Charissa continued to scrutinize him as though still trying to decide whether Shad was friend or foe. “Dad said she’s dying.”
That wasn’t a lie. What concerned Shad more was just how Charissa’s father was relaying this information.
“The sickness your mom has ... it doesn’t change how much she loves you. She wishes she could’ve come to St. Louis with me, but since she couldn’t, she sent this for you instead.”
Shad picked up the day pack and offered it to the girl. With her gaze never leaving his face, Charissa gingerly took it from him.
“Your mom packed all kinds of goodies in there for you.” Shad offered his best version of a reassuring smile. Then he decided to imply a new concept Charissa was going to need to adapt to. “Your Uncle Eliot and Aunt Tess put some things in there for you, too.”
Eliot Weller was supposed to be here with Shad today, but he was a veterinarian and received an emergency call concerning a prize brood mare this morning. Thus Eliot was unable to meet Shad at the train station in Jefferson City, and Shad had been forced to show up alone for Charissa’s scheduled pickup. Having never done this sort of thing before, Shad was a little more than annoyed by Eliot’s absence. Although he usually preferred solitude, Shad had learned to value someone else’s company whenever he was thrust into new situations.
Charissa didn’t say anything as she studied the day pack without opening it. Shad stood again while the woman was taking a small blue suitcase from the car’s back seat.
“I’ll take that.” Shad offered.
After settling some final details with the officer and the social worker, Shad thanked them and guided Charissa toward the playground area of the park as the patrol car drove away.
“We have about half an hour before we need to go to the train station.” Shad set his carrying case and her suitcase on the first bench they approached. “Have you ever ridden the train before?”
He already knew the answer, so when Charissa shook her head it was the response Shad expected.
“You want to play on the playground while we wait?”
The girl only stared at him in response.
Shad sat next to the cases. Charissa remained standing at the other end of the bench. Her day pack was sitting on it although she still gripped the top strap while never removing her gaze from him.
Now that he was getting back into something more familiar, Shad drew a cleansing breath and offered another reassuring smile to Charissa. This would be much easier for the girl if Eliot were with him to provide her with somebody she knew. Too bad he didn’t have the option to pull his wife Dulsie out from her job to tag along. Dulsie would still be a stranger to Charissa, but at least Dulsie had a winning personality and a shared gender with the child. If nothing else, Shad was certainly more at ease whenever Dulsie was around.
“Or would you rather talk about what’s going on?” Sure, he was trying to obtain additional testimony, but Shad also recognized the value of allowing Charissa to speak her concerns.
Charissa’s grip on the pack tightened for a second, but then her eyes seemed less wide. “You don’t look like a lawyer.”
Shad’s response was deadpan. “I’m traveling in disguise.”
He was conscientious of speaking the truth, even in jest. Shad had purposefully worn tan slacks and a sage, short-sleeved, button-down shirt because a suit might be intimidating to the child. He also didn’t want to look “official” to others as he (and Eliot, originally) escorted Charissa back to her home. Besides, Shad hated wearing suits and welcomed any opportunity to eschew them.
The girl seemed to consider his answer for a minute before speaking again. “How much money you gonna make?”
If ever there was a question he hadn’t expected her to ask, that would be it. It was Shad’s turn to stare at Charissa with some bemusement before he responded.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Dad said you’re hauling me away only because you figured out a way to make a bunch of money.”
Demetri Simms’s evaluation fell in line with what most people, Shad included, thought about lawyers. But Shad’s motivation for tackling a situation other attorneys had dismissed had nothing to do with money and everything to do with ... justice. And it had been his thirst for justice that had driven him to this occupation. Distilling the complexities to the level of a five-year-old, however, wasn’t going to be easy.
“I’m not here for the money.” Shad leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and rested his chin on clasped hands. “I’m also not hauling you away. I’m taking you home.”
Charissa regarded him with unwavering wariness. “I don’t have a home back –” She seemed to reconsider her choice of words but couldn’t settle upon an appropriate substitute quickly enough. “– home.”
“Did somebody tell you that?”
Charissa finally stopped looking at him and lowered her head to study the day pack. Her slender, tanned fingers kneaded at the hanging loop on top.
Had she been coached, or more likely threatened, not to say too much? The last thing he could risk was pushing too hard, which luckily Shad was better at catching himself when working with kids than adults.
“How do you feel about going back to see your mom?”
Charissa looked back up at him, and for the split second that Shad met her eyes he thought he noticed a flash in them.
“Why do you care?”
If only Eliot hadn’t run off to save that mare there wouldn’t be so much antagonism to deal with. Charissa’s father had probably done his best to fuel the fire against her mother’s attempts to regain their daughter.
