Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (17 page)

I thought on that. “I gave you more than you needed?”

Wanderley stood up and held his thumb and forefinger out, an inch apart. “A leetle bit more.”

“Okay.”

We shook hands and I got the door for him. As he stepped out he handed me a baby-blue envelope with a princess sticker keeping the flap closed.

“Party invitation,” he said, and he was off.

I'd forgotten about Molly's third birthday party. I slid my thumb under the flap and pulled the invitation out. Next to a pretty princess in a green-and-white dress were the words, “Come be a princess for a day!” Inside were the details. It would be held at the Heights Playground in Donovan Park, from ten in the morning until twelve thirty on Saturday, October twenty-seventh. There was a number to call “Chloe” to RSVP. The specifics were written in a beautiful script. That would be Chloe's handwriting, I guessed. Underneath, in a different hand, was written, “Thanks for coming, Bear and Annie.”

Aughhh. I didn't want to go to that kiddie party. It was all the way across town, and Annie and I wouldn't know anyone there except for Wanderley, and we'd be nearly as old as Molly's grandparents. Why did Wanderley want us there? I like Wanderley, but we don't have a social relationship. It took Phoebe dying to get us together this time. I sighed.

Twelve

T
he dogs and I had some lunch. There was a container of homemade chili and beans in the fridge, enough for all of us so I shared it out. We were finishing as Annie Laurie and Jo walked in from the garage. Annie Laurie looked whipped and Jo had dark circles under her eyes.

Having the pugs over had been a good call. Jo dropped her purse and a bright-yellow Forever 21 bag on the island and got on her knees to receive the frenzied greeting the pugs were offering. She let them kiss her face all over and Baby Bear stood for this misappropriation of attention as long as he could before he used his bulk to push the pugs aside and get his fair share of attention. Jo nuzzled and stroked Baby Bear until his eyes rolled up into his head and he about wagged his tail right off.

“What's this?” Annie asked, picking up the three dog bowls. “You didn't feed those dogs chili and beans, did you?”

“There wasn't that much left—did you want some?”

“I can't think it's a good idea to feed dogs chili and beans, Bear.”

“Oh, they loved it.” I pulled Jo to her feet and gave her a hug. “How's my girl?”

That brought it back to Jo and she shook her head and her eyes filled.

“I know, baby. Not a good night. I'm so sorry.”

Another head shake. Annie tried to communicate something to me with her eyes, but I didn't get the message.

I said, “Detective Wanderley was here earlier. He wants to talk to you. Is that going to be okay?”

Jo pulled away and went to the cabinet for a glass. She filled it with ice and water and drank standing over the sink.

“I guess,” she said after drinking.

“Could you tell me and Mom about last night?”

She shook her head.

“Come here, Jo.” I took a reluctant hand in mine and drew Jo over to the couch. Annie sat on the coffee table across from us and put her hand on Jo's knee.

“Tell us, Jo.”

And the story stumbled out. Jo had been at her friend Cara's with another girl, Ashley—we knew that part of the story. Alex and some other boys had also apparently been over—we hadn't known about that, but it was okay. We know Cara's parents and they're good people. Jo came home and—

Annie Laurie asked, “Why did you come home, Jo? Didn't you and Ashley plan to spend the night?”

A slow nod.

“So what made you decide to come home, then?”

“I just did, that's all.” The tears were gone and that last came out a little grit-toothed. I couldn't decipher what was behind it. Annie Laurie touched Jo's arm to get her back on track. “All right, Jo, you decided to walk home. Then what?”

There had been a tiny shift in Jo's eyes. I didn't think Jo had
walked
home. I let it pass. For now.

“I came inside and Baby Bear didn't come meet me. I heard him whimpering, so I called him, and he ran to the head of the stairs and barked and then he ran back to my room. I . . . I didn't want to go upstairs. The house was dark . . .”

That kind of thing had never bothered Jo before. My girls are gutsy. They've never been squealy.

“I went upstairs. Baby Bear was crying for me but I was still really slow and I felt it more every step I took.”

“Felt what, Jo?” Annie kept her voice low. She took Jo's hand in her own.

“I don't know! Only, my heart was beating faster and faster and I felt like I couldn't breathe.”

“You were frightened.” Annie bent her head and kissed Jo's knuckles.

“Yes.”

I squeezed my girl up close to me.

“When I walked into my room, my heart was thumping so hard I thought I'd pass out and Baby Bear came to me and then I saw Phoebe just sitting there.”

