The lamplight by Daddy's chair cast a sheen on his pallid cheek. He lifted a hand. “I . . . don't know. Let me think about it tonight.”
Officer Hankins studied him, but Daddy would say no more.
“All right.” Sighing, the policeman pushed off the couch. “I can keep Baxter locked up overnight. Bobby, you and I'll need to talk tomorrow.”
With one last look at Katherine's stricken face, he took his leave.
“I'll take Greg home,” I told Daddy before he could offer himself. His scarce acknowledgment bespoke the depth of his shock. I knew his sense of responsibility would have driven him to apologize personally to the Matthews. I looked from him to Katherine. They would need to talk. I hoped he ripped her apart. Told her to never set foot in our house again.
“I'll check on Clarissa and Robert first,” I said. “Tell them to stay in Robert's room until I get back.”
Greg waited tactfully in the garage while I looked in on my brother and sister. “Jackie!” Clarissa flung her arms around my waist and cried. I held her silently, anger and hatred for Katherine throbbing through my veins. Clarissa could not begin to understand all that had happened, the changes in our lives that this night would bring.
She tilted her tearstained face up at me. “Jackie, Robert wouldn't tell me. Why did that man call Katherine a pieceâ?”
“Shh.” I pressed fingers against her lips. I could not bear to hear the phrase spoken from this innocent mouth. Robert turned away to hide the sick expression on his face. What the words must have done to himâa young boy, looking up to Katherine the way he did. Surely they crawled and wriggled and slimed inside him, just as they did within me. I wondered how we could ever look at Katherine again and not think of the label Trent Baxter had prescribed with such apparent accuracy.
“Clarissa.” I sat on Robert's bed and pulled her down with me. “Everything's going to be okay. I need you to stay in here with Robert now while I take Greg home. Don't go to Daddy now, hear? Let him and Katherine talk. I'll come in here and get you when I get back.”
She nodded, resting in assurance upon my lie that all would be well.
Before leaving, I hugged Robert, whispering, “Are you all right?” He nodded, his forehead creased and eyes averted to the carpet.
As I joined Greg in the garage and we got into the car, I silently begged God to see my family through the next few days.
I
can walk,” Greg said as I backed our Ford Taurus out of the garage. “It isn't far.”
I managed a smile. “Yeah, right. A stranger walking through town with a bruised face and a stained shirt. You have any idea how many people would call Officer Hankins?”
“Oh.” He touched my shoulder. “Then we can talk before I go back?”
I could not believe this night. Greg Kostakis wanted to be with meâalone. The thrill I once could have taken in that. Now I felt only weary gratitude. “We can take a few minutes.” I reached the end of our street and turned right on Main. “I can probably find a spot outside town to stop.”
Instead of turning left on Minton toward the Matthews', I drove on straight through the stoplight. Two miles past the Bradleyville sign an old logging road veered left. We bumped over ruts and rounded a curve through maple trees until the highway lay out of sight. I rolled to a stop and turned off the car. Dust puffed up from the tires to hover, orange-tinted, in the breezeless sunset.
Suddenly, I had no idea what to do next.
Greg shifted to face me, fingers spread on his legs, the knuckles on his right hand puffy and red. I could see the faint indentation from his ring.
“I hope you can put your ring back on soon,” I said.
“I'm sure I will.”
I searched the corners of my mind for something to say. “Does it mean something? I mean the ring.”
The words sounded so stupid. Poor Greg, sitting there with a jaw that looked purple and swollen. It needed ice. I needed a hole to crawl into. My family needed my
mama
back.
“It's the stone for my birthday. A sapphire.” Greg felt his pocket, assuring himself the ring was still inside. “My parents buy it for me before I leave Greece. It means much to me.”
I nodded. “When is your birthday?”
“September twelve. I am sixteen last year. Yours is when?”
“February tenth. Sixteen for me, too.” I drew my shoulders in with a little shiver.
“You are cold?”
“No, it's warm. I just . . .” I focused on my lap.
“Jackie,” he said quietly, “Katherine will be okay. Your baba will protect her.”
My head came up. “Katherine! Who cares about Katherine?”
