Nery Legacy (6): The Real Consequences*

    As he took the note from his wife, Ben kept his right arm wrapped protectively around his younger daughter. He wasn’t sure whether or not Ruby was going to snap and lash out at either of them, and after the last couple of days, he found it hard to trust her. They’d had a very enlightening conversation the previous night before bed, when he’d taken a snack up to her so that she wouldn’t go to bed hungry, and he thought he understood his wife a lot better. He didn’t like what he’d heard, and in some ways it made him more uncomfortable, but he also had a new sympathy for Ruby, and he appreciated that she’d finally told him that she was actually jealous of her own daughter, the things that she was able to do, the things she got away with, and her relationship with Ben. He knew that it was a big confession for Ruby, and it had left her broken, crying in his arms for over an hour until she fell asleep. She’d been acting embarrassed all morning, and though he didn’t feel guilty for the strapping that he’d given her the night before, he did feel for his wife.

    More than anything, he was glad that it seemed Ruby had learned something about his daughters, and how he expected them to be treated. He’d threatened her with throwing her out, and he’d meant it. If anything like yesterday ever happened again, he’d put her out without another thought. These were his children, and as a man he felt that he was honor bound to protect them, even from their mother if it was necessary for him to do so.

    Feeling the tension in Clarissa’s body, Ben tugged her close to him and gave her a kiss on the top of her head, smoothing her red hair back. It was still the strawberry blonde of youth, and he could see how it was going to go the way of Ruby’s, a darker red as she got older. He hugged her hard, then rubbed her back. It had been a relatively mild spanking, only about half a dozen quick, brisk pops with the wooden spoon, and nothing that she wouldn’t recover from quickly, but she’d carried on as though he’d taken his belt to her backside. Rissa had always been known for drama, of course, and that thought made Ben smile. Maybe now, after today, she’d be thinking twice about the drama that she caused the next time she had an opportunity. He was going to have to be especially watchful once Raph was in the house with them, considering that his younger brother had a tendency to be surrounded by drama and the last thing that he or his thirteen year-old daughter were going to need was Rissa’s gossip.

    “Clarissa, go on up to your room,” Ben said, giving her another hard hug. When the child let out a sob, he paused, then cupped her face in his hands and gently kissed his nose. “You ain’t bein’ punished, baby girl,” he told her, brushing the hair out of her face where she’d dropped her head and it had fallen in her eyes. “You can take your book or some toys with you. Punishment’s over. Now Daddy just needs to have a talk with Mama.”

    “You are gonna divorce her!” Rissa cried, clear panic in her face.

    “No, baby. Not today.” He didn’t want to promise her that it wouldn’t happen, because he’d been close to that point yesterday, but today... Today he could see the obvious fear in his wife’s face, and right now he was more concerned about Ruby than he was about either of his daughters. She looked like a little girl herself, and for the first time in a long time, he thought he saw a glimpse of the woman he had married when they were still too young to know what marriage meant. “Go on,” he said to Rissa, giving her a little pat on her bottom. “I’ll be up there to check on you when Mama an’ me are done talkin’. I promise.”

    Ben took a deep breath, letting Rissa go. She went to the bookshelf and pulled her book off of it, then she looked over at him with a pleading look before she started for the stairs. He watched her go, making sure that she was out of earshot and then listening for her door to close upstairs. He hoped that after he’d just punished her that she wasn’t going to simply open the door and listen to the conversation that he was having with Ruby, but knowing his younger daughter, there was always that risk. “C’mere,” Ben said to Ruby when Rissa was gone. He took her hand and pulled her down to sit on his lap, then wrapped his arm around her, the one attached to the hand still holding the note, and he hugged her tight. He hadn’t said anything to her since Malcolm had read her the riot act on the phone, and there was a twinge of guilt that told him that he probably should have said something more to her.

    “You forget about what Mal said,” he told Ruby. “He don’t know the whole story an’ he’s got no idea I striped your backside last night. An’ let’s face it, Mal’s an ass. You don’t listen to what he says. You listen to what I say. Understand me?”

    “Yes Sir,” Ruby said in a shaky voice.

    Ben wrapped his arms more tightly around his wife, hugging her hard to him, and then he kissed her shoulder, since her face was too high in this position for him to reach. He transferred the note from his left to his right hand, then he looked up at her. “I think you done learned a hard lesson last night, Ruby. Don’t let me be wrong.”

