Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (28 page)

“Wanderley, what are you on about?” I picked the chairs back up, and we dumped them in his brother's pickup bed.

“She made me promise not to tell anyone about it. She made it a condition before she told me anything.”

This was rich. Wanderley had given me a forty-minute lecture on my stupidity in making that same promise once, and now here he was . . .

He ducked his head, acknowledging the unspoken accusation. “I've told you all I can. She'll calm down. Jo brought me a . . . a problem I can't fix. I don't have the power. She's mad at me, but I can't help her.”

•   •   •

The drive home was almost as quiet as the drive there had been. Annie Laurie was the only one who wanted to talk.

“You do realize now why we were invited to the party, don't you, Bear?”

“No.”

“We were there to make James look respectable.”

I snorted. “Did you tell everyone I spent Thursday night in jail? That I got arrested in a trailer park?”

“No. It would have been fun, but James wouldn't have thanked me for it. He'll be at church tomorrow.”

I took my eyes off the road to see if she was joking.

“He owes me,” said Annie Laurie. “From what Dr. Hensler said, you can tell James has made it sound like the church visits have been more than business. I backed him up so he has to make it true. He owes me a month's worth of visits.”

“Essentially, you fibbed to Dr. Hensler and then you blackmailed Wanderley into coming to church.”

“Oh no, that's so ugly, Bear. It's a tit-for-tat thing. I did something for him and he has to do something for me. It's not like I asked him to fix speeding tickets for me, Bear.”

Annie Laurie is a lawyer's daughter, you know. That's going to come out in the blood, one way or another.

I studied Jo in my rearview mirror. Her eyes were teary but her face was set. Annie caught me and turned around in her seat.

“What
is
it, Jo? Are you feeling bad, sugar?” She twisted in her seat belt and put a hand on Jo's cheek. “Still no fever. Tell us what's wrong, Jo.”

Jo didn't say a word, but big tears slid down her white cheeks.

•   •   •

Jo was grounded, but we did allow her to have friends over, and that night, eleven showed up. Eleven! There was Alex (of course) and a mixture of school and church friends, all of whom disappeared into the television room. I noticed Jo's friend Nolan was among them and wondered if I could get the kid to take a look at my laptop—it was slowing down. Nolan is a computer psycho-genius, and whatever that kid develops someday, I'm investing in it.

I was rewriting my sermon in the study. Annie Laurie brought me a cup of hot kava and sat in the easy chair, her own mug warming her hands. She had a book open in front of her, but she wasn't reading. She was listening.

“What?” I said, looking up from my text.

She put her fingers to her lips. “Listen.”

I did. I didn't hear anything.

“
Why
don't we hear anything? No music, no television, no laughing. What are they doing?” she said.

I put my papers down. “Let's go see.”

Annie untucked her legs and put her mug on my desk. “No. You stay here. I'll go bring them soft drinks or something.” She rummaged in the kitchen and put a tray together and went upstairs.

I heard her tap on the door and open it without waiting for an answer. There was a murmur of voices thanking her. The door shut and she padded downstairs to our office.

“What's going on?”

Her forehead creased. “I don't know. It looked like a counsel of war. Very serious faces. They all had their phones in their hands—bad news, maybe? If so, they weren't interested in sharing it with me. At least everybody has their clothes on.” She shrugged and picked up her book.

I went back to going over the sermon that a third of the congregation would not hear a word of.

The storm was gathering, but we didn't know it.

Nineteen

S
unday morning at church, the natives were restless.

The youth group usually occupies a block of six or so pews. This Sunday, something was up.

I'm used to the discreet use of phones during service. If I caught one of my girls doing it, I'd have confiscated their phones for a week, but when the user is seventy-five-year-old Mr. Yu, I'm going to pretend I didn't see it and go on with my sermon. The phone keeps Mr. Yu awake, and since he used to sleep through my sermons, it's a silver lining.

However, this Sunday, I couldn't ignore it. The youth group pews were boiling. Hands passing phones over and under pews, muffled exclamations, earbuds being shared like everybody was a blood relative. And their faces! I thought I had a good message, but girls were breaking down in tears, getting up and leaving the sanctuary. I saw an irate father come down and insert himself between his daughter and her friends, and that quarter grew still, but, my gosh—I'd never seen anything like it.

Jo, I couldn't complain about. She was as still and stone-faced as an Easter Island monolith, the turmoil washing up against her but not drawing her in. I was proud of her composure. Mark and Lizabeth sat toward the back but they must have slipped out right after services. I didn't see them in the foyer.

Wanderley was there as promised, but I don't think he got much from the service, either. He seemed worried and preoccupied. Annie asked if he wanted to come to lunch with us, but he said he had plans. Jo passed us with a covey of teary-eyed friends.

Wanderley caught her by her sleeve. “Jo, could you give me a minute?” he said.

She pulled away from him. “Sorry,” she called over her shoulder, “can't help you. I don't have the power.”

•   •   •

Monday, a week and two days after Phoebe died, the storm broke.

