I watch Dan take a piece of cherry pie. Out of the whole bunch, only Chet and Wynona seem to have it together.
How much simpler life would be if I had their faith. If I can believe my eyes, neither fears the freight train bearing down on Chet. Yet I could tell Wynona about the loneliness. No amount of faith will stop that.
No child, no matter how wonderful, is a substitute for a husband or wife. Not if you were both in love. And as hard as it is to think about Chet Bracken being in love, he clearly is. Maybe that’s why this case has been so hard on him. For the first time in his life he has things in perspective. Wynona. Trey. The little time he has left he can’t really concentrate on a trial. In fact, he is even thinking like a human being instead of like a lawyer.
That’s why it has been difficult for him to suspect Shane. How can I blame him? Chet still doesn’t want to believe that the man who has given him such peace may be a murderer, and it’s taken him this long to face that distinct possibility.
“What the hell,” Dan says, sliding the pie onto the table.
The crust appears an inch thick.
“I could’ve gotten ice cream on it.”
“A man of iron discipline,” I agree.
“I can easily see you in a monastic order, fasting for weeks at a time.
Your cheeks gaunt, your wispy body a perfectly flat line as you prostrate yourself against the cold stones of the abbey at four each morning. Toiling cheerfully for hours in the scorching sun. Your mind pure, unadulterated, your thoughts only of God and your fellow man.”
Dan digs into his pie.
“I’d probably become gay, all right,” he muses, putting a typical Bailey spin on the subject.
“Even as terrible as Brenda can be, I still get excited if we haven’t done it in a while.”
It. It’s been a while. Maybe it’s over for me. Women can obviously tell when you’re desperate. I used to dream of the day Rainey and I would make love, but now it’ll never happen.
“Good for you,” I say, meaning it. Who knows? Maybe Dan’s marriage isn’t as terrible as it seems. He probably makes it sound that way just to have something to talk about.
“What do you make of Leigh’s story about the nude video?” I ask. Dan has been curiously silent on the subject.
The last piece of pie disappears down his throat.
Three bites. And I thought Woogie ate fast.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he says, wiping his mouth with the greasy rag of a napkin that off and on has been wedged in his crotch.
“It sounds like one of those trial balloons politicians send up. She’s running scared. If she thought Shane had been in on it, you or Chet would have heard it long before now. As much as she might love her old man, she’s too young to take the rap for him. The last martyr even close to Leigh’s age was Joan of Arc. That kind of stuff is done best by people our age whose most exciting activity is collecting coupons for arch supports and Preparation H.”
I chuckle at the truth in Dan’s remark. Why would Leigh want to take a fall if she’s got her whole life in front of her? My problem in this case is that I don’t really know the client. As I lament this fact to Dan, a light bulb finally goes on in my head. Leigh’s sisters.
Why aren’t they here? Is there so much estrangement that they won’t even be here for their sister’s murder trial? Who was it who suggested I call one of them? If my memory gets any worse, I’ll need to start writing down my own name.
Upstairs, I thumb through my notes on the case and, for a change, find’ what I’m looking for-the names of the neighbors next door. I call and am told by Ann Wheeler that Mary Patricia has never married and lives in a small town in Rhode Island. I get the number and leave a message on her answering machine. She must be at work.
At three-thirty, as I am about to head west for Christian Life, Rainey calls and tells me that she has located Sarah.
“She’s okay,” she says.
“I’ve seen the place she’s staying in, and you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Where is it?” I ask, relieved but irritated at the same time. I’ll be the one to decide if I need to worry.
Her voice fall of sympathy, Rainey says, “I can’t tell you that. The price of seeing it was that I had to swear I wouldn’t tell you.”
I try to keep my voice calm, but I can’t.
“For God’s sake,” I yell, “this is my child we’re talking about, Rainey!”
“I know that!” she shoots back.
“Don’t cut the one link you have to her right now. If I told you, and you went and got her, the next day she might be gone again and for good.”
I drum my fingers on my desk in frustration, knowing she is making perfect sense. I can’t lock Sarah up.
“Does the place she’s in have running water and electricity
Rainey can’t suppress a giggle.
“Relax. She’s not fighting off rats in an abandoned warehouse. It’s a very adequate apartment. The girl she’s staying with is an emancipated minor and very mature for her age. She’s got a job and pays her own way. Don’t try to crowd Sarah too much right now, okay?”
How mature can a kid under eighteen be? I know fifty-year-olds who don’t have any business living by themselves.
“Is it in a safe area of town?”
“Very,” Rainey Says, her voice reassuring.
“I even checked the refrigerator when she wasn’t looking. They have more food than you do. Granted, it’s mostly frozen pizzas and Cokes, but she’s not starving.”
For the first time in months, I feel profound gratitude to Rainey. Even though our relationship is strained to the breaking point right now, she is still coming through for me.
“I take it her roommate is Christian Life?”
“Oh, most definitely!” Rainey assures me.
“She’s a good kid.”
Not a boy, thank God. Rainey, thank goodness, can’t help her social-worker mode.
“Will you ask her to call me tonight?” I say, suddenly close to tears. At least she isn’t facing a murder charge.
“I already did,” she answers. “Try to be home about eight.”
I wipe my eyes, glad she can’t see me.
“Thanks.” For a moment I consider telling Rainey that Leigh has disappeared, but I’m already late now. I’ll have plenty to tell her later tonight.
“Try to remember,” Rainey advises, “that Christian Life is the most important thing in her life right now.
She feels you’re a threat to it.”
I want to protest that I haven’t prohibited Sarah from spending a single minute up there, but Rainey knows that. Intellectually, she must mean. But Sarah knows I don’t know enough science to stop a case of the hiccups. Still, I suppose I represent the kind of people who do.
“Why didn’t she stay,” I ask, looking at my watch, “and argue with me?”
Rainey says gently, “Because you don’t fight fair.
You use guilt, condescension, self-pity every emotion she’s never been able to deal with when you’re in the picture.”
Not to mention hitting her. Parents. We ought to be killed at our children’s birth to give them a chance.
“I hear you,” I say, but I probably don’t As Darryl Royal, the long-retired coach of the Texas Longhorns, used to say about his football team, “You dance with what brung you.” As I drive out to the Christian Life complex, I meditate on what “brung” me thirty years ago out of eastern Arkansas. When my sister and I got into trouble as children, invariably we would be called in for a lecture at the foot of my parents’ bed. Her Reader’s Digest condensed book lying on her chest, our mother would take off her glasses and sigh, “Children, how did I fail you? I’m so sorry. For you to be acting this way, I must have failed you in some way. Your father’s going to be so disappointed.”
Our part read: “No, Mother, you didn’t fail us. We’re just horrible children, and we feel so bad.” Did we? As I fight the five o’clock traffic, which begins earlier every year, I try to think back on how I felt, but it has been too long to recapture the precise feeling of shame that I had let them down in some unforgivable way. To Sarah’s credit, she has moved beyond that What was it she said? won’t let you guilt me! I wanted to turn her into a little me. Page amp; Page, attorneys at law. Fat chance. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if she lets me come to her wedding.p›