to a honey brown, his eyebrows almost black. He had neat hands and feet, and was very particular about his footwear. He owned a dozen pair of sneakers.
Only twice in the last year had Daniel had a crisis, both times occurred before his scheduled therapy with Doctor Cohen. Both times, Mitch had found the boy seated in the barn under a noose hanging from the rafters.
Frightened, Mitchell had screamed at Daniel, jerked him away and asked him what he was thinking. The boy had not replied, only looked at him blankly mumbling in gutter French.
Doctor Cohen changed his meds and for a week kept him home until the trank level evened out. They celebrated his birthday as the day he joined them, August 14.
Once a year, a Colonel came to Mitch’s work place, sat in on the high level meetings and greeted him in the hallway, inquiring about his wife and son.
Four years passed. Daniel was 6’2” of hardened male and had every female for forty miles hanging around. He attracted them like a bee to honey and sometimes seemed bewildered by it.
Mitch sat him down and gave him a lecture about sex, protection and respect to which Danny listened with that same grave reserve.
“You understand me, Daniel?” Mitch asked, never quite able to reach beneath the boy’s mask.
Daniel nodded. “We had this in gym class last year and this year, dad.” He spoke deliberately in a soft voice, with a Gallic influence.
“Do you have feelings like that, Daniel? Wake up hard in the morning?”
Daniel looked away so his answer was barely heard. His jaw muscles clenched. “I know all about sex,” he snarled in a voice so full of rage that Mitch jerked his chair back in alarm.
“Danny?”
When he turned his face back, all Mitch saw was the same bland expression. “Don’t worry, dad. I won’t get into trouble. I don’t like girls.”
Mitchell swallowed. “Uhh. Well, boys are okay, too, Danny. If that’s the way you feel.”
“Don’t like them, either.”
Gaines heaved a sigh of relief. “What did Doctor Cohen say about it.…sex?”
“She said if I needed to, I could masturbate,” he said it in clinical terms.
“Do you like going to Doctor Cohen, Daniel?”
He hesitated, his hand reaching for the grizzled head of his old lab, Sassy. She looked up adoringly at the teenager and licked his hand. A fleeting expression of real emotion animated the boy’s face. “She scares me, dad,” he admitted in low tones. “I don’t like the shots or the tapes she plays. She puts me under and strange voices talk to me.”
With a dry mouth, Gaines asked, “what do they tell you, Daniel?”
“They tell me who I’m supposed to be.” Next visit to the therapist, Mitchell went with him.