Chapter 70

1 p.m. Sunday

Miguel Pena pulled out a chair to sit between his wife and Lupe at the restaurant where the family dined after Sunday services.

He gave a slight smile to the females at the table before turning to his son.

"I think you left a few details out of your story last night," he declared. His gaze made it obvious that he was less than pleased with his progeny.

Mariel raised her eyebrows at her husband. Chuck had been amazingly pleasant all morning – something she really hadn't seen since he was 10 years old. Miguel caught her look and shook his head in disappointment.

"The surgery was on a kid from Chuck's school," he said, unable to say more because of federal privacy laws.

"I hope it wasn't Stan Dalton," Chuck said. He was so used to hearing disappointment in his father's voice that he didn't notice any difference.

"No," Miguel replied.

"Oh, then it had to be Brian Newton," Chuck said, shrugging. "Yeah, that's part of last night, I guess."

"The boy was handcuffed to the bed," Miguel informed the table – neither confirming nor denying the name Chuck had offered. "I overheard the police officers talking about it when I was doing his chart. How could you let that happen to that girl?"

"Huh?" Chuck asked, looking up from his cheeseburger. He might not have recognized disappointment but he caught the angry tones his father had used. "What girl?"

"You know very well 'what girl'!" Miguel seethed.

"Abby?" Chuck wondered.

"Yes," Miguel answered in exasperation.

"I didn't do anything," Chuck said, now on the defensive.

"She was your date and your responsibility!" Miguel stated. "You do not lend her out to your friends or whatever you did!"

"Wait a moment, Honey," Mariel cut in. Miguel was getting a bit too loud for a family restaurant and Chuck was wearing a look of confusion. "Chuck, did something happen to Abby last night?"

"Well, yeah," Chuck said. "But I didn't do it."

"But you let it happen," Miguel interrupted, unwilling to let his son downplay his part.

"Dad, she told me the moment we got there that she wanted nothing to do with me," Chuck said. "She went her way and I hung out with Elizabeth and her friends. What happened in the locker room was entirely her doing."

"It was not her doing," Miguel said, his eyes narrowing at his son's callous answer. "Regardless of what you think, no girl is asking for that to happen!"

Chuck looked at his mother again in bewilderment.

"I did not say that anyone was asking for anything," Chuck said. "Dad, I have no idea what you're mad about."

Miguel tried to push down his temper before he spoke again.

"The young woman who accompanied you to the dance last night was sexual assaulted by the young man whose teeth I replaced this morning," he said in a tight voice. "She is still in the hospital for observation – along with another boy from your school who has a Grade II concussion. This is more than 'some trouble at the dance, ' Chuck."

"Abby wasn't sexually assaulted," Chuck said dismissively.

"The police are saying otherwise!" Miguel insisted.

"She got caught and she's trying to save her reputation, Dad," Chuck replied. "She took three Roid Freaks into the locker room to party. She made fun of them and they didn't take it kindly."

He gave Lupe a sideways glance so his father would know it wasn't fodder for young ears.

"If she went into the locker room to 'party, ' she was asking for it," Lupe said. "Or at least she should have known it was going to happen whether she wanted it or not."

Chuck gave a vague nod. That's the way he looked at it, too.

"Roid Freaks?" Miguel asked.

"Three football players," Chuck said. "Well, you know one of them. He played basketball last year but he skipped it this season so he could take a cycle of PEDs, I guess. Anyway, I guess Andy went out with the guy's girlfriend last summer or something. She came to him for help because she was worried he might get violent. It turned out that she was right to be worried. He tried to hit her and the kid with the concussion pushed her aside. Look, Dad, Abby went into the locker room with those three guys for the express purpose of getting drunk and doing what she did."

"I heard they choked her until she was unconscious and did ... some other things," Miguel stated. "I doubt that was on her agenda."

"I knew the girl was stupid," Lupe remarked. "Look, I'm not from the lily white suburbs but anyone with any sense would know better than to put herself into that situation. As soon as she went in there with them, she agreed to whatever acts they could think of. That's just common sense. In my neighborhood, they might have killed her so she couldn't testify against them."

Miguel stared across the table at the newest member of his family.

"Lupe... ," he said incredulously.

"She's right, Dad," Chuck cut in. "Abby wanted to have sex with other girls' boyfriends in order to prove that she could. She got into more than she bargained for and now she's saying it wasn't consensual. Yeah, she probably wasn't planning on having someone knock her unconscious and I'm sure ... the other thing ... wasn't on her agenda. But she signed the contract whenever she went into the locker room with those guys. If she hadn't been found out, she would have strutted through school tomorrow. But she was so she's going to do what she can to make herself look better than she is. That's the type of person she is, Dad.

"Yeah, those guys are jerks. I know that. I wouldn't go into the locker room alone with them. Abby knew what they were like, too. If you want a fresh perspective, ask Elizabeth. I didn't do anything wrong last night. I spent my evening with Elizabeth and her friends – trying to figure out how we were going to protect Brian's girlfriend without all of us getting expelled from school."

"Apparently, the boy in the hospital didn't let that be a consideration," Miguel replied.

"He wasn't going to graduate," Chuck informed his father. "Andy knew about it somehow. Those are the guys that tried to hassle Regan a few months back. Andy kicked the crap out of them, I guess. Well, at least one of them. I know that for sure. Anyway, those three guys were going to get blank diplomas. Now they're going to get 'Special D's' in the classes they were failing so they can get out. Andy and Elizabeth set that up with the school board somehow. I honestly don't know how they pulled it off but I heard some woman tell one of the fathers that his child would graduate even though he was suspended from school."

"Probably Anita," Lupe jumped in. "God knows she owes them at least that much for getting us into this mess."