The elders were meeting to discuss the possibility of adding a Spanish-language service on Sundays. It would mean cutting our three English-language services down to two, and hiring a Spanish-speaking pastor. I was all for the addition but I got pulled out of the meeting when Rebecca cracked open the door and said she needed me.

I didn't ask if it could wait. Rebecca is as sound a person as God ever made. Besides that, her eyes were red. She'd been crying.

I trailed her back to my office and sat at my desk as she shut, and locked, the door. Rebecca has never locked my door.

“Boot your laptop, Bear.”

I did. When she told me to pull up YouTube, I did that, too. She walked over and typed something in the search bar, hit Enter.

A line of screens popped up. Rebecca scrolled until she came to one titled, “For Phoebe,” posted by someone calling themselves “vngnzizmn.” Rebecca clicked the full-screen box, unfolded a tissue clenched in her hand and blew her nose.

The screen filled with jumbled images—the corner of a bed, a hanging light fixture, a blurred view of trim ankles in dark shoes. The impression was of a cell phone video, a video made by someone who didn't want to be seen filming. At times the scene went black and muffled as though the phone had been hidden in a pocket or the folds of a shirt. The one time the camera caught a face, it was blurred, too. You could tell it was a woman, that's all. But I already knew it was a woman. I recognized her voice. It was Lizabeth Pickersley-Smythe.

The voice was low and controlled but white-hot with fury.

“. . . -vry thing you touch, you've been a bag of snakes from day one. You were a waste before you ever came here so I'm not taking the blame. You—” The word was bleeped out. “—this family was happy before you came and
ruined
everything we worked for.”

Phoebe's voice now: “We were happy before
you
—”

“You think he was happy? You think your dad was
happy
? Working in a nowhere job? Growing old at forty? You think he was
happy
with your drunk mother and his chinless daughter? Happy living in that crackerbox because your mother was too stupid to get a job and thought that playing the lottery was a viable path to security? You were a millstone around your father's neck, you both were, holding him back from what he should have been. Your father is
ashamed
of you, he
hates
the way you look. You know that, don't you? You've noticed he won't look you in the eyes? You weren't a beauty to start with but what you've done to—” A portion was muffled out. “. . . without a conscience. Every time he answers the door, picks up the phone at night, he knows you've done something else to humiliate him, and he's
praying
that one of these nights that call will be to tell him you're dead—”

The other voice, Phoebe, cried out at this.

“. . . before you totally disgrace him and you—” Again, muffled. “—and it would be a relief to him if you did, a mercy, the kindest thing you could do.”

“Liar! Liar!”

“You're calling me a liar? Are you so stupid you can't see it for yourself? Look at this—he texted me, he texted that he wished you were
dead
!”

“Liar!”

“Read it, then, if you think I'm lying—”

“Get away from me—”

“Read it for yourself—you don't believe me—read it! No? I'll read it for you then. ‘. . . if she would only disappear, and never come back . . .' What do you think that means? Look! It's right here! Two days ago, check the date, read it if you don't believe me.” A terrible silence followed and then a hoarse cry. Phoebe must have dropped her phone, all that showed on the screen was a blank ceiling.

“Liar.” The conviction was gone.

“All that medication I cleaned out of the sty you were living in—maybe your mother wasn't saving it for herself. Maybe it was for you all along. I brought some of it home, you know. I never waste anything. It's under your sink where I keep what I need to clean filth out of my house. You should check it. Just in case. Maybe it was meant for you.” The blur of a body moving and then the sound of a door shutting.

I could hear soft sobs. A hand reached out for the phone and the screen closed. The video ended.

I sat there. The last words Phoebe had posted on her Facebook page—“a mercy.” After hearing the recording, those words sounded like the suicide note we'd all been looking for.

Rebecca's hands covered her nose and mouth. Her eyes were streaming. I looked at the video box. It had been posted two days ago. It had 18,541 hits.

“How did you find this?”

“It was on the church website.”

“No.”

“It's off now. I called Derek. He's trying to figure out how someone got in to post it. What are we going to do?”

I called Wanderley.

“James,” I said.

His voice tensed. “What is it?”

“You in the office? Near a computer?”

“Yeah.”

I told him what to look for. I waited. It was torture listening to that conversation again, muffled as it was over the phone line. Wanderley cut it short.

Wanderley said, “Pull her out of school, Bear. Pull her out of school and meet me at your house. You do it or I'm going to and if I have to, I'm going to make it official.”

I didn't think he could do that. “Has she broken any—” He hung up on me.

It's less than a mile to Clements High School from the church. I had my picture taken, signed a badge and a ledger and was escorted to an office where I filled out a request to withdraw Josephine Wells from school for the rest of the day. Under “Reason for Withdrawal” I wrote “family emergency.” That was the truth.

I texted Annie even though I knew she was teaching a seminar today and wouldn't check her phone until she was on her way home.

Jo walked toward me down the long tiled hall like the Lady Jane Grey on her very last walk. I didn't say anything to her and she didn't speak to me the five minutes it took to drive home. She knew what this was about.

Wanderley was on our front porch and Baby Bear was looking at him through the glass door, trying to tell him that no one was home.