I said, “Phoebe was alive?”

“I thought so. I mean, she was sitting there, cross-legged, bent way forward with her arms loose in front of her and her hair covering her face and I said, ‘Phoebe?' and she didn't
answer
me, I was standing two feet away from her and I said her name and she didn't even
move
and then I touched her arm and she fell over and her eyes were
wide open
and I think I screamed!”

I didn't blame her. I think I would have screamed, too.

“I called you to come home—” That would have been the text. “And then you finally came home.” There was rebuke in her tone, but we had gotten there as soon as we could.

“Why didn't you call nine-one-one?” asked Annie, which amazed me.
I'm
usually the one who says the wrong thing.

Jo's mouth dropped open and she said, an ocean of horror opening up in front of her, “Could she have
lived
?”

“No,” I said quickly. “She could not have. Phoebe was gone before you got here.”

But it was too late. Annie had released the evil djinn of doubt and guilt and now we couldn't get him back in the bottle. “I don't know
why
I didn't call nine-one-one! I don't know! Why
didn't
I?” Jo sobbed and stormed and paced and questioned herself and refused to be consoled.

The pugs picked up on her distress and trumped her with their shrieking. Baby Bear followed at her heels, whining his anxiety. I gave up trying to reason with Jo and appealed to her instead. I said, “Jo! You're scaring Baby Bear. And the pugs are going to wee in the house if you can't get them calmed down. Make sure the gates are closed and take them in the backyard. They need a break. They're picking up all this tension and Rebecca told me that when Mr. Wiggles gets upset, he barfs.”

Jo stopped the noise. She blew her nose on the tissue Annie handed her and went into the backyard to check the gates. When she came back to the door, three muzzles were pressed up against the glass. It made her laugh, thank you, God.

After Jo took the dogs outside, Annie touched my arm. “Oh, goodness, Bear! What was I thinking?”

Heaven knows I've been there, saying the wrong thing, so I didn't have anything to offer her. I put the kettle on for tea, because the English have that right. A cup of sweet, milky tea is better than Prozac. I mean, I haven't had Prozac, but tea is a good, calming, soothing alternative.

Jo had herself back under control when the four of them came back in. There was even some color in her cheeks from the cool October weather. All the clouds had been swept from the dogs' eyes, leaving sparkling, sunny, happyhappy, joyjoy. One of the nice things about having almost no short-term memory.

Jo's mug was waiting for her on the kitchen table. I'd added extra sugar and even heated the milk before pouring it in and I could tell she felt better when she sipped it and that made us feel better, too. I picked up her shopping bag.

“Let's see what you got, Jo,” I said. It was a shopping ritual. After you go shopping, you come home and show Dad what you bought. My girls, including Annie, like to show me, and, at least where Merrie and Jo are concerned, it gives me an opportunity to register a complaint if the article is too suggestive. Annie Laurie is more liberal about how the girls dress than I am. She says that's because I've never been a girl. I say that's because she's never been a
boy
.

Jo got to her feet and dumped out a bag of black lace and chains and two huge, clunky black shoes. The stuff didn't look like anything Jo usually wore. It looked like stuff
Phoebe
wore.

She held up the fall of black lace. It looked like a skirt with a wide waistband, but of course, it couldn't be. You could see right through it.

“What is it?”

Jo looked at me. “It's a skirt.”

I said, “How can it be a skirt? You can see through it.”

“No you can't, Dad. It's got an underskirt.”

That wide waistband? Yeah.
That
was the underskirt. I kept my mouth shut.

The jangle of chains, it turned out, was a bracelet. It consisted of a ring to be worn on the middle finger attached to a multichain bracelet. Looked exactly like the slave bracelets girls used to wear when I was a kid.

I said, “Jo, that's a slave bracelet. Why would you want to wear a slave bracelet?”

Now she really gave me a look.

“Dad, it's not a
slave
bracelet. It's a warrior
queen
bracelet.”

Okaaay. But I believe in the power of the word, so, okay. I'm good with a warrior queen bracelet. Warrior queen daughters aren't nearly as worrying as slave daughters.

“Let's see the shoes.”

Jo picked up the hideous monstrosities. They were black fake-suede platform oxfords, according to the tag pasted inside. Overall, the heel height had to be five inches. Five and a half, Jo corrected me.

I took one from her. It felt like a block of balsa wood. “Can you walk in these?”

