Paradise for a Sinner by Lynn Shurr Page B

all beat up.”
    Joe covered the space between the fallen Teddy and Dean with the same quickness he displayed on the football field. He grasped his oldest son by the shoulders. “You march over there and apologize. Help the boy up.”
    “Why, because he really is your son, because you cheated on Mom?”
    “No, because I’m trying to raise you as a decent human being. For the last time, I am saying Teddy is not my son. Now do as I told you.” He gave Dean a shove in the right direction.
    “Sorry, I guess.”
    Using a strength most boys his age did not possess, Dean heaved Teddy to his feet. The crippled boy hung his head to hide the tears streaming down his face. Reassure one child, hurt another. Joe shook his head in frustration as Dean stomped past on his way to get a towel. Tommy, ever Dean’s best pal, moved closer to Teddy, who cringed against the fence.
    “Dean isn’t really mean. It’s hormones Mama Nell says.” Then, he trotted off after his buddy.
    A huge splash drew everyone’s attention back to the pool. Two oversized athletic shoes sat on the rim. Adam Malala surfaced, dragging the chair with him into the shallow end. He wheeled it up the ramp installed for the Camp Love Letter kids.
    “Still working fine, but we should dry it off. Maybe Knox can check the gears for you, Teddy. Want me to carry you back to the house until we are sure?”
    Teddy made his way to his beloved and yet hated wheelchair. “No, Miss Winnie, could you get me a towel to put on the seat? I want to take my own self back to the house.”
    Winnie did this small service, opening the gate for him, and walking behind as he went along. Carrying the boy’s sticks, Adam escorted them. She could have sworn steam rose off of his big body, his long, bedraggled hair already beginning to curl again. A family in crisis, a patient to care for, and her mind took her straight to bed with a Samoan lover. She had sunk lower than the wheelchair in the deep end of the pool.

Chapter Twelve
    Spurred on by a cash money incentive, the landscaper worked like the devil in debt to complete the beach and palm grove before Super Bowl Sunday. He plugged the tall, graceful-necked trees into the earth, shoring them up with ropes and stakes until they rooted. Not very attractive for the moment, but he screened the stakes with a border of short, bushier palms bearing sharp, pointed leaves along the fence surrounding the pool and set groupings of dwarf banana trees, hibiscus, and cannas into the gentle curves of the walkway that wove through the garden.
    On the Friday before the deadline, dump trucks filled to the brim with pearly white sand arrived, and the mostly Mexican work crew began hauling and dumping wheelbarrows full on top of the bare, scraped earth until a beach evolved. The process drew the Billodeaux children after school, blithely skipping out on homework that could and would be done on Saturday before the big party the following day.
    Brinsley served them a less than elegant snack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on whole wheat bread cut into triangles, but still placed on a silver tray poolside. Corazon was getting used to having a butler in the house. At the moment, she relaxed in the kitchen with her coffee in hand and enjoyed the company of her own son, a big baby and now a husky little boy. Even the maids who came in the mornings to clean and do laundry performed better under the butler’s cold eye. They might have been Corazon’s livelier, prettier cousins, a seemingly endless procession of young women on their way to better jobs, education, or marriage, but they completed their tasks more efficiently with Brinsley double-checking their work. Once, the maids had been housed on the grounds, but Nell long ago decided to pay them better and get them rooms in Chapelle after more than one of their boyfriends set off the alarms by climbing over the fences after dark and a few flashed their dark eyes at Joe. Knox picked up the maids daily