The Secret Hour

by Luanne Rice

  “Teddy?” Maggie asked, her voice dropping so the officers wouldn't hear her.

  “Yeah.”

  “How come Dad represents him? Really?” she asked, frowning. The age-old question. Teddy had asked it when he was her age, only back then the defendant had been someone else.

  “Like you said yourself before, it's his job.”

  “Why doesn't he represent innocent people instead?”

  Teddy laughed, throwing the wadded-up washcloth into the sink. He was giving up on the bloodstains; let Maggie wear the dirty shirt if she wanted. Their father's voice rose, talking to the cops in the front hall. The crisis was over—no one was hurt, and the police were on the case.

  “Why are you laughing?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking,” he said. “Of telling you to ask Dad that question.”

  “Why? Because you think he should, right? Only represent good people who didn't do it?”

  Teddy's spine tingled again, thinking of that old lady at Paradise Ice Cream. After she'd said that, he had gone online and looked up the murdered girls. Anne-Marie Hicks had been seventeen. Her high-school yearbook picture had been posted, showing blond hair that slanted across her eyes, seven earrings in her left ear, four in her right, and a huge smile revealing braces and a little gap between her front teeth.

  “Right, Teddy? That's why you think I should ask Dad?”

  Teddy felt another pull deep inside, remembering how their mother had sat with their father for hours, rubbing his shoulders while he wrote briefs and studied legal documents, getting ready for the murderers' trials, supporting him no matter what she felt about the cases.

  “Tell me, Teddy!”

  Smiling into his sister's anxious blue eyes, so innocent and worried, he felt like crying, but laughed again. “Mags, I think you should ask Dad why he represents guilty clients because I'd love to hear the lecture he'd give you.”

  “Lecture?”

  “Yeah. All about ‘the miracle at Philadelphia that resulted in the Constitution, the Sixth Amendment, and a defendant's right to counsel. . . .' Yay, team. And then he'll tell you about Oliver Wendell Holmes and how law is ‘a magic mirror' . . . where we get to see our own lives reflected. Just ask. You'll get Dad going, and he won't stop till dinner.”

  “I wish he would,” she whispered, burying her face in Brainer's matted fur. “Not stop till dinner. Never leave . . .”

  Teddy stopped laughing. He figured it was the same for Maggie as it was for him: Ever since their mother's death, he hadn't wanted to let their father out of his sight. He listened to the voices in the hall. His father was trying to be friendly to the officers—people he grilled mercilessly when he got them on the witness stand—and the police were treating him coolly back. Maggie had heard, too. When she lifted her head, her eyes swam with tears.

  “It's okay, Maggie,” Teddy said, pulling her into a hug. Her thin body trembled in his arms. Her hair looked terrible, as if their father had taken nail scissors to it. It was dirty—just a few hours away from being greasy—and she smelled funny. She smelled like an under-the-bed mixture of dust and sneakers. She smelled like Brainer, tangled and stuck with dried leaves and seaweed without their mother to lovingly brush him every day.

  Teddy wanted Maggie to smell like lemons and lavender, just like their mother had. He wanted her to have clean hair and straight bangs. She cried, missing their mother as much as Teddy did, and he held her closer as the policemen passed by again, whispering into her ear, “Don't cry, okay? You're my girl, Mags. My best girl in the world.”

  Maggie didn't like the noise. The siren, first of all, but then the police radios squawking like trapped mice. Poor little animals caught inside a speaker box, wanting to get out and run home to their mamas.

  She didn't mind the actual police officers. Most of them were nice—to her. They smiled, crouched down to say hi, asked her how was school or was she hoping to be the next Mia Hamm. The soccer jersey, of course. She just acted polite, not bothering to explain that the jersey was her brother Teddy's, that she wore it because it was like taking a little bit of him to school with her.

  The reason she was so polite, and the reason all the police officers made her heart hurt, was that they didn't like her father. She thought that maybe if she was very kind, quiet, and well-mannered, the officers would see that her father was a very good man. Didn't they know what it was like for him, raising his children all alone? But the policemen didn't care about that. They were like most of the people around: All they knew about her father was that he was the lawyer for Greg Merrill.

  Maggie understood all this. Teddy thought he was shielding her from knowing, but she knew anyway. She'd grown up fast since their mother died. She was eleven, but she felt old. She figured she probably felt twenty. Old and tired inside, wound up like a kid outside. She had come flying out to the porch, just to give Teddy a chance to get ready for school: to let him off the hook from having to take care of her.

  Her father sat in a chair, being examined by an EMT. Maggie sidled closer. She wanted to make sure the cut wasn't deep and deadly. Their mother had died in a car accident, and at first the EMT's had thought she would be okay. Her car had hit a deer, then crashed into a tree. She had been on the Shore Road, just past the police station, and help had arrived immediately. The EMT said she had stood up, walked over to the animal to see if it was still alive, and then sat down because she was feeling dizzy.

