The Proviso (96 page)

“What are you doing here?” Eric barked.

There wasn’t much she could say to that except the
truth.

He threw up his hands and said, “Okay, but it’s your
funeral. And put your holster back on if you’re going out.”

She shrugged into her holster, stuck her badge on
her pocket, grabbed her purse, and accidentally kicked over the
wastebasket that was under her desk. She stooped to pick up the
trash and her brow wrinkled as her hand encountered what felt like
cotton balls. “What in the world . . . ?” she whispered as she
picked up a handful of cotton stuffing and brought it up to her
face, but she didn’t have time to think about it. Those people were
hungry.

She met up with the mother and her children a couple
of minutes later and smiled at the woman, whose tears had not
abated.

“Come with me, Mrs. Barber.”

“Oh,” she sniffed, “that ain’t my name. It’s Dawson.
I ain’t married to Billy, but I been with him nigh onto ten years,
since I’s fifteen.”

Justice was hard pressed to keep her jaw from
dropping on the floor. Twenty-five? This woman was Justice’s age
yet looked like she was about to hit menopause. She blinked. “Well,
okay, Miss Dawson—er—”

“Betty.”

“Okay. Betty,” Justice said as she hefted the
youngest child up into her arms. “My name’s Justice. Let’s
eat.”

It was fifteen more minutes before the six of them
were seated at a table inside the café across from the
courthouse.

“Order anything you like, Betty. As much as you
want. And for the kids, too.”

“You don’t mind?” she asked, uncertain but
hopeful.

“Not at all. And if I don’t think you’ve ordered
enough, I’ll order more.”

The look on the woman’s face was of utmost gratitude
and she proceeded to order enough food to feed a starving nation.
But of course, these five people
were
starving. Justice made
sure the kids’ glasses were kept full of milk and juices and that
they ate as much as they could possibly hold. And Justice tried to
hold her tongue, though she wanted very badly to pick Betty’s
brain. Finally, when the devouring of food had calmed somewhat,
Justice began.

“Betty, tell me something. Do you love Billy?”

Betty looked up at Justice, her eyes sharp and face
hard. “Why?” she asked in a dangerous tone, but Justice went on,
undaunted, yet studying her fingernails intently.

“Because I wanted to know why you stay with him and
put up with this life when you could do so much better.”

The woman swallowed heavily and cast her eyes down
at her plate. “That’s just it, Miz Justice. I couldn’t do no
better. Billy, at least he feeds us . . . ” But her voice trailed
off. “Well, I guess he don’t, now do he?” She looked up at Justice,
who, though she looked younger, felt older by decades at that
moment. “You got a man?”

Justice cast a glance down at the bare ring finger
on her hand and—again—felt deeply the loss of something she’d never
had to begin with. She nodded. “Yes.”

“What’s it like to love your man, to know he loves
you?”

Justice started, and looked back up at Betty. She
stared at the woman for a long while without actually seeing her.
“I don’t know, Betty,” she finally murmured.

“What’s that mean?”

“He doesn’t love me.”

“Do you love him?”

“Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

“Oh. Well, what’s he like? Does he hit you? Or force
you ever’ night? Does he get drunk and tear into your kids? Does he
cheat on you?”

The enormity of Betty’s sincere questions and the
significance of the answers washed through Justice and she shook
her head again. “He, um,” Justice cleared her throat. “No, he
doesn’t do any of that stuff. He takes care of me.”

“Then from where I’m sittin’, it don’t matter
whether he loves you or not.”

“I can see that.”

“Do you like layin’ with him?”

Justice swallowed as she remembered the week before,
being wrapped in Knox’s arms on the couch and feeling so warm and
secure, so cared for. That night in the grass. The weekend spent
watching movies, sharing popcorn. “Oh, yes,” she sighed, then
cleared her throat again. “So why were you crying over Billy in the
courtroom?”

“Because he’s all we got. I don’t think I could make
it on my own with four kids. We couldn’t get up enough money to buy
off that bastard prosecutor Hilliard. Shoot, ever’body knows he’d
sell his mother down the river for enough cash, but we didn’t have
it.”

Justice’s eyebrows rose. “Really. How much did you
have?”

“Two hunnerd and seventy-five dollars.”

“How much did he say it would take?”