He studied me, brows knitting. “Ah, Iâ”
“She lied to Daddy! She didn't tell him about that man; I know she didn't. I could see it on his face. He can't afford to be hurt again, don't you see? We've already lost Mama. You know what it took for us to open our hearts to somebody else?”
The words tumbled over each other until tears pricked my eyes. I blinked them back. I felt shame enough; the last thing I needed was to cry.
Greg laid his hand on my arm. “I am so very sorry.”
The gentleness in his voice cracked something inside me. Slowly, I lowered my head to the steering wheel and broke into quiet sobs. Greg sighed with sympathy. “Here.” He pulled me toward him until I listed awkwardly over the console, arms crossed over my chest. Leaning against him, I shuddered air in and out, crying for Daddy, and our family, and Mama. Not to mention the hopelessly shattered night.
I don't know how long I cried, but I do remember what brought me out of it. The sensation of Greg's fingers silking through my hair. I stilled, suddenly aware, focusing on his touch. My back muscles pulled from the strange position I found myself in, but I did not want to move. I blinked my eyes open to focus on a button of his shirt, the silk fabric soft beneath my cheek. The faintest scent of his cologne lingered. I heard his heartbeat and closed my eyes again, listening. Until a noisy truck lumbered by out on the highway, breaking the spell. I moved away from Greg then and flopped back against my seat, exhaling a long breath. A blackbird swooped in front of the car, its wings sheening in the waning sun. I watched it fly away.
“You are okay?”
“Yeah.” I gazed at him ruefully. “I should be askin' you that. Your face looks terrible.”
One side of his mouth curved. “Thanks.”
“No, I didn't mean . . .” Carefully, I touched his cheek. “It must hurt.”
He folded his fingers around mine, easing them away from his face. “It is fine.”
We managed a little smile at each other. Then I realized my tears must have tracked through my blusher, and my nose probably rivaled Rudolph's. I looked away. “I should get back. Robert and Clarissa need me.”
“Of course.” He hesitated. “I want to see you again. Maybe go out tomorrow night?”
I picked a piece of lint off the car seat and rolled it between my finger and thumb. This was too good to be true, absolutely too good. Maybe just like Katherine and Daddy. Dueling voices argued inside my head.
Greg really likes me. Greg's got amillion girls and is just looking for something to do in Bradleyville.
“I don't know.”
“You don't know if you can, or you don't want to?”
I shook my head at the ridiculous question. “Of course I want to. But I'll have to see. I don't know . . . how my family will be.”
He brushed my cheek with a fingertip. My skin tingled under his touch. “I hope we can.”
When I let Greg off at the Matthews', he reached for my hand and pressed it between his palms. “Thank you for dinner. I pray for your family tonight.”
“Thank
you,”
I whispered. “For everything.”
S
aturday morning we took the phone off the hook.
By eight o'clock it rang like church chimes. Everybody knew a few details but not near enough. They wanted to know how we were, and for heaven's sake, what exactly happened?
Most of the calls came from my friends. Even the gossip-minded adults of Bradleyville carry a certain modicum of propriety. I talked to Alison, telling her everything about Katherine, swearing her to secrecy. Then Nicole called, then Cherise. I wouldn't tell them much. Milli-cent's demand of a minute-by-minute explanation proved the last straw. “I heard that guy was there too, and that he practically saved your life!” she breathed. “Is his jaw broken?”
Daddy heard me mumble an excuse that I had to go. That's when he told me to leave the receiver off the hook. He leaned against the counter looking bruised and worn, his hair still mussed from sleep. More likely, the lack of it. I hadn't slept that well myself. The knuckles on his right hand were swollen and discolored, matching Greg's, no doubt. He flexed his shoulders and arched his back like a football player after a hard game.
“How's your head?” I asked.
“Sore. But I'll live.”
Silence. I wanted desperately to ask him about his talk with Katherine but didn't know how. Funny how mere words can seem so threatening, as if tied tongues somehow deaden the hurt.