    When his wife said nothing, Ben sighed and glanced down at the note in his hand. “So what’s this?” he asked, scanning it quickly.

    “I found it on Charlie’s bed. An’ she aint’ there!” Ruby said, hopping up out of his lap to pace the carpet in front of him. “This is my fault! I feel so terrible!” she said.

    Holding up a hand to silence his wife, Ben was relieved when she fell quiet, and then he began to read thoroughly.

    The note read:

    “Mama,

        I know I messed up. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what
    to do. I know you hate me. I have to go. Please don’t look for me.
      
        I love you and Daddy and Rissa. I won’t be back. Please don’t look
    for me.

    Love,
        Charlotte

    There were wet marks on the page where it was obvious that Charlie had been crying as she wrote the note, and Ben felt a hard twinge in his own gut, tears coming to his eyes a he read it a second, and then a third time. Finally he looked up at his wife. For a moment, he tried to find something to say to her, but he bit back every accusation that came to mind. They both knew that Ruby’s behavior the previous day had been unacceptable. Saying more about it would only cause hurt feelings, and there was no sense in that. He’d told Rissa “not today” and he’d meant it.

    “It’s my fault,” Ruby choked. He could see the clear distress on her face, her beautiful features contorting with pain, and then her eyes screwing up as tears began to finally fall. She covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders heaved as she began to sob. “It’s my fault! I drove her off!”
  
    Ben pressed his lips together for a moment, and then he nodded, deciding that honesty was the best policy. “Yeah,” he told his wife. “You did.” All it would have taken was a little bit of compassion on his wife’s part and their daughter would be here with them, letting them help her make the difficult decisions about keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption. In his mind, abortion wasn’t even on the table. He sighed, then stood up and wrapped his arm around Ruby’s shoulders, pulling her close to him. Although he wouldn’t lie to her, he could tell that his wife’s distress was real. He kissed her forehead and brushed the hair back from her face, then cupped her face and looked into her eyes. “She’s havin’ a teenaged fit. She’ll be back before supper, I’ll bet. An’ then you’ll be apologizin’ to her, an’ it’ll all start to get better.” He hugged his wife because he wanted to hide the fear that was on his own face. He wasn’t so sure that what he was saying was true. Charlie was prone to fight with his wife, but most of the tantrums that she perceived weren’t nearly as severe as what Ruby seemed to assume.

    When he was just about to suggest that his wife go and start putting up the dishes (so that he could get her out of the way while he called the police), there was a hard knock on the door. Ben jolted slightly and looked down at Ruby. “Go into the kitchen,” he said to her firmly, then kissed her forehead again. If it was the police at the door come to tell him that something had happened to Charlotte, he didn’t want either Ruby or Rissa there to hear it.

    Anxious, Ben watched Ruby do as he’d said, tears in her eyes. He groaned, then went to the door and pulled it open, his heart thundering in his chest with real fear. But instead of a uniformed officer on the door, he met with the angry visage of his brother Malcolm, with Raphael behind him. Malcolm’s hand was raised as he was about to knock on the door again, but instead he lowered it and Ben was shoved back into the house, his brother’s aggressive face too close to his own. Normally it was the two brothers on the doorstep who were at one another’s throat, so Ben was taken aback. He stood his ground, spreading his legs and standing solidly. “What the hell is going on?” he and Raph both asked in unison.

    “You first,” Malcolm growled as he pushed past Ben. The oldest Nery stood back, letting his brothers into the house, looking from one to the other in confusion.

    “I told you everythin’ I know when we were on the phone earlier. But I gotta say, Mal, there ain’t no call for you to go yellin’ at Ruby that way. She’s hurtin’ herself enough without havin’ your help with that,” he said sternly to his younger brother. He didn’t want them to know that Charlotte wasn’t home. He was still hoping that she’d be home before they knew it, and that there wouldn’t be any need for him to tell his brothers that she was missing.

    “Where’s Charlie?” Raphael asked. Ben’s eyes darted in the direction of the next oldest son in the family. Raph’s arms were crossed over his chest, and he was giving Ben the look that Ben often used on Ruby when he was trying to get her to talk about something she didn’t want to admit to. Why did he feel like a little boy? These were his younger brothers, an Raph was nearly five years younger than he was!

