Truth-Stained Lies (21 page)

D
arkness was beginning to set in as Cathy and Michael reached the jail. Jay’s attorney was just pulling up. He went in to process Jay’s release while Cathy and Michael waited outside.

The temperature had dropped, and a cool wind whispered across the parking lot, ruffling Cathy’s hair. The moon hung low, full.

“The moon looks like it’s closer to the earth than usual,” she said. “Weird to think it’s just an illusion.”

“Not just an illusion,” Michael said. “It’s a reminder.”

“Of what?” she asked with a smile.

“Of God’s having control over everything. The moon … Jackson’s life … our lives.”

Cathy smiled. “Something happened to me during all this. I realized some things.”

“About God?” he asked.

He always seemed to read her thoughts. “Yes. About his listening to me when I pray. I found out that he does. He even answers.”

“You knew that already.”

She looked into the wind, squinting. “Yeah, I knew. You’ve reminded me enough. But I didn’t want to admit it. I blamed God for everything. For my father’s betrayal … for my mother’s cancer … for Joe’s murder.”

“And you don’t anymore?”

She thought about that for a moment. “I’m still grappling with all of this. But I do know one thing. God’s love trumps evil. Jesus is the evidence of that.”

Michael looked at her, moonlight glistening in his eyes. “I knew you’d come around.”

“And another thing happened. When I was trying to figure out if the killer was one of the people I’d blogged about, I realized how what I do impacts lives.”

“It does, Cathy. You do good work.”

“No, I mean that it impacts them in a negative way. I’m not sure I’ve always been that careful. If someone looks guilty, I tell the world.”

“But you have great instincts. And you dig for the truth.”

“But I never pray about it. What if there are people like Jay, who are completely innocent, whose lives have been ruined because of what I’ve written?”

Michael considered that for a moment. “I hope you’re not planning to quit blogging. It’s too important, what you do.”

She met his eyes. “Really? You think so?”

“You know it is. For some reason, God took me out of the police force and put me where I am. For some reason, he’s given you a blog that people like to read. Think of how many dangerous people you’ve helped get off the street.”

“Maybe I won’t quit. Maybe I just won’t draw conclusions before I should. I’ll pray about these things before I sink my teeth into them.”

“Sounds like a good plan.”

She met his eyes, mirrored his smile. “Thank you, Michael.”

“For what?”

“For encouraging me. And for being there. I knew when Warren opened that balcony door that you’d be there. You’re always there. You’re my hero.”

She couldn’t manage to look away as he gazed at her, and she felt her heart hammering against her chest just as it had done when she was in danger.

She wondered if she was in danger now.

His face moved close to hers, and she didn’t back away. Suddenly his lips touched hers, sweet, soft … just the way she’d imagined. The kiss deepened, lingered …

His hand came up to touch her face. She melted to his touch. She had known he would taste like this …

Too soon, he pulled back and met her eyes. She drew in a deep breath … held it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She hadn’t expected that. She looked down at her feet, sudden guilt assaulting her. “For what?”

“For … that. I shouldn’t have been so bold. You’re Joe’s girl.”

“I
was
Joe’s girl.”

“But my brother loved you.”

“He loved you too.”

He let his eyes linger on her face. “It feels wrong … doesn’t it?”

She didn’t know what she felt. Was it wrong or right? If
Joe knew, would he be devastated or delighted? Would he have chosen Michael for her or declared him off limits?

She didn’t know. Unable to speak, she touched his face, pulled him back to her, and kissed him again. This time she lost herself in his kiss, touching the stubble on his jaw, the silkiness of his hair, the texture of his skin. His fingers buried themselves in her hair, gently tilting her head.

The door opened suddenly and light spilled out, startling them apart.

“Cathy?”

She turned to see her brother standing in the light. “Jay?”

He ran toward her, and she threw her arms around him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said. “How is Jackson?”

“He’s back in the hospital.”

Jay’s eyes filled with tears. “They said on TV Warren kidnapped him. They said he was dying.”

“He’ll be better now with you there. Come on, we’ll take you to him.”