“Three hunnerd. We just couldn’t come up with the
other twenty-five, and he knew it.”

Justice huffed and rolled her eyes. He could be
obnoxious, that was for sure, and she wondered if he’d done it out
of boredom, frustration, or amusement.

“Betty,” she ventured, not sure she wanted to open
this can of worms, “he doesn’t fix cases. Never has.”

“Oh, how would you know anything about Knox
Hilliard?” she snapped. “Anybody can tell just by lookin’ atcha
that you wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout him.”

Justice just looked at her, confused. “Betty, he’s
my boss. Why do you think I’m wearing a gun and a badge?”

Betty’s jaw dropped as she worked at her vocal
cords, but nothing came out besides helpless gurgles. “You—you’re—
You work— Knox Hilliard?”

Justice nodded.

“You—” she gasped. “You—
bitch
! You—this food
an’ an’ an’ bein’ nice an’ all an’—oh!” She looked around
frantically. “C’mon, kids, we—we gotta—” she gulped as she looked
at the plate of food she hadn’t quite finished. “We gotta go.”

“Betty, wait—”

“Don’t you touch me!” she screeched. “C’mon,
kids!”

“Mama, tell Billy Junior to gimme my teddy bear
back,” pleaded the littlest one.

“C’mon, Billy Junior! Chad!”

“Mama!” squealed Chad.

Betty continued to bluster disconcertedly as she
packed up the children.

“No, please, Betty, stay. Eat some more,” Justice
pleaded. “I know you’re hungry. This doesn’t have anything to do
with Knox.”

“No, I—not with you! I wouldn’t take nuthin’ from
you—workin’ for Hilliard! You tricked me!”

“Mama!” the boy screamed.

“Chad, you stop that right now!”

“But Billy took my bear!” he wept, tears coursing
down his face and streaking the dirt as he struggled to stand up in
the seat.

“What bear?” Betty snapped. “You ain’t got no
bear.”

“I do! I do!” he insisted as he sobbed. “Big gold
man gimme bear.”

Billy Junior held up the medium-sized brown fur bear
by one of the paws. “He ain’t no good, though,” said the older boy.
“He’s all crinkly.”

Betty snatched the bear, glared at both boys, then
tried to scoot out of the booth.

“Wait, Betty—”

“Don’t wanna talk to you.”

“There’s a note on the teddy bear, Ma,” Billy Junior
intoned. “What’s it say?”

Betty looked down at the bear in her hand absently,
then her brow wrinkled as she took a closer look. “What’n the
hell’s this?” she muttered as she plucked at the back of the toy,
then gasped as she drew out a piece of green paper. “Oh, my good
Lord,” she whispered in awe as she held up a soft, worn hundred
dollar bill and relaxed back into the booth. She looked back at the
animal and poked through it. “It’s full o’ them puppies. Hunnerd
dollar bills.” She glared at Chad then. “Where’d you git this,
youngun? I won’t be havin’ you takin’ after your pa an’
thievin’.”

“Big gold man gimme.”

There was only one “big gold man” in that courthouse
and Justice thought she might cry right there.

“What’s the note say, Ma?”

Looking abashed, Betty said, “Well, I forgot my
readin’ glasses. Don’t know what it says.”

“I’ll read it for you, Betty.”

She glared at Justice. “Mind you, I kin read. I just
don’t got my glasses handy.”

“I understand.”

Reluctantly Betty handed the note to Justice and
Justice gulped at the computer-generated message. “‘Dear Miss
Dawson,’” Justice read aloud. “‘Please take this bear and go away
from here, away from Billy. Start a new life. Go to school, get
some skills. You don’t have to depend on anyone but yourself.’”

Betty sat dumbfounded. “Oh, my,” she whispered as
tears came to her eyes. “The good Lord’s done answered my prayers
at last.”

Justice didn’t even care that she got back to the
office at 4:30. Knox didn’t give her a chance to explain, so she
got chewed up and spit out in front of everybody.

But she held her head high and stared straight back
at him while he yelled at her, letting him know she knew what he’d
done.

His eyes were a deep blue.

* * * * *

88:
WIPEOUT

For the first time since she’d moved in, he was
actually in the house and, better yet, upstairs when she came home.
He watched her speculatively, as if he were deciding what to say to
her first.

