Fable set her gaze on him and smiled. She believed Ben’s father was fond of her. He knew the worst about her. He’dseenher panhandling, and he was still kind to her. She thought living seventeen years of his life in turmoil for a love he couldn’t find might have changed his ways of thinking when it came to love over money and power.
“What fun would it be if a tongue or two didn’t wag?” she asked with a playful arch of her brow.
The Lt. Colonel tossed his son a chuckle and then shook his head as if to say “you have your hands full.”
They took a bus to Ms. Halstead’s office, which they found after an hour of searching, on the basement level, behind the office of the garage.
Fable looked around at the three women sitting at their desks. One chair was empty. Around the vacant desk were different plants of various sizes. Pictures of children were tacked to the wall to the right.
“We’re here to see Ms. Halstead,” Fable let the three women know. Two of them were too young to be Dorothea West. The third was about the right age, but neither she nor the Lt. Colonel made any show of recognition at the sight of the other.
“She just stepped out,” one of the younger women let them know. “You can have a seat.”
Fable thought she could hear one of the men’s hearts beating. Ben’s? About to see the woman whose death shaped him with rage and violence. Richard West’s? About to finally see his beloved Dorothea again? Maybe it was Fable’s heart beating furiously in her ears excited for them all, and anxious of being without Ben.
Another door opened and a woman of about forty-five to fifty entered the office. She wore flip-flop style leather sandals, a summery dress in a floral pattern. She wore her long chestnut hair in a braid dangling down her back.
She smiled at Fable on her way back to her desk, and Fable was thinking how much she resembled Prudence, when the social worker spotted the Lt. Colonel. Her eyes widened and filled to the brim with tears. Just before they fell like a waterfall down her face, she shifted her gaze to Ben’s.
Recognizing her son, she drew her shaking hands to her mouth and then ran to him. “Ben? Benjamin?”
He nodded, unable, it appeared, to speak as his tears flowed.
“Oh, my baby! Oh, Richard, you brought our boy to me!” She wept in her son and husband’s arms for a long time.
Fable watched a bit, then swiped her tears away and went over to stand near the other three desks.
“So, how are your days going?” she asked the women.
“Not as good as theirs,” one of them replied.”
Fable grinned looking over at the reunited family still hugging. “Right?”
“Fable,” Ben looked up from his mother’s neck and called out to her. “Come, meet my mother.”
Dorothea West stepped back to look at her. “Fable Ramsey? Weren't you supposed to come in about a job? How do you know my family?”
“Mother,” Ben’s deep, soft voice sounded before Fable could answer, “Fable is my wife.”
His mother definitely turned a shade paler. She swallowed then looked about to be sick. She caught herself and smiled. “This is news! Well,” she turned back into Ben’s embrace. “It was only a matter of time until you took a wife. It’s just that the last time I saw you, you were an eleven year old boy–and now you’re married!” She laughed and both men laughed with her.
Fable smiled, but she didn’t mean it. Thea West wasn’t just anyone. She was Ben’s mother. What if she persuaded Ben not to save Thoren Ashmore? No, Ben wouldn’t change on her.
“Richard, how did you find me?”
“I never stopped searching,” he confessed softly, his eyes soaking in every feature of her face.
When she threw herself into her husband’s arms, her three coworkers gasped.
“We have so much to talk about” Lady Colchester said, fitting into her role as if she’d never left it.
“I’m taking the afternoon off,” she called out to the girls at their desks. “Maybe longer.”
“It will definitely be longer,” her husband mumbled, shooing her out the door.
“Ben,” Fable said, grabbing his shirtsleeve. “You’ll be going back soon.”
“I’ll save your father, Fable. You can count on me.”
