There was more to the story than what Cindy had said, just like I thought. Patterson Reid didn’t simply want to look good, or upstanding, he wanted the entire town on his side for the trial. He’d done it when he ran for mayor, and it secured him an easy victory. Now, he was trying to pull off the same stunt. It might have been wrong of me to think it at the time, but I clenched my fists hoped that one day I’d see him and his smug, conniving daughter get hit right where it hurt the most.
Twelve
Opening arguments began on Shane’s case first thing Monday morning, but the news was more focused on the growing group of protestors that had gathered outside the courthouse. I watched them on television, holding up signs and marching up and down the sidewalk with unruly expressions on their faces. When a reporter put her microphone in front of one man, he angrily chanted, “PCR is here to stay! EPA, go away!”
It would have been humorous if not for the serious, crazed gleam in his eye and the dozens of other protestors standing behind him and chanting the same thing. I silently wondered how many of them had been paid to be there by Patterson Reid and how many he had simply managed to convince to join. Undoubtedly, many of them were employees that had come to fight for their jobs.
Things were mostly the same through Wednesday, with very little coming back about the trial itself and most of the attention going to the protestors. Several people had already been arrested by police for getting out of control and one man was filmed being roughly pushed against the courthouse steps and handcuffed after tossing a sign at one of the lawyers from Shane’s team. The whole thing was devolving, and fast.
I was sitting with mother at her chemotherapy appointment when my phone buzzed in my purse. It was a text from Shane, letting me know he hadn’t forgotten about coffee and asked if I had time to meet with him.
“A message from you-know-who?” Momma asked teasingly.
“Yeah.” I slid my finger across the cracks in the screen while I read his message. “He wants me to meet him for coffee at the Atlantic Café downtown. Apparently the court is having a long recess for the next few hours.”
“You should go on and meet with him then. I’m not goin’ nowhere till this here bag is finished.” Mother raised one finger and pointed at the bag of neon liquid hanging above her chair.
I let out a sigh. “I want to see him. I just feel like I’m always leaving you here, Momma.”
“Oh, phooey,” she dismissed it. “That’s cause I’m always askin’ you to go fetch somethin’ or other. ‘Sides, I won’t be havin’ to come here much longer. My last appointment is next week.”
“I know you’ll be glad.”
“Darn right. Think I’ll even drive myself.”
“Momma, no,” I argued. “You’re not supposed to be driving.”
“Like hell I ain’t. I told you I got this thing licked.” She crossed her arms and stuck out her chin. “I’m perfectly capable of gettin’ myself to and from this place, and I won’t hear another word of it, young lady. You don’t need to be here anyway for my meetin’ with the doctor.”
What the heck was that supposed to mean? Not once had she argued with me about taking her to the appointments over the last few weeks. Now, all of a sudden, I was being overbearing?
“Momma, I-“
“Nnnt!” she chided nasally. ‘I done tol’ you and that’s it, Mary Katherine. I want to do next week’s appointments on my own.”
I stared at her in confusion for a moment before finally shaking my head and giving up. Mother was just as hard-headed as Daddy when it came to certain things and this was no exception, it seemed.
“Listen,” she said, and reached out to stroke my forearm with one bony hand. For all her renewed energy the last few days and how much she’d been eating, the progress seemed to have faded. Even the greyish circles had begun forming around her eyes again.
“Mary Katherine, I know what’s best for me, and this is somethin’ I aim to do on my own. So go on, now. That man is waitin’ to hear back from you. Don’t just sit there jawin’ at your ol’ Momma. You go and sit with him for a while. I’ll be right here waitin’ when you get back.”
I relinquished a half-hearted smile. “Alright. I won’t be long, ok? But I still want to talk about this driving business later. Don’t think I’m just going to forget.”
“Yeah, yeah. Leave me to my soaps, now, and change that channel ‘fore you go. Tired of watchin’ all this nonsense on the news anyway.”
