Faithful Unto Death (15 page)

“Is that all?” I asked. “End of story?”

Jenasy turned so that she was facing Nat directly, kind of edging me out.

“Dad goes to Bradford Williams,” she says, looking only at Nat. “He’s the managing partner, and Dad tells Williams what he knows. Dad said Williams was seriously pissed. Pissed that one of their lawyers would have pulled such a trick in a court of law, but Dad said it was pretty clear that Williams was even more upset that Dad had brought it to his attention. Williams didn’t come right out and say it or anything, but the feeling Dad got was that Williams thought Dad should have just kept his mouth shut and forgotten about it. That Dad had dumped it all on Williams’s shoulders and Williams was not happy.”

“And?” I said.

“So Williams said there would have to be a confidential meeting with all the partners there, and that’s like, halfway impossible because everybody is traveling and there’s never a time when all the partners are in the office, and each time Dad asked Williams about it, Williams got snottier and snottier.

“Dad told me he thought he was going to have to report it himself. And that would mean he would have to leave the law firm, because he would not be the most popular partner on the seventeenth floor, right? Everyone was going to be hurt bad. It could even bring the law firm down, but if Dad couldn’t get the firm to take action, he didn’t know what else to do. He said he was not going to be a party to a lie; his father hadn’t raised him that way, and it counted less than nothing that this sleaze lawyer was sucking up to me.”

Now Jenasy’s eyes teared up and she tilted her head back to keep the tears from spilling out.

“You know what I’m wondering, right? I’m wondering did this perjury guy decide to make sure Dad never reported it?”

Or that Bradford Williams guy, or another partner who got wind of the story and didn’t want to see a twenty-year investment turned to ashes for a mistake someone else had made, and for someone else’s conscience. Seemed to me the circle of suspects had just increased by however many partners Graham had.

And who had gone to the Garcias’ the very day Graham was killed and tried to collect Graham’s laptop and papers?

Twenty

H
ow could you fit together all the pieces of Graham Garcia’s personality? Baby Bear and I had a short run on the levee, then took a break right about where Alex told me he’d seen his dad the night Graham had been killed.

Graham Garcia had not been a simple man, whether or not he was, as his son suspected, a Humbert Humbert. But not with Jo. With some other young girl with long dark hair. Who was Jo’s size.

My own meeting with Graham had left me puzzled. Graham came off as a distant, hard man, determined to end his marriage on his own terms. He hadn’t once mentioned his children by name, or the effect a divorce might have on them. There were no questions as to how to do as little damage as possible to the wife he would be leaving behind. On the other hand, he hadn’t tried to justify himself, or explain why Honey was the real reason the marriage had failed. He hadn’t told me it was all her fault.

Garcia had said his adopted son would not have wanted to shame his father. From Dr. Garcia’s description, he had been driven even as a child, a boy who had to become a man way too soon. A twelve-year-old rescuing his mother.

When I was that age, my greatest worry was whether or not I’d get to play first string for my junior high football team. Graham, once he escaped his terrible home, had worked like a demon to fit into a world he hadn’t been prepared for. And he had succeeded. He’d fit in beautifully. He’d made serious money. He’d married the beautiful daughter of a rich man. He’d had two beautiful children.

Father Nat told me that Graham had been a deeply committed Christian, a regular at the seven-thirty mass Sunday mornings and a generous giver. Once Jenasy had left, I’d asked if Graham had ever said anything about an affair—Nat had replied, “You know we Catholics hold ourselves to a higher standard; the confessional really is sacred, Bear.” Then he’d given me a slap on the back that I felt clean through to my sternum.

I felt sure that if Graham had confessed to the affair, he hadn’t mentioned that it had been with a young teenager—no way Nat would’ve been so blithe.

The story Jenasy recounted showed her father as a man who would accept great personal sacrifice rather than compromise his integrity. But somehow, sleeping with a teenager wasn’t a challenge to that integrity?

In spite of what Dr. Garcia said, I didn’t see him as the reason why Graham didn’t initiate divorce proceedings himself. Graham’s stepbrother had divorced and there had been no rift in the father-son relationship. Sooooo . . .