    Ben cleared his throat. “We should talk,” he said, then nodded toward the kitchen. He started to lead in that direction, but then he stopped. “First one of you gets disrespectful with my wife is leavin’ an’ ain’t comin’ back. I wanna make that real clear. Raph, you’re lookin’ for a place to live. I’d be thinkin’ real careful about how you talk to Ruby. She’s got her own shit goin’ on an’ it ain’t right for you to put more on her. Got it?”

    After a moment, both brothers nodded together, and Ben gestured toward the kitchen. “Put some coffee on, Ruby,” he instructed his wife. “We got company.”

    Ben didn’t sit down, but he motioned for his brothers to do so. Instead, he stood with his arms crossed over his chest and looked first at Malcolm. “Clarissa knows she shouldn’ta been talkin’ to you about the stuff she been sayin’. She was wrong, an’ she knows it now. So what’s this about? You come here to yell at me an’ Ruby about our parentin’?” He didn’t say it, but he thought Malcolm and Raph both had their own issues with their kids and had no room at all to talk to him about the way that he ran his household.

    “I want to know where my niece is,” Raphael said. When Ben looked at him, his brother was tense, his hand clenched into a fist on the table.

    “She called my cell phone,” Malcolm interjected. “She sounded scared out of her fool mind. Didn’t stay on the phone.”

    “She must have called me right after she got done with him,” Raphael said, just as there was a knock at the door.

    “Seth,” all three brothers said together.

    “Go let him in,” Ben said to Ruby. He didn’t wait for her to obey, but went to grab the pot of coffee and pour five cups, then carried them over to the table two at a time, putting them down. He reached for the creamer and sugar, and brought those two, followed by a couple of teaspoons. They’d been sharing as long as he could remember, and nobody was going to be offended, as long as nobody stirred his coffee before the others could get to the sugar.

    Finally sitting down, Ben looked at his brothers. “So you know Charlie’s not here,” he told them seriously. He could hear Ruby at the door, talking to their youngest brother, and he sighed when he heard Bridget’s voice too. She didn’t need the stress any more than Charlie did! “Come right on back!” Ben called out to the gathering at the door. At least he didn’t have to worry about getting Bridget a cup of coffee. She wasn’t to be drinking it when she was pregnant anyway.

    “You spoil her,” Bridget was saying. “No child of mine is ever going to think that it’s alright to simply run off when one of her parents tells her something she doesn’t like!”

    “Did she tell you that her mother called her a whore?” Malcolm asked.

    Ben could tell that his brother was bristling, and he held up a hand, giving the younger man a warning look. “That’s enough, Mal,” he said sternly. “I told you. Ain’t nobody gonna talk about my wife that way in my own home. An’ ain’t nobody gonna talk about my daughter that way neither,” he said, exchanging a knowing look with Ruby. His wife flushed and turned her head away, making him more and more convinced that he’d made his point well last night.

    Standing up slowly, Ben went to put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “So it seems that our daughter called the three of you. Maybe you knew she was gone before we did,” he said, looking seriously at each of his brothers in turn, for the moment ignoring the aggressive Bridget. “An’ I know Mal knows that she’s pregnant, so let me get that out of the way for all of you if she ain’t told you. Seems Clarissa thought it was okay to put an announcement on Facebook about the whole thing, which is how Mal found out. An’ now Charlie ain’t here.” He paused, letting that sink in, registering the look of discomfort on Raphael’s face, the knowing expression on Mal’s, and then the look of disgust that passed quickly over Seth’s.

    “So here’s what’s going to happen,” Ben said carefully. “I’m going to call the police. The women,” he said, leveling a look at Bridget, “are going to stay here in case she comes back. An’ then the four of us are gonna go out lookin’.”

    Another knock at the door had Ben groaning. By now he’d forgotten about his fear that it would be the police either dragging his daughter home or here to tell him that she’d gotten herself into trouble. He sighed. “Ruby?”

    Ruby nodded and left the room again. A moment later, there were raised voices, and a thumping sound from the other room. Ben shot up out of his chair and raced into the living room to find his wife on her backside, a teenager he recognized standing over her. “What the hell did you do to her?” the boy roared.

    Ben stepped forward, putting space between his wife and the teen. “Seth!” Ben shouted. “Raph!” His brother the lawyer hardly had the strength or intimidation that he wanted, though Mal was the first into the room, and also the first to stand by his brother. Ben appreciated his sibling’s desire to protect and defend his wife, and he gave him a nod, then turned back to Greg. “Seth, get my gun,” he said, staring at the youngster.

