Paper Castles (20 page)

In the meantime, what did one do with a child who was convinced her mother murdered her father? A child whose rage grew more and more unpredictable each day. Pray? Oh yes indeed, Savannah prayed. Countless nights on bended knee, in tears, begging God to help Angela. The girl was suffocating in grief. School was an ordeal of relentless taunts and teasing. She’d lost friends: parents didn’t want their children associating with the daughter of a murderer. Who could blame them?

While Savannah suffered the silent treatment, Angela and PJ’s loud arguments rattled the ramparts. Healthy sibling bickering turned to the black feud of mortal enemies. Savannah feared they would scar each other for life and never be able to repair the relationship.

Savannah worried constantly about the effects of the situation on both of her children. Just because PJ kept his feelings tucked inside didn’t mean he wasn’t suffering as much as his sister.

Just the other night, Savannah had sat up in bed, trying to decipher a noise that woke her. She flipped the covers back and slid to the floor. Out the window, she could see PJ moving in and out of the light from the side porch. His basketball hit the backboard and he chased after it.

Savannah looked over at her bedside clock. One in the morning. She knelt to the floor and curled up near the windowsill, head on her arms and watched a boy grappling with his grief in the shadows below.

PJ stepped up to the free-throw line, its markings faded and scuffed after years of wear. He snugged his toes up to the boundary, taking every inch allowed. The ball moved from his left hand to his right and back again, as he stared at the net in front of him. Fingers spread wide, he gripped the ball with precision before lifting it overhead. With one smooth push, he sent it flying, his right hand following through in slow motion. Just the way Price taught him. Swish.

He looked around as if he might see his father standing on the sidelines, cheering him on. The night was silent, except for the thumping of a basketball on pavement.

The dinner table was always a battlefield. Any word or phrase could trip the trigger to the land mines Angela carefully placed around the table, tucked behind the bowl of green beans, or beneath the platter of roast beef.

Tonight Savannah merely said, “What did you and Julie do this weekend?
”

Angela threw her fork down, the clang of metal on china startling everyone. “What did I
do
?” Angela said, glaring across the table.

PJ’s fork hung in mid-air as he stared at his sister. Savannah glanced at Neenie for a clue and Neenie rolled her eyes.

“Well, let’s see,” Angela said. “What did I do? Oh yeah, I went to the cemetery to visit my father’s grave. It was Daddy’s birthday, remember?”

The air hissed out of the room like a punctured tire, and the evening began to break down.

“When was the last time you were there, Mother?” Angela had taken to calling Savannah
Mother
since the murder. No longer
Mommy
or
Mom
. She was removing herself in every way possible.

Savannah folded the napkin in her lap into neat pleats. “I’m glad you went, honey,” she said, keeping her voice calm. She had forgotten it was Price’s birthday. Something she’d have never done when he was alive.

“Why won’t you go to Daddy’s grave?” Angela shoulders were thrown back, chin jutting out like a warrior’s. A Joan of Arc riding into battle. Beneath her shiny armor, Savannah saw the little girl running to her mother with a skinned knee. She wanted Mommy to make everything all right.

“Angela, please.”

“I’m just asking you a question.”

Savannah saw the tears ready to fall, tears always at the ready because Angela lived life on the edge of hysteria.

“I don’t want to fight tonight.”

“We wouldn’t have to fight if you’d just say it.” Angela’s eyes were wild. Her body shaking, crying, completely undone, barely breathing as the words tore from her chest. “
Tell me you didn’t kill my father.”

“Baby...”

“Don’t call me Baby,” she shouted. “Just
answer
me.”

“Angela, shut up,” PJ said, his head in his hands, looking sick to his stomach. “Just shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You shut up.” Angela screamed. “I have just as much right to my opinion as you do. You know she did it. She hated Daddy.”

Savannah saw her daughter splitting into pieces: Daddy’s little girl, the vindictive woman and the child who still needed her Mommy. The three personalities rose up in unison and formed a firing squad, lined up against Savannah.

“Just tell me you didn’t do it,” Angela cried.

Savannah got up and walked around the table. She knelt beside Angela and looked up at the tear-stained, frightened face.

“You know I don’t remember that night,” Savannah said. “I don’t believe in my heart that I could’ve harmed your father.”

“Say you didn’t do it.” Angela’s lips were trembling. “Please.”

“I—”

“You
can’t
, can you?” Angela pushed Savannah away with enough force to knock her mother over, along with half the dishes on the table. Savannah froze at the sound of glass shattering on the floor.

“You ruined everyone’s life. You killed everything.” Angela stormed from the room.

PJ came to help Savannah up. “Don’t listen to her Mom. She’s nuts.”

Savannah shook her head. “No. Don’t say that.”

PJ wrapped her up in his arms and the two survivors held on for dear life as Neenie returned with a broom and dustpan to clean up the broken pieces.

P
HIL WAS back. And Savannah was glad. It leant a bit of normalcy to her days. Things had been extremely tense since the last blow-out with Angela. Savannah was holding her breath until school let out in a few days. The kids would go down to Florida to visit Price’s parents and Savannah prayed the trip would help her daughter find some peace.

“So we don’t know her name,” Phil said, bringing her back to the present. Like a dog with a bone, he kept coming back to the woman Savannah saw with Price the night of the Valentine’s Day dance.

