Mending Fences

by Sherryl Woods

  Grady was hot and filthy and tired, but it had been years since he’d felt this much contentment. His seriously neglected yard was coming back to life. The pool, which had been drained and left empty ever since Megan’s death, had been scrubbed and painted and filled with crystal-clear water once more.

  His lawn had been neatly mowed, old plants ripped out and replaced with bold tropical flowers that suited the Spanish style of the house. The runaway bougainvillea had been trimmed to within an inch of its life, leaving stems that were still bright with splashes of fuchsia and purple flowers. Dani had added orange birds of paradise with their dark green leaves and a dozen other plants he didn’t recognize.

  The girl worked tirelessly, her arms strong enough to haul the five-gallon containers of plants, her expression serious as she gently patted the soil around their roots.

  “She looks happy, doesn’t she?” Emily said from the chaise longue next to his. “Almost as if nothing happened.”

  “She hasn’t forgotten,” Grady said. “But she’s strong enough to start putting it into perspective.”

  “Do you think it will affect how she thinks of men and dating? I really worry about that. She’s been so cautious for months now. I should have guessed it had something to do with Evan.”

  He knew all too well that the rape could well shape her outlook on dating. “It might,” he said candidly. “But with time and the right kind of encouragement, I think she’ll get past all of it.”

  “To be honest, a part of me hopes she won’t want to date for another ten years,” Emily admitted.

  “It would be better for her if she went out next weekend,” Grady said. “But I understand where you’re coming from.”

  “When I was Dani’s age, parents still screened the boys their daughters went out with,” she said. “At the time I thought that was archaic, but once I had Dani I understood the value of it.” She gave him a wry look. “In effect, though, I had exactly that chance with Evan. Look how badly I blew that.”

  “No,” Grady said sharply. “You couldn’t have predicted anything that happened.”

  “Josh did,” she said.

  “Because he was with Evan under different circumstances. He saw how he treated the girls he dated. Stop blaming yourself for not seeing through the polite veneer he worked hard to maintain around you and most other adults.”

  “But I did see glimpses of that other boy,” Emily admitted. “I saw how he treated Marcie.”

  “And chalked it up to teenage attitude toward parental authority, I imagine,” Grady suggested. “You see a lot of that at school.”

  She sighed. “True.”

  “Leave the blame where it belongs—on Evan,” he told her. “Why don’t I pour you a glass of wine and you can relax a little before my mom gets here?”

  “I don’t think my stomach can take wine right now,” she said. “Just the mention of your mother gets it all twisted into knots again.”

  “Then I’ll hurry with my shower so you won’t have to face her alone.” He leaned down and brushed a lingering kiss across her lips until the color returned to her cheeks. “That’s better,” he said with satisfaction.

  She smiled. “Indeed, it is.” Then her attention went to Dani. “She probably needs to clean up too.”

  “Not unless she wants to.”

  “But she’ll make a terrible impression looking like that,” Emily protested.

  “Trust me, all my mother will notice is what she’s done with this yard of mine.” He gestured toward the pool. “And what she’s motivated me to do. Most of all, she’ll think that Dani will make a beautiful, industrious granddaughter.”

  Emily’s eyes widened with alarm.

  “Not to worry, querida. She’s not going to hold a shotgun to your back till we head down the aisle. She’s just anticipating.”

  “Too much, perhaps,” Emily said.

  He touched a finger to her lush mouth. “Not really.”

  Not if he had anything to say about it.

  The petite dynamo who’d taken over Grady’s kitchen was the most fascinating woman Emily had ever met. She’d exuberantly hugged Dani, oblivious to the dirt that covered her and the sweat running down her face and arms. Then she’d embraced Emily just as enthusiastically, chattering happily in Spanish until Grady had reminded her that their guests spoke only English.

  When she’d switched to English with a quick apology, her words were barely accented and her excitement unabated. There was no mistaking the fact that she already had high expectations for this new woman in her son’s life. Emily feared she was going to be disappointed. All the signs were pointing in the right direction, but she and Grady had just walked a few feet on a long and sometimes difficult road.

  “Come,” she’d commanded a few minutes earlier. “You can help me with dinner. We will get to know each other.”

  “I’ll set the table,” Emily offered. “You don’t want me ruining all this wonderful food you’ve brought.” Grady had been right. There was enough here to feed an entire army, not just the four of them.

  “You don’t cook?” Mrs. Rodriguez asked, looking stunned.

  “Not like this,” Emily replied, gesturing at the display on the counter and the kitchen table.

  “Not to worry. I like to do it. You concentrate on teaching children. I will see that you and my son don’t starve.”

  “Mrs. Rodriguez, you might have gotten the wrong idea. Grady and I are friends. We’re just getting to know each other.”

  “My son has friends,” she said dismissively. “He needs a woman in his life. He wants you. That is enough for me.”

  “But—”

  “Here is silverware,” Mrs. Rodriguez said, cutting off her protest before it could be formed. “We’ll eat in the dining room. This is a special occasion, sí?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, biting back a sigh. “Yes, it is.”

  When Josh showed up a few minutes later, she felt as if she were being hurried toward a future she hadn’t yet embraced.

