Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (26 page)

A voice cried out, “Or the old man bust your butt!”

U of H released me and sat down so he was on eye level with Alex. “
I'll
bust your butt, dig?”

“This mean you let the kid take her out?” asked a new voice.

“I have to talk to her mom,” I said.

Alex said, “You
know
Mrs. Wells thinks it's okay for me to take Jo out.”

“Dude,” said U of H.

I didn't say anything.

“
Dude
,” said U of H.

“All right,” I caved.

Alex sprang to his feet and held his hand out to shake. Unnecessarily dramatic, but I shook. The cell applauded and a guard came in wanting to know what the noise was about. No one told him. He told a Peter Cartwright that he was being released and a guy dressed in scrubs gave us a wave and left. The skinny white guy sat down in Cartwright's space.

After that, Alex insisted I take his floor space and I said no and he insisted and I said no and U of H grabbed me by the pants leg and pulled me down until I was sitting.

The dinner hour arrived, none of us knowing what hour that was, as watches and phones had been confiscated. Dinner was served on school lunch trays without cutlery of any kind. It consisted of chicken-fried meat patties with cream gravy, canned corn, little cubes of carrots, and month-old rolls. It looked like a school lunch that had been sitting uncovered in a warehouse for nine months.

The short-sleeved business shirt said, “Look.” He picked up his cutlet of ground meat and a neat circle of congealed gravy rose from the tray with it. He gave the cutlet a shake and the gravy flapped like stingray wings.

I said, “Dang,” and the James Earl Jones guy rumbled with laughter.

“Wait until you see breakfast,” he said.

U of H put his tray on the floor and slid it out of the cell. Alex and I followed suit.

Business shirt propped his stingray cutlet over the roll and built a carrot square rampart around it. He flicked corn kernels at the stingray, making bomb noises. You have to appreciate a man who can create his own entertainment.

A guard came to the cell. “Seventy-five? Your coach is here. He bailed you out.”

U of H groaned. “Coach is going to run me until I drop. I hope you let him know this is all about an overdue registration sticker,” he said to the guard.

“You got arrested over an overdue registration sticker?” I said incredulously.

We exchanged names and numbers that we couldn't write down and probably wouldn't remember. But I would remember his jersey number.

•   •   •

The cell thinned and filled, thinned and filled. I made Alex sit down. Sleep was impossible, but some slept.

At last, a guard called our names and Alex and I went through the interminable business of recovering our belongings, relacing shoes, threading belts through belt loops, slipping my wedding ring back on my finger.

As we were escorted into the receiving room, Jo launched herself at me—uh, no. It was Alex she was aiming at. Alex, her white knight.

Annie sat in a molded plastic chair, smiling at me. I walked over to her and she stood and put her arms around my waist.

Her mouth touched my ear. “Bear,” she said, “I've always had a thing for bad boys, you know that?”

I laughed.

“Come on. Let's go to The Breakfast Klub,” Annie said.

Seventeen

W
e piled into the car and went to The Breakfast Klub, a Houston institution. Any morning of the week, you'll find the power elite drinking coffee and talking politics, hipsters and musicians who haven't been to bed yet, construction workers and businessmen, standing in line for their turn at one of the dozen tables.

Alex and I were starving, and between us we placed orders for plates of fried catfish, grits and eggs, for waffles and fried chicken wings, for pork chops and eggs and biscuits. Jo wanted only coffee but Alex insisted she drink a glass of Breakfast Klub Choco-Milk with him and she did. She wouldn't have done it for me.

Over the roar of the gospel music being blasted from the sound system, Jo and Annie Laurie filled us in on what Alex and I had missed.

Jo and Cara had arrived at the trailer park full of bravado. Jo knew where the extra key was hidden—Phoebe had shared this knowledge with Jo and Alex in case they ever needed a place to “be alone.” Uh-hunh. What Jo didn't know was that there was someone living in the trailer—Phoebe's grandfather. Mr. DeWitt had moved there a few months after Phoebe had moved in with her father. But Jo and Phoebe were no longer friends by then—Phoebe hadn't given Jo that update.

All the lights were out, so Jo wasn't alerted to the fact that there was a new tenant. She let herself in and was patting down the walls, looking for a light switch, when she stumbled upon Mitch DeWitt, who had been sleeping on the floor. He rose up and scared Jo half to death. Evidently they both screamed and DeWitt grabbed his gun.

To my mind, a gun is a tad excessive when you're facing down a five-foot-two-inch mite of a girl. About the worst you could have coming to you would be a heavy dose of sarcasm—teenage girls are masters of sarcasm. I mean, what was she going to do? Flail him to death with her itty-bitty hands?

