36
Moms, we’re so glad you’re home.” Their words coming out simultaneously, Heather and Hillary swarmed over Cassie the minute she and Marcus stepped inside the Gillette home. Fighting back tears for the girls’ sake, Cassie patted each one’s face and kissed them before sitting them down and making them update her on their respective days at school.
“I told you, there’s nothing more to discuss,” she told them a thousand times if she told them once. Days away from turning thirteen, her daughters were too smart for their own good sometimes. Undeterred, they peppered her with legal questions about the day’s court hearings and the defense strategies that had kept Cassie from having to await trial from a jail cell. Cassie alternated between humoring their questions and trying to refocus the girls on what really mattered: God had answered their prayers and had allowed their mother to remain free while the case related to her confession was adjudicated.
“We have big plans, Moms,” Hillary said. “We set up the hot tub for you, so you can soak as long as you want; then we’ll all put on fuzzy bathrobes and watch two of your favorite movies downstairs, okay? We got Down in the Delta and The Preacher’s Wife.”
Cassie smiled. “You two do know your momma’s tastes, huh?”
“That’s not all,” Hillary replied. “We also got Black Forest cake for dinner.”
Raising her eyes at Marcus and M.J., who suddenly entered the family room together, Cassie shrugged playfully. “Do you hear these two? What else is for dinner?”
“Oh, please,” Hillary said. “It’s all about the cake, Moms, and coffee of course. We’re celebrating —no need for a balanced meal tonight!”
“Whatever, I’ll go along for the ride.” She looked tentatively at her husband and son. “Will the two men in my life join the fun?”
“Sorry, sweetie,” Marcus replied, stepping over to her and pecking a kiss onto her cheek. “You know I’m overjoyed about today, but I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on.”
Cassie frowned. “Marcus, with all the craziness, we haven’t had real family time in weeks. Couldn’t you join us —”
“There are bills to be paid, sweetie.” Her husband’s tone was clipped, nearly monotone now, and Cassie caught the meaning. Since her confession had hit the news, her real estate business had dried up more with each passing day. Her inventory of listings was down only about 8 percent, but her backlog of potential clients was nearly nonexistent. She really wasn’t sure how much of that was due to her preoccupation with her legal woes and how much was the result of the controversy swirling around her, but either way she knew that pressure was mounting on Marcus to get his magazine profitable as soon as possible. As he had told her after a dispiriting meeting with her accountant last week, “It looks like my income is no longer discretionary, huh?”
Straining to hold to a sense of the peace of God, Cassie reached up and pulled Marcus’s lips to hers, delivering a kiss meant to communicate understanding. When they separated, M.J. stepped in behind his father and took a seat on the couch armrest nearest to Cassie. “Welcome home, Mom,” he said, reaching down and engulfing her in a hug. “I love you, you know that, right?”
You better. Cassie left the words unsaid, to avoid any chance of further burdening her son. M.J. was well aware that his mother had made a deal with the Devil —at least, with the Devil resident in Peter Whitlock —in order to get his involvement in the shooting erased from the legal record.
Not that her sacrifice had gotten M.J. a complete pass, and, frankly, Cassie hadn’t wanted it to. Her son’s name had still been splashed all over local and regional papers for being present at the shooting of a police officer, a shooting perpetrated by his cousin. And while even Dante had been hit with a reduced charge based on Whitlock’s claim to have sparked the gunplay, the episode was controversial enough that any association was toxic to M.J.’s celebrity status. The Big Ten football programs had stopped calling, the Ivy League schools seeking scholar-athletes had suddenly lost interest, and at this point, it looked like her son’s only hope of earning a football scholarship would be to attend someplace too desperate to hold him to account and too insignificant to give him a shot at the NFL.
“Well, let me go fire up the hot tub,” M.J. said now, rising to his feet. Walking past his sisters, he patted each one’s back. “You two better now? You keeping everything in mind?”
Cassie narrowed her gaze at her son. “What are you talking about, M.J.?”