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” she told Josh, regarding Grady with a frown as she said it.

  “He told me his mother was cooking. Where else would I be?” He impulsively gave the older woman a kiss on the cheek. “Your picadillo was the best I ever had.”

  Mrs. Rodriguez beamed at him approvingly. “Smart boy. I like you. Now finish setting the table. Your mama can watch me add a few spices to my arroz con pollo.”

  Josh gaped and Dani, who’d just come inside, giggled.

  “You might not want to let her anywhere near the stove,” Dani said with some urgency.

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Rodriguez said. “Come.”

  Emily went, too intimidated not to. After all, she was only going to observe, not touch anything or add anything.

  Unfortunately, a container of something was shoved into her hand at once.

  “One pinch,” Mrs. Rodriguez said. “Like so.” She demonstrated, then waited.

  “I don’t know,” Emily said.

  Grady grinned at her. “Give in, sweetheart. It’ll be painless.”

  “But will the food be edible?” she asked warily.

  “It’s one pinch,” Mrs. Rodriguez scolded. “How hard can that be?”

  Emily sighed and opened the lid of the container. She dumped what to her looked like a pinch into her palm, only to have Mrs. Rodriguez gasp and jerk her hand away from the pot.

  “Too much! A pinch is like so.” Again, she demonstrated, then glanced at Grady. “The two of you, outside. I will finish in here. Los niños can help me.” She cast a disapproving look at Dani’s filthy hands. “After you have washed up.” When Josh started to move to her side, she frowned. “You, too.”

  “But I wasn’t digging in the dirt,” he protested.

  “Wash!”

  He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Dismissed, Emily followed Grady outside. “They actually listened to her.”

  “My mother’s pretty formidable. People tend to li
sten.”

  “I could use that skill in my classroom,” she said, unable to keep a wistful note out of her voice.

  Before she could sit down, Grady beat her to the chaise longue and pulled her down beside him. She tried to ignore all those muscles and all that masculine heat, but it was a losing proposition.

  “You forget I’ve seen you in your classroom,” he said. “My mother has nothing on you. If you ask me, you’re two peas in a pod.”

  “Except she can cook.”

  “I can get a good meal anywhere,” he consoled her. “You, I’ve only found once.”

  Suddenly, ridiculously, she felt the sting of tears in her eyes. Grady looked alarmed.

  “What did I say?” he asked.

  She brushed impatiently at the tears. “The sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  He looked entirely too pleased with himself. “That was just the beginning. Give me a few weeks to warm up.”

  That was what scared Emily more than anything. He had her right here, right now. She didn’t need to wait for any encores.

  24

  Marcie didn’t think she could bear sitting through her son’s trials, especially not the one in which he’d be facing Dani’s accusations. As much as she hadn’t wanted to believe her son capable of such a crime, she’d looked into Dani’s anguished face and known she was telling the truth. She suspected she’d feel the same awful, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach if she heard Lauren Brown’s testimony.

  Two weeks before the court date for Evan’s first trial, she made several phone calls, including one to Evan’s attorney, then insisted that Ken sit down across from her in their kitchen. Determined not to be put off, she overrode his objections that he didn’t have time to waste chatting.

  “Make the time,” she said flatly. “This is important, Ken. It’s probably the most important conversation we’ll ever have.”

  “More important than saving our son?”

  “This may be the only way to save him,” she responded quietly.

  “You’re not going to bring up that crap about a plea bargain again, are you?”

  She ignored the jeering note in his voice. “Yes, I am. And I’m going to keep bringing it up until you actually hear me.”

  “How can you even suggest that Evan spend one minute behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit?”

  “Crimes,” she said emphatically. “He didn’t do this once, Ken. There are two young women who’ve made these charges, one of them a girl we’ve known practically all her life.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s not a liar,” he said stubbornly.

  She looked into his eyes. “You know better.”

  “I know our son,” he countered.

  “So do I, and as much as I hate believing it, he is capable of doing this. I’ve looked him in the eye and asked for the truth. He mocks me. That is not the reaction of an innocent young man. It’s the reaction of someone who can’t deny his own guilt.”

  “How can you say that? He’s our son, dammit! What has gotten into you? He deserves our unconditional support.”

  “Not unconditional, Ken. Not when it comes to this. I’ve had to face the truth. In fact, I’ve had to face a lot of truths over the past few months. Our marriage is in shambles. It has been for years. I’ve just been too scared to admit it. Our son has adopted your attitude toward women. It started with me and, sadly, it’s taken an awful twist with young girls his own age. I blame myself for that, as much as I do you.” When Ken opened his mouth, his face contorted with outrage, she held up a hand. “Don’t contradict me or belittle my opinion. You’ve done that enough and for the last time.”

  “So this is all my fault?” he demanded. “I made Evan into the kind of boy who could commit rape?”

