Part 41 (2/2)

Jack would have bet every single baseball card left in his possession that Emma didn't even know she was crying.

Jack found Corazon in the laundry room, separating colors from whites. ”You know,” she said, ”if I tell you another seven hundred times, maybe one of these days you might turn your clothes right side out when you put them in the hamper, eh?”

He hopped on top of the dryer, swinging his legs. ”Can I ask you something?”

”Sure.”

”How do you know if you love someone?”

Corazon looked up, her hands stilling for a minute. ”Well, that's quite a question,” she said. ”And usually it's something you figure out for yourself.”

”If you love someone, you want to take care of them, right?”

She smiled slyly. ”Someone's had a change of mind about Rachel Covington?”

”And if you love someone, you're not supposed to hurt them.”

”No,” Cora answered, ”but you usually do at some point, anyway.”

Well, that made the whole thing about as clear as mud. Jack thanked Cora and scrambled out of the laundry room, up the stairs. Emma's door was shut, as usual. But she'd managed to sneak out when no one was looking, because a stack of neatly banded baseball cards were set just inside the threshold of his own bedroom door.

That was how he knew she was planning to leave.

Eyelids, Jack thought, must weigh something like forty pounds each, or why would it be so hard to keep them up after midnight? He got down on the floor and did another fifty sit-ups, then paced around his room. He couldn't risk falling asleep, not yet. And his parents had only just gone to bed. He knew Emma would make sure they were sound asleep before she sneaked away.

At 1:20, Jack swallowed hard and walked to Emma's room. It was the first time he'd ever gone to her s.p.a.ce instead of letting her come to his. And although he only had a vague impression of what must have happened between Emma and her uncle, he guessed it probably happened in her own bed.

Either this was going to work, Jack thought, or she was going to scream loud enough to bring down the whole building.

He turned the key in the lock she knew how to pick anyway and slipped inside on the slice of light from the hallway. One second Emma was facing the wall, and the next she was staring at him, her eyes huge in her face, her whole body going rigid.

”Shh,” Jack said. ”It's just me.”

That didn't seem to make it any better. Emma was dead silent, just as still.

”Can I sit down?”

She didn't answer, and with a slight pang in his stomach Jack realized that no one had ever asked for her permission. His weight tilted the mattress, and Emma rolled against his bent knee like a cylinder of wood. ”I wanted to show you something,” he whispered. ”I wanted to show you that someone who loves you doesn't always have to hurt you.” And taking a deep breath, he reached down and held her hand.

She froze. It was the first time they had ever touched, beyond accidental brus.h.i.+ng when they pa.s.sed baseball cards back and forth. She was waiting for him to do something else, something disgusting Jack didn't really want to picture in his head. But he just sat there, his fingers tangled with hers, until Emma's other hand came up to cover his, until she crawled into his arms like the child she'd forgotten how to be.

June 29, 2000 Carroll County Jail New Hamps.h.i.+re Jack threaded his tie into a Windsor knot, pulled it tight, and tried his best not to think of a lynching. He smoothed the fabric down, never taking his eyes off the stranger in the mirror. Blue blazer, khaki pants, loafers, tie-this had become his trial uniform. And the man staring back at him was someone who understood that the legal system didn't work.

There was a sharp rap on the other side of the bathroom wall. ”Get moving,” a CO called out. ”You're gonna be late.”

Jack blinked twice, the man in the mirror blinked twice. He raised his hand to his forehead, where his hair was beginning to curl in the damp humidity of the shower room. He told himself it was time to go.

But Jack's feet didn't move. They might as well have been nailed to the cement floor. He grabbed the edge of the sink and tried to force one leg back but was literally paralyzed by the fear of what was yet to come.

The CO stuck his head into the bathroom. Humiliated, Jack met his eyes in the mirror, only to find that he could not force out a single word.

The guard wrapped his hand around Jack's upper arm gently and pulled until Jack fell into step beside him.

”I'm sorry,” Jack murmured.

The CO shrugged. ”You ain't the first one.”

