Blue (25 page)

She thought about it incessantly for three days, torturing herself about it, and she finally went to the office to talk to Ellen in person. There was always something now, and all of it associated with Blue, but she loved having him in her life. She didn't know what to do, but she didn't feel she could leave before the meeting at the archdiocese in October. She didn't want to hurt Blue's case against Father Teddy, and Andrew thought it would if she was away. She had called to discuss it with him again, and he'd been candid with her. He said he needed her there, if she could do it.

She sat down across from Ellen with a sigh.

“You look harried,” Ellen said to her, handing her the packet of information she needed to read before her assignment.

“It's incredible how stressful it can be to be at home. It's a lot simpler just worrying about dysentery and snipers.”

Ellen laughed at what she said. Sometimes she felt that way, too. She had been a field-worker for years like Ginny and still missed it. But she'd had some health issues, from years of getting diseases on her assignments and poor medical care, and had finally decided it was time to work in the office, not the field. She felt that Ginny was still years away from making that decision.

“Excited to be leaving again?” she asked her with a warm smile, and Ginny almost burst into tears. She wasn't excited, she was wracked with indecision. But in her heart of hearts, she knew she had no choice. She needed to stay with Blue. He would never have said it to her, but she knew how much it would mean to him, and maybe it was a sacrifice she had to make.

“I don't even know how to say this to you, Ellen, but I think I have to stay home till the end of the year. I don't want to screw up my job, and I love what I do, but I've become the guardian of a fourteen-year-old boy. We're involved in a lawsuit, and there are criminal proceedings where he's a victim. He just started a new school. And I think I need to stick around.” She looked unhappy as she said it.

Ellen looked shocked. She could see how torn Ginny was, and she was one of their best workers—they didn't want to lose her from the field. It would be an enormous loss to them. “I'm so sorry, Ginny. Is there anything I can do?” She was a compassionate woman, and would like to help if she could.

“Yes, baby-sit him while I go.” She hadn't been home for this long for three and a half years, and at times it felt strange. But leaving Blue for three months and coming back after Christmas would have been infinitely worse.

“Do you think you'll give up fieldwork?” Ellen asked her, looking worried.

“I hope not. I honestly don't know. I have to see how it goes—everything is still so new. And I'm trying to get adjusted to having a teenage boy.”

“Are you planning to adopt him?” It was a reasonable question, given what she'd said.

“I don't know,” Ginny said thoughtfully. “I'm already becoming his legal guardian, and I'm not sure we need more. But the one thing he doesn't need, and that I don't want to do to him right now, is me leaving for three months when so much is happening in our lives.” And getting herself killed on an assignment would be disastrous for him. She had thought of that, too, although she didn't say it to Ellen. She wasn't ready to quit SOS/HR, she just wanted time off while she tried to figure it all out, and she was sure that by the end of the year she would. “Can you put me on leave until the end of the year?” Ginny asked her, looking anxious.

“I can,” Ellen said fairly, “if you really think that's what you have to do.” Ellen gazed at her with unhappy eyes, afraid that she'd never go back. Ginny was afraid of that, too. She thanked her for her understanding, signed a form for the leave of absence, and left the information packet for India on Ellen's desk. Then she went home to wait for Blue to come home from school. She sat in her living room feeling like someone had died. She didn't feel liberated or relieved to be staying home. All she felt was that she had done the right thing, for Blue. She wasn't at all sure if it was right for her, and she knew she'd miss the work she'd been doing until now.

The phone rang while she was sitting there thinking about it. It was Andrew, and he picked up on the tone of her voice immediately. “You don't sound like a happy camper,” Andrew said to her. “Is something wrong?”

“I'm not sure,” she said honestly. She didn't feel great about it, even if it was the correct thing to do. “I just extended my leave of absence until the end of the year. I didn't feel right leaving Blue. But I'm not ready to give up human rights work, either. I already miss it. All I do is go to the grocery store, and play cards with Blue. I need more in my life than that,” she said miserably. “And I also didn't want to be gone for your meeting with the archdiocese next month.” She wanted to be in two places at once and knew she couldn't.

“Why don't you go easy on yourself for a while? Maybe it'll do you good to stay home for a few months. All the sorrows of the world and broken people will still be out there in January, and then you can go back. Maybe you can do shorter assignments or troubleshoot for them, instead of going for three months at a time.” It wasn't a bad idea, and she hadn't thought of troubleshooting before. It cheered her up as he went on. “I know Blue will be happy, and so am I,” he said, sounding elated. “How about having dinner with me next week to celebrate your being here?” It was sweet of him to ask, although it seemed a little strange to her. She liked and admired him, but he was Blue's lawyer, not her friend. And she was sure he felt that way, too.

