“Taking over,” he informed me, coolly. “It’s my job.”
“My life is not your ‘job’!”
“My children’s lives are!”
“That doesn’t give you the right to unilaterally—”
That’s as far as we got before those same children interrupted us.
We don’t have to drive far down the gravel road to find what we’re looking for. Franklin pulls the car off onto a shoulder and parks it there. We both help the children out of their car seats and then take their hands to cross the road, with Arthur holding on to me and Diana grasping her dad’s hand, of course. “Okay, kiddos.” Franklin’s tone holds warning. “We’re going to all go together and we’re going to keep very very quiet. If you can go all the way in and come all the way back out without saying a single word out loud, there is frozen yogurt in your future. Shh, Arthur!”
This seems an impossible challenge to me, but off we go.
Barbed wire fences rim the fields on either side of us. Dust rises at our feet. The air smells and tastes like drought—the flavor of roasted earth, dead grass, and overgrown weeds. Franklin and I both carry bottles of water from which the kids and we sip frequently.
The kids are so excited that they start down the path on their tiptoes before settling into an eager trot. Franklin and I follow, stiffly careful not to touch each other.
I’d like to touch him, all right—I’d like to slug him.
When we finally spot the duck blind, he runs to catch up with his kids and grabs them. When they start to squeal, he puts a finger to his lips, and points out the blind to them. Our little troop marches on. It feels hot enough to bake a bird. But Arthur and Diana are being impressively good about not making any noise except for the natural crackle of stones and twigs under their sandaled feet.
After a few yards, their father stops us again.
Again he silently points, only this time it’s toward some little cages that have been set under the shade of some scrub bushes.
Diana lets out a delighted squeal, which she immediately shushes by clapping her own hands over her mouth. Her eyes grow wide as she stares up guiltily at her dad. But he only holds out a hand, which she takes, and then he leads her right up to the cages so she can get a good look at what is inside of them. It turns out to be doves and rabbits. Arthur is nearly beside himself with joy at the sight of the sweet creatures. He races right up to them and immediately wants to stick a finger into every cage to pet them.
I hurry after, to gently discourage him from doing that.
“Why are these animals here?” I whisper to Franklin. “Isn’t it only hawks they capture? What do they need with doves and bunnies?”
At that moment, a fluttering sound breaks through the heavy air.
We all turn to see what caused it.
We see, in a clearing to our left, that there’s something leaping into the air.
“What’s that, Daddy?”
“Shh. I don’t know, Pumpkin.”
Whatever it is, it falls back to earth, but then jumps high again.
It could be a bird bobbing around, except there is something unnatural-looking about it. It takes me a long moment to grasp that it is a bird, and that the bird is bait for the hawks. A live dove has been strapped into a leather harness that is cleverly attached to straps that run back to the duck blind. Inside the blind, somebody is working the straps, making the dove leap up and down like a marionette.
A bird of prey with a large wingspan circles above the clearing.
Fascinated, appalled, I stare as it circles, lower and lower, and then dives like a fighter pilot for the imprisoned dove.
Diana catches on to what is about to happen.
“He’s going to kill the little bird!” she screams. “He’s going to kill it!”
Her little brother, who giggled at the “dancing” dove, now screams in reaction to his sister’s terror.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Diana screams. “Save the little bird!”
The hawk, alerted by their cries, swoops out of the clearing just inches above the dove’s head and flies away.
The dove, in its harness, settles back to earth.
Within seconds, two annoyed-looking scientists emerge from the duck blind and trot over to us. Our trek to see hawks has turned into a disaster. The children are hysterical, even though the dove is safe. One of the scientists, a young man in a T-shirt and khaki shorts, speaks sharply to Franklin and me over the noise of the children’s sobbing. “Did someone give you people permission to be here?”
The other scientist, a young woman, crouches down to try to comfort the children, who are pressed, crying, into their father’s legs. “We wouldn’t let the hawk hurt the dove,” she tells them. “We always pull the dove to safety.” Then she, too, looks up accusingly at the grown-ups. “We take very good care of our lures. We feed them well, give them plenty of water, and we never let them stay out there in the sun very long at all. It’s not as bad as it looks to children. But they don’t understand that, and that’s why we don’t encourage children to come here.”
“We didn’t know,” I say, spreading my hands in helpless apology. “We’re so sorry.”
But Franklin, busy dealing with his distraught children, looks less than contrite. “If that’s true,” he says, “then why do you distribute those advertising flyers encouraging people to bring their children over here? It said this is one of the best attractions in the Keys. It said children love it, and we shouldn’t miss it.”
“We don’t put out flyers,” the young woman claims.
“Yes, you do,” Franklin insists, and I realize that he’s taking out on her some of what he feels toward me at the moment. “There was one in our door this morning.”
“No, sir, we don’t,” the young male biologist chimes in. “We wouldn’t do that. We don’t want visitors over here, not unless they’re invited. It’s not really a tourist attraction.”
“Then where’d the damned flyers come from?”
