Blood Orange (43 page)

She wasn’t talking yet, but Dana believed it would happen soon.

David still slept in the spare room. Like his daughter, he was
healing slowly. Lexy sent letters via e-mail, but she never called. She
said she was through the door and halfway across the room, headed
for the great outdoors. Dana had no idea what this meant, but it
sounded hopeful.

Hope gave shape to Dana’s days and kept her moving forward.

Shame and guilt and terrible regret still burned her insides, but
the heat had diminished some. She was healing, too.

After going to Peluso and telling him about her role in the death
of Lolly Calhoun, Marsha Filmore had stayed on in the room above
the garage until her daughter was born. A black-haired little girl
with jerky limbs who broke out in a lurid rash the first time she tasted formula. Dana heard her crying from the apartment, a pitiful
sound like a small wounded animal. A sound Frank Filmore would
never hear. And then one day mother and daughter were gone.
Marsha left behind her clothes-except the mink-and dozens of
empty wine bottles. According to David, Peluso knew where she
was. She would return to San Diego and probably testify at the trial.

David said that if the Ethics Committee ever got wind of how
Dana had persuaded Marsha to go to Peluso he would be in deep
trouble. But she could tell he was glad for what she’d done. He
would give Frank Filmore the best defense he could and make
Peluso prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt. Marsha would
testify, and Frank would be found guilty. David would argue hard
against the death penalty.

At the nursery Dana intended to purchase a camellia. But when
she saw the scrawny blood orange tree in a plastic tub, it called to
her and said she must plant it in her garden and nurse it to health as
a reminder of what had happened to them all that year. A reminder
and a promise to survive and prosper.

When they got home she changed into her overalls, and Bailey
had to wear hers too, which led to special shoes and a favorite straw
hat. Everything was complicated with Bailey, but Dana rarely complained anymore, even to herself.

She thanked God every day for the miracle of Bailey and for giving her family a second chance.

She gathered an armload of tools from the shade house and carried them to a square of earth protected by the garage and the back
wall, where the sun shone most of the day. Digging was a challenge
because the soil was dry and crumbly late in the season before the
slow, soaking rains that would come in the new year. She did not
mind that her back and shoulders ached and sweat ran down from
her hairline and stung her eyes. Beside her, Bailey dug away with the miniature shovel and hoe Santa had put under the tree the year before. She had outgrown them. She had outgrown almost everything,
becoming a skinny, long-legged girl with soulful eyes. Every now
and then she tugged on Dana’s shirtsleeve and pointed to her work,
and Dana praised her.

When the hole was three feet deep and almost as wide, Dana
rested her tools against the wall and went around the far side of the
house, where she had made compost in several large plastic bins.
She filled the wheelbarrow full and mixed the compost with the dirt
from the hole until she had a pile of nutritious soil.

She still thought of Micah and remembered him in her prayers.
Sometimes she awakened after barely remembered dreams, hot and
yearning for what she had felt that week in Italy. Perhaps as a consequence, she had begun thinking of her mother in a different light,
as not simply someone irresponsible and flaky, but as a woman seduced by pleasure as Dana had been.

Using the shovel, Dana whacked the plastic pot until it split.
Rootbound. She imagined the tree sighing with relief as she poked a
forked trowel into the dirt to gently loosen the roots around the
bottom and sides. She half-filled the hole with new soil and then
tipped the tree in on top of it. On their hands and knees, she and
Bailey scooped and tamped the remaining soil in the hole, then
made a shallow watering ditch around it. She brought the hose from
across the lawn and let it run slowly into the hollow, seeping down
on the roots.

Dana sat against the wall and pulled Bailey onto her lap. It was
warm in the sun, and the gardening had worn them both out. She
closed her eyes, holding Bailey more tightly. She wasn’t happy, but
for the most part, strangely, she was contented. Maybe next month
she would want a job or another baby, but for now there was nothing particular to strive for, no mighty goal to aim at.

They were all broken inside. Sometimes she could feel it, like a
joint that pops out of place and aches for hours after. Though there
had been healing, nothing would ever be the same for any of them.
It was not a matter of whether David would forgive her. She believed he would and maybe had already without quite realizing it.
When David came back to their bed it would be because in the end
love was the engine of forgiveness.

What she wanted for all of them was enough time for love to do
its work.

In the far corner of her garden, protected on two sides, the
blood orange tree had already begun to stretch its roots down into
the soil. In a year or two, if all went well, it might bear fruit. By then
Lexy would be back and David would call Dana Number One
again. She prayed every day-to be honest and faithful and patient-and she believed God heard her. She asked for simple things.
For Bailey’s voice calling to her, for David’s smile, and his hand on
the small of her back, for absent friends and souls departed, for the
raspberry sweetness of the blood red fruit.

Thank you …

To Art, my first husband, for his wisdom and passion. Always.

To Susan Challen, Carole Fegley, Sharon Saunders, Peggy Lang,
and Judy Reeves for their creative and spiritual advice.

To the ladies of the Arrowhead Association for always being there.

To Reverends Mary Moreno Richardson and Allison Thomas at St.
Paul’s Cathedral, who honored me with their candid answers to my
prying questions.