Michael pulled Jay into a hug. “Glad to see you out, man.”

As they drove Jay to the hospital, Cathy didn’t look at Michael again. The air seemed charged with enough voltage to power her heart for years.

But guilt still had its own current.

S
o you’re having a baby before I am.” Cathy’s gut reaction to Holly’s news disturbed her. Why couldn’t she just empathize with her sister? This wasn’t about her, of course. But it reminded her … if she’d married Joe, by now she’d probably be shopping for maternity clothes and cribs.

Holly sat on the sand in front of her, the ocean at her back. She looked so small and pretty with the wind whipping her long pink hair into her face. Her skin had more color now, and those dark circles that often marked the morning after a night of clubbing had disappeared. Though it wasn’t ideal for her to be pregnant and unmarried, maybe it was pushing her toward being more healthy.

“I know. It’s crazy.”

The end of day sun burned on Cathy’s face and shoulders. She dusted the sand off her feet and slipped them back into her sandals. “Are you going to tell the father?”

Holly breathed a mirthless laugh. “No. I don’t even know his last name. I’ll never see him again. And that’s just as well, because I hardly knew him. I was just drunk.”

Cathy sighed. “Holly …”

“I know. You don’t have to say it.” She looked down at the sand and drew a circle, finished it off with two eyes and a smile.

“Say what?”

“All the things I’ve done wrong. All these years I should have listened to you and Juliet. You’ve always been right. You warn me of where I’m heading, but I race there anyway.”

“So maybe this time you’ll slow down. Think it through. Raising a child can’t be done by the seat of your pants. It takes thought, planning, commitment.”

“I know. It scares me to death.”

Cathy looked into the breeze. A family was sitting on the packed wet sand at the edge of the waves. A little toddler was piling sand in a tower with a plastic shovel. His father stood in the water with a baby on his shoulders, frothy tongues of sea water nipping at his feet. The mother dug through a sack and pulled out a baggie of crackers.

Cathy had experienced that as a child, but in so many ways that scenario had been lost to Holly.

Cathy turned back to Holly. “I think you’re going to do fine. I see changes in you.”

Holly’s eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

“Yes. You’ve been more caring lately. You’ve done things to help. You’ve taken responsibility.”

“Probably because I’m not going out drinking every night. Can’t really do that when you’re pregnant.”

“Oh, you can. Lots of people do. You choose not to. And that speaks volumes about your putting your baby’s needs
before your own. You’ll do fine, Sis. You had a rough start, with Dad and everything.”

Holly shook her head. “No, I can’t blame him. Not anymore. I make my own choices.” She wiped away the sandy happy face she’d drawn, dusted off her hands. “I saw him, you know.”

“Saw who?”

“Dad.”

Cathy squinted to study her face. “You went there?”

“Yes. To the nursing home. I sat with him, saw how helpless he is. This cranky nurse’s aide was feeding him, and I made her give me the spoon so I could do it.”

Cathy was stunned. “Did he know you?”

“No. I was a stranger to him.”

Cathy felt the pain rising in her throat. “Did he say anything?”

“Not a word. I could have been anybody off the street. He’s not really in there. But I guess it helped me in some way just … to see him. Just to know that he can never redeem himself. I have to stop living my life as if I’m waiting for him to pay back his debt to me.”

Cathy stared at her, amazed at the bravery of her sister. Since they’d learned their father was in a nursing home here, they’d all dealt with it in their own way. Cathy didn’t know if Juliet ever visited him. Juliet hadn’t ever mentioned it. But for Holly, the weak one, to go there and serve him …

Holly’s phone buzzed, and she looked down at the text. “It’s from Jay. He says the doctor came by and they’re releasing Jackson tomorrow.”

“Very cool,” Holly said. “So that whole prayer thing. It really does work.”

“Yeah, it does. Go figure.”

When Holly went back to her taxi, Cathy sat alone for
a moment, trying to shake the conversation about their dad from her mind. But it wouldn’t leave her.

Did her father still look the way he had years ago? Was his hair more gray? Was his face more wrinkled? Had he put on weight?