  Maggie could see all this in her mind, even though she hadn't been there. She could see her mother in her blue dress and white sandals. The moon had been full that night. It was July, and her mother had had a sunburny tan that glowed in any light—even moonlight. Her sun-streaked hair would have been windblown, from the car window being open. Her lipstick had been fresh and pink—she had heard her dad say that to Gramps.

  Maggie sometimes forgot what she knew and what she had been told. So much about her parents she just knew—held deep inside, the way she knew how to breathe, the way she remembered every day how to walk and ride a bike. But some of this story had come from her father, from so long trying to make sense of the fact her mother was no longer here.

  Was no longer anywhere.

  The part about the EMT's thinking she was fine. They had examined her. She wasn't cut anywhere, but they had taken her blood pressure and listened to her heart, thought she was okay, but told her to stay still anyway. An ambulance was coming. It would take her to the hospital, where doctors would check her out thoroughly.

  Her mother had laughed. (Was that the story or something Maggie just knew? It was so there, in Maggie's mind, the image of her mother's blue eyes wide and amused, her throat rippling with soft laughter.) “I'm fine,” she had said, concern replacing the amusement. “But what about the deer? Should we call a vet—to put it out of its misery?” And she had gotten up to go see if the deer—a female whitetail—was in any pain.

  And she had sat down. Just like that: a sigh, and she had sunk onto the ground, leaning against a tree as if suddenly exhausted. As if the whole thing—being out so late at night, too late to put Maggie to bed and kiss her goodnight, driving home in the moonlight, hitting the whitetail deer, hearing the waves on the rocks like the thump of blood in her ears—as if it all had simply been too much.

  Thinking of her mother, Maggie saw her father tilt his head so the EMT could better examine his cut head. The whole time, police officers were talking. “An eye for an eye,” one of them was saying. “Seven girls in the ground, a brick through the window, you do the math.”

  “I have two children,” her father shot back. “Watch what you say.”

  “Seven girls,” the policeman said, holding the brick in what looked like a huge Baggie but which Maggie understood to be an evidence bag.

  “He's been cut,” a woman said. “Take care of him and lose the attitude.” Her voice was sharp, with a different accent, and made Maggie look. For some reason, Maggie hadn't noticed her before. She'd been standing at the door, dressed
in a dark gray coat with straight brown hair touching her shoulders, but now she moved toward Maggie's father, as if she wanted to protect him. Was she a detective? Or another lawyer? She was pretty and plain at the same time.

  “Who are you?” the head officer asked.

  “She's from the employment agency,” Maggie's father said, prodding the side of his head—no longer bleeding—with two fingers. “She arrived just after the incident, but she didn't see anyone.”

  “That's right,” the woman said, her voice edgy, as if she didn't like the cops being mean to Maggie's father. “I didn't see a soul.”

  “Pity,” the cop said, but Maggie no longer cared about the officers' sarcasm or meanness to her father. Her attention was pulled to the woman. She gazed down at Maggie's father, her expression something between a frown and a look of pure worry. Maggie must have been staring so intensely the woman felt it. Because suddenly she raised her eyes, looked across the room, locked her gaze with Maggie's, and gave her a wonderful smile.

  She was their new baby-sitter.

  Maggie's heart kicked over. They had had so many. Roberta, Virginia, Dorothy, Beth, and Cathy. None of them were bad, but none of them lasted. The job was too hard. Maggie's father worked such long, intense hours, he needed someone extra responsible to take up the slack. Someone extra smart, extra nice, extra good, someone who cared when their father had a cut on his head and gave Maggie a great, huge smile to let her know everything would be okay.

  Let her be our baby-sitter, Maggie thought. She liked the woman's eyes—dark blue-gray, like the Sound at night. But, oh! Turning her head, now her eyes caught the light and looked deep green, like a river. Her eyes were alive and deep, filled with the kind of mystery that would make her a good storyteller. Maggie didn't care about how the laundry was done, and she didn't care whether eyes were blue or green. She cared about stories.

  Mrs. Wilcox, the next-door neighbor, opened her front door and walked down the sidewalk. The police stopped her, asking questions about what she'd seen and heard.

  “You need stitches, Counselor,” the EMT said, making notes on his pad.

  “It's nothing,” her father said.

  “Hey, you want a scar to make you look tough around the creeps you see in prison, that's your deal. But you're gonna have to sign off on it—acknowledging that you're denying my first-rate medical advice.”

  Seeing her father reach for the pen, Maggie's heart stopped.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Only she must have screamed, because every single person in the room turned to look at her, and Mrs. Wilcox gasped. Brainer came tearing in from the den, straight to her side.

  “Maggie, I'm okay,” her father said, smiling to reassure her. Streaks of blood were drying on the side of his face, on his white dress shirt.

  “Yeah, he is,” the EMT said, trying to set her at ease. “I was just busting him—don't worry.”