I arrived at the Atlantic Café, a small coffee shop a few blocks from the courthouse, and pulled mother’s old Buick carefully into the narrow space between two other cars right off the street. It was metered parking, of course, as real estate downtown was precious and what few parking lots existed were either reserved or drastically inconvenient.
“C’mon…easy does it,” I coaxed.
Just as I thought I’d pulled off squeezing the gigantic land yacht of an automobile into place, there came a sudden, disturbing bang from the rear of the vehicle. I jammed the brakes, causing the whole car to shake, and covered my mouth with my hand.
Oh, crap.
I buried my head against the wheel and shook my head. This day was not turning out how I’d expected. Mother was going to kill me.
Before I could get out to inspect the damage though, I heard a squeaky, irritating laugh. There, standing near the rear fender of the car, was Cindy Reid. Her cheeks were rosy with glee, and once she saw the mortified look on my face through the window, she raised her shoulders up and cackled even louder. To demonstrate her prank, she banged her hand against the trunk, creating the same hollow sound I’d heard only moments ago. I went from total shock to seeing red in less than a second.
“Oh my!” she said, barely able to contain herself, “That was too much. We jus’ keep runnin’ into each other! Did you think you had another traffic accident?”
“Just what the hell are you doing? I thought I crashed into something!” I could feel my pulse pounding in my head as I climbed out of the Buick and slammed the door behind. The desire to leap over the hood and strangle her was overwhelming.
Cindy shook off her cackling and said, “I was in the neighborhood for the trial. You know, just showin’ my support for Daddy and all those poor workers that might lose their jobs. When I saw your Momma’s beat-up ol’ car pullin’ in, I knew it had to be you. What brings you all the way down here and off the farm?”
“You scared the life out of me, Cindy.”
“It was just a joke, Kat. For goodness sakes, you’d think I’d put a dent in this ugly ol’ thing? Maybe with a sledgehammer-”
“It wasn’t funny. You could have hurt someone.”
She waved me off. “You really need to lighten up. I ‘member when you used to think this kind of thing was hilarious. Did seein’ me with Hale upset you so much that you lost your sense of humor?”
And then, I kind of lost it. With a quick flick on my wrist, I tossed my purse back through the open driver’s side window and stormed around the front of the car. Cindy took a step back and the smirk on her face melted away into a look of dread. My fists were balled up so tight that my knuckles had turned numb and white, but they remained stiffly down by my sides. So help me, I was going to rearrange her pretty little face if someone didn’t jump between us.
“Bitch!” I cursed loudly, and Cindy stumbled backwards at my sudden, angry approach. It was doubtful that many people, if any, had ever spoken to her like that in her entire life.
“T-take it easy, Kat.”
“You think you can push the poor little farm girl around? Is that it?!” I was trying really hard to keep from shouting, but it only mostly worked. “You can’t mess with people like that!” I got so close that I could smell the sharp scent of designer hair spray coming off her long blonde tresses. “You make me sick, do you know that? Sick, Cindy.”
“What is wrong with you?!”
“You’re what’s wrong.” I jabbed my finger out right at her nose, only missing b
y a few inches, and she flinched and cowered away timidly. “Hale doesn’t even like you. He’s just hanging around with you to try and make me jealous, and it isn’t going to work.”
“You’re…you’re c-crazy,” she stammered, and took another step back.
Maybe so, I thought. What the heck was I doing? Had I lost my mind?
I swallowed hard and felt myself relax just slightly. The fire went out inside me and receded to a slow smolder. Seeing this, Cindy must have realized that I wasn’t going to beat the living hell out of her after all and she began clumsily retreating down the sidewalk. The look of nervousness in her eyes was almost comical. Thankfully, and not too surprisingly, she kept her trap shut this time.
Before Cindy had stepped off the curb and started making her way back in the direction of the courthouse, I heard the shop door open behind me with a jingle followed by Shane’s familiar voice, “I think you really got through to her.”