    A moment later, Seth came into the room with a rifle, and Ben groaned. He’d have thought that of all their brothers, Seth would have figured it was the shotgun that he wanted, but he couldn’t help but smile. He wasn’t planning on using the thing, just making an impression. He reached his hand out for the rifle, and then he looked back at the father of his grandchild. “You hit my wife?”

    “No,” Ruby said. Ben turned to see that Raph was helping her up to her feet. Ruby dusted herself off, then added, “He just shoved me.”

    Ben nodded and turned back to Greg. “Where’s my daughter?”

    The teenager seemed to deflate, and Ben relaxed a little bit. “I don’t know. I got a text message from her friend Sara, said she was in trouble and that she was staying with friends.”

    “Which friends?” Mal was quick to interject.

    “I don’t know,” the teenager responded. “She didn’t tell me. She just said that Charlie had a fight with her mom and that she was afraid to go home.”

    “Afraid...” Ruby said behind Ben, and he took a step back and put his arm around his wife. He could hear the tears before he saw them, and he gently kissed her cheek, then brushed the tears from her face. They’d talked about this more than once, and he knew that she understood now, but it wasn’t going to stop hurting any of them for a long time. Trust would have to be earned again.

    Ben sighed. “Your parents know you’re here?”

    “No sir.”

    “Then you’d best come on back an’ give ‘em a call,” Ben said. He didn’t say a word about Charlie being pregnant, because that was for her to tell Greg, and he wasn’t even sure whether or not Greg was the father. “You can tell ‘em that Charlie’s missin’ an’ that you’re helpin’ us look for her. Go on.” He nodded toward the phone and waited while the boy dialed, then he turned to look at his siblings and the two women. “We’re gonna find her. She’s alright. Wherever she is, she’s hidin’. Might have to do some diggin’ to find out who she’s been hangin’ out with lately. After last week, it’s hard to tell.”

    “Sara, Emmaline and Karen,” Greg said from where he stood near the phone. Greg could hear the drone of the answering machine message on the other end of the line, and then Greg left a brief message. Ben nodded in his direction.

    “You got their numbers?”

    “Yes Sir.”

    “Call them.”

    Ben crossed to the phone and picked it up, then dialed the number for the local police. Ten minutes later, he was off the phone, and Seth was gone, leaving his wife behind. Looking around at the gathered crowd, Ben sighed. “Cops will be here any minute. Ruby, you give them all the information you got, an’ that note. Make sure they get a recent picture, too. We’re goin’ out lookin,” he said. “Greg, you ride with me. Mal, Raph, you take your cars. Who’s got a cell phone?”

    “I’ve got one,” Greg said. Raph and Mal both held theirs up, and Ben nodded his head. “A’ight. Then every car’s got one. We can communicate. Let’s go find our girl.”

    Ben wasn’t even thinking about how much trouble Charlie was in yet. He was too worried about her being out there, the possibility of her seeking an abortion, how she’d take care of herself, would she do what a lot of young girls did if they ran away and turned to the streets? His Christian sensibilities wouldn’t even let him think of it as he climbed up in the truck and waited for Greg to join him.

    “Call those numbers. Get in touch with those girls,” he said to Greg as he started the engine on the old Ford. The truck was getting up in miles, and with the price of gas, he didn’t want to be out there doing all this driving, but what choice did he have? Charlie was his daughter, and he was scared out of his mind that something was going to happen to her!

    “Yes Sir,” Greg said. Ben glanced to the side to see him dialing fast, then putting the phone to his ear. “Karen!” he said. “Hey, how’s it going? Yeah, this is Greg. Just wanted to ask if you’d seen or heard anything from Charlie.... No, Charlotte. Nery, you idiot! Charlotte Nery! Awww, fuck,” the boy muttered. “She hung up on me. Try her house first. 152 Gwendolyn Avenue.”

***

    Three hours later, Ben opened the front door at home, Greg trailing behind him. There was still a cop car in the drive, and Seth’s car was back, but he was the only one. He and Greg were both worse for the wear, and he was sure that the teenager was at least as exhausted as he was. When they entered, Ruby jumped to her feet and immediately scuttled off into the kitchen, and Ben sank down onto the couch, putting his head in his hands.

    “You’re the father?” one of the officers asked.

    Ben didn’t even raise his head, but nodded. “Yes. I am.”

    “Your wife was saying that there was a fight between her and your daughter, and that she’s pregnant,” the officer said to Ben.