“What
do
we know?” Phil asked himself.

“Nothing,” Savannah sighed.” She’s a ghost. The detectives said she didn’t exist.”

“Right. Detectives.” Phil bit down on the pencil between his teeth.

He was looking over the roster of attendees from the Valentine’s Dance. They’d been over it together a dozen times. Name by name. Some names were scratched out in red. A few had been circled, then after further investigation, scratched out too. Even Phil’s interview with the gossiping Delores unearthed no clues. Savannah was startled to learn the troublemaker who’d said “That’s not what I heard,” had in reality heard nothing at all.

Savannah could hear Price saying, “See, I told you, you were making it up. You’re crazy.” She shook her head, shaking the voice from its perch on her shoulder.

“Damn.” Phil tossed his pencil on the desk and ran his hand through dark hair. She watched as he took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

“Let’s take a break,” he said.

“Let’s get away from this desk. I’ll make us a snack and meet you in the backyard.”

Phil was settled on the porch swing when she pushed open the screen door. She carried a tray with chicken salad sandwiches, a pitcher of iced-tea, and a cold beer for Phil who gagged at the syrupy sweetness of sweet-tea.

“Might as well hook yourself up to an IV drip of sugar,” he said, the first time he tried the southern staple.

“Yankees,” both Neenie and Savannah mumbled.

The late May afternoon was warm and the garden was in full bloom. Savannah looked at the showy Iceberg roses surrounded by rows of neatly-trimmed boxwood. She remembered all the plans she and Gio had made for the garden tour this year. Those plans were gone. So was Gio. Like so many other things, he was a luxury she could no longer afford. She cried when she had to let him go, but he hugged her hard.

“Arrivederci Signora,” he said. “E buona fortuna.”

“Thank you Gio. I need all the luck I can get.”

Then he leaned in close and whispered. “In culo alla balena.”

Savannah laughed at their old joke.
Up the whale’s a
ss. Gio delighted in teaching her silly or even slightly naughty Italian phrases. Savannah was an excellent pupil and replied as Gio had taught her.

“Che non scoreggi.”
May it not fart
.

Gio smiled and nodded as he got in his beat up pick-up truck full of rakes, shovels, and bags of mulch, and drove out of her life.

One more good-bye.

She looked over at Phil who held his beer in one hand and sandwich in the other, the muscles in his jaw flexing as he chewed. He seemed to be chewing on something more than chicken salad. A determined look was in his eyes as he stared past the courtyard. In fact, he hadn’t quite seemed himself since he got back in town.

Maybe he has something going on in his personal life
.

The thought unnerved her for some reason. He’d never mentioned anything about a girlfriend. But why would he? It was none of her business.

They ate in silence, the only sound between them the splashing of the fountain in the center of the courtyard, a Greek goddess pouring water from an urn into the pool below. She’d poured the same stream for years, her expression never changing.

“Seems like this city is one big park full of fountains,” Phil said.

“One thing we Southerners have learned is how to keep cool. Just the sound of running water is enough to shave off a few degrees.”

Phil nodded slowly, chewing to the rhythm of the porch swing. “It’s so beautiful out here.”

“So much work that hasn’t been done,” Savannah said, eyeing the weeds that needed pulling. The garden needed constant attention. It was a chore she used to love, but she had neither time nor energy for it now.

She shrugged and turned her eyes away from the yard and back to Phil.

“How was Kip when you saw him?” she asked.

“Fine.”

Something’s wrong.
She felt it in her stomach—her old friend, Panic, revving its engine. Something was off.

“Just fine?”

His eyes flicked over her, taking the temperature of the moment, as if he were testing her strength.

“Remember I told you Kip and I were having a strategy session?”

“Yes.”

“Actually Kip and I, as well as your father, have done a lot of strategizing about the tack we should take for your defense.”

She’d been pushing her toe against the wooden floorboards to keep the swing in motion. Now she stopped. He had her full attention. She watched him, looking for clues tucked behind careful words.

“We’ve wracked our brains trying to come up with another solution.”

“What do you mean
another
solution? As opposed to what?”

Phil looked over at her, his eyes gentle, his words gentler. “As opposed to you not remembering what happened.”

She sat staring at that implausible excuse. Knowing when it was handed over to the jurors, they’d hand it right back, insulted.

“So...” She tilted her chin toward him.

“Look Savannah, I’m going to poke all the holes I can in every bit of the D.A.s so-called evidence. But that’s still a long shot. We need a defense.”

“A long shot?” For some reason she’d believed that things were going swimmingly. Now she was a long shot? Savannah Palmerton: Long Shot. Hundred-to-one-odds.

“Jury trials are always a walk into the unknown, but most of the time, the jury
wants
to find you not guilty. It’s my job to give them a reason, a way out. Something they can believe in. Something they can hang their not guilty verdict on and walk out of that courtroom with their heads held high. Do you understand?”

“Of course.”

“Your father and Kip and I would like for you to meet with a doctor.”

Suspicion coiled around her ankles. “What kind of doctor?”

“A psychiatrist.”

The word came whizzing out of left field, whooshed by her head, and landed in the fountain with a splash. The Greek goddess went on smiling and pouring.