I pulled into the garage and pushed the remote to close the door behind us. I turned the car off, unbuckled my seat belt and took Jo's hand.

I said, “I love you, Jo. I believe in you. Whatever happens, don't tell a lie. If you're certain what you did is right, if you prayed about it, then I'll back you up. Hear me?”

Her chin trembled.

“What happened to Phoebe? I'm mad, too, Jo.”

She flung her arms around my neck.

Baby Bear was standing inside the kitchen door telling us over and over again that someone was at the door and he didn't have any thumbs. We got out of the car.

I left Jo in the kitchen to put water on for tea. Baby Bear rubbed and pressed against her until she had trouble keeping her balance.

I showed Wanderley into the dining room we hardly ever use. I didn't want this conversation in our family room where we read together and play Scrabble and set up our Christmas tree.

Wanderley pulled a chair out from the table but didn't sit down. “Where is she?”

“She's making us some tea.”

“I don't want any tea.”

“Don't drink it, then. I want some and I told Jo to make it.” The kettle whistled and we sat together listening to Jo pour the hot water into the teapot, clap the lid on, and gather spoons from the flatware drawer, then the rattle of cups on saucers. She used her hip to open the swinging doors between the kitchen and the dining room. She set the wooden tray in the center of the table and poured out three cups of tea. She put two full spoons of sugar and a dollop of milk in my cup and handed it to me with a napkin and a spoon. She poured a cup for Wanderley and held the sugar spoon in her hand, waiting expectantly.

Wanderley looked at her. I know what he saw. Five feet two inches of lithe dancer, long wavy brown hair hanging to her butt. Jeans and T-shirt and a Texas Tech sweatshirt Merrie had forgotten to take with her. She looked like Joan of Arc. And I was proud of her. I was troubled by what she had done, by what she had taken on herself, but I was proud of her.

Wanderley waved off the sugar and took the cup. “When you showed me the app, you told me your questions were hypothetical.”

“What app?” I said.

Wanderley sipped at the tea, scalded his tongue and put it down. “At Molly's party. She showed me a recording app. She wanted to know what I could do if she had proof on a recording app. But the situation she gave me, the
hypothetical
situation she gave me, wouldn't have constituted proof of anything.”

Jo kept her eyes down as she stirred milk into her tea. “You told me there wouldn't be anything you could do, if a situation like that came up. When you told me you couldn't help me, then the problem
stayed
hypothetical for you. It wasn't your problem, then. It was mine.”

Through the dining room window I saw a big red truck screech around the corner and come to a stop half an inch from Wanderley's bumper. I heard Wanderley suck his breath in. Alex bounded from the truck and raced to the front door, banging on it even though he could see us through the window. Baby Bear made a big deal about letting us know there was someone at the door, all of ten feet from the dining room table. Jo got up and opened the door for Alex.

“Becky said you got pulled out of class—” Alex began.

Jo asked him to have a seat and went to the kitchen to get him a cup and saucer. While Jo fixed Alex's tea for him, not needing to ask him how he liked it, Alex surveyed the chairs, took one from the end of the table and dragged it around. I sat on Jo's left, Alex sat on Jo's right.

Across the table from us Wanderley said, “Give me a break.” He sipped from his cup, grunted and put a spoonful of sugar in his cup. “What it comes down to is this: you lied to me, Jo.”

“No, I didn't.”

“At Molly's party, when you brought this up, I asked you if you had Phoebe's phone and you said you didn't.”

“You asked me if I knew where it was, and I said I didn't.”

“I had Phoebe's phone,” Alex said, “If you want to throw someone in jail, then it's me you want.”

“Tone that down a little, would you, Alex?” Wanderley said. “Did you hear me say anything about jail?” He shook his head and drank from his cup. “So you had Phoebe's phone,” he said to Alex. “How did you come to have Phoebe's phone?”

“Jo gave it to me.”

Wanderley refocused on Jo. “How did my officers miss it—when they searched your room?”

Wanderley's men were going to be getting a crash course on searches when he got back to the office.

“When they were all over my room, Mom told me to get what I needed out of it so I could sleep downstairs with her that night. I got my pajamas and my toothbrush and my retainer, which I keep in a red bag that says ‘retainer.' I picked it up and I took it downstairs with me.”

“They didn't ask to see what you were taking with you?”

“They did. I held the stuff out and they said I could go down with Mom.”

Wanderley's eyes narrowed when he heard that. Someone would be going back to How to Search a Room 101.

Wanderley put his elbows on the table and leaned over. “And you couldn't tell there was something else in that retainer bag? It wasn't heavier? Shaped wrong?”

“I knew.” She sounded small.

“But you didn't tell anyone.”

“I wanted to see what it was first. If I told, you would have taken it away.”

“Yes. I would have.” He stared at her. She didn't look away.

“Tell me the rest.”

“Alex came over Saturday. Dad said you wanted to talk to me and Alex said he would hide the phone and not tell me where it was so I wouldn't know where it was so if you asked me, I could answer truthfully that I didn't know.”

Wanderley stared at the two teenagers and said, “You've got yourself a couple of lawyers, Bear.”