  She winced at the harsh word, but it was accurate. “As usual, you didn’t really listen to what I said. I accepted my share of responsibility. I never stood up to you. I never called you on your behavior, partly because I loved you and partly to keep the peace, because that’s what I thought made a good wife. I was wrong, more wrong than I could possibly have imagined. I taught Evan that it’s okay to show utter disrespect for a woman, that we don’t deserve better than that, especially from someone who’s supposed to love us.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes and fell, unchecked. “Together, we set the example, Ken. Together, we made Evan into the kind of young man who thought it was okay to take advantage of a woman because she didn’t deserve respect or consideration or even being heard. Maybe it even goes all the way back to childhood when no never meant no with Evan, because we always gave in.”

  “Have you been watching that guy on TV again? What’s his name? Dr. Phil? Cut all the psychological mumbo-jumbo. Our boy is perfectly normal.”

  Could Ken be that delusional? she wondered. “It is not normal to bring a sixteen-year-old girl into this house and force her to have sex when she repeatedly told him no. It is not normal to take a young college girl into her apartment and force her to do the same thing, even though she’d rejected him.”

  “He never—”

  “Yes, he did,” she said flatly. “You know it, and the sooner you stop denying it, the better off Evan will be. He needs help, Ken. He doesn’t need his daddy to get him out of another jam, so he never learns that actions have consequences. That stops now.” He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, she said, “I’ve spoken to Evan’s attorney and he agrees with me. Remember, he’s seen the evidence. He understands the likely impact on the jury, not only of the physical evidence, but the testimony of these two young women. We both believe that the plea arrangement offered by the prosecution is Evan’s best chance to get the help he needs, rather than spending years in jail.”

  She looked him directly in the eye. “Years,” she repeated. “He won’t get off with a slap on the wrist if he’s convicted, but if he’s willing to plead guilty to lesser charges and the two girls agree, he can serve a minimal amount of time and then get probation. His attorney believes the prosecution and judge will accept the deal because he has no other criminal history and has always been a good student and otherwise a model kid. They want justice for Dani and Lauren. They don’t want to destroy Evan. This needs to happen, Ken. It’s the only way to save him. You and Evan both need to face facts. He’s not going to walk away from this. If God is merciful, Lauren and Dani will agree.”

  The fight suddenly seemed to drain out of her husband, a man she’d loved for most of her adult life but no longer respected.

  “You shouldn’t have called the attorney,” he said, but there was little fire in his voice. “I was handling everything just fine.”

  “You were trying to,” she agreed. “But this can’t be handled, Ken. It needs to be faced head-on. If those girls say yes, I want Evan to take the deal and save himself from an even worse punishment if he’s convicted in both of those cases.”

  “If, Marcie. That’s a big if.”

  She shook her head. “If Evan’s own mother, me, believed what Dani said, then a jury will, too. Every word coming out of that child’s mouth is God’s honest truth. There’s not a doubt in my mind about that, not one shred of reasonable doubt. Worse, Evan admitted as much to Caitlyn. Do you want her dragged into this, forced to testify against her own brother?”

  “Our attorney is good,” he countered. “The best. He can make a saint sound like a sinner.”

  She regarded him with disgust. “And you would let that happen? You would let him try to harass those girls and tarnish their reputations? You would put your own daughter through this?”

  “To save Evan? Yes, without the slightest qualm.”

  “Well, I won’t allow it,” she said, shaking but determined. “I can’t. It goes against every shred of decency in me. As a mother, I hate the thought of Evan pleading guilty, but also as a mother, I have to imagine what it’s like for those girls he victimized. And unlike you, I care about what it would do to Caitlyn if she were forced to testify.”

>   “You’ve let Emily influence you,” he charged. “You’ve listened to her whining about poor Dani and you’re willing to throw your own child to the wolves to save her.”

  “I haven’t discussed this with Emily. She has no idea what I intend to recommend.”

  “Oh, please, you didn’t dream this up on your own,” he jeered. He tried to stare her down, his scowl meant to intimidate, but she held firm.

  “Evan wants to fight,” he reminded her. “He wants to clear his name.”

  “Because you’ve convinced him that’s possible. He wants desperately to believe you because it’ll be the easy way out of all this. I intend to sit him down with his attorney and explain a few facts to him.”

  Ken seemed stunned by her refusal to back down. “You’ve changed,” he said at last. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  “Yes, I have, thank God. It’s taken me far too long.”

  “Evan will never forgive you for forcing him to do this,” he said.

  She sighed then. “I can’t force him to do anything. I wish I could. Maybe, though, if he follows my advice for once, he will get a tiny glimmer of what it’s like to do the right thing. If so, I can live with having him hate me. Thanks to you, he’s not all that fond of me as it is.”

  She was about to stand up and make the call to the attorney, when Ken stopped her. “Wait.”

  She sat back down.

  “This will be the end of our marriage, you know.” He said it as if he meant it to be a threat.

  Marcie nodded. “That’s a given.”

  He seemed startled by her easy acquiescence. “It’s been over for a long time, hasn’t it?”

  Unable to speak, she merely nodded.

  For the longest time, his gaze held hers, but he was the first to look away. “I’m sorry.”

  She reached across the table and touched his hand. It was ice-cold. “Me, too,” she said, filled with dismay and just the first, faint hint of relief. “Me, too.”

  Emily was surprised to find Grady waiting for her in the parking lot at school.

  “What are you doing here?”