The Last Breath (12 page)

“I remember those months better than you think I do, you know.” My voice is quiet, barely a whisper, and sounds as exhausted as I suddenly feel. “How you practically moved in here, didn’t eat or sleep or go home for weeks at a time. How you hired a team of lawyers, put them up in the Quality Inn on the interstate, covered all of the costs. How after the verdict you picked up where Dad couldn’t, footing the bills for college, buying us books and clothes and cars, inviting us for birthdays and holidays. I remember everything.”

I look up now, and Cal is watching me intently. His courtroom mask has softened around the edges but is still guarded, and he remains silent. I wonder if he already senses the words that are building in my throat, threatening to choke me.

“But you still stopped after one lousy appeal.”

Anger flickers over his expression, followed closely by something else, something I can’t quite read, as well as the undeniable spasm of pain. Is Cal hurt and angry that I don’t understand? Or are his emotions more self-inflicted, fueled by guilt at letting his only brother languish in prison? Either way, I don’t think I want to know the answer.

We stand in silence for a long moment, an endless moment, and then he turns to leave.

But a few minutes later, as I’m climbing the stairs to my room, I can’t help but wonder what Jeffrey will say when I tell him he was right.

15

CAL AND I
spend the rest of Saturday tiptoeing around one another, neither of us willing to bring up Jeffrey Levine or allegations of slutty behavior. Mine or Ella Mae’s. When, late that afternoon, he asks me to run a few errands, I take his request for what it is—a test. I shuttle to the stores without so much as a passing thought about a detour down Main Street.

Well, maybe a teeny passing thought. A fleeting fantasy. But how could I not? Jake said he would be thinking about me, and what girl would not obsess about that?

But the point is, I don’t go to Roadkill. I don’t even do a drive-by. I push my carts through Walmart and Winn-Dixie, schlep the merchandise to the trunk and steer my car straight back to a house that is starting to feel more and more like a prison.

One woman’s prison, another man’s escape from the same.

Cal meets me at the door, motions for me to follow him into the kitchen.

“I finally got ahold of your sister.”

“Congratulations.” I dump the bags on the counter and turn to face him. “Because she’s apparently not speaking to me.”

“She is tomorrow. She’s expecting the two of us after church.”

“We’re going to church?” I might even make a face as I say it. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine anything worse. I prefer my services in churches where I can remain anonymous, where the congregation’s judgmental stares don’t taint the air until I choke on every breath, where the sermon of Christian values of forgiveness and acceptance isn’t contradicted by the congregation’s whispered allegations.

“Of course not. But when somebody tells you to drop by after church, they mean around 12:30.”

“Then why don’t they just say around 12:30?”

Cal shakes his head like I just asked him why Tennessee is called the volunteer state. “You really have been gone a long time, haven’t you, baby girl?”

“What about Bo? He still hasn’t called, and his cell keeps going to voice mail.”

A long sigh. “I swear, that boy. If he doesn’t get his ass over here soon, I’m—”

“Hey!” Dad’s voice, fueled by anger and something more desperate, something that shoots through my veins like ice water, cuts Cal off midthreat.

For an old man, Cal is pretty spry. He rushes to Dad’s bedside, beating me by a good four seconds.

“What does somebody have to do to get attention from you people, keel over and die?” Dad’s face is squinty and drawn. “I’ve been hollering for the past ten minutes.”

“What’s wrong?” Cal uses his lawyer voice, now laced with worry.

“My goddamn back is on fire, that’s what’s wrong. Where the hell is Frannie?”

“Fannie,” I whisper.

“I don’t give a shit what her name is, just go get her.” Dad’s face contorts, and he twists on the bed like a garden snake. “Hell’s bells, it’s like somebody stabbed me in the kidney.”

I watch my father, thinking of all the death I see in the field. Rows and rows of injured and dying alongside mass graves. Wailing mothers mourning a lost child. Soldiers far too young to have died holding guns. I’ve learned to somehow distance myself from their suffering, to not succumb to the emotions of their tragedy, to rescue the survivors without stopping to grieve for their dead.

But now my training fails me, utterly and completely. My dying father writhes around in agony and I stand here, sneakers stuck to the living room carpet, stiff with indecision.