“Franklin!” I caution. He is acting like a prosecutor interrogating suspects. The young scientists are being kind to the children, but they look as if they aren’t about to take any shit from him.
And then it hits me, the same thought that strikes Franklin at that precise moment, too.
Just like that, we both know where the flyer came from.
Paulie Barnes. He’s here! Paulie Barnes is here on the island.
Franklin stares down at his children, whose innocence has been lost a little bit, and then he looks over at me. Finally, he admits to the biologists, “This was my mistake. I don’t know what to say. I apologize.” When he glances at me, I realize that at least a little bit of that is aimed at me, too.
They look exasperated but willing to accept it.
I am not, yet.
Back at the car, I feel raw and furious as I whisper to Franklin, “I wanted you to take them home. I asked you not to stay. But no, you knew better, didn’t you? You know what’s best for everybody, don’t you? Writing that E-mail without asking me first was a terrible thing to do. And this was a terrible thing for the children. Now, will you please take them home?”
“And leave you here by yourself? Are you nuts?”
“I’ll go home, too!”
“No, I won’t be forced into doing what he wants me to do. And we don’t have to leave, none of us do. It was all for show, Marie, a power play, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means something to them!” I point to his children.
When he only tightens his jaw, I have to let it go.
Diana is staring at us through her tears, but now there’s a sly little smile on her face. This argument of ours pleases her.
If this cruel episode didn’t convince Franklin to remove them far away from me, then nothing I can say will do it.
But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve already won this war.
He just doesn’t know it yet.
17
Marie
The chil
dren, clutching the comfort of their “blankies” and stuffed toys, fall asleep in their car seats in the back of the Acura.
“It’s times like this I hate car seats,” their father says to me in a low voice that seems to hold a note of appeasement.
I’m willing to give it a try, too.
“Because you’d like to bring them up here?”
He nods, looking both exhausted and ready to kill someone. At least that’s no longer me. When I see there’s also sadness in the lines of his face, my heart finally aches for him. Yes, he’s been acting like a frantic father instead of a cool-thinking prosecutor, but who can blame him for that?
“He’s here, Franklin,” I whisper, and feel an inner shiver.
“We don’t know that,” he whispers back, but there’s no contention in his tone now.
“Well, then, how’d the flyer get here?” I ask him, trying to keep my own tone neutral and nonargumentative. “May I see it?”
With one hand on the wheel, Franklin reaches under his seat, pulls out a piece of paper, and hands it over to me. I see that it is a single, letter-size sheet of shiny paper folded lengthwise into thirds, produced in glossy full color, with several attractive photos of hawks. The headline and copy advertise the “Bird Watch Nature Center” as a local magnet for families with children.
“It looks genuine to me.”
He glances at me. “It would have fooled you?”
“I’m sure it would,” I reassure him. “You found it stuck in the door?”
“Diana did. Actually, slipped under it, I think. As soon as she saw the pictures of the birds and I told her what it was, she was after me to bring her here.”
“I understand. Let’s figure out what to do about this.”
“I already know what I’m going to do,” he says, and I feel the wall going up between us again. “I’m going to call the local police, and tell them to look for this guy. In case you’re right, and he is here.”
“But what are they going to look for, Franklin?” I’m still trying hard to keep my voice and my temper down. “A man alone in a car? A man with extra copies of these flyers? For all we know, this is the only one in existence. In fact, it probably is. There’s nothing for cops to go on, Franklin, no evidence of any crime, no probable cause to stop anybody. Is there? You’re the prosecutor,” I challenge him. “You tell me.”
He doesn’t say anything for about a tenth of a mile, and then he concedes, “All right. You’re right about that. But we’re both assuming this flyer is his work, and we don’t know that for sure. We have to check it out, we shouldn’t assume. So one thing I could do, I could try to find out if any of our neighbors got these flyers, too. I can ask around to see if anybody saw who put this under our door.”
“That’s a good idea.” I feel relieved by his words, because he’s right—we are jumping to conclusions. Who knows? Maybe there’s an advertising campaign that the young biologists know nothing about, flyers put out by their funding agency, or something like that. “We could do that. That won’t break any of his rules. Franklin, first, he put the tape in my car. Now the hawks, if it was really he who sent us there. Those would be the surprises he alluded to. But how could he be sure that I’d turn on the radio in my car? And if he’s the one who did the flyer, how could he be sure that we’d visit Bird Watch, much less that we’d take the trouble to go to the banding station?”
“Most people probably do turn on their radios, so that wasn’t hard. As for the bird-watching, he couldn’t have known we’d take his lure.”
“So to speak. So then, I don’t get it.”
Franklin shifts around in his seat, as if a sudden burst of energy has shot through him and he can’t contain it. “Maybe it’s just a game, Marie. This may be pure game to him. He’ll sprinkle these surprises around and scare us if he can. When it works, he scores. When it doesn’t, he still hasn’t lost anything, because he’s kept us nervous and on edge. Well, I’ll tell you something. If he wants to play games, I’ll play a game with this bastard. And then we’ll see who walks out of the Coliseum alive.”