    “She’s... She’s what?” Greg asked. Ben looked up. The boy was standing over him, and he sighed. “Charlie’s pregnant?”

    The boy was pale, and Ben stood up, gently taking his elbow and guiding him into the nearest chair. He shot the officer a warning look and was grateful when Ruby brought some sweet iced tea in a pitcher with some glasses. She put the tray down on the table, and Ben went to pour a glass and hand it to Greg. He sat down on the edge of the coffee table and looked at the teen. “That’s got somethin’ to do with why she ain’t here. Her an’ Mrs. Nery had a fight about her bein’ pregnant. An’ Mama... Has a bit of a temper. It’s all dealt with now,” he added, looking over to where his wife was standing. “But there was a big misunderstandin’ that Mama can’t make clear til Charlie comes home. So we gotta find her. You understand, don’t you son?”

    “Is it mine?” Greg looked up at him, his dark brown eyes searching Ben’s face, and the man sighed and patted the boy on the knee. “Don’t know my girl to be the kind who’d be sleepin’ around, son. If you an’ her done the deed, I’d say this baby’s yours.”

    The teenager turned his head away, and Ben sighed and stood up, then faced the officer. “My wife an’ my daughter had a fight yesterday when Ruby found out Charlie was pregnant. She called her a couple of names an’ she slapped her. It ain’t right, an Ruby knows it. We done talked about it.” Although he didn’t want to have welfare on them, Ben also thought that it was best that he was straight up and honest with the officer if they were going to find his daughter.

    The officer (McNeil was the name on his tag) made some notes on his pad, and then looked up at Ben. “Would you consider your wife a violent person, Mr. Nery?”

    “No Sir,” Ben said instantly, defending Ruby. Behind him, she sank down onto a chair, and he saw out of the corner of his eye that she put her head in her hands. “I wouldn’t consider my wife abusive at all. I think she was shocked by the news.”

    “And your daughter. Is she generally afraid of your wife?”

    Ben hesitated, then finally shook his head. The officer made a note, and he cursed himself inwardly for his hesitation. “Officer, my daughter is sixteen years old. She’s going through a difficult time an’ she an’ my wife don’t always get along the way that I’d like for them to. That ain’t a crime for anybody to not always get along. Nothin’ like this has ever happened before an’ it ain’t gonna happen again. Right now I think we need to focus on findin’ my daughter instead of on condemnin’ my wife.”

    “And we’re going to be looking for your daughter,” the other officer said. “But we need to know the circumstances. It will help us to know where to find her. This sort of domestic situation, we’d expect her to run to a friend’s house for a couple of days, then come home.”

    Ben shook his head. “I tried her friends. Four of them. Nobody’s seen her. I talked to the parents, the friends themselves. Nothing. No Charlotte.”

    “Well then you let us question them,” McNeil said. “They might be more likely to respond to the police than to an angry father,” he said. When he looked up from his notes, his face was kind and sympathetic. “I think we’ve got all the information that we need here,” he said. “If we find something out, we’ll call you. You do the same.” The man reached into his pocket and extended a business card, which Ben took.

    “Thank you,” Ben said, then closed his eyes as the officers existed just as Mal and Raphael came in through the front door. Ben looked up at them. Raphael was giving the officers a look that Ben could only think of as “skeptical” and he sighed, shaking his head. “Come on in,” he said. “You two find anything out?”

    “Only that Carrie’s a total bitch,” Raph said. “Holy shit. Wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she’s hiding Charlie out,” he added, then sank down onto a chair next to Bridget, who inched away.

    Malcolm rubbed his temples, and Ben watched his brother for a moment until he asked, “What did you find out?”

    “Only that we’re probably going to have child welfare on us,” Ben muttered.

    “What?” Mal asked, immediately coming to attention. “What for?”
  
    “The officers were asking a lot of questions about the fight I had with Charlie yesterday,” Ruby said in a soft voice from where she sat on the couch, rocking herself slightly. Ben sighed and went to sit next to her, pulling her against him and holding her tightly.

    “Well I know a good lawyer,” Mal said.

    “Really?” Ben asked, looking up at his brother. “Who?”

    The laughter momentarily broke the tension in the room. “I’ll get some paperwork ready,” Mal said once it had died down. “If they come to the house, call me, an’ don’t say a word to anybody. Right now you need to focus on findin’ Charlie though. Make that your priority. Leave the law to me.”

    It was just what Ben and Ruby needed: one more thing for them to worry about, after money and their missing daughter.