Unconditional (14 page)

“Didn't have to. Your boy was one of our original suspects.”

Hope seeped out of my lungs like a slow leak from a child's balloon.

“But he had an alibi. He was with his cousin that night.”

I pressed my hand up to my forehead, pushing hair away from my face. I looked down at my boots, feeling dizzy. I'd been so sure. The clippings . . .

“But I'm telling you, I saw—”

“I don't really care what you saw, Mrs. Crawford. I care about
evidence
. I can't make an arrest in a homicide case based on your gut feelings.” I heard him sigh deeply. “Look, just stay out of the Commons, you hear? Nothing good ever comes outta that place . . .”

I stood straight, looked over my shoulder at the children, still dancing. To Keisha, who twirled under Joe's guiding hand.

“And nothing good ever will,” Detective Miller finished. “Look, whatever it is you're doing down there, you need to stop. And don't call me about this again, you hear me? You're on your own.”

I opened my mouth to tell him I
was
doing something good, that he didn't know what I knew. To tell him about the box in Anthony Jones's drawer. The box I
knew
held the truth. But before I could say another word, Detective Miller disconnected the call.

Dismissed. Just like that.

And just like that, Billy's murderer would go free.

I decided that Detective Miller was a cruel man. He didn't care. Didn't care about Billy. About me. About finding the truth.

I slowly turned and walked back into the barn where the party continued. Scraped-clean paper plates littered the makeshift tables, half-empty drink bottles abandoned around them. My guests continued to laugh and smile and dance while I now found it difficult to breathe.

I took the stairs up to the loft. When I had reached the top, I peered over the railing. Beneath the glow of the Chinese lanterns, my new friends kicked up the hay, unaware of what I was feeling in this moment. So much joy below, so much distress above.

I turned toward the corkboard and the table with my paints, pencils, and artwork, feeling every bit as hopeless as I had the night I'd met Keisha and Macon. The night I'd seen Joe again for the first time in ages.

Taking deliberate steps forward, I focused on my drawing of the man in the red hoodie. This drawing was of Anthony Jones. I knew it. I slowly removed the tack holding it in place and examined the sketch. I now had a face I could add to the phantom gangster. With a little effort, I could have it filled out.

“So this is where you hide out.” Joe's voice came from behind me.

I whirled around, hiding the sketch behind my back.

Joe stood at the top of the stairs, watching me. “What is all this?”

I dropped the sketch to the table and, turning, covered it with another drawing, something I had worked on for
Firebird
.

“Wow. What is all this?” Joe asked again, his footsteps drawing closer as the music continued to play beneath us. I scooped up about twelve paintbrushes scattered near my fingertips and returned them to one of the Mason jars where they belonged.

Joe now stood next to me, his fingers lightly touching some of my awards and trophies.

“This is my life,” I said.

He looked up at the shelf where I kept first-print copies of all my books. “Are all these yours?”

“Yeah.” I felt nervous. Uncomfortable. No one but my husband and parents had been up here before now.

“Hey,” he said, pointing to a drawing like the one of the little oriole I'd drawn the night of the campout with Billy. “There's that little bird you were always drawing. You write that book?”

My eyes fell to the sketch pad set aside for
Firebird
. Joe followed my gaze, picked it up, and thumbed through it. There was nothing but blank pages.

He gave me a questioning look.

“No, I gave up on it,” I said, working furiously at looking busy, moving pieces of paper around on my desk.

“Why?”

It's about a little bird who finds out that God even cares for the sparrows. Then he's happy.

“Because I don't believe it anymore.”

Joe inched closer. With hands shaking, I pulled the padded stool out from under the desk and sat on it, keeping my face turned away from his. One look at him, I knew, and my resolve would crumble. If that happened, I wasn't sure I could regain my composure. The children were still downstairs, still laughing, still playing. If the dam burst, I was certain they'd hear the anguish I felt in my heart. I couldn't let that happen. These children, they didn't deserve to hear that.