Embarrassment flooded me, replacing any of the leftover anger.
“Oh my God…I can’t believe you saw that. I am so sorry, Shane. I don’t know what to say.”
He stepped out and wrapped one arm over my shoulder, escorting me inside. “I wasn’t going to do anything unless I thought you were really going to hit her. It was close, though. I was on the edge of my seat. I even put my coffee down.”
“I feel like such an idiot. That girl knows how to push my buttons.”
“She’s like that with a lot of people, I’d guess.”
We walked inside the café and Shane showed me to our seats. He’d already taken the liberty of ordering a large mug of something for me that smelled delicious.
“Chocolate Mocha, with whipped cream and a shot of espresso,” he said, and took a sip of his own cup. Then came his familiar, charming smile. “I figured you might like it, Kat. Although now I’m thinking I should have ordered you something a little less…caffeinated.”
“You probably should have.” The embarrassment was leaving me finally. I blew out between pursed lips.
He stirred the mixture and asked, “So I take it you’re familiar with Patterson Reid’s daughter?”
“Um-hmm. We went to high school together. That’s the third time we’ve crossed paths since I got back into town.”
“I see,” Shane said, examining me. “You two have a, uh, rough history?”
“Something like that. She’s been after my ex for as long as I can remember. Now that we broke up and she’s got him, she’s taken every opportunity to throw it in my face. Her little practical joke out there sort of just…pushed me over the edge.”
“Oh.”
“I’m over him,” I quickly added.
“Ok.”
“You know what he did. I told you what he was like.”
“I believe you, Kat.”
I swirled the thin red straw in my mocha and watched the white whipped cream form long sugary trails in the dark, chocolate-laced coffee. “You still coming to the farm this weekend?”
“Of course. I can’t wait.”
“I really am sorry that you saw me acting like that. I promise you that I’ve never done anything like that before, Shane. I don’t know what got into me, exactly.”
“Don’t worry about it. Like I said, I have a feeling she’s like that. Before you showed up, she was in here, telling me how her father would have my job before everything was over and done with.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. She said I’d be lucky to get a job pumping gas by the time he was through with me. Probably my fault, since I started talking to her first. It was kind of, I don’t know, cathartic watching you let her have it out there. I couldn’t do it myself. People around here already hate me enough, I think.”
“Yeah well, she’s a bitch,” I said, almost whispering the last word.
“I heard.” Shane chuckled and took another sip of his drink. “So did a few other people.”
We both sat in silence for a moment, enjoying being there together. It was infinitely more comfortable than the silence we shared on the way home after our first date.
“So, how’s the case going? Cindy must think things are pretty bad for the Reid’s if she’s in here messing with you, too.”
“They are screwed,” Shane said thoughtfully. “Opening arguments are done. They pled not guilty, of course. We’ve already had one witness up, a man who worked at PCR for over ten years and developed some significant liver damage after being exposed to toxic dust on a daily basis. After that, we’ve got nearly a dozen others; people that worked there, a man that lost his livestock, a couple that lived nearby and had to vacate with their baby-”
“The Morris family,” I said. “Everybody in Kirkland knows about them.”
“Right.”
“Part of the mine collapsed on their property and their well was filled with whatever nasty stuff that place digs up.”
“And it had probably been contaminated for years before that,” Shane added. “All the environmental data from back then was handled by PCR, so naturally, everything looked kosher. The EPA had two surveys done back in the late eighties that said otherwise. Our newest survey was taken last year, leading up to the lawsuit.”
“Why didn’t the EPA sue them back in the eighties, then?”
“Bureaucracy. Red tape. Whatever you want to call it. The truth is, Patterson Reid rubs elbows with a lot of rich and high-ranking people so he was able to keep things under wraps for a long time.”
“He came to our church on Sunday. Got a bunch of people all excited.”
“He’s certainly doing a good job of it,” Shane said and leaned back in his chair.