“Dad. Yes. I can walk in them.”

“How far?”

“Dad!” A pause and then she admitted, “They're form over function.” Uh-huh. Everything in the bag looked like form over function to me. Baby Bear sniffed the shoes, decided he had the same idea about plastic shoes as I did.

“You could break an ankle in those shoes. No more ballet.”

Jo's eyes widened. “Keep the receipt, Mom.”

I asked Annie, “How much did all this cost?”

Annie was feeding Cheerios to the pugs and Baby Bear. She shrugged her shoulders. “Jo used her own money. What did it come to, Jo?”

Her own money? What money? Jo doesn't have any money. She's never had a job—ballet takes up too much time—and we only give her twenty dollars a week. How the heck could she have used her own money? Unless my child was running drugs for some greedy . . .

“Where'd you get this kind of money, Jo?” It came out harsher than I'd meant it to. My heart was thumping like I'd run a mile with a rottweiler on my tail. I sat down.

“You bought a skirt, shoes, jewelry—what did all that come to? I want to know where you got the money.”

She flushed. My heart beat sped up. Annie said, “What's up, Bear?”

“Dad, it was my money, and I . . . I earned it and anyway, everything together was less than forty dollars and—”

“You're trying to tell me you got all that for less than forty dollars?”

Jo took the skirt thing and held the tag out to me. Eleven ninety-nine. You can buy a skirt for eleven dollars and ninety-nine cents? I spread my hands. “Jo, you say you earned the money—I want to know how. As far as I know, you don't babysit, you don't do lawns, you're at ballet class every afternoon—”

Jo flinched. Her color deepened. Her eyes were filling with tears and I thought my heart was going to break like a dropped china plate.

“You are at ballet class every day, aren't you, Jo?” I didn't want her to answer. I didn't want to know that my girl had taken a turn down a dark, dark road.

“Dad, I . . .” She stood in front of me trembling, the tears spilling over.

If Jo had sold drugs—if she had been a part of what killed Phoebe Pickersley, a girl younger that Jo's own sister, there would be nothing I could do to fix this. All the money in the world wasn't going to be able to fix this.

Annie clutched the length of black lace to her chest, her eyes going from me to Jo and back. “Tell me what's going on, Bear. What's this about?”

“It was
my
money. They were
mine
to sell,” said Jo.

Oh, dear God.

“And I was never going to read them again and I got a hundred and seventy-five dollars for all of them together and postage cost me around twenty—”

What? “What are you talking about?” I asked her.

“My Marguerite Henry horse books. I sold them on eBay.”

Annie said, “You got a hundred and seventy-five dollars for those old books?”

I didn't give a dang about the books. She could do what she wanted with them. But that wasn't all of it. I could tell Jo was holding something back. I'd seen her flinch.

“Your afternoons, Jo. Are you spending them with Madame Laney?”

She closed her eyes and held on to the kitchen island. “Most of them, Dad.”

The kitchen filled with silence. Baby Bear, unhappy with the tension in the room, came to me and barked. Tommy sat down and barked at everyone. Wiggles snored in the family room.

“What have you been doing in the afternoons, Josephine Amelia? All those afternoons when Mom and I thought you were at ballet class—where have you been?” My voice was calm. My mind was spinning, my heart about to quit on me, but my voice was calm.

She kept her trembling lids closed, the tears leaking out from under her lashes. She shook her head.

“I need to know, Josephine.” My child had done something so shameful, she couldn't bear to look me in the eyes.

At last she whispered, “Going to RCIA classes, Dad.”

What
? “What's RCIA?”

Jo turned her back to me and tore off a sheet of paper towel and blew her nose. Annie watched us both like she was seeing a Kurosawa movie without subtitles. Jo kept her back to me and answered, “Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.”

Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults—what the heck was that? I'd never heard of any rite of Christian whatever. I didn't know of any program like that going on up at the church. “What is that? Some kind of Bible study? You're going to some kind of Bible study?” I was still missing something. What were the tears about? What was all the drama for?

She drew in a quavery breath. “I'm studying to become a Catholic, Dad.”

“Oh.”

Oh.

Ohhh.

Jo's hands were cupped over her face and her shoulders shook. The thing to do would be to go over there and put my arms around her.

She wasn't a drug dealer. She had sold her own books. And she was spending her afternoons studying to become a Catholic. I should have felt enormous relief. I did. My heart had slowed way down. I was relieved.