“I was just telling them earlier,” her son said, “that they need to keep their cool and trust God to protect you, that He’ll make sure you don’t get charged with a felony behind this. I mean, Mom, none of this would be going on if you hadn’t tried to protect me.”
“M.J., that’s enough.” Cassie had watched enough Law & Order to know she didn’t want her girls knowing the backstory behind her confession. She, Marcus, and M.J. were exposed enough as it was.
“All I told them,” M.J. said, forcing his way into a seat between the twins and hugging them, “was that you decided to confess to all that happened with Eddie in order to help me out of my jam. This is a lesson, right, that the best road to take is always to just tell the truth and trust God with the outcome.”
If only life were that simple, Cassie thought. With M.J.’s case resolved, Paul Brinker had taken on Cassie’s defense, and he had provided a blunt assessment to her and Marcus this afternoon. “This is getting tougher by the day,” he had said as they left the courthouse. “Your account will continue to generate sympathy with certain audiences, Mrs. Gillette, but it’s clear that other constituencies are pressuring the police not to take you at face value.” Cassie knew exactly who those constituencies were —the same working-class whites who lined the block each time she had a court hearing, the same ones leaving threatening messages at her agency and on the Gillettes’ home phone. They had not told the children, but despite the downturn in their finances, she and Marcus had decided to pay for a security service that circled their block every night between midnight and 4:00 A.M.
Though her insides roiled with these realities, Cassie chose to humor her son’s optimism. “You’re right, M.J. You girls listen to your brother.” Even though his interpretation was a little naïve, the sight of her son’s spiritual perspective gave Cassie hope. Hope that her coming sacrifice might actually be worth the cost.
37
Hey, boss lady.” Julia’s secretary, Rosie, cracked her office door just enough to poke her head in. “I have that reporter from channel two on line one. He doesn’t sound like he’ll go away easily.”
Julia shrugged and continued editing the document on her computer screen. “Well, he’ll have to accept reality eventually.”
“I’m confused,” Rosie said, stretching her words for emphasis. “I thought you had me spend months chasing the media, trying to get them to care about the Board of Advisors and the work you’ve all done to try and save the school system. Wasn’t the idea that you were hoping they would call back eventually, show some interest in what we’ve been doing here?”
“Yes.” Julia placed a finger to her chin, steeling herself in the face of Rosie’s sarcastic tone. She couldn’t really expect Rosie to automatically understand what was going on; they had worked together for nearly three years now, but their relationship had worked because it had been professional, not terribly friendly.
“Rosie,” Julia said, grimacing as she realized she wasn’t sure she could deliver on the promise, “tell him that I’ll have a member of the Board of Advisors return his call.”
Rosie huffed, halfheartedly keeping it under her breath. “Can I give him a name?”
“As soon as I have one, yes.”
“What about Dr. Simon? He’s been one of the lead board members, right? He’d be a great face for the media.”
Julia felt her eyes roll heavenward. She’s killing me, Lord. “Dr. Simon has resigned from the board.”
“What?”
Julia leaned back in her seat, wipi
ng her forehead as a calming mechanism. “Rosie, the man’s probably hung up by now.”
“You’re right!” The secretary flashed a chastened smile and finally began easing the door shut. “But let me know by day’s end who your media designate will be.”
Feeling her shoulders deflate, Julia sighed once the door was shut. Just the thought of taking another reporter’s call made her skin crawl. She had learned over the past several days that the media had no interest right now in Christian Light’s fate. She had fielded over a half-dozen phone calls and personal visits from reporters recently, and every one slowly brought the discussion around to the firestorm created by Cassie’s confession.
The essence of the questions rang in Julia’s ears as Amber slowly opened the office door. Now that Dayton was dividing along racial lines with respect to how believable Cassie’s claims were, Julia was being forced to take a side, and it didn’t stop there. As the superintendent of Christian Light Schools, what did the Cassie Gillette–Eddie Walker scandal say about the racial environment at her school system? Had it simply devolved from a majority-white environment, beset by racial prejudice, into a majority-black one with just as much animus toward the “new” minority?