“I have every reason to care.” Shad drew another deep breath as he tried to collect his thoughts. Details were no challenge to him, but trying to distill them to others was much more difficult. “Or rather, you see....” He leaned against the backrest of the bench and stretched one arm across the top, still struggling to come up with the right words. “Let’s put it this way. Your mom hired me. But I’m not working for your mom to make money. I’m not even working for her just so she can get you back. I don’t –” Shad caught himself. He was about to say “I don’t care about your mom,” and this was the wrong level to make that statement. He leaned forward again. “The only reason I decided to work for your mom was because she convinced me it was in your best interest to bring you back home. I don’t care –” Shad took a couple of seconds to reconsider his words before proceeding with them. “– So much about what your mom wants or what your dad wants. What matters more to me is what you want.” He clasped his hands together in front of his knees. “Did any of that make sense?”
She studied him for enough seconds that Shad started to wonder how he was going to manage trying to rephrase that babble into something more comprehensible.
“I want Mom and Dad back,” Charissa finally said. “Together.”
Shad looked down at his hands and blew out an exhale. “You and a million other kids.” He looked at her again, managing to bring his gaze as high as her nose. “I can’t do that. I can’t make them get back together. So I have to come up with the next best thing for you.”
Charissa lowered her gaze again. “If Mom wasn’t dying, they’d be together.”
When Monica Simms first approached Shad about getting Charissa back, he was initially interested in her situation for two reasons. First, it reminded him of the story about Pap’s great-great grandfather. When the potato famine of the 1840’s struck Ireland, Quaid Delaney’s father abandoned the family because he couldn’t bear to watch them starve to death. For the rest of his life Quaid despised his father for this penultimate act of cowardice. He was so outspoken about his opinion that to this day getting called coward by a Delaney was equivalent to be being called something rather excremental by anybody else. If Demetri Simms could walk away from his wife and take their child because he didn’t want them to watch her die, Shad initially believed he might have the same color of belly as Quaid’s father.
The other reason was simply because there could be a child’s welfare at stake, which was very much of the foundation for why Shad had accepted the ludicrous idea of becoming an attorney. At first he didn’t see much hope for Monica’s goal. The couple was still legally married and Demetri didn’t have any kind of criminal record, so Shad had little grounds to initiate a custody battle.
During his initial consultation with Monica, however, Shad began to notice “red flags” in her description of their relationship with Demetri. So he asked Monica certain questions he’d devised whenever Shad wanted to verify if abuse was an element in a case he was considering. Even though she didn’t realize it herself, Monica confirmed Shad’s suspicions. If Demetri could convince a woman in her twenties that she was “crazy,” Lord knows what harm he could do to the mind of a child.
Shad’s pet questions wouldn’t work on a child, however, and he also had to take care that he neither led Charissa nor set himself up for the accusation of contributing to alienation of her father.
“Why do you think that?” Shad simply asked.
“It’s a bad thing, dying.” Charissa looked up at him.
“Tell me what’s bad about dying.”
Shad could read a river much more effectively than he could people’s expressions, but he suspected the slight frown that furrowed Charissa’s brow indicated she thought his request was a bit odd. Then her gaze lowered to the day pack, and her voice was softer when she spoke.
“It’s bad people who die.”
Shad was so consumed by all the ramifications of that answer it took him probably thirty seconds to respond. “Only bad people die? Don’t good people die too?”
“If you’re good, you get to die when you’re old.” Charissa didn’t look up. “If you’re bad, God makes you die sooner.”
On the one hand, it was a philosophy that might offer comfort to a child. Wouldn’t the world be safer if all the bad guys were struck down before they could harm the innocent? On the other hand, it negatively judged everyone who faced an untimely death.
“Why do you believe that?” Shad asked.
This time Charissa did raise her head to look at him, and her eyes shimmered. “Dad told me so.”
This was a hollow victory for him. Shad was indeed obtaining the type of testimony he needed against Demetri, but Shad realized he had a bigger issue to tackle at the moment.
“Your mom isn’t bad.” Shad knew he was notorious for getting to the point, but this seemed like one circumstance he could indulge that tendency.
Charissa regarded him for a few seconds before responding. “Then why is she dying?”
The phrase “life isn’t fair” immediately came to mind, but Shad knew he had to come up with a better answer.
Luckily Mam and Pap had already answered the same types of questions for him. “There ... is a purpose.” Shad took a deep breath as he tried to figure out how to simplify something deeper to the level of a five-year-old. “I can’t begin to understand it, because the way of God is not the way of man. But when bad things happen, if we can make good come of it, then we have done the work of God.”
He couldn’t decipher Charissa’s slight frown, but Shad doubted he had made much headway.
“The truth is ... the truth is good people die too. It doesn’t seem fair, I know. Lord knows we need all the good people we can get.” Shad didn’t consider Monica to be anywhere near sainthood, but that wasn’t his concern right now. “Your mom will always love you. And anybody who loves you has got to be good, right?”
It bothered him that Charissa didn’t respond right away, and even then she sounded uncertain. “I suppose.”
Now seemed as good a time as any to continue building on that new concept she would need to get used to. “And your Uncle Eliot and Aunt Tess love you, too. They’re gonna help your mom take care of you.”
After a few seconds of silence, Charissa spoke with the hint of a plea in her voice. “Don’t make Mom and Dad get a divorce.”
“I have to if I can.”
“Why?”