He’d been so animated and charming as a preacher, and his flock had adored him. Did he still have that twinkle in his eye?

There was a way to find out.

She knew where the nursing home was. She had passed it many times, since it sat on Highway 98 along the beach. At least his wife had chosen a nice place for him.

She dusted off the sand and crossed the street to her house, wondering if she had the courage to go to that place and dredge up all those memories. But had she really ever escaped them?

Not sure what she would say to him if she saw him, she drove to the nursing home and went in, feeling incompetent and awkward, which she deplored. But she found her way to the Alzheimer’s wing.

She walked slowly down the empty hallway, looking at the names on the doors. Rogers, Wright, Gonzales …

Finally she heard a voice inside a large room up ahead. A man’s gentle voice, reading. “For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for a lifetime; weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

She stopped outside the door and saw that many of the residents were in there, some seated on chairs, others in wheelchairs. A young man stood at the front, an open Bible in his hand. Was today Sunday? Had she come during church?

She turned to walk away, but the preacher stopped her. “Ma’am? You’re welcome to join us.”

Embarrassed, she shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I was just … looking for someone. I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“You aren’t interrupting. Come on in.”

She hesitated, scanning the faces … mostly women … and settled on two old men.

There he was. Her father, a little grayer than he’d been in the last picture she had with him, when he’d escorted her to the father-daughter banquet at her school. He didn’t seem aware of her or the man at the front. He merely stared at the air, unengaged with his surroundings.

A lady sitting at the piano followed Cathy’s gaze. “Is Mr. Cramer your relative?”

She cleared her throat. “Yes … my father.”

“Well, come on in, honey.”

One of the aides in scrubs brought a chair up beside him, and realizing she couldn’t escape now, Cathy crossed through the residents and sat down. Her father didn’t look at her.

As the preacher resumed his sermon, Cathy only stared at her dad, a million emotions flipping like a slideshow through her mind. The shock of his infidelity. The pain of his abandonment. All the phone calls she’d made that he hadn’t returned. Birthdays coming and going without a notice. Christmases changed forever.

In fact, they rarely ever saw him again after he ran off with the woman. It was as if he’d gutted the family from his life.

And now, here he was, unable to have the epiphany about how wrong he’d been, unable to repent and beg for forgiveness. Unable to start over fresh and be the father she needed.

Her bitterness seemed such a waste, over an empty shell
of a man who didn’t even know he’d done anything wrong. What good was it?

It was her own prison, one of the things that held her back. In some ways, his failures challenged her to be better, do better, in hopes of showing him that she had become somebody even without him. That she didn’t need him. That her own human spirit had risen above his indifference.

But now that didn’t even matter. Her father was a broken, empty old man who didn’t even know where he was.

The preacher talked about David’s plight during the writing of the Psalms … words that revived memories of her dad waxing poetic in his own pulpit. But then the preacher read again.

“As for me, I said in my alarm, ‘I am cut off from before Thine eyes; nevertheless Thou did hear the voice of my supplications when I cried to Thee.”

Yes, Cathy thought as the preacher read on from Psalm 31. God had heard her supplication. He hadn’t cut her off or forgotten her.

I see you
. Those words filled her spirit, reviving her soul, bringing tears of pain and joy to her eyes. Then her father turned his warm familiar eyes to her. For a miraculous moment they connected, and she would have sworn he recognized her. A gentle smile lifted the sides of his lips.

“Daddy,” she whispered.

He lifted his shaky hand, and put it over hers.

Tears shimmered in her eyes as she sat there with him, taking in the sustenance of the sermon like a starving orphan, as that recognition faded to vacancy.

A week later, the gravesite swarmed with mourners, some friends of the family, others well-wishers who’d prayed for them. A couple of TV reporters hung on the outskirts of the crowd, their cameramen anything but discreet.

Cathy got out of her car and walked across the spongy grass. Several of the mourners saw her and stepped aside, allowing her to pass through. She saw Holly and Juliet standing near the tent. Michael turned as she came closer. She met his eyes.

