فصل 05 - بخش 02

5

Marcy Maitland was glad to take Grace into bed with her when Grace asked, but when she asked Sarah if she wanted to join them, her older daughter shook her head.

‘All right,’ Marcy said, ‘but if you change your mind, I’ll be here.’

An hour passed, then another. The worst Saturday of her life became the worst Sunday. She thought of Terry, who should have been beside her now, fast asleep (perhaps dreaming about the upcoming City League championship, now that the Bears had been disposed of), and was instead in a jail cell. Was he also awake? Of course he was.

She knew there were going to be some hard days ahead, but Howie would put things right. Terry had once told her that his old Pop Warner co-coach was the best defense lawyer in the southwest, and might someday sit on the state’s supreme court. Given Terry’s cast-iron alibi, there was no way Howie could fail. But each time she drew almost enough comfort from this idea to drop off, she thought of Ralph Anderson, the Judas sonofabitch she’d thought of as a friend, and she came wide awake again. As soon as this was over, they would sue the Flint City PD for false arrest, defamation of character, anything else Howie Gold could think of, and when Howie began dropping his legal smart-bombs, she would make sure Ralph Anderson was standing on ground zero. Could they sue him personally? Strip him of everything he owned? She hoped so. She hoped they could send him, his wife, and the son with whom Terry had taken such pains, out into the street, barefoot and dressed in rags, with begging bowls in their hands. She guessed such things were not likely in this advanced and supposedly enlightened day and age, but she could see the three of them that way with utter clarity – mendicants in the streets of Flint City – and each time she did, the vision brought her wide awake again, vibrating with rage and satisfaction.

It was quarter past two by the clock on the nightstand when her older daughter appeared in the doorway, only her legs clearly visible below the oversized Okie City Thunder tee she wore as a nightshirt.

‘Mom? Are you awake?’

‘I am.’

‘Can I get in with you and Gracie?’

Marcy threw back the sheet and moved over. Sarah got in, and when Marcy hugged her and kissed the nape of her neck, Sarah began to cry.

‘Shh, you’ll wake your sister.’

‘I can’t help it. I keep thinking about the handcuffs. I’m sorry.’

‘Quietly, then. Quietly, hon.’

Marcy held her until Sarah had gotten it all out. When she was quiet for five minutes or so, Marcy thought the girl had gone to sleep, and felt that now, with both of her girls here, bookending her, she might be able to sleep herself. But then Sarah rolled over to look at her. Her wet eyes shone in the dark.

‘He won’t go to prison, will he, Mom?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He didn’t do anything.’

‘But innocent people do go to prison. Sometimes for years, until someone finds out they were innocent after all. Then they get out, but they’re old.’

‘That isn’t going to happen to your father. He was in Cap City when the thing happened that they arrested him for—’

‘I know what they arrested him for,’ Sarah said. She wiped her eyes. ‘I’m not stupid.’

‘I know you’re not, honey.’

Sarah stirred restlessly. ‘They must have had a reason.’

‘They probably think so, but their reasons are wrong. Mr Gold will explain where he was, and they’ll have to let him go.’

‘All right.’ A long pause. ‘But I don’t want to go back to community camp until this is over, and I don’t think Gracie should, either.’

‘You won’t have to. And when fall comes around, all of this will just be a memory.’

‘A bad one,’ Sarah said, and sniffled.

‘Agreed. Now go to sleep.’

Sarah did. And with her girls to warm her, so did Marcy, although her dreams were bad ones in which Terry was marched away by those two policemen, while the crowd watched and Baibir Patel cried and Gavin Frick stared in disbelief.