She didn’t say a word; she just went about the
business of cooking dinner for both of them, since he’d had the
presence of mind to show up.

“All right,” he snapped. “Let’s have it. Where’d you
go today and why?”

“We’re not at work and you could’ve asked me that
before you started in on me.”

“Tell me anyway.”

She huffed. “Took the defendant’s family across the
street and fed them.”

He grunted. “Why?”

“Because they were starving and I thought that was
more important than watching you do what I’ve seen you do a
gazillion times if I’ve seen you do it once.” He had nothing to say
to that, and she looked over her shoulder at him and drawled, “And
don’t act like you’re all mad. You gave them a teddy bear stuffed
full of cash.”

Knox rolled his eyes. “I have no idea what you’re
talking about.”

“Liar.”

He said nothing for a long while and Justice threw
the vegetables and meat into a wok. She plugged the steamer in and
threw some flour tortillas in it. She heard a low meow and the
swish of cat against denim.

“It was a dumb thing to do,” he finally
admitted.

She tossed the stir fry and glanced at him where he
sat at the table, Dog stretched up with his front paws on Knox’s
thigh to get his face scratched. Knox obliged absently and she bit
back a smile. “I don’t think so. I thought it was sweet.”

“Eh. She’ll blow it all and go back to Billy as soon
as he’s released.”

“No, she was pretty graphic about the way he treats
her and now she has the means to do something about it. With women
like that, it always comes down to means. You pulled me out of a
bad situation and then you gave me the means to leave you.”

“And you came back. There you go.”

She looked at him sharply. “You don’t beat me. You
don’t rape me. You don’t get bastard children on me. You don’t
cheat on me. You take care of me and give me everything I need; in
fact, you’d give me anything I wanted if I asked—and don’t tell me
you wouldn’t. Not only don’t you make me slave my life away and
make me look like I’m forty when I’m actually twenty-five—you
pulled me off that farm, where that’s exactly what would’ve
happened to me. I can ditch you any time. I’m free to do what I
want, when I want, how I want as long as I’m to work on time—and
even that’s negotiable.”

Knox laughed reluctantly, but said nothing else and
she finished dinner. She put the tortillas on a plate and divvied
up the stir fry, giving herself as much as she knew she could eat
and him the rest.

He put his fajita together and took a bite. “This is
really good.”

“Thanks.”

They ate in silence for a moment as he hand-fed Dog
bits and pieces of beef and tortilla. Finally, Knox muttered, “I’m
sorry I was an ass today.”

“Which time? I counted three or four.”

He chuckled, again reluctantly.

“I want to know something. Were you born
grumpy?”

“No, Iustitia,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his
tongue. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t. I was a semi-professional
surfer in college. You can’t surf and be grumpy.”

Her mouth would have dropped open if she didn’t have
food in it. She swallowed it so she could speak. “You were?”

“Yes. Surfing is probably the most—” He stopped to
think, to look for a word. “—
joyous
experience in the world.
Man communing with ocean via fiberglass.”

There was so much she didn’t know about this man and
suddenly, her heart hurt because of that. “So . . . what happened
that made you grumpy?”

He paused mid-chew. Then, softly, “I’d rather not
talk about that.”

“Oh. Okay.” They ate in silence that felt tense to
Justice because she had so many things she wanted to ask and didn’t
know where to start. She cleared her throat. “Um, Knox . . . ”

Knox suddenly watched her intently, waiting for her
to finish.

Justice stared down at her plate as if it would give
her courage. “I wanted to know if you would rather not sleep on the
couch anymore?”

He said nothing for a long time, but she couldn’t
bear to look at him. She felt his fingers on her chin, lifting her
face so she would meet his gaze. “I don’t know if I can just sleep
with you, Iustitia. Are you asking me for more than just
sleep?”

I want anything you’ll give me, but I’m too
embarrassed to ask.

“I just feel bad that you love your bed so much but
you’re sleeping on the couch.”

That surprised him, taking him out of the moment.
“How do you know I love my bed?”

“It’s well taken care of. You have very fine linens
on it that are custom made. The rest of your house—” She waved a
hand. “It’s a wreck. Chipboard furniture from Wal-Mart, even.”

He laughed outright then.

“You love your books and your cat.”