Then she saw Jay, sitting on the front row of the folding chairs near the caskets. Little Jackson leaned into him. He was still pale, but he’d come through his illness with no lasting effects, and the doctors assured them that he would have a full recovery.

They’d delayed Annalee’s funeral until he was well enough to attend. Mrs. Haughton had passed peacefully in
the hospital. She never woke up after finding out her son was her daughter’s killer. Now they celebrated both mother and daughter’s lives together, and would bury them side by side. Jackson would only have to endure one funeral.

“Is he okay?” Cathy whispered to Juliet.

“Yes, he seems fine. Jay did a good job of preparing him.”

They got quiet as the short service began. As the preacher spoke, Cathy’s mind wandered to Warren. He had broken his back in the fall, and was paralyzed from his waist down. He lay in a rehab hospital now with a guard at the door. Though he’d pled guilty to Annalee’s death and the other charges against him, she knew his personal prison would be worse than the state could inflict on him.

When the funeral was over, Jay gave Jackson a bundle of balloons and allowed him to set them free into the sky. He waved to them, a soft, poignant smile on his little face as the balloons drifted out of sight.

Despite Annalee’s behavior over the last year, Cathy hoped that in the last few moments of her life, she’d called out to Jesus. Maybe she hadn’t died with guilt and shame crushing her. Maybe she had been washed clean as she bled out in the bathtub. Cathy hoped so. Jackson would be expecting to see his mother someday when he made his own walk into heaven.

Later, they all met at Jay’s house — the house he’d built with Annalee, the house she’d died in. Jackson would be allowed to continue living in his own home, sleeping in his own bed, playing in his own yard. Jay was no longer banished to a bare apartment.

But the grief would be with them for a long time to come.

Mrs. Haughton’s entire estate went to Jackson, and Jay
had assigned it all to a trust fund that Jackson could access when he was older. Until then, he’d support his son himself.

Relatives and friends brought food and lingered, talking of their memories of Annalee and her mother. The sisters worked tirelessly in the kitchen, making sure that everyone felt welcome.

But Cathy wondered what had happened to Michael. He’d disappeared shortly after they’d arrived at the house. Though their relief was profound after solving Annalee’s murder, Cathy knew that Michael’s thoughts had returned to Leonard Miller. His appearance back in town had reignited Michael’s desire to catch him committing another crime. He’d spent much of the last few days following the man around town. She knew he wouldn’t rest until his brother’s killer was off the streets. So far, Miller had stayed within the law.

When she could get away, she walked out of the kitchen and looked around. Michael wasn’t inside, so she glanced out the window. His Trailblazer was still parked on the street.

He must be out back. She crossed through the big house and stepped out the back door. There he was, sitting on the porch swing with Jackson, their backs to her.

“Can Mommy see me?” Jackson asked him, looking up at the clouds.

“I’m not sure,” Michael said. “But I do know that Jesus can see you. And he probably keeps her updated about all the cool things you do.”

“Someday we’ll be together again,” Jackson said wistfully. “Me and Mommy and Daddy and Grandma.”

Michael patted his knee. “That’s right, buddy.”

“And your brother will be there too. What was his name?”

“Joe.”

“Yeah, Joe. He’s probably bowling with my mom.” Jackson smiled at the thought.

Michael chuckled. “Bowling? You think they have bowling alleys in heaven?”

“Probably,” Jackson said. “Mommy likes to bowl.”

Cathy stood quietly near the door. Michael would make a wonderful father … a great husband … to someone.

That guilt rose inside her again, reminding her that it shouldn’t be her. She stepped back inside and saw Juliet watching her.

“You’re wrong, you know.”

“Wrong about what?”

“About Michael. You were Joe’s two favorite people. Why wouldn’t he want you together?”

“Because he was the jealous type.”

“He’s in heaven now. He’s not struggling with that anymore.”

Cathy looked at the floor. Juliet came closer, put her hand on Cathy’s shoulder. “I think it’s okay.”

As Juliet walked away, Cathy went back to the door. She looked out and saw that Jackson was on his swing set now. Michael stood in the middle of the yard. He turned and saw her … and a smile overtook his face.

For that moment, Cathy let herself be happy.