I couldn’t make it work. I don’t know what a pedophile looks like, but still, Garcia didn’t look like one. And wouldn’t a pedophile want to hang on to a background like Graham’s? Wouldn’t his family offer the perfect cover? What would he have to gain from a divorce? I mean, it’s not as though he could marry a child. There’s no way such an affair, if it can even be called an affair, could be anything more than a dalliance.

Twenty years ago, when I started preaching, I was expected to have a fresh sermon Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. It doesn’t matter how good a preacher you are, you’re going to run dry if you keep to that schedule. Thank you, God, most churches handle things differently now.

Unlike Tuesday nights, when you have a number of more secular and social classes to choose from, Wednesday night is worship and Bible study. You could choose from four or five adult Bible studies on Wednesday nights, and all our youth classes met then, too. Usually, this was time I enjoyed. I love my job, but it’s good to hear someone else’s take on the Christian walk.

Last night, the idea of sitting in any of the classes for an hour made me feel itchy all over. Like I ought to be someplace else, doing something else. I didn’t know what I could do, and that made it worse.

Worse yet was going out to my car with Annie Laurie at eight thirty—the soonest I could leave on Wednesday nights after all the meeting and greeting—neither of us having seen Jo anywhere in the halls. We thought she might be visiting in a friend’s car. She was. Alex’s.

Once we were all in our car (the wayward daughter, too), with the windows rolled up, I put the car into drive and said, “I thought I had made it plain that you weren’t to have anything to do with Alex until this whole mess was straightened out.”

Jo said, “Yes.”

I said, “Yes, what?” and squeezed past Mrs. Farmer, who will wait for an engraved invitation before she’ll venture into oncoming traffic.

She said, “Yes, sir.”

I said, “Jo, you know what I mean.”

Jo said, “Dad. Yes. You made it plain you didn’t want me to see or talk to Alex. You’ve been clear how you feel about me seeing Alex. What I don’t know is how your feelings fit in with your Christianity.”

If we hadn’t already been so close to home, I would have pulled the car over. Annie Laurie put a hand on my knee.

“Okay, explain that, please. The bit about my feelings and my Christianity.”

“All right. But just so you know, you are asking me a question, and I’m going to answer it honestly, and if you ground me for answering honestly, then you’re a Nazi.”

I said, taking a deep breath first (it didn’t help), “In the first place, Jo, you’re already grounded until your wisdom teeth come in, and that’s going to be when you’re around twenty-five—”

Annie Laurie said, “Actually Bear, Jo’s are coming in early. She’s going to have to have them out; I meant to tell you—”

“And in the second place,” I said, ignoring Annie Laurie’s helpful comment on Jo’s upcoming dental expenses, “we need to go over our World War Two history again if you think I’m being a Nazi—”

We pulled into the garage and Annie Laurie jumped out of the car saying, “I’m going to go walk Baby Bear while you two refight World War Two.”

I grabbed a bottle of water from the garage refrigerator on the way into the house. Jo, making a huge business of it, got a glass out of the cabinet, filled it with ice and tap water, and sat down in the easy chair Baby Bear favors. The tap water was her way of letting me know I was destroying the planet by way of disposable plastic bottles.

Jo said, “If you sit down instead of glowering over me, I’ll answer your question.”

Where does my girl get words like “glowering”? I can’t remember the last time she picked up a book that wasn’t required reading.

I sat down on the hassock in front of the fireplace. That put me eye to eye with Jo. She didn’t flinch.

Jo said, “Dad, will you please not interrupt—”

I said, “I never interrupt—”

“Like you just did? I’ll tell you when I’m done, okay? If you have a question, hold up two fingers. If I don’t stop, that means your question has to wait until I’m done.”

What she was doing was she was being snotty. Back when I read to Merrie and Jo, I used the two-finger method. If I hadn’t, we’d never have made it through a book.

Jo said, “And I’m not being snotty, either. I think your two-finger trick worked. So is that okay?”

I looked at my Jo, face like a heart, dark waves of hair falling halfway to her waist, her jeans too snug on her frail, slim body.

I said, “How am I not living up to my faith, Jo?” I really wanted her to tell me. I needed to know.

She said, “Okay, so you know how you used to read to us? Remember you read that book about how some German people fought back against the Nazis? How some people hid Jewish children, even though hiding them put their own children at risk? How the Nazis discovered some families that had hid Jewish children, and to make an example of them, the Nazis took away the Jewish children, and hung the family’s own children right in front of their eyes? Do you remember reading that to us?”