“Hey now,” Joe whispered.

Keeping my head down, I cast my eyes his way. He now leaned back against the desk, his legs crossed at the ankles. I kept my focus on his boots, even more so on the shoelaces.

Anything to keep from crying.

“Hey,” he said again. “What happened, Sam? Where's that hopeful little girl I knew?”

I opened my mouth to answer. To say something positive. But the words wouldn't come. Couldn't make it past the knot that had formed in my throat.

Tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

My chest hurt. If I
didn't
let it go, I was afraid of what might happen next. “She
died
,” I said, pressing my face into my hands, the tears now coming without apology.

Joe stepped around me, wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and pulled my face to his chest. I inhaled deeply. He smelled of sunshine and hay. Love and friendship. The tenderness of his embrace was not lost on me. I needed this. I needed someone I could trust to hold me. To tell me it would be okay. That
life
would be okay. That I would be happy again, and one day I'd look forward to the rising of the sun.

The next moment I felt silly and ashamed. How was it, I wondered, that Joe—with everything he'd obviously been through—had found such purpose and I could not?

Joe tucked my head under his chin. “Do you want to talk about it?” he whispered.

I shook my head. “Not right now. I can't . . . not right now.”

I felt him nod. “I'm here when you need me.”

This only made me cry harder.

Joe didn't say another word. He simply stood there with his arms around me, hands awkwardly rubbing between my shoulder blades in small circles, waiting for the tears to subside and my anguish to ease. When I was finally done, I looked up at him through wet lashes.

“I guess I'm a mess.”

He smiled. “I guess you are.”

Which made me chuckle.

“Sounds like things are winding down, down there,” he said. “I'm gonna help Denise and Brick get the kids turned in for the night.”

“Okay.” I smiled up at him. “Thank you, Joe.”

“Any time.”

I watched him shuffle across the loft and then step slowly down the stairs. Just before his head disappeared beneath the floorboards, he looked over at me. Offered a single nod. I smiled again in return.

After a few minutes, I heard Denise call, “All right, everyone. Time to pick up, clean up, and head on back to the house.”

Mumbles of disappointment rose on the rafters. I walked over to the stairs, sat on the top step, and leaned my head against a rail, watching the activity below. Joe leaned against the barn door, oblivious to me. Denise walked backward toward him, her eyes still on the children. But when she reached Joe, she turned, stood shoulder to shoulder with him, and smiled.

He looked at her intently until a pained look crossed his face.

“Hey, old man,” she said. “You do your dialysis today?”

I sucked in a breath as Joe pressed his lips together and shook his head. “No, ma'am.”

Denise crossed her arms.

“But I will. I promise.”

Dialysis
. That was the machine I'd seen in his bedroom in Nashville. The one he'd brought to the farm. That meant something was wrong with Joe's kidneys.

Denise clasped her hands together and brought them to her chest, as though she were in prayer. “Were you upstairs talking to Sam?”

He nodded, keeping his eyes on hers. For a moment I watched them do what Billy and I had once been able to do—speak without words.

“Everything all right?”

Joe answered with a shrug.

“Tell you what. Brick and I can get the kids to bed. Why don't you spend as much time as you need with her?”

Joe gave her a questioning look.

“She needs you, Joe.”

I drew my knees close to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Denise had to be the most giving person I'd ever had the privilege of knowing. And that included Billy.

“But you'll owe me one,” she continued, smiling.

Joe appeared confused. “Owe you? Owe you what?”

Her smile grew wider, which made me smile too. If Joe hadn't known about Denise's feelings for him before now, surely he couldn't deny them after this. “I'm sure you'll think of something.”

The light from the Chinese lanterns was shut off about five seconds before the children and Brick, who carried one sleeping child in his arms, started filling the spaces around Joe and Denise, Keisha lagging behind. Only the light from outside over the barn door illuminated them. I turned my head to look to where the party had just concluded. Toward the back, Cricket had stuck her head out of her stall and was watching the processional.