It turns out Mitch DeWitt was on solid legal ground, though. In Texas, a “person is presumed justified in using deadly force to protect themselves against an unlawful, forceful intrusion into their dwelling.” I asked if it could be considered a forceful intrusion when Jo had used a key to get in? A key that had been offered for her use by the then-owner of the trailer? Annie put one of her biscuits on my plate and told me she had asked her sister Stacy's husband Chester, a lawyer, exactly that question. His response was, did we really want to go to court to find out?

Annie said that Chester had called Mark Pickersley, who called Mitch DeWitt, and told him that if he wanted to continue to live in the trailer, he needed to drop the charges. Mark said he was the one paying for the space the trailer took up. DeWitt dropped the charges. Annie told Mark we would pay for having a new front door installed, since I had damaged the bolt, lock and the framing around the door in my eagerness to get in.

“How did Brick do with the eulogy?” I asked Annie.

She put two of her fried chicken wings on my plate and I ate them, too. I hadn't had anything to eat since lunch the day before.

“You would have been proud, Bear. I can't describe it to you. It will have been recorded. You need to listen to it. It was comforting. Reassuring.”

“How was Mark about the last-minute change?”

“He was confused, but it all happened too quickly for him to react, and then Brick did such a lovely job.”

I nodded. I crooked my hand at Jo to come over, and she put down the biscuit she had been nibbling on and came to me. I sat her on my knee, her back to her mom, put my hand beneath the weight of her hair, and I lifted it up. High on her nape, right below the first tendrils of dark hair, was a tiny bird. It looked red and sore and there was a sheen of salve on it. I tapped beneath it with a finger. Annie's mouth made an
O
.

“It's a phoebe. That's a bird.” Annie's eyes got watery and she sniffed.

“Did it hurt?” I asked Jo.

Jo's eyes were level on mine, unflinching. “Yes. It was supposed to.”

Okay. My child was atoning. I got that. I would have preferred a less permanent mea culpa, but if it had to be a tattoo, well, this was a small and discreet tattoo. I could live with it. Just as well, since I was going to have to.

Alex had watched the exchange carefully. He said now, “Jo, your dad says it's okay if we date.”

Annie added eyebrows to her
O
.

Jo looked at me for confirmation and I nodded. “You're grounded now, but when that's over, yes. You can go out with Alex. There's going to be restrictions, but yes.”

Annie said, “How did that come about?”

I explained that our entire jail cell had voted and Alex had won. Jo slipped off my lap and went back to Alex. “How long am I grounded for?”

“Five hundred years.”

“Dad!”

“Four-fifty.”

“Dad!”

“Your mom and I will talk about it, Jo. It's going to be a long time. You could have been killed. This is a big deal. But I don't want to talk about it right now. Where is Cara, by the way?”

“Home and grounded,” said Annie Laurie.

“Good,” I said.

Jo had guts, I'll give her that. I like a woman with guts. I like them to stay alive, is all I'm saying.

From:
Merrie Wells

To:
Walker Wells

Jo says you spent the night in jail. I bet her $50 you were there to bail someone out. Do I owe her or does she owe me?

•   •   •

After my shower, I had to go over to the Pickersley-Smythes . . . wait. Scratch that. I had to go over to the Pickersleys', as I would now be calling them, and apologize for letting them down at the memorial and for Jo's prying. I called ahead.

Mark met me at the door and took me back to the kitchen where Liz was constructing an elaborate sugar-free dessert tray to drop off for her Bunco group. She gave me a crimped smile and asked me why my daughter thought it was okay to break into other people's homes and had we had this problem with her before.

“Sit down, Bear. She doesn't mean it that way.” Mark poured me some iced tea and pushed a bowl filled with sweetener packets my way. He leaned against the kitchen island and watched his wife's preparations. I drank the tea unsweetened. I hate sweeteners. I know lots of diabetics, all of whom keep sugar on hand for the thousands of people in the world who aren't diabetic. But not Liz.

You know, I was there to do the groveling bit, but I thought it was a little harsh to call Jo a housebreaker. Especially since Phoebe had entered our house without permission more times than we could know. I said, “Liz, Phoebe showed Jo where the extra key was hidden, and—”

“It's not Phoebe's trailer, anymore.”

“And she didn't know anyone else was living there—”

“Does she break into the model homes here in the neighborhood? Since no one lives in them?” Liz set a pastry down on the tray with enough force to crumble it. “She likes to use other people's property as if it's her own, is that it?”

Mark choked on his tea. “Liz, could you stop busting his balls? What do you care, anyway? It's a lousy trailer—you've barely even set foot in it.”

“Excuse me, Mark, but I'm the one who cleaned that trailer from end to end when Jenny died and you moved Phoebe here. I thought the idea was we'd sell it to give you some much-needed personal funds. In case you wanted to contribute. To the household.” She gave him a poisonous smile and he smiled right back.

So it wasn't just
my
balls she was after.