“To talk about the case?” she asked him.

“No,” he said calmly and clearly, with a smile she couldn't see. “Because I like you. I think you're a fantastic person, and I just remembered I'm not a priest anymore. Is that okay with you?”

She thought about it for a long moment, and then nodded, smiling, too. “Yes, it is.”

“I have good news for you, too. They had an opening in the family court calendar next week. They're doing the guardianship hearing. I'll need you and Blue for that, and Charlene if she's willing.” It was fantastic news.

“Why don't we schedule our dinner after that, so we'll have something to celebrate?”

“With Blue?”

“No, just the two of us,” he said firmly.

And when she told Blue that night that she was staying till January, and would be home for Christmas, he gave a scream you could have heard all the way to Central Park. Her decision to stay with him and not go to India for three months had now been met with warm approval by her fans, and she was pleased. Suddenly her decision to stay home made sense, which felt good to her. She knew it was what she was meant to do.

The guardianship hearing was as easy as Andrew had said it would be. The judge was sympathetic to Blue and knew about the impending criminal case. He was deeply respectful of Ginny's human rights work, and everything she had done for Blue. And Charlene showed up. It was the first time she and Blue had seen each other in a year, and it was bittersweet when she saw him. But she hadn't been there for him, and Ginny was, despite her traveling for work. She had already changed his life immeasurably, and the judge had no problem awarding her guardianship. Andrew and Ginny took Blue to lunch afterward, but Charlene said she had things to do and scurried away as soon as they left the courtroom.

So Ginny was officially Blue's legal guardian. It was a big step for both of them, and a commitment to each other. If she had gone to India, she wouldn't have been there for the hearing, so her instinct to stay had been the right one. There was a kind of magic to it, the things that had happened, the people who had come into her life, the school he was going to, Ted Graham being brought to trial. The hand of destiny had touched them all, and all because of Blue.

The meeting at the archdiocese in October was frustrating and confusing. She went with Andrew, and he lost his temper several times. He and Monsignor Cavaretti locked horns repeatedly, veiled threats were tossed around like tennis balls, and some of them were not so veiled. There were six monsignors in the room this time, and a bishop at one point, and Andrew was alternately diplomatic and returned their threats in kind. The monsignors present flip-flopped between hinting at a settlement, and saying it was out of the question—mostly to check Andrew's reaction, Ginny suspected. Andrew knew they were testing the waters, to see what he wanted for his client, but they were impossible to deal with. And in spite of the fact that seventeen men and boys had given the police statements about Father Teddy's sexual abuse when they were minors in vivid terms, the priests were still implying that he was innocent and the boys were lying.

“Seventeen little boys and respectable men are
lying
?” Andrew asked them with a look of outrage. “How do you figure that? Your man is a sociopath. He's a pedophile who's making a mockery of everything the priesthood represents. I'm not even a priest anymore, and I'm indignant at the idea that he claims to be. How can you defend him? And knowing what you did, how could you cover up for him and send him to another city so he could do it again? The destruction of those children's lives is blood on your hands. You are just as responsible as he is, and I don't know why you're not forcing him to enter a guilty plea. He's going to be convicted at trial and go to prison. You're wasting everybody's time,” Andrew accused them. The meeting grew increasingly heated for three hours, and finally, admitting it was going nowhere, Monsignor Cavaretti adjourned it. He said they would have to discuss the matter further and meet again.

Andrew's eyes were ablaze with fury when they left, while Ginny walked along beside him and agreed with everything he had said.

“What's the point of defending a man we all know is guilty? All they wanted to know today was if we're weakening. But Cavaretti knows me better. I'll go to my grave making sure Father Teddy is stopped and convicted, and I will fight for the best settlement for Blue I can get.” Andrew felt they owed it to Blue, and so did Ginny, and they had no intention of giving up. Cavaretti and the other monsignors knew that now. And they had all the other victims to contend with, too. It was going to be a costly case for the church, particularly because they had hidden Ted Graham's transgressions and done nothing about them, or to stop him; they had just closed their eyes and moved him on. It was one of the worst elements of the case. They had had the power to protect all those children, and they hadn't, and now lives had been ruined because of it, if the boys didn't recover from the trauma. And some of those who were grown men now hadn't.

Things seemed to calm down again for a while after the futile meeting, and for the next two weeks, Andrew was busy with other cases, and she didn't hear from him. They managed to have one very nice dinner at an Italian restaurant, and they enjoyed talking to each other and relaxing and not discussing the case for a change. They had agreed not to, and stuck to it. They were just two adults who liked each other, having dinner. And they had a good time, but she didn't hear from him afterward. And she helped Blue with homework every night. He was a whiz at everything that involved music and was composing concert pieces of his own, but he needed help with the academic subjects. She worked on English and history with him, but chemistry wasn't her strong suit, so she really had to concentrate and jog her memory to explain it to him.