To Professors Irwin Miller and Tom Barton of California Western
School of Law and attorneys Nancy Rosenfeld and Chuck Sevilla
for sharing their perspectives on David Cabot’s ethical quandary.
And to Wes Albers of the San Diego Police Department for his tactical suggestions. Any legal and procedural gaffs in Blood Orange
are entirely mine.

To Andrea Johnson and Reverend Lee Teed for their inadvertent inspiration.

Thank you, finally, to the defense team of Steven Feldman, Rebecca
Jones, Robert Boyce, and Laura Schaefer who inspired me to write
Blood Orange as I did. To them and all the members of the defense
bar who struggle daily to see that justice is done, I am immensely
grateful.

October 2004

A READING GROUP GUIDE

Drusilla Campbell

The following questions are intended to enrich your own
appreciation and understanding of this novel, or to inspire
lively and thought-provoking conversations about it. Reading
a great story is always a private pleasure, but sharing the
experience with others can open whole new worlds of insight and enjoyment. If you don’t already belong to a reading group, perhaps it’s time to join or start one!

1. When we read about a kidnapped or lost child being returned, we are always happy. But a new set of problems arise for the
family of a rescued child. What are those problems, and how might
a family go about resolving them?

2. Is Dana a good mother? If she had taken better care of Bailey,
could she have avoided the kidnapping? Why would it be particularly difficult to be Bailey’s mother?

3. In the beginning of the book Lexy and Dana believe they have
a strong friendship. Would you agree with them? How does their
relationship change in the course of the story? What are the elements of strong friendships as you have experienced them? Is it believable that Gracie could be David’s best friend and confidant?
What does it take to make a friendship between a man and a woman
work?

4. David has to explain to Frank Filmore that it’s not his goal to
prove him innocent. His job as defense attorney is to make sure the
prosecution plays by the rules and the trial is fair. Discuss this con cept of the adversarial system. Do you think most people understand the role of the defense attorney? What would be the effect on
a person’s daily life of defending a man like Frank Filrnore?

5. Dana and David believed their marriage could withstand anything until their troubles began. What were the weaknesses in their
relationship that led to their breakup, and are their strengths sufficient to bring them back together?

6. Lexy tells Dana that the past is just a story and a person can
decide how much importance to give it. Is this always true? Some of
the time? How do our personal stories change through the years,
and why are they so hard to disregard? Lexy has tried to ignore the
role of anger in her story, and she never really explains it to Dana.
What are your theories of what has made Lexy angry? What in
Dana’s story has made her dishonest? What is David’s story, and
how has it shaped who he is?

7. Football is used as a metaphor for life and it serves David well
most of the time. What does being the quarterback mean to David?
Is there a difference between the way he and Dana see it? How does
football make him strong, and how is he impaired by these continual references?

8. Why did Dana have such a passionate and irresponsible affair
with Micah? What were the factors that contributed to her behavior? Why do some people do things that seem completely out of
character? Did she stop loving Bailey and David during her week in
Florence? What did her obsession with knowing what was normal
have to do with her actions in Florence? What does being normal
mean to Dana? To you? Does her view of normality change from
the beginning of the book to the end?

9. Dana says that her affair with Micah was like grabbing hold of
a trapeze and flying. What role did the city of Florence play in her
affair? Is it true that some places are inherently seductive? How did
Dana’s love of Early Renaissance painting contribute to her behavior?

10. Why didn’t Dana tell Lexy about her affair with Micah when
she got back to San Diego? What are the qualities in Dana that
made it impossible for her to reveal such a powerful incident to her
best friend? What did she fear, and were her fears at all justified?
How would Lexy have reacted if Dana had confided in her?

11. What is the core of Lexy’s spiritual life? Do the events of the
novel challenge her faith in God or her faith in herself? She chooses
to leave the priesthood temporarily to work through her problems.
What will she work on? What strength does she bring to this work?
Lexy is a flawed human being. Can someone with so many flaws be
a priest? Is there a way in which her humanity empowers her?

12. How do you interpret what happened when Lexy visited
Dorothy Wilkerson for the last time? How did Lexy interpret it?

13. Gracie says that Dana would take responsibility for the
Holocaust if she thought it would explain why her mother abandoned her. What is the role of guilt in the formation of Dana’s character? How does it play out in her relationship with David, Bailey,
and Lexy?

14. How would you describe Dana’s relationship with Imogene?
Is it true that you can live with someone and yet never know them?
Do you root for their relationship at the end of the book? Why?
What avenues of understanding and growth would open up for Dana if she were to have a positive relationship with her grandmother?

15. Was Marsha Filmore a victim or a participant in the crime
her husband committed? What binds her to Frank and keeps her
loyal? Is there any similarity between Dana’s relationship with
Micah and Marsha’s with Frank?

16. Why does Dana plant the tree? Why is it a blood orange
tree? What role do symbols play in our lives?

17. Dana tells Lexy that she has forgiven Micah for taking Bailey.
How is that possible? She makes a distinction between excusing
something and forgiving. Does this make sense to you? Have you
ever experienced the difference yourself?

DRUSILLA CAMPBELL lives in San Diego with her
husband, horses, and dogs. She is co-founder of The Writer’s
Room, and speaks and teaches at writing conferences throughout
Southern California. She is at work on her next novel. Readers
can visit her Web site at www.drusillacampbell.com.