I did remember. Thinking back on it now, it seems like reading
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
to children, but I thought it was a good idea at the time.

Jo said, “I remember Merrie asking you if you thought those parents had done the right thing, because parents are supposed to protect their children, and you said yes, the German parents had done the right thing, even though their children died, and they died, too. You said a Christian had to love God more than anyone else, more than your father or your mother or your children, and that the way you show God that you love Him is to ‘trust and obey.’ You remember?”

What I didn’t remember was Jo paying attention during all this reading and discussing. In my memory, she was always dressing and undressing Barbie dolls or messing with the hair on her My Little Pony while I read at bedtime. Merrie was the one who was listening. I finished my bottle of water and crushed it in my hands.

“So, Dad. You don’t want me to spend time with Alex because even though you know it’s not true, some tiny little weasel part of your brain thinks, ‘Oh my gosh, what if he’s a murderer.’” Jo used a deep “dad” voice.

“See, you’re trying to protect me. You’re mad at me all the time, but it’s still your job to protect me.”

The “weasel brain” didn’t hurt, but the “it’s your job” did. It really did.

“But, Dad, that’s like being a bad German parent. Alex is my friend. This is the worst time in his entire life.”

All sixteen years of it. I noticed that Alex was Jo’s “friend.” I wasn’t hearing anything about love from Jo. That was good. Unless it was bad. Unless Jo wasn’t saying she loved Alex because she thought she loved someone else. Someone older.

“His dad is dead and he’s dead in a horrible way because dying from murder is way worse than dying from cancer or something normal. And Alex was already upset about his dad before the murder so things weren’t good between them and they can’t be fixed now.”

Echoes of Honey’s grief, that now things could never be put right.

“The police are all over Alex’s case because of . . . stuff. His mom is a wreck and Jenasy is being a complete”—a look at me—“witch. And this is when you want me to stay away from Alex? When he needs me most of all? And you know what? Even if Alex was a murderer—Dad, sit back down, he’s not a murderer; he didn’t kill his father, but even if he did—you know what the Bible says? You have to forgive him. You have to. Because if you don’t, God won’t forgive you. That’s what it says, Dad. You know what you say from the pulpit, ‘Hard truths.’”

I held up two fingers.

Jo considered, and then nodded. “Go ahead, I’m not done, but you can ask a question.” She lifted her planet-friendly ice water to her mouth, drank, and set her glass on the floor near her feet.

The kitchen door opened. Annie and the dog were back. Baby Bear leapt into the room, did a fast circuit of the family room, kitchen, dining room, and hall bath, then ran back to the family room and jumped up into Jo’s lap. He outweighs her by nearly a hundred pounds, but Baby Bear can’t stop longing for the three or so months of his life when he could be called a lapdog. Jo pushed him to the floor and he settled between her Doc Martens, got up, sucked down half of Jo’s water, secured an ice cube, and settled back down to make a mess. Jo always wore those heavy black Doc Martens on her delicate little feet because if someone stepped on her foot and she was wearing sandals, it could mean an injury. If someone stepped on the Doc Martens, Jo wouldn’t even notice. And no matter how hard Baby Bear tried, he couldn’t get them off her feet. He’d pretty much given up trying.

I heard Annie take a glass from the cabinet, and then the glug of wine being poured. On a Wednesday night. She came in and sat on the arm of Jo’s easy chair, her wine-free hand automatically stroking and twining through Jo’s dark hair.

I said, “Jo, what about ‘Obey your parents’?”

Jo threw her hands out; the poor child was dealing with density.

“Dad, shit, that’s it.”

I started to say something.

Jo said, “‘Shit’ is a vulgarity, not a profanity. Nana says you’re very vulgar.”

I let it pass.

Jo said, “Dad, I’m sorry I said ‘shit.’ But don’t you get it? That’s what Jesus was saying when he said that ‘Love me more’ thing. It’s seriously wrong to abandon a friend; to abandon Alex when he needs me more than he ever did before, that’s like, that’s going-to-hell wrong. And even if it wasn’t wrong, Dad, I will never leave Alex, Dad, he loves me, he believes in me.”

And then the tears, and the rush upstairs, and the slammed bedroom door, and there I sat, two fingers up. “Jo, do you know I believe in you? Do you know I love you?”