"Yeah, Anita," Chuck agreed. "That was her name. She's the one who lied to you guys?"

"She didn't lie," Mariel said.

"If it wasn't a lie, it didn't miss by much," Lupe said angrily. "I think you call it a lie of omission. She didn't tell us that she was powerless and we trusted her to make things work. She's nice but she's really clueless."

"Andy and Elizabeth seemed to give her a lesson or two," Chuck said, smiling slightly. "She was nodding along with anything those two would tell her – and she backed it up, too."

"This time," Lupe noted.

"Are you sad about leaving your old neighborhood?" Chuck wondered.

"No," Lupe admitted.

"Then, as Mom tells me, 'Stop your bitchin'," Chuck said, laughing.

"Yeah, fine," Lupe said. "That just means I'll have to find something else, though."

"I've got another list if you need it," Chuck told her. "It worked at church today."

That moved the conversation away from Abby Barnes and to more pleasant subjects. It was the second consecutive quiet meal for Mariel – but Miguel was left to wonder when children had become so unsympathetic.

"Do you really think this is a good idea?" Camille asked Rita as they stood in the owner's box at the baseball stadium. Neither was interested in the game so much as they were interested in the champagne and hors d'oeuvre trays that were making their way around the room.

Camille wasn't inquiring about the seafood roll she'd just snared. She was asking about the prospect of having her son and Rita's daughter spend the night together again.

"We've let them spend Saturday nights together for the past two weeks," Rita pointed out. "And in four weeks, they're both going to be 18."

"And two months after that, they'll be on their own at college," Camille added with a sigh.

"I think we make it clear that if either is late to school, it's the last time we permit something like this until their birthdays – after which we're pretty much powerless to stop them even if we wanted to," Rita said. "But if you think differently, I'll tell Regan the same thing that you tell Andy."

"He said you didn't want to make me look like the bad guy," Camille said, rolling her eyes.

"We're mothers," Rita replied. "We're used to being the bad guy. Regan has had Robert wrapped around her finger since the day she was born. If you think she's spoiled now, you should see how she might have turned out if I hadn't put my foot down occasionally."

"I don't think she's spoiled," Camille answered. "She's used to having money but I don't believe that she thinks that makes her ... special."

"She is very used to getting her own way," Rita admitted. "Part of it is because she uses our family name to influence others. Another part is because people seem to naturally defer to her."

"I hope she's not counting on that from Andy," Camille noted.

"Me, too," Rita agreed. "If she is, well, it won't hurt her any to have him make her back down."

"And it won't hurt him to have someone stand up to him once in a while," Camille added. "He's ... well, he's grown into a particularly large man from working in the warehouse. He's also got a fairly short fuse about certain things. Last week ... during all the chaos in our old neighborhood ... I was patching up some of the kids from the building when he walked in. A couple of these guys are ... well, they're nasty customers. They're the type of men you cross the street to avoid, you know."

Rita nodded – even though she rarely moved in areas that required such actions.

"Andy walked in and he didn't recognize them immediately," Camille continued. "He dropped his books and was ready to fight in an instant."

"Because he thought they were there to hurt you," Rita interpreted correctly.

"Yeah," Camille said. "The look on his face was ... I'm not sure I can describe it."

"I think I've seen it," Rita replied. "That's what I meant yesterday about him intimidating me. It was his posture, his size and his look. I made some unfounded accusations against him and Regan and he was ready to do battle. Looking at it through the funnel of time, I'm impressed that he was ready to protect Regan – even against me. I can only imagine how fiercely protective he is of you."

"As protective as I am of him," Camille said, moving the topic back to the origin premise. "That's what I'm worried about: This is all moving so quickly. In two weeks, Regan has gone from someone I'd never heard mentioned to practically setting up housekeeping with my son. They don't really know each other well enough for that step."

"I agree," Rita confessed. "And I'd be worried if I thought that was what was going on. I think ... and I could be wrong ... I think this is just an early start to how things would be if they met in August at Stanford. You remember how quickly things progressed when you were in school. They move faster now. I don't want to see Regan hurt – but at the same time, I don't want to see her hurt Andy either. I think ... and, again, I could be wrong ... the best way to prevent that is to let them spend as much time around each other as they can stand. What are we going to do this summer when they tell us they are planning to take a trip to Hawaii together or something?

"The others are going to stay, too – or so I was told. I don't think she'd lie about that because it wouldn't affect my decision either way. I just put her off until I could get your views on the situation."

Camille frowned as she studied the bubbles in her champagne flute. The last time she'd had anything similar had been the New Year's Eve she'd spent with Evan's family. Her father might have beer in the house but her mother, of course, had been a teetotaler – except for communion wine.

"I guess you're right," Camille admitted. "Andy asked me if I planned to come to his dorm in August to make sure he got up for classes. He's never missed a day of school unless he was ill and when he lies to me, it's never about anything important. If he says he'll be at school, then he will."

"And he'll make Regan get to school," Rita added with a chuckle. "Seriously, I think things could be a lot worse. Andy is a prince compared to some of the guys that have tried to catch Regan's eye."

"Only a baron," Camille corrected, smiling.

"Shit," Rita said, shaking her head but grinning back at Camille. "I thought that silly girl yesterday was going to slip her panties in his pocket or something."

"Lupe?" Camille wondered.

"Her, too!" Rita said. "I was talking about ... I forgot her name, thank God ... Paul's sister."

"Noel," Camille supplied. "Yeah, she seemed to track Andy's movements all over the room."

"I was a bit worried because Lupe seemed intent upon following Regan's actions," Rita said.

"Really?" Camille asked, concerned. "I didn't notice."