“Come on, little buckaroos,” Denise said.

Joe kicked his heel against the hay-strewn packed dirt. “I'll walk you halfway.”

I sat and waited, closing my tired eyes, knowing Joe would be back any minute. When I heard the sound of feet, I opened my eyes again to see Keisha walking ever so slowly into the barn. She walked all the way to the back, to where bales of hay were stacked high, and her backpack lay propped against the base of them. With one swoop, she picked it up and swung it over her shoulder, and then took two steps toward the barn door.

But then she stopped and, head cocked, looked over at Cricket.

I placed my hand over my mouth and watched as she took cautious steps toward the horse. When she was near enough, Cricket leaned down, allowing Keisha to place her head against the horse's long nose. Cricket snorted as though giving permission. Then, ever so gently, Keisha raised a hand to Cricket's ear, bent it forward, and whispered into it.

Moments later Keisha walked out the door, toward the farmhouse.

Tears sprang to my eyes.

Keisha had spoken. She'd shared her secrets with Cricket.

When Joe reappeared,
I was standing at the barn door, struggling with whether or not to tell him what I'd seen.

“Wanna take a walk?” he asked.

“Part of the creek runs behind the barn over here,” I said. “Just past the hay bales.”

“Show me.”

We walked side by side, neither of us saying anything until we reached the creek. By then I'd decided to let Keisha's secret remain between her and Cricket. I picked up a few pebbles and flung them, and they skipped across the water in the moonlight. Joe eased himself down, stretched out his legs, and invited me to do the same.

Closing my eyes, I took in the evening sounds around us. The movement of water over the river rocks. The crickets singing as a breeze whispered gently through the pine needles and the leaves of the oaks and poplars.

“I'm listening when you're ready,” Joe said.

I ran my palms down the top front of my jeans. “My husband's name was Billy. We met when I was in college. He was the cousin of my roommate and . . . I'd been invited to her house for the weekend.” I looked out over the water. “She lived not . . . not too far from here.”

Joe nodded as he rested his hands behind him in a patch of grass and pine needles.

“Anyway, Billy came over to Julie's house that weekend and . . . one look at him, and I was so madly in love, Joe, I could hardly see a step in front of me.”

Joe chuckled.

“I know that sounds silly.”

“Naw. Not from a romantic like you, it doesn't.”

“He was five years older than me. Life had kept him from going to college. He'd already been working for the power company for years when we met.

“His mama and daddy owned this farm, and he ran that too. They'd moved down to Florida after his daddy said he couldn't take any more of the winter weather.”

“I understand that.”

“I think they just wanted to live near Mickey Mouse.”

Joe smiled.

“Billy and I got married a year after we met. I finished school and took an internship at a publishing house in Nashville. Wrote my first book. And then my second. Neither got published.” I laughed lightly. “At the time, I only had three fans. One I was married to, and the other two had brought me into this world. But my third book caught the attention of one of the editors. I got myself an agent, and the next thing I knew, I had a career writing children's books.”

“An award-winning career.”

I nodded.

“I always knew you had it in you.”

I glanced upward to the slivers of sky I could see between the tree branches. To the stars and the moon. “You thought my stories were silly.”

“Aww, I just said that. Deep down,” he said, pointing to his chest, “I always knew.”

“Well, thank you for keeping me in the dark all those years.”

We shared a smiled. Joe took in a deep breath and exhaled. “So where is Billy now?”

“Three years ago, there was a storm, and Billy got an emergency call to go down near Murphy's Liquor Store.”

“Down in the projects?”

“Yes.”

“Okay . . .”

“While he was there . . . someone shot and killed him.”

Joe grimaced. “Oh, Sam . . .”

Tears filled my eyes. “They never caught the guy who did it. And after a phone call I got tonight from the detective on the case, I don't think they ever will.”