”And don't forget to tell Darla the blue-plate special, when you decide,” Addie said.

Roy slipped his arm around his daughter's waist. ”We can do fine without you.” He faced her, so proud of his girl in this pale peach suit, with low heels on her feet and her brown hair pulled back from her face with a simple gold clip. Christ, she looked like a professional business-327 woman, not some two-bit waitress. ”You are beautiful,” Roy said quietly. ”Jack won't be able to take his eyes off you.”

”Jack won't be able to see me. I have to sit outside, sequestered, because I'm a witness.” Suddenly, Addie stripped off the fitted jacket of her suit. ”Who am I kidding?” she muttered, reaching behind the counter for her ap.r.o.n. ”I'm just going to drive myself crazy sitting there all day. At least here I'll be able to focus-”

”-on what's going on at court,” Roy said, interrupting. ”You have to go, Addie. There's something about you ... like you're a lighthouse, and other people see the beam. Or an anchor, with the rest of us just hanging on to you for dear life. You ground us. And right now, I figure, Jack needs something to grab on to.” He held out her suit jacket, so that she could shrug it on. ”Go on, get down to that courthouse.”

”It's only six-thirty, Daddy. Court doesn't convene until nine.”

”Then drive slow.”

When he went back into the kitchen, Addie stood alone in the early light of the diner, watching the sun leapfrog over shadows on the linoleum floor. Maybe if she arrived early, she could find the entrance where the deputy sheriffs brought the inmates from the jail. Maybe she could be there when Jack was brought in, could catch his eye.

Then something beneath the counter stool where she liked to imagine Chloe sitting drew her attention. Shriveled and brittle, more brown than red-it took a moment for Addie to recognize it as the little bouquet she had once confiscated from Gillian Duncan, tucked into her ap.r.o.n and forgotten.

It was the craziest thing, but when she lifted the dead flowers to her nose, she could swear they were as fragrant as new blossoms.

Amos Duncan flattened his tie against his abdomen as he hurried downstairs to the kitchen. ”Gillian,” he called over his shoulder. ”We're going to be late!”

He headed toward the kitchen, intent on swilling at least one cup of coffee to settle his stomach before he began the grim h.e.l.l of this trial. Houlihan would put Gillian on the stand first. The thought of his daughter sitting up there with a thousand eyes on her, television cameras rolling, and twelve men and women bearing witness-well, it was enough to make him want to kill someone. Jack St. Bride, in particular.

He would have given anything to take the stand in her stead, to make their life private again. But instead, all he would be able to do was watch, like everyone else, and see how it played out at the end.

The smell of coffee grew stronger as Amos entered the kitchen. Gillian sat at the kitchen table, dressed in the virginal white outfit Houlihan had hand-picked for her. She was shoveling cornflakes into her mouth behind a barricade of brightly colored cereal boxes.

Amos looked at her, nearly hidden from his view by the cartons. He fixed his coffee, black, the way he liked it. Then he slid into the chair across from his daughter.

There were three boxes blocking her from his view. He pushed the Life cereal box away. When he moved a second box, Lucky Charms, his daughter stopped chewing.

Finally, Amos s.h.i.+fted the cornflakes, so that he could see her un.o.bstructed. Bright color stained her cheeks. ”Gilly,” he said softly, offering up a whole story in that one word.

Gillian reached for the Lucky Charms and set it up again, a wall. She took the cornflakes and the Life cereal and made barriers on either side of the first box. Then she lifted her spoon and began to eat in silence, as if her father were not there at all.

”Sydney!” Matt hollered at the top of his lungs, holding his squealing daughter at arm's length as she fought to hand him the arrowroot biscuit she'd been gumming. ”Don't you do this to me, you little monster. This is my last clean suit.” Matt hollered at the top of his lungs, holding his squealing daughter at arm's length as she fought to hand him the arrowroot biscuit she'd been gumming. ”Don't you do this to me, you little monster. This is my last clean suit.”

His wife rounded the corner, carrying a stack of clean laundry. ”Where's the fire?”

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