“How could all those people out there support him? Can’t they see how much damage he’s done over the years?”
Shane shook his head. “I don’t know. Some folks don’t understand unless it affects them directly, I suppose. For some, it’s become this big thing they’ve got in their heads about the government coming to take away their jobs.”
Another moment of silence.
“So you think you’re going to win?” I asked.
“I hope so. I’m trying not to stress out over it too much, but you never know what kind of stunts might get pulled during a trial. Reid’s got one heck of a legal defense.”
“Tell you what,” I said, leaning forward and staring into his beautiful, amber eyes, “After you come visit me on Saturday, you’re gonna be too tired to even think about being stressed out.”
“Is that right?” Shane lifted one brow and leaned in as well. “What did you have in mind, Miss Atwater?”
“All sorts of physical activities. Farm life is strenuous.”
“You’ve definitely gotten my attention. I’ve already forgotten about that troublesome court case.” Shane’s grin stretched even wider and I plunked his nose with the end of my finger. Warm, bubbling heat seemed to tingle up my spine and I squeezed my legs together to try and suppress it.
Mmm…he was doing it again.
“Oh, you have?” I asked with a smile.
“Definitely. Who was I suing again? Blatterson Smeid?”
The chimes on the shop door jingled and Shane suddenly looked up at the person who had just walked in. It was the woman I’d seen the protestor throw a sign at, and she was wearing the same peach-colored outfit she’d been wearing the day she stood behind Shane as he gave his press conference. Shane’s warm smile quickly tightened and gave way to a serious expression.
“The judge is calling us back,” she said hastily and slapped her hands flat against her thighs. The tone of annoyance in her voice couldn’t have been any more evident.
“Why? The recess isn’t over for another hour.”
“I don’t know, something about our last witness. Reid’s doing, I’m sure.”
“Damn.” Shane drained the last of his drink. “Kat, I hate to do this, but I’ve got to go.”
Shoot. Just when I was starting to have fun.
“That’s ok. I’ll see you on Sa
turday,” I said.
“Sounds great,” he replied and stood up. With his briefcase in his hand, Shane bent over and whispered so his colleague couldn’t hear, “It’s a date.”
The woman that had come to fetch him was already holding the door and waiting. Whatever it was that had caused them to be called back certainly had her incredibly inpatient. Shane gave a final wave on his way out, and then he was gone.
Thirteen
The entire rest of the week I could barely do anything except think about Shane’s upcoming visit. I stayed busy around the house whenever I wasn’t with mother at her appointments, and one evening, even though she had to drag it out of me, I took Abby to meet up with her friends at a roller skating rink in Wilmington. In the end, I was glad she did. While the girls mostly sat at the tables near the concession and gabbed and ate cotton candy, I took the time to throw on a pair of used skates and glide around the concrete rink. The distraction was a blessing, and I managed to only fall once.
I talked to Momma about her plan to drive herself to the clinic for her last few appointments and follow up with the doctor, but she shot me down at every turn. Getting my father involved did little to help, as she did the same thing with him. According to her, this was part of her recovery, and something she had to do on her own so that she could prove that she was getting well again and could handle daily tasks without help.
When Saturday did finally come, I woke up at the crack of dawn and found it impossible to go back to sleep. Shane was on my mind, swimming through my thoughts, and invading my dreams. It was wonderful and nerve-wracking all at the same time.
After tossing and turning for nearly an hour, I crept down the stairs and listened for sounds in the kitchen. All was quiet. Daddy had likely already gotten up and made his way to the barn to check on Francis and Dale or get the tractor ready. Abby was still out cold in her bed, and if past experience was any indicator, she would probably stay that way most of the morning.
I came around the corner and there was Momma, sitting at the end of the table where Daddy usually sat, with a cup of coffee and a plate with a single biscuit arranged right in front of her. She hadn’t noticed me yet, and was staring out the window with an odd, concerned expression, and clutching her stomach.
Love Lift Me Page 12