A tinny voice sounded from the phone. “If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again . . .” The annoying off-the-hook signal began, pulsating through my head. I jerked open a drawer and shoved the receiver inside. Even then we could still hear the tone. I glared at the drawer.
“It'll stop in a minute.” Daddy inhaled deeply and rubbed his eyes.
I took my time pouring myself a glass of orange juice. Offered Daddy some. He nodded. With a full glass before each of us, we sighed into our seats at the table. The flowers Greg had brought me stood in their vase like multicolored sentinels. I fingered a yellow petal, glad that they had been too tall to set on the dining room table the previous night. As with all else, they would have been knocked over and ruined.
My gaze shifted to Mama's chair. I stared at it, remembering how Daddy had brought it from the garage for Katherine. Only a week ago, but it seemed forever. I wondered if he would put it back.
“Did you apologize for me to the Matthews?” Daddy asked. I hadn't even seen him last night when I'd gotten home. He and Katherine were still talking, their conversation suspended as I walked past the family area toward Robert's bedroom.
“I didn't go in.”
Daddy's shoulders slumped. “You should have. Now I'll really need to call them.”
“You don't have to call anybody,” I declared. “Nothin' that happened last night was
your
fault.”
“Doesn't matter. It's the thing to do.”
“Daddyâ.” My mouth pressed shut against any disrespectful words. I wanted to shake his shoulders even as my heart lurched for him. My fingers wrapped firmly around my glass.
Daddy shifted in his chair. “Now listen, Jackie, I don't want a word said outside this house about what you heard last night, hear?”
Fortunately, he'd still been in his bedroom when Alison had called. “I know.”
Winnie sidled up to the glass door outside with her forlorn “I'm lonely” look. I ignored her.
“I'll need to call Officer Hankins soon,” Daddy said half to himself.
“You goin' to press charges?” A shiver ran through me as I imagined court appearances, the lingering gossip. As far as I was concerned, Trent Baxter could just leave town and take Katherine with him.
Piece of trash.
“No.” Daddy sighed. “On one conditionâthat he never sets foot in Bradleyville again.”
The threat of his tone pulled Greg's words into my thoughts.
Your baba will protect her.
Surely I misread my daddy's meaning. “And Katherine?” I pressed.
Daddy pushed his glass aside and rested both elbows on the table, looking me squarely in the eye as if he knew every murderous inclination I'd entertained about Katherine May King in the last twelve hours. “She'll be goin' to Robert's team's softball game with us at noon. And she'll be stayin' here for supper tonight.”
I ogled him, a hundred arguments swirling in my brain. I searched for the ones that mattered, instead grasping only at the stupidest of details. “We can't all fit in the car.” The game was thirty miles away. Robert's casted leg would take up half the backseat.
“I'll ride with Katherine. You can drive Robert and Clarissa.” Daddy's eyes never left my face, as if he expected an eruption and stood ready to quell it. That same surprised hurt I'd felt the day of Katherine's at-home spiraled through me. Here I sat, looking to comfort Daddy against all Katherine had done to him, to us, and he was choosing her side.
I sucked my top lip between my teeth. “How can you still want her around?” I whispered. “She's not . . . she's nothin' she pretended to be. She doesn't
deserve
you.”
Daddy shook his head. “She's not pretendin', Jackie. She's simply trying to rebuild her life after having made mistakes. In that way she's no different from a lot of people.”
“âA lot of people' don't try to be part of our family!” I retorted. The near-cracking of my voice brought heat to my cheeks. For some reason I did not want to let Daddy see how much Katherine had hurt me personally. I raised my chin. “Are you telling me you've forgiven her for everythingâjust like that?”
“Did you expect that I wouldn't?”
Were we living on two different planets? Hadn't he looked just twelve hours ago as if his world had caved in? “But you seemed so hurt and mad last night! I thought . . .” I couldn't finish the sentence.
“I was hurt. For a whole lot of reasons. Mad, too. Mostly because everything happened in front of you and your brother and sister, not to mention a guest. I knew Katherine was mortified.”
“Katherine
was mortified? I was mortified, and so were you when you heard everything about her! She told you she loved you when she was engaged to someone else. She came back here just to get you in her clutches!”