Chapter 12

They sat down in the study, Charles, Ororo, Hank, and Joey's father, and Ororo commenced to tell him what had gone on in his absence. She was still angry at him for not heeding Jean's warnings when he came in, and thereby caused Joey more pain, but as the conversation wore on she softened a bit. He had no idea of what had really gone on in his house.

"I didn't know," Henry moaned, slumped over in his chair, his face buried in his hands. "Oh, God, I didn't know. Anita Seward came so highly recommended by the agency, she'd been with two previous families, and she seemed to like Joey…I didn't know she would beat my daughter like that." He raised his head. "I sent Anita instructions that she was to withdraw five hundred dollars from the account I set up to take care of household expenses when Joey's birthday came around. When I received the account statement I checked to see that it had been taken out, and it had. I didn't call to make sure Joette got it. I never thought she would go against my wishes." He looked crestfallen. "I saw that money was being taken from the account, and I did send a few letters asking her about some expense or another, but she told me she had bought Joette new clothes, or a new CD player, or another plant for her greenhouse. I never thought to ask Joette."

"Joey," Ororo said softly. "She prefers to be called Joey."

"Joey," he said. "I'll remember."

"Where did Mr. Hunt come from?" Jean leaned forward. Her tone was soft, but her eyes were hard. "How could you let a man like that live with your daughter? You're empathic, when you saw him you should have known…"

"I never saw him!" Henry got up out of his chair and paced the room, coming to a stop finally by the tall window. 'Anita said her brother had just recently moved to New York, and he hadn't found a place to stay yet. She asked me if I would mind if he stayed for a few days with her until he found an apartment. I was stupid; I said yes." He drew in a ragged breath. "I didn't know he was still there. I never asked. I don't know why." He turned to them, and he looked hopeless, defeated. "How badly is she hurt? Why did she scream when I picked her up?"

Jean sighed. "She was torn badly when he raped her. We had to hold the flesh together with stitches while it heals. She's not in any condition to be moved."

"Oh my poor Baby," he sat down, hard. After a moment he raised his head again. "You really wouldn't mind if she stayed here, Charles? We've kind of lost touch over the years, and I don't want to presume on your hospitality--"

"She may stay as long as she likes, Henry," Charles said. "Ororo thinks of her almost like a little sister. As we have doctors living here as well, she will have better medical care than she would in a hospital, or even at your home with a trained nurse. Love is the thing she needs most right now to heal, both physically and emotionally, and she will get that here. I doubt she really hates you, Henry. She has just been through an extremely traumatic experience; she does not want to see any man right now. It will take her a while to get over that."

There was a knock on the study door, and Xavier called, "Come."

Scott opened the door. "Charles. Mrs. Seward just rang the doorbell. She wants to speak to you."

"What does she want?"

Scott made a face. 'She said she's aware that her 'charge', as she calls Joey, ran here last night, She's convinced that Joey's told us some ridiculous story to get us to feel sorry for her and let her stay." He hesitated. "She's also accompanied by a man."

"Hunt!" Joey's father surged out of his chair. "I'll kill the son of a--"

"Henry," Xavier said sharply. "I want to hear what kind of excuse they have for Joey looking the way she does. Jean, perhaps you could escort Henry to the kitchen and give him some refreshment--"

"No!" Henry said. "I want to stay. Please. I'll hide, in a closet or something…but I want to know what they're going to say."

Xavier regarded him for a moment, then he said, "Jean, would you take the spare wheelchair out of the closet, please?" Henry installed himself in the closet and closed the door just as Scott brought Mrs. Seward and Mr. Hunt in.

"Mr. Xavier, I presume?" Mrs. Seward said haughtily. Xavier nodded slightly.

"Just so. What can I do for you?" he said.

"My name is Anita Seward, and this is my brother Gregory Hunt. We live on the property adjoining yours," she said. "I have charge of a little girl, my employer's child. Last night, after a minor disagreement we had with her over her unseemly behavior toward my brother, she ran out of the house in a temperamental fit and has not yet returned. I believe she may be hiding on your grounds, or maybe somewhere in your house. I am not sure what kind of story she has told you in order for you to allow her to stay, but I assure you it is all lies and I would like her returned immediately."

"Indeed. Will it surprise you to know, Mrs. Seward, that I believe what she has said over what you have just told me, and that I have not the slightest intention of giving her over to you, even if she were in a condition to be moved, which she isn't?"

Mrs. Seward narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean, she's in no condition to be moved?"

"I meant exactly what I said, Mrs. Seward. You weren't home last night, you have no idea what your brother actually did to your 'charge', as you term her?"

A flicker of alarm crossed Mrs. Seward's face, but she composed herself. 'My brother said that she came onto him. When he rebuffed her advances, she had a temper tantrum and ran out of the house. My brother wouldn't lie to me."