Because how do I distance myself from my own tragedy?

“Gia, get Fannie.” Cal’s order doesn’t register around the emergency-broadcast-system siren blaring in my ears.

My father clutches his side, practically folds himself double on the bed. “Son of a bitch!”

Cal jiggles my arm, and I startle to attention. “What?”

“Go get Fannie. Drag her out of the shower if you need to. Tell her we need her right away.”

He gives me a less-than-gentle shove in the direction of the stairs, and my body responds. Ninety seconds later I return with Fannie, in her bathrobe and panting, who handles Dad’s complaints with good-natured competence. She assesses his pain level and administers liquid morphine, and within a few minutes the muscles in his face unscrew and his body melts into the mattress.

Disaster averted—for now. No thanks to me.

Cal draws a bottomless breath, scrubs his face with his hands. “Can the three of us have a little huddle in the kitchen real quick?”

My stomach drops into the crawl space under the living room floor. I follow them into the kitchen, bracing myself. Cal’s deep scowl tells me I’m not getting away without a good tongue-lashing.

But before Cal can launch into me, Fannie intercepts him. “Well, this sure changes the game.”

I don’t dare meet Cal’s glare, focusing my eyes on Fannie’s instead. “I know, and I’m really sorry. But I’m better trained than what just happened back there. I swear I’ll do better next time.”

Fannie blinks at me once, twice. “Sugar, I was talking about your father. His pain level. I wasn’t expecting things to get so volatile so soon.”

“Oh.”

“What does that mean?” Cal says.

“It means things are progressing a whole lot quicker than any of us expected.”

“Oh,” I say again.

Not for the first time, Fannie looks at me like she does Dad. Like I’m someone to be taken care of. She gives my arm a few pats. “Don’t you worry, sugar. I come armed with a butt load of morphine. I aim to keep your father comfortable and pain free for whatever time he has left.”

Cal clears his throat. “The doctor said up to three months.”

“I’d ballpark it more at three weeks. That’s if we’re very lucky.”

Cal and I suck in a simultaneous breath. Three weeks? When I filled in the paperwork for my leave of absence five days ago—has it only been five days?—I requested a minimum of three months. Now Fannie is telling me I might only need one?

A new and unpleasant sense of urgency nips at my conscience and leaves a sour taste on my tongue. One month to prove to everyone I can handle any disaster, including my own, and forge some sort of peace with my dying father. One month—and we’re already a week in.

I check my watch, turn to Cal. “I’m thinking Bo may need another little shove.”

“I was just having the same thought.”

I wriggle my phone from my back pocket, push a few buttons and wait for Bo’s voice mail to kick in, which I knew it would as soon as he saw my number.

“Bo, it’s Gia.” My voice is relaxed and singsong, as if I’m calling to wish him a happy birthday. “Hey listen, I just wanted to invite you to my Nancy Grace interview tomorrow night at the house. You know Nancy, right? That blonde on Headline News? Anyway, I told her I could probably get her a few choice quotes from you. And, oh, I almost forgot.”

I pause for a breath, enough to fuel every ounce of menace I can force into my tone. “Cal and I are hosting a family get-together at Lexi’s tomorrow after church. Attendance is mandatory. Don’t test me on this, Bo, ’cause you won’t win.”

I hang up.

Cal’s face clears, and he gives me a smile that lets me know my previous blunders are forgiven. “Baby girl, are you sure you don’t wanna be the next Tennessee Tigress? Because that was one kick-ass bit of prowling.”

* * *

My sister lives in a charming brick cottage with shuttered windows smack in the middle of Rogersville’s historic district. I follow Cal up the narrow walkway, looking longingly in the direction of Roadkill, only a few blocks up the road. I imagine Jake upstairs in bed, sleeping off what was surely a busy Saturday night, and I wonder if he’s alone. For a man who promised to spend the weekend thinking about me, he could have at least texted.

“Looks like we beat your brother,” Cal mutters without turning, right before he stabs the doorbell.

“He’ll be here.” My voice is thick with authority I don’t own. Bo better show. Nancy Grace is a beast I’d really rather not face.

Lexi answers the door in sweatpants and the remnants of yesterday’s makeup, her normally perfect hair is a greasy knot on top of her head. I haven’t seen her like this in, well, ever. Even in the privacy of her own home, she was always trying. Now, her pretty lips don’t even smile.