How was he going to explain the most complex case he’d yet handled in Shad’s three years of being an attorney to a mere child? “Because the law says that everything will go to your dad when your mom passes away. Including you. Normally that’s not a problem. But....” Shad shook his head as he took another deep breath for a long exhale. “I have to take appropriate measures to insure your rights are protected.”
Charissa looked up at him with a slight frown, and Shad realized he’d just spoken above the girl’s comprehension. Shad also quickly ascertained why he had just made that slip. The child’s relatives had mentioned to him, as though it were a positive thing, that Charissa acted older than other children her age. While her pseudo-maturity was easier to handle than hyperactivity, Shad knew both could be symptoms of abuse.
That gut feeling which usually eluded him during most of his interaction with others never failed Shad when he suspected any kind of abuse. He could only figure it was the result of a well-worn survival instinct, and feeling it stir again increased his concern for Charissa.
The girl had been served an awful lot. Her mother was dying. Her father was verbally and emotionally abusive. The only relative who could, or would, take her in was Monica Simms’s brother Eliot and his wife Tess. Although they seemed like kind people, Monica had informed Shad that Eliot was much like their father. On the positive side he was a good worker and provider, but Eliot also wound up not being home a lot. Tess was also devoted to her own job with the Department of Natural Resources. Shad wasn’t completely content with the prospect of placing Charissa in a home where she might feel second to her adoptive parents’ jobs, but it was better than being belittled, berated and bullied throughout her childhood.
“I’m here to protect you.” A flicker of an idea surfaced in his mind. “All of us, your mom, Uncle Eliot, Aunt Tess, we all want to do what’s best for you. You’re very important to all of us. And anytime you want to talk to me, I want to listen. I’m your lawyer, really. Your mom hired me to protect you, and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”
Charissa looked up and studied him for a few seconds before speaking. “You’re my lawyer?”
“That’s right.”
“Does that mean you have to do what I say?”
“If I agree it’s in your best interests.”
“Will you stop the divorce?”
Shad shook his head again. “I’m sorry. Stopping the divorce is not in your best interests.”
Charissa frowned as several more seconds passed. Then her expression became more thoughtful.
“So I could fire you if I wanted?”
Shad was as impressed as he was taken aback. For a girl who was just going to be starting kindergarten at summer’s end, Charissa was developing keen problem solving skills.
Of course that could also be an indication she had too much practice at being thrust into problems children shouldn’t have to handle.
Shad hated to just tell Charissa no. He was too familiar with the powerlessness of childhood, and Charissa would be overwhelmed if she truly knew how many powers were pulling at her now. He also didn’t want to mislead her with a yes. This was one of those times he had to find a compromise.
“Only if you give me two weeks notice.”
“What’s that?”
“That means if you fire me, you’re still stuck with me for two more weeks.”
Charissa thought about his explanation before reaching her conclusion. “I guess I’d better fire you now, then.”
Well, this wasn’t the first time an idea he’d thought was reasonably bright turned out to be more dim witted. “Already? You haven’t even given me the chance to prove my worth to you.”
“No chance.” Charissa shook her head. “I want to get it over with.”
Shad studied her as Charissa actually looked over toward the swing set. His gut stirred again. Why? What was it about that choice of words she’d just sp
oken that he recognized yet couldn’t name? The combination of personal experience and formal training enabled Shad to comprehend the subtleties in all levels of abuse. It was the one aspect of human behavior he had a good grasp on.
Yet those words “get it over with” reverberated in Shad’s memory. Charissa wanted to “get rid” of him, and do so quickly. That was understandable. He was, after all, the big, bad lawyer who was apparently tearing her family apart before its appointed time. But his gut told him there was more. As much as Shad knew, he realized he only knew just enough to suspect he was missing something.
“Will you push me?” Charissa glanced back toward him.
Shad immediately processed her question beyond its face value because he suspected that he was going to have to dig for more than just testimony. But right now his analytical side needed to take a break. It had a way of overshadowing his social obligations, and Shad knew in order to satisfy it, he was going to have to build a rapport with the girl first. His response, however, was still grounded in the underlying complexities of her question.
“Only as much as you need me to.”
Chapter Two
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.
--Carl Jung
The train station was an easy walk from the park, but Friday afternoons there could be busy, especially in a suburb of St. Louis. Shad didn’t like crowds, but taking the train was infinitely preferable to the alternative of driving for two hours back to Jefferson City. Not only would he and Charissa have the freedom to move around instead of being trapped in a car together, Shad could avoid stressing out over a commonplace activity most people took for granted.
He could operate a combine in an open field of corn, soybeans, or oats with confident ease. Shad could also drive a car on back country roads in relaxed comfort. Traffic in the town of Linn where his office was located could start making him jittery, but the traffic in Jefferson City would almost bring him to his breaking point. Thus there was no way on Earth Shad would even consider trying to negotiate with what seemed like millions of vehicles on the unfamiliar streets or highways of St. Louis. His aversion to crowds in general convinced Shad he was mildly agoraphobic, but the throng at the train station was a lesser evil to him than traffic on the streets.
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