"Oh, wouldn't he," Xavier said evenly. "What about it, Mr. Hunt? It looks like perhaps your sister might be wrong in her blind confidence in you. Shall I tell her what you really did? Shall I tell her you beat Joey with the yardstick kept in her closet? Shall I tell her you chased her out to her greenhouse, the one place she always counted on for privacy? Shall I tell her how you whipped a defenseless thirteen-year-old girl with your belt for refusing to hold still for you? Shall I tell your sister that you brutally raped her charge there in the cold, after she was stunned by the beating? Shall I tell her how you tore the child's body open, ripping her most sensitive skin apart when you forced into her? And do either of you know how she must feel right now, knowing that something precious to her, something she would normally have given to someone she loves someday--was ripped away, irretrievably lost? That she now lies in a room upstairs, confined to bed for a week, because you tore her up so badly she needed stitches to close the tear?" His voice had gotten colder, harder, as he spoke, and the anger swirling around the room made the two people in front of him cringe in their chairs.

Ororo and Jean looked at each other. Charles was angry. They'd almost never seen him get this angry. He was unconsciously projecting, and that wasn't a good sign.

No…wait…Charles wasn't projecting, it was the man in the closet. They'd forgotten Joey's father was an empath!

Henry burst out of the closet, unable to contain his own anger anymore. He rushed at Hunt, grabbed a fistful of the other man's jacket, and slammed the man's back against the hard, solid wood door of Xavier's study. "How dare you come in here and lie to my face?!" he hissed at the man. "How dare you hurt my daughter and then come here and demand that she be given back to you? What would you do when you got her back? Take her back, tell her not to tell anyone what happened and beat her until she promised to keep silent? Continue to live in my house, and, since you'd already taken her once, continue to rape her every day, every night, until you broke her spirit and she committed suicide? How would you explain it to me when I got back? Or were you planning to take her and run away, and never return, and I'd never know what happened to her, to my little girl?"

"You didn't care about her anyway!" Hunt finally whined. "You didn't care when my Sis beat her with the yardstick, you didn't care that she was starving her and forcing to go without sleep and making her do housework! At least she gets some human contact from me!"

"Your kind of contact she doesn't need!" Henry was furious. "Charles, if you will call the police, I will file charges against them myself. I'll spare you the trouble of doing it." Xavier reached for the telephone on his desk.

Henry was standing by the bed, staring down at the sleeping girl, when Ororo pushed open the door silently. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Social Services chose to leave her here indefinitely," he said to the tall silver-haired woman. "I haven't been much of a father to her."

Ororo looked at him quietly for a moment. "You were busy," she surprised herself by saying. "And the agency did refer her to you. And you had no way of knowing Mr. Hunt had just gotten out of jail for statutory rape and pedophilia." She sighed. "It will not be forever, Mr. LeFevre. They simply wish to make sure that the environment she goes home to is a safer, more secure one than she had."

"I know," he said. "I don't blame them. I went with the social worker back to the house to see what her room looked like. It's so bare, Miss Munroe. Empty. She had none of the things Anita told me she'd bought for my little girl. No radio, no music, no phone…even her closet was half-bare. And the clothes that were left didn't look like they'd fit her." Ororo decided not to tell him that Remy had burgled his house the previous night for Joey. "And her greenhouse…everything was broken. All those plants she spent all that time caring for…they were all broken, all gone. I only managed to save one plant." He gestured to the small terra-cotta pot sitting on her bedside table, where a slightly wilted iris bud sat tightly closed among its leaves. "I hope she forgives me someday."

"She will," Ororo said quietly.

He looked at her. "I have to go back to the house. The lawyers want all the paperwork for Anita's hiring and firing, and I have to figure out what she did with all that money she's been taking and supposedly using for Joey. I transferred the account into Charles' name, so he can get whatever she needs without having to use his own." He turned to her. "I wanted to say thank you. Before I forgot. Joey's lucky she has a friend like you. I'm very lucky she has a friend she could count on. I don't want to know what would have happened last night if she didn't know she could come to you for help." There were tears in his eyes.

Ororo hugged him gently, and watched as he turned and left the room with slow steps. Still thinking about him, she went over to the plant and checked it to see if it needed watering. It didn't.

She studied the iris bud. A Joette iris. Slightly wilted, but with care and attention, it would become a beautiful little flower. Just like Joey would. What was it Remy had called her? Ma petite fleur? A little flower? Ororo smiled. A fitting nickname for a girl named after a flower.

Yes, Joey would recover, and eventually bloom into a lovely young girl. Ororo smiled. She would look forward to that.

Okay, that's it for this one. I hope you all liked it, it's sort of like my 'Secrets and Shadows' story, except that this one was a little more graphic. Okay, maybe a bit.

Thank you all for reading, and especially for reviewing. Kitsu LeBeau, many thanks to you for all the enthusiastic praise; thanks also go out to Dazzler and Storm II, for encouragement, praise, and reviews. 'Last One Standing' will continue to go up, and after that the story I'm working on right now will go up; 'Knight and Squire', a Logan/Jubes A/U fic (yes, another one.) Enjoy the stories, and I hope to see some of you there! (if you're Logan/Jubes fan, that is.)