“I didn't know then,” she went on, “that all my labor was going into making that trailer more comfortable for a drunk.” Another tart met its demise under Liz's hand. She gave me a sharp look as she picked the broken tart up and dropped it down the disposal, like it was my fault the tart had broken.

I said, “I want to apologize for not being there for the memorial service—”

“It's okay, Bear, Chester explained,” Mark said. “Brick did a fine job. He did a good job.”

“What I'd like to know, Bear, is
why
Jo broke into the house,” Liz harped on.

God tells me I have to love everyone, and I do try. But he doesn't say anything about liking them. I didn't like Lizabeth Pickersley-Smythe. I guessed she was still using the “Smythe.” “Jo feels guilty about what happened to Phoebe and—”

“What
happened
to her?” Liz wrapped the dessert tray around and around with Press'n Seal so tightly, it looked like a scene out of
Dexter
. “Nothing
happened
to her. She
killed
herself. She never gave a thought for anyone else, and poor Mark has—” She froze when Mark reached across the island and put two fingers on her lips.

“That's enough, Liz.”

I stood up and put my iced tea glass in the sink. “So, anyway, Annie and I wanted to tell you how sorry we are for everything, and to please send us the bill.” I headed for the door. The woman whacked the tray down on the counter, probably breaking all her carefully wrapped tarts, and followed me. Mark came along, no enthusiasm for the task.

“I still don't understand what Jo thought she was doing in that trailer. If you could explain it, I could—”

My hand on the door handle, I turned to face her. “Lizabeth, I don't
know
why Jo let herself in to Phoebe's trailer—”

“It was never really Phoebe's trailer—”

“I know Jo is feeling haunted by Phoebe's death—”

Liz put her hands on her hips. “So now Phoebe is a ghost? Is that right? She's
haunting
Jo?”

I closed my eyes and took a breath. Opened my eyes. She was still there. Hard to believe I once thought she was a handsome woman. If Mark Pickersley was paying for his sins, then God preserve me from the sin of adultery—that is a price too high.

“I'm going to say good-bye.” I opened the front door and stepped out. Liz stepped out, too. If she started down the street after me, I might just break into a run.

“Send Jo over,” said Liz. “How about that? Let her explain for herself. I'd like to have a word with her. Maybe she can explain to me why she thinks she's entitled to go breaking into other people's—” Mark had her by the upper arm and was pulling her back into the house.

I walked to my car and got in, Liz still talking. I shut the door and started my engine. I could still hear her, so I turned the radio on really loud.

•   •   •

I took a personal day from work for the rest of Friday and went home to sleep. Of course, it left me an insomniac later that evening, so around one
A.M.
, I gave up trying to sleep and went into my office and found Brick's eulogy on the church's website. I played it. Annie Laurie was right. Brick had done a good job.

Jo's bedroom door opened and I heard the heavy pad of Baby Bear's feet and Jo's lighter tread. They came into the office and Jo curled up on the easy chair and listened to Brick try to sum up a young girl's unhappy life. At one point she stiffened, got up and took the mouse from me. She drew the cursor back and played a segment again. Then she stopped the recording.

“Is that true?”

“What, honey?”

“Was she really going to go to the Air Force Academy?”

“Before everything went wrong for her, yeah. It looked like she had a shot.”

Jo gave me a long, considering pause. “Can I see something?” She unplugged my laptop and carried it to the easy chair. She did some typing and some scrolling and then closed the page she'd been looking at. She handed me back the laptop and then rubbed her fingers together, calling Baby Bear to her. “Night, Dad,” she said, and they went back up to bed. I listened to the rest of the eulogy. Afterward, I looked at the History button, which showed me that Jo had gone first to Wikipedia, then to the United States Air Force Academy, then to the United States Air Force page.

I thought I heard Jo crying in her room.

From:
Walker Wells

To:
Merrie Wells

Subject:
Updates

Hey, Sugarpie—Remember when I was in the hospital and I said I missed you and you said you would keep in touch more often?

From:
Merrie Wells

To:
Walker Wells

Subject:
Re: Updates

Hey, Dad—Sorry. Meant to. Everything is fine here. Same stuff over and over. I'm working hard at track. Really hard.
Really
hard. It's not like high school. No games, no songs at practice. And Dad, I'm not tall here. 5'10”—that's not tall in college. You know what they call me? Midge. As in Midget. I'm Midge Wells out here. I'm thinking of dropping.

From:
Walker Wells

To:
Merrie Wells

Subject:
Re: Updates

What you lack in inches, you have in smarts. You run smart, girl. Try harder. You'll be fine. Don't be a quitter, Midge. The Wellses aren't quitters.

From:
Merrie Wells

To:
Walker Wells

Subject:
Re: Updates

Don't call me Midge, Dad.

From:
Walker Wells

To:
Merrie Wells

Subject:
Re: Updates

Coming home when, babyheart? I need to see my girl.