“Interesting look for church,” I say.

She points to my left eye. “I think you went a little overboard with the purple shadow, Tammy Faye.”

I would roll my eyes, but it would hurt. Lexi motions us in, shuffling across the hardwood floor in giant SpongeBob Squarepants slippers. Cal and I step inside, clicking the door shut behind us.

My sister’s house is, to put it politely, a pigsty. Crap everywhere. Blankets and pillows strewn about, a scattering of papers and magazines and books, three days’ worth of dirty dishes and food wrappers on every horizontal surface. Not like my sister at all.

“What’s wrong with you?” I say over the flat screen blaring from the living room wall. “Are you sick or something?”

“Peachier than ever.” Lexi digs under a blanket for the remote and punches the mute button with a chipped thumbnail. “What’s this I hear about you perched on Jake Foster’s bar stool again yesterday?”

Good Lord. The gossips in this town. I give her my most casual shrug. “He fed me.”

“I hear he did a whole lot more than that. I hear he took you upstairs and closed the blinds.”

I flash a glance at Cal, who chomps down on his toothpick. “Maybe we should go ahead and get started.”

“Why don’t we give Bo a few more minutes?” Cal shrugs off his coat, folding it in half and draping it neatly over a chair by the window. “His church service must’ve run long.”

I check my watch—12:43 p.m.—and a new wave of dread twists in my stomach. Why couldn’t I have threatened with something less hard-hitting than HLN, something like wine hour with Hoda and Kathie Lee?

Cal moves a jumbled stack of newspapers from the couch to the floor and sits, crossing his legs and looking like he’s getting comfortable enough to wait all day. “I’m sure he’ll be here by the time coffee’s made.”

Cal’s reminder of Lexi’s manners seems to snap my sister out of her sloth. She nods, snatching up as many plates and cups from the coffee table as her hands will allow, and gestures for me to follow her into the kitchen, where she dumps them unceremoniously into the sink. When she crosses her arms and leans a hip against the countertop, I sigh, reaching for the coffeepot.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove with this helpless act, Lexi, but I also don’t care.” I dump the used grounds into the sink, drop in a fresh filter. “Not after you ditched me this weekend.”

Lexi grins. “Sounds like you found something else to occupy your time, you big ole slut. So what is it? Eight, nine inches?”

“Can you be serious for ten seconds?” I flick on the water, hold the pot under the stream. “Things with Dad are going quicker than anyone expected.”

“For such a slut, you certainly are a prude.”

“Fannie says if we’re lucky, he might live only three more weeks.”

“Fannie Miles? The one whose husband spent their retirement fund on drag queens and meth?”

“It was cocaine and prostitutes, but yeah, that’s her.”

“What a disappointment. My version is so much more interesting.”

I whirl around to face her so fast, water from the pot in my hand sloshes down Lexi’s sweatpants and onto the floor. “I need you to focus here. I’ve been thinking about what that lawyer said about Cal’s defense, and about Dean Sullivan. And the fact that he’s an alcoholic now.”

“So?”

“So what if it’s because he can’t live with himself since the trial? What if it’s because he feels guilty for something he did or didn’t do?”

“Like what? Dean saw him, Gi. He saw him pretending to break into his own house the night Ella Mae was killed. You do the math.”

“I did the math, over and over for sixteen years. But what if the math was right, but the equation was wrong?”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It means, what if this professor is right? What if all this time we were adding up evidence that didn’t exist, basing our judgments and beliefs and guilty verdicts on a shoddy defense and coerced testimony? Don’t you get it? If this professor is right, Dad might not have been found guilty. He might never have gone to prison.”

Lexi presses her lips together and drops her head, mopping the spilled water with a slipper. I’ve seen that expression before, right before she threw up on a Sunday drive over Grandfather Mountain. Still. I don’t back down.

“I think we should talk to this Jeffrey Levine,” I say.

Her head pops up, her eyes wide. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.”

“Come on, Lex. Ten minutes. Let’s just hear him out for ten minutes, and then—”

Cal interrupts with a loud harrumph, and his expression tells me he heard more than I would have liked. “Your brother’s here.”