JD05 - Conflict of Interest
Page 21
Caroline smiled and reached out for my hand.
“I knew you’d get her back,” she said. “I knew it from the very beginning.”
CHAPTER 47
Life isn’t fair sometimes.
As I stood holding my wife’s hand beneath a fast-moving sky at the Veterans Administration cemetery at Mountain Home in Johnson City, I thought about what I’d said to Harold French at the jail just a few days before Lindsay Monroe went missing. It had certainly turned out to be true.
The headstone with my father’s name on it had already been removed and the backhoe had scraped the top of the casket containing the body of Lucas Venable. There were three nameless men in green uniforms doing the work. One of them lowered himself into the hole and began to dig out the red tinted clay around the casket.
Standing just a few feet away were Lucas Venable’s parents, Robert and Vanessa Venable of Fairfield, Wisconsin, eighty-three and eighty-two years old. They were kind and gentle people, and my heart ached for them as they stood silently and watched the men go about their thankless task. Caroline had accompanied me to Fairfield a week earlier. The visit had been difficult and emotional, but now, finally, after four-and-a-half decades of uncertainty, the Venables had come to collect their son and take him home to his final resting place. As gut-wrenching as it had been to explain to them what my father had done, I took at least a bit of comfort in knowing they didn’t go to their own graves wondering what had happened to Lucas.
Caroline squeezed my hand as the casket was lifted from the hole and the men began to clean away the mud and clay. A hearse was waiting to take the casket and the body to the airport. The Venables told me they planned to have Lucas’s remains transferred to a casket of their choosing once they got him back to Fairfield. There would be a memorial service and he would be buried in a family plot right next to the spots that were already reserved for them.
The thought of my standing in a similar place, watching as my wife was lowered into the ground, kept creeping into my mind. I would push it away, but it continued to gnaw away at my consciousness like a rat gnawing its way through a wall. How long would it be? Six months? Two years? Six years? She was fighting, but the cancer was relentless. I could see it taking bits of her day-by-day.
The men loaded the casket into the hearse and the driver closed the door. We said our goodbyes to the Venables and wished them well. As they walked away, I lingered by the grave site, thinking about all the times I had visited what I thought was a fallen hero. I’d been enamored by the idea, and I couldn’t help but feel cheated.
An opening appeared in the clouds above and a burst of sunlight brought me out of my melancholy. Caroline stood on her tip toes, cupped my face in her hand, and kissed me on the cheek.
“What does my hero want to do now?” she said.
I took her in my arms and squeezed gently.
“I want to do what you said the other day, baby,” I said softly. “I want us to follow our hearts and keep on going. That’s about all we can do, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER 48
The wind outside was howling and bits of snow were flying around like swarms of white bees, but inside the darkened auditorium the air was calm and still and the mood as warm as a summer sun. I was sitting in the middle of the back row as the lights and the music came up, having slipped in just a few minutes earlier.
The past couple of months had been difficult, but Caroline had made yet another determined run at recovery and she seemed to have stabilized. The brutal side-effects of the radiation treatments on her spine had finally passed. She was eating again; she looked healthy and had more energy. The hormone treatments she was receiving had slowed the cancer down. We didn’t talk about it often and tried not to think about it, but all of us knew the disease was still lurking like an assassin in the dark.
Caroline hadn’t organized a dance recital at Christmas time in ten years, but this year she had decided she wanted her students to perform. Jack was backstage helping with props, Lilly was handling the lighting, and Sarah was in the dressing room helping the girls and the mothers with costumes. I usually handled the music, but I’d begged off this time because I wanted to sit in the audience and enjoy the performance. It was a rare indulgence for me, an opportunity to shut out the brutality I dealt with on a regular basis and appreciate the beauty of dance.
There was one girl in particular that everyone was looking forward to watching. Little Lindsay Monroe had come back to Caroline’s dance school two weeks after Bates and I had managed to get her away from Earl Botts. Richard had come to my office the day after he was released from jail and we’d talked for a short while. He said he was planning to ask Mary to forgive him and try to re-establish the trust he’d violated. He wanted to somehow put his marriage and his life back together. I didn’t know whether he’d be able to do it, but I respected his attitude and wished him the best. Things seemed to be working out, though, because Richard and Mary were sitting together four rows in front of me. I looked at them and thought about all the terrible things that had been said and written about them in the media and how much courage it took for them to be sitting in the middle of hundreds of people with their heads high, moving on with their lives. I thought about the capacity people have to forgive, and how powerful a force love can be if people will just let it into their lives.
A smile crossed my face as the first of the fairies, toy soldiers and elves began to dance across the stage beneath the pastel-colored lights, and it stayed there for the rest of the evening. For that brief stretch of time, the evils of the world vanished like morning mist, and it felt good to feel good.
It felt good to be alive.
About the Author:
Scott Pratt was born in South Haven, Michigan, and moved to Tennessee when he was thirteen years old. He is a veteran of the United States Air Force and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from East Tennessee State University and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Tennessee College of Law. He lives in Northeast Tennessee with his wife, four dogs and a parrot.
www.scottprattfiction.com
Also by Scott Pratt
An Innocent Client (Joe Dillard #1)
In Good Faith (Joe Dillard #2)
Injustice for All (Joe Dillard #3)
Reasonable Fear (Joe Dillard #4)