She was on the way home from the gym one afternoon, where she had started exercising, when she stopped to buy magazines and saw a photograph of herself on the
New York Post
and another one on the
National Enquirer.
They had both used old photographs from her TV news days, and they were about five years old. She hadn't seen the paper yet that day, bought them both immediately, and read them the minute she got home. The
New York Post
story was closer to the truth but had strong implications she didn't like. It said that she was a party to a sexual abuse case, which involved a priest who had molested seventeen young boys in both New York state and Illinois. He was out on a million dollars bail, all of which was true and a matter of public record, and the article listed all the charges accurately. Then it went on to say that her involvement was due to a homeless boy she had taken in and housed who was one of the victims. It did not state his name, since the names of the victims were protected and would not be released.

The article went on to say that Virginia Carter had virtually disappeared from public life and TV news when she and her husband had had too much to drink at a Christmas party four years before, as a result of which her husband had been killed drunk driving, and so had their three-year-old son, and she had been in seclusion ever since. The article didn't say it but heavily implied that she had psychiatric problems as a result of her husband and child's death, and she herself had also been under the influence the night they were killed, and no one had seen her since the accident. It made it sound like she'd been drunk for the last four years.

Then the article questioned what she was doing with a homeless boy, and how she had gotten tangled up in the latest scandal in the Catholic Church. It described similar stories of pedophile priests who had been convicted. In conclusion, it said that the defendant in the case, in which Ms. Carter was mysteriously involved, would be tried sometime in the next year. Church officials were unavailable for comment, the attorney of record for Ms. Carter's ward was Andrew O'Connor, a former Jesuit priest, and Ms. Carter herself remained MIA. And the last words of the piece were “To be continued…stay tuned for breaking news,” which had been the closing line on her broadcast when she did the news.

She sat there staring at the piece. It had gotten the facts right, but it had implied that she and her husband were drunks and that he had killed their child while drunk at the wheel, and that she had disappeared immediately afterward, implying subtly that her psyche had been shattered. She hadn't been in the news since Mark had died. Someone had talked to them, and she had no idea who but she didn't like it. The reporter could get the list of charges from the court's public records, but the list of details had come from a person. She hated to be in the spotlight again, or to drag Blue into it with her, even unnamed, because she'd once been better known than she was now. She hated the tabloid feeling to the article, and being in the news at all.

And the
Enquirer
went straight for the throat as it always did. It ran an old photograph of her on the front page next to a giant question mark where it said, “Back from the grave with a fourteen-year-old homeless boyfriend?” And it managed to make the court case sound as though she were somehow involved in it in a seamy way. She hated everything about it, and called Andrew as soon as she finished reading.

“Did you see the
Post
and the
Enquirer
today?” she asked in a tense voice as soon as he came on the line, and he laughed.

“No, they're not usually top of my must-read list. I read
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
and the London
Financial Times
when I have time. Why, what do the other two say?”

“I'm on the cover, and the
Enquirer
wins the prize. They're asking if I'm back from the grave with a fourteen-year-old homeless boyfriend. And the
Post
seems to know a lot about the case. It talks about my husband driving drunk the night he and my son died in the accident. It makes it sound like I've been in a psychiatric hospital ever since, which I never was, and it's questioning what I'm doing now with a homeless kid, involved in a sex scandal in the church. So who do you think is talking?”

“Interesting question,” he said thoughtfully. “You know more about that stuff than I do. I don't think Cavaretti would ever plant a piece like that. He's giving us a hard time, but he's a responsible man. Maybe Blue's aunt said something to someone, and they found her, and they probably looked the rest of it up once they had your name. It's probably somewhere on the Internet, from the time of your husband's death.” Then he lowered his voice and spoke softly. “I'm sorry, Ginny. I'm sure this must be painful for you. But it's just tabloid garbage—no one reads it.”

“Yes, they do. You don't, but lots of people do. Imagine calling Blue my fourteen-year-old homeless boyfriend. For God's sake, what's wrong with these people? It makes me feel embarrassed that I was ever a member of the press.”

“That's how I feel about Ted Graham, having been a priest,” he said quietly.

“What if Blue sees this, or if they start hounding us? They can make our life miserable. I don't want them naming Blue as part of Ted Graham's case. He has a right to privacy, he's just a child.”

“You'd better tell him,” Andrew said seriously, “because someone will if you don't. You should defuse it.”