“Everything is off the rails.”
“What’d you say, Auntee?” Returning to her seat on Julia’s office couch, where she was chipping at her evening’s homework, Amber stared at her with concern. “Are you feeling okay? You look really tired.”
“Thanks, sweetie,” Julia replied, embarrassed that she had spoken her despairing thought aloud. “We’ll just be here another forty-five minutes or so. I need to submit this funding application before we leave, then stop in to the Board of Advisors meeting down the hall. That should give you time to finish your homework, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you have it finished, we can stop for dessert on the way home.” A recurring thought hit her, and Julia decided she was too tired to keep fighting the pull inside. She spoke her mind tentatively. “Amber, every time we go visit my friends back in Chicago, you tell me you love that city. Is that still true?”
Amber took a minute to consider the question as she settled into her place on the couch. “Um, yeah. You know I think Chicago is the bomb, Auntee. They have the best pizza, the coolest stores, and plus Kelly and Lisa live there.” Kelly and Lisa were two of Julia’s friends’ daughters.
Julia returned to her typing, trying to keep her eyes on her computer screen as if her question was offhanded. “Would you ever want to live there again?”
“Ooh, really?” Amber’s eyes popped wide in surprise before dimming slowly. “Living there would be cool, like if we did it for the summer, maybe? That’s when the weather’s best.”
Julia stepped onto the limb she didn’t really want to test. “So you’d rather live here in Dayton most of the year? You would miss your brothers and sisters, your pappy, too much if we moved back?”
Amber scrunched her nose in deep thought. “I love all of them,” she said, “but I really only see them on the weekends right now. I mean, if we could come home every weekend, then it would be almost the same, right?”
Julia nodded, a weak smile breaking out. “You’re already doing some calculations, huh? Don’t get too rushed yet, kiddo. I’m just making small talk, okay?”
Amber shrugged and picked up her math workbook. “You asked me the question, jeez.”
“That’s enough with the smart tone,” Julia replied, though she was grinning despite herself. “Focus on your work, okay?” Navigating her PC’s mouse, she clicked out of her Word document and into her Microsoft Outlook contact information. Scanning, she stopped when she came to the entry for Anita Ruth. She knew for a fact that the General Solomon Parker Academy was still without a superintendent, and that Anita was keeping the door open for her. As she dialed Anita’s number on her cell phone and stepped out of her office, Julia reflected on the conversation that had convinced her to make this call.
Her father had looked appropriately shocked when she had sat him down and unloaded the betrayal she had suffered at Maxwell’s hands. “You sure you want to be tellin’ me this?”
“Daddy, just listen,” she had said. “I need someone to hear me out, to help me think.” Robbed of Cassie’s counsel, Julia had realized just how poor a job she had done building friendships since returning to Dayton.
When she had finished her account, including Maxwell’s attempt to “explain everything,” Julia’s father had sighed. “I blame myself, Julia.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on. This obsession you have with saving the world, always being the one on a mission? I don’t know squat about psychology, honey, but I know that growing up without me and your momma has something to do with your hero mentality, as well as the fact that you don’t really trust men in the first place.”
• • •
Ricky had meant well, and as insulted as she had initially been, Julia was glad she had asked his opinion. It took her father’s cynical eye to help her see just how deluded she had been, thinking she could set the world on fire when, in fact, she was hiding from the fears that still plagued her decades after having her heart broken by Maxwell. Julia had prayed over that reality, and asked for God’s strength to find the energy to take on some of those long-avoided battles.
One thing she was clear-eyed about, though: She deserved a fresh start, somewhere apart from the firestorm created by Cassie’s actions and the cloud of betrayal spurred by Maxwell. As her ears tingled with the sound of Anita’s salutation on the other end of the phone line, Julia sighed. For the first time in days, it felt like the box that Cassie and Maxwell had encased her in was breaking apart.
38
Though he knew he’d pay for it, Maxwell pulled into Edna’s driveway anyway.