You’re losing control again, I think as I stare at him. The prosecutor, who is famous for his cool, is only human, like any other loving father, and he’s losing it. And that means that I’d better hang tightly on to mine.
One of us needs to stay in the condo while the children nap in their beds upstairs, so I stay behind while Franklin begins his investigation. I’m hoping the activity will leech out some of the hard, stubborn determination that seems to be growing in him again and which I fear may become dangerous to us all. I sympathize with his need to protect and defend, but I’m scared that if he charges into this situation like a prosecutor in a trial, we may end up with a worse disaster on our hands than just crying children, upsetting as that is. At this moment, if anybody asked me, I’d be tempted to say that Franklin is the greater present danger to us.
When he sets out on his task, I feel relieved to see him go.
“No, I don’t remember getting any flyer like that” is the response Franklin hears from everyone who opens a door to him within the condominium development. Nor does he spot other flyers sticking out from under any doors. But then he gets lucky with the condo manager, albeit not as lucky as she’d like him to get.
“Oh, I put that in your door,” the woman tells him.
She leans a shoulder against the sill of her own open doorway and crosses her arms under her chest, a gesture that lifts and accentuates her ample cleavage, as he later, vividly, reports to me.
He keeps his gaze fixed on her leathery face.
“Just like the E-mail asked me to do,” she adds.
“E-mail?”
“Yeah, the one we got from your travel agent.”
The prosecutor is well accustomed to hiding surprise in front of judges and juries, and he calls on that experience now. “I didn’t use an agent to book this weekend.”
“You didn’t? Well, that’s weird.” She shifts her position, managing to move a bit closer to him in the process. “You want to come in? Come on in. I think I’ve put a printout of that letter in my files.” While Franklin waits just inside her unit, which smells of fried fish, she upends a wastebasket beside a couch, finally emerging in triumph with a copy of the E-mail. “Here it is—see?” She sticks the paper—and herself—right up to his face. “There’s your name, Franklin DeWeese, right? Care of the manager. That’s me, Margie Conover. Well, you can read it for yourself,” she says, though she doesn’t back off very far to give him a chance to do that.
The first thing Franklin notices is a return address that looks as meaningless as the ones I got: [email protected]. Below that, the body of the E-mail says: “Please print out the attached advertising flyer and slip it under the door of Mr. Franklin DeWeese, who will be renting a unit from you this weekend. This is material he requested. Thanks.” It’s clear to Franklin that “Paulie Barnes” wins either way with this trick—if we receive this flyer but don’t fall for it, he’s still unnerved us; if we take his bait, then all the better.
“Did you go?” she wants to know.
“To the hawk station? Yeah, we did.”
“So how was it?”
“Interesting place, but not appropriate for children.”
“I saw your kids, they’re so cute. If you need a baby-sitter, you could bring them over here and I could watch them for a little while.”
There is no way in hell that he’s going to turn his children over to a stranger—any stranger—and especially not on this trip. Franklin thanks the woman without encouraging any of her suggestions—not the offer of baby-sitting, or the more covert suggestions, either.
When he returns to our unit, the first words out of his mouth are, “He didn’t deliver that flyer in person. I don’t think he’s here, Marie. I don’t think he was ever here.”
“Franklin, there’s a message for you to call Truly.”
Push has finally come to shove.
His ex-wife’s name isn’t
really Truly, it’s Trudy, but it has become a standing joke with him to call her Truly, because she is still so proprietary toward her ex-husband, acting as if only she can ever be “Truly DeWeese.” It’s a bad pun, but it amuses him, and I have picked up the bad habit of calling her that, too.
“What does she want?”
“She wants you to call her right away, please.”
“Was she decent to you?”
“She was fine.”
“Dammit. I was hoping she could last a weekend without needing to check up on us.”
“It’s okay, Franklin, they’re babies, she’s their mother, it’s natural.”
He makes a noise that sounds like a cross between a growl and a snort. But he crosses to a phone sitting on a kitchen counter and punches in the numbers required to reach Trudy via his telephone credit card.
My heart begins to pound too hard for comfort.
“It’s me, Trudy. What’s up?” The question seems to imply there had better be a good reason, a crisis at the very least, for his ex-wife to interrupt his weekend with his girlfriend and his children. He gets the kids on weekends and part-time on holidays, and he guards that time like a lion. Plus, he only rarely takes any time away from his office—which is the real reason he agreed to such unequal custody. So he has looked upon this weekend as something deserved, rare, special—and all his.
As he listens, Franklin slowly turns around until he is looking at me.
His gaze becomes a stare that turns ugly.
I just stand there, absorbing the blow from his eyes.
I called his ex-wife this morning. I told her what was going on. I encouraged Trudy to command Franklin to return their children to her at once.
When the terse, tense conversation ends, Franklin puts down the receiver with a slow precision that suggests fury.
“You told her?”
“I told her.”
“How could you do that to me, Marie?”
The Truth Hurts Page 15