“I hate to show him crap like this,” she said, sounding acutely unhappy. But she did what Andrew said and told Blue about it when he got home. She told him that it was just junk. And they talked about the night Mark died, and she admitted that he'd been drinking more than she'd realized at the time, but he hadn't been obviously drunk, or she wouldn't have let him drive. But there was no denying that his blood alcohol level had been well above the limit.

“You must have felt terrible about that,” Blue said sympathetically, and in order to be honest with him, she said that she had felt guilty ever since for letting him drive that night. She cried when she said that maybe if she hadn't, they'd still be alive, and Blue felt awful for her. She was more upset than he'd ever seen her. He didn't know what to say, so he tried to lighten the mood. “They think I'm your boyfriend?” His voice cracked when he said it, and they both laughed.

“I hate this kind of stuff,” Ginny said as they sat side by side on the couch, looking at the papers on the trunk she used as a coffee table. “I don't know who talked, but I don't like it. I never did. They hounded me for months after Mark died to see what I was doing. All I was doing then was crying. Do you suppose your aunt had something to do with this?” Ginny looked pensive as she said it, although it seemed unlikely.

“She could have. She wouldn't go to the newspaper. But maybe she shot her mouth off and someone else did. She likes to talk a lot and gossip. Maybe she wanted to get even with you for going after Father Teddy. She'll never forgive you for that. She still thinks he's a saint. I don't know who else would do it. I never knew you were that famous, Ginny,” he said, a little in awe of her.

“I used to be. Mark was, too. No one cares what I'm doing now.” And she liked it that way. And she knew from experience that you never found out who talked. The tabloids just picked up bits and pieces and wove them into a story, whether true or not, but they had a lot of the facts right this time.

“I'm sorry. If you hadn't tried to help me, they wouldn't be writing this junk about you. It's all my fault,” Blue said unhappily.

“Don't be stupid, Blue. It's Mark's fault for being drunk that night and driving, and killing himself and Chris. And mine for disappearing for four years. And yours for having the courage to speak up about Father Teddy, which was
entirely
the right thing to do and still is. It's all our faults for being alive and breathing. Everything is someone's fault, and so what? None of this bullshit matters. It's Father Teddy's fault for molesting a bunch of innocent kids, and the church for protecting him. Every day, good stuff and bad stuff happens to us. It's what you do about it and how you handle it that matters. You just can't let it break you. You have to keep fighting. And guilt and regrets never get us anywhere.” She smiled at him, got up, and put the two papers in the garbage, but he looked deeply sorry that because of him she had been embarrassed. “That garbage will be in someone's hamster cage tomorrow.” He nodded but didn't look as though he believed her.

The topper on the day was when Becky called her after dinner.

“For chrissake, Ginny, none of us needs the headache of you in the tabloids again! It was bad enough after the accident, when they made you sound like a couple of drunks. Everyone kept asking me if you and Mark were alcoholics.” Her words smarted far more than what was in the tabloids, and Ginny winced as she listened. “You don't know how hard it is for me and my kids and Alan to see you on the cover of the
Enquirer
while they talk about your fourteen-year-old boyfriend.”

“I don't have a fourteen-year-old boyfriend,” Ginny corrected her, but Becky was so quick to blame and attack her about everything she did. “Are you under the impression that I gave them an interview?” Ginny snapped at her.

“You don't have to. Your life is a soap opera. You were always in the tabloids when you and Mark were on the news. Then he got drunk and killed Chris, and you were with him. Now you have a homeless kid move in with you, and go after a parish priest on some kind of crusade that's none of your business, and suddenly there you are on the front page of the
Enquirer
with a ‘fourteen-year-old boyfriend.' You have no idea how embarrassing that is for the rest of us. Do you know how many people I'm going to have to explain it to? And poor Alan at work. We lead quiet, respectable lives, and somehow you're always slipping on a banana peel and falling ass-backward into the news. I wish to hell you wouldn't do that.”

“So do I,” Ginny said, suddenly furious with her sister, who was uncharitable and mean-spirited at best. And Blue listened to her on the phone with a look of pain. But Ginny didn't see it. “You know, I wish you'd grow up one of these days and notice that there's a world out there bigger than the matchbox you live in. While I'm working my ass off to save kids in Afghanistan, you're driving to the grocery store and the dry cleaner in Pasadena, and you think that's all there is in life. Your house and your swimming pool, your kids and your husband. I may make an ass out of myself sometimes, but at least I'm living. I had a husband and a kid, too, but I wasn't as lucky as you are, so now I'm trying to make a difference in other people's lives, instead of sitting home and crying about them. And all you do is bitch about what I do and tell me it's not ‘normal.'