The quartet of angry-looking young men surrounded his car immediately. Two even kicked it freely as he stepped onto the pavement. “Back up off my property, fellas,” Maxwell said, nodding respectfully. “I’m not looking for trouble.”
The thinnest one in the bunch coughed into his sleeve as he sized Maxwell up. “Why don’t you just get back in the car?” He crossed his arms and took another step, until he was nearly blocking the path back to Maxwell’s driver’s-side door. “You’re not welcome around here, least of all at Mrs. Morrison’s place.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Maxwell replied, “why don’t you go and tell her that I’m out here.”
“Somebody thinks he’s pretty darn smart,” said a taller man, sniggering all the while. “You really telling us how to protect our neighborhood, Buster Brown?”
“Hey!” The sharp, barely human bark that came from overhead caused all five heads, including Maxwell’s, to swivel up to the steps leading to the Morrisons’ front door. Maxwell felt his eyes squint at the sight of Peter Whitlock, who descended the steps in loping fashion. The detective was still in warmed-over shape —he was using a crutch, one foot was in a cast, and his face was still splotched with bruises from his encounter with Dante and M.J. The insistent fire in the eyes, though, was ever present.
“Leave the man be,” he said, his tone sharper as he joined everyone on the driveway. “My mom called him over here specifically, you dimwits.”
A third member of the crew nodded toward Whitlock while slamming one fist into the other and staring menacingly toward Maxwell. “Pete, you of all people should be ready to teach some lessons about who’s welcome around here and who’s not.”
“How about I make my own decisions about that, Keith?” Pete took the palm of one hand and playfully slammed it against the younger man’s forehead. He turned toward Maxwell. “Come on, Doc.”
Once Whitlock had shut the front door after them, he pointed in mock pride at the messy sleeper couch in the cramped living room. “How’s that for more than you’d like to see? This is what happens when you wind up living with Mom and her old man.”
Maxwell tried to respectfully avert his
gaze. “Do you want me to wait here while you go get your mother?”
“No, have a seat there,” Whitlock replied, jamming a finger toward a faded cloth lounge chair. “She’ll be down in a minute.”
Torn between two desires —tending to Edna in a time of emotional need, while trying to understand Whitlock’s sacrifice of his career in return for Cassie’s confession —Maxwell tried to keep the door open for small talk. “Found a new job yet?”
“Still looking,” Pete replied, removing a lighter from underneath a stray sheet on his unkempt bed. Collapsing onto it, he lit a cigarette. “I have a few leads —may wind up selling insurance. Can you believe that?”
Maxwell eyed the man carefully. “You seem pretty chipper, all things considered.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Pete said as Edna began to make her way down the stairs. “Someone’s finally paying for what happened to my brother.”
“Stop saying that!” Edna’s exclamation stopped both Pete and Maxwell cold, and they remained in stunned silence as she slowly descended the remaining stairs. When she reached the bottom, she held her arms out to Maxwell as he stood. “Thank you for coming,” she whispered as they hugged.
“I’m sorry to yell, Doctor,” she said as she impatiently knocked Pete to the side as she sat on the edge of his bed. “I’m just tired of this one acting as if everything has been solved.”
“Mom,” Pete replied, rolling his eyes, “what else are you looking for? We finally found someone who confessed to directly putting Eddie in harm’s way. And she’s going to pay —she will do time. I’m sure of it.”
“See,” Edna said, turning back toward Maxwell. “He just wants revenge. Peter, don’t you care that this woman claims your brother was trying to rape her?”
His eyes turned to slits, Pete glanced toward his mother before gesturing to Maxwell. “You see, Doc, my mother doesn’t understand that I have no control over what Eddie may have been up to that night. All that matters is knowing that someone who was involved in his injuries loses some of everything she holds precious —her family’s respect, her business, and, who knows, maybe more. Those boys I saved you from outside? There’s tons more, all of them ready to take Cassie out for slandering Eddie’s name, least of all when he can’t defend himself.”
God Only Knows Page 21