  Her father pushed off with his right hand, standing up, and Maggie felt the sob tear through her lungs, screaming through her skin. “DON'T STAND UP!” she cried. “Let them take care of you! Don't walk, Daddy!”

  “Maggie, I'm fine,” he said, grabbing for her. “It's not like your mother—it's just a superficial cut—nothing serious at all.”

  “Sit down, Daddy,” Maggie wept, pushing him onto the couch. “Please, please. Let them take care of you! Please, Daddy, please!”

  “Maybe she's right,” the woman, the baby-sitter, said softly. “Why don't you just do that? Sit down a minute . . . and let them give you the stitches. It would make her feel better.”

  Maggie cried and shuddered, feeling her father's arms around her, hearing the woman's quiet voice and somehow suddenly, completely, loving her for it. This stranger had come out of nowhere that awful, bloody Tuesday morning to take care of their family. She was saving her father's life.

  “What's your name?” Maggie heard her father ask in that flat, unfriendly way that made him sound like the lawyer no one liked, the hard-planed voice designed to drive everyone away from him, from them, and leave the O'Rourke family alone with their private tragedy and dirty clothes.

  “Kate,” she said. “Kate Harris.”

  “Fine, Kate Harris,” Maggie's father said, his voice just as flat but even icier than before, a frozen lake of a voice. “I'll have the stitches, but you'll have to get them off to school. Maggie and Teddy. Mrs. Wilcox, can you help her out?”

  “Of course, John,” Mrs. Wilcox said.

  “We'll have to work out the details afterward,” Maggie's father said.

  “You're on,” Kate Harris said, and Maggie suddenly felt a hand on her head. The fingers were light and cool, and they moved down to take her hand, gently easing her away. Maggie didn't even put up a fight.

  She drifted out of her father's embrace. He was watching her, and she felt him wanting to take it back—not get stitches, but walk her to the bus stop and then hurry to his office. Maggie's stomach was in a knot, but Kate Harris crouched down to look her in the eye and melt the knot away.

  “He's going to be fine,” she said. “He'll be very brave and let them stitch him up. When they're done, they might even give him a lollipop.”

  “Why?” Maggie asked, her mouth tugging up in a smile.

  “To treat him, for doing the right thing even though he doesn't want to do it.”

  “I don't want a lollipop,” her father said, sounding as sullen as Teddy did when he had to do the dishes.

  “You might not want one,” Kate Harris said, her smile so pretty and gentle it pulled Maggie even closer to her, “but you might need it. A little sweet now and then never hurt anyone. Right, Maggie?”

  “Right,” Maggie breathed. Her eyes filled with tears, but for the first time in longer than she could remember, from happiness. Kate Harris was her new baby-sitter. She had landed on their doorstep, just like Mary Poppins or a new baby, just like a basket filled with the most beautiful summer flowers imaginable.

  “Right,” her father said, his voice very edgy and hard, but it didn't matter. Kate Harris had gotten him to sit still and get stitched, taken care of by the proper authorities, so he didn't stand up, sit down, and suddenly die—just like Maggie's mother.

  Kate Harris had just saved her father's life, and Maggie loved her for it.

  chapter 2

  Kate watched the lawyer climb into the back of the ambulance, waving wanly at his children as it pulled away. Stitches were in order; also X rays and perhaps even a CT scan, to determine the extent of the damage. Veins, arteries, blood vessels in the head: wouldn't want to overlook anything.

  “Can't we go to the emergency room with him?” Maggie asked.

  “Better not,” Kate said. “Didn't he say something about school?”

  “Yes, he did,” the neighbor woman said. Maggie said nothing, watching the street. The ambulance had long since turned the corner, but Maggie stared intently, as if she could see ghosts hovering in the cold October air.

  “I'll never be able to concentrate in school,” Maggie said. “Till I know how he is.”

  “Come on, Mags,” said her brother—Teddy, older by three years, according to the newspaper clippings—tugging her into the front door. Kate watched them go. She yearned to follow—to stand inside the house, to look around, to feel so close—but the neighbor was standing right there beside her. The dog stood inside, a beautiful golden, his coat matted with mud and burrs. Kate thought of Bonnie romping through thorny seaside fields, felt a pang in her heart.

  “So,” the woman said, staring at Kate with steady, warm but wary eyes.

  “So,” Kate said.

  “You have no idea what he's been through,” the woman said. “All of them, really. We like to think the children are resilient, will bounce back quickly, but how can they, after losing their mother so young? And then, to think of someone attacking them this way—”

  “Who do you think did it?”

  “Could be anyone,” the woman said. “The papers are full of s
tories, every day. . . . This is a small town, and people know where John lives. They drive by all the time. Some yell horrible things.”

  “Breach of privacy,” Kate murmured, feeling herself redden.

  “Yes. Terrible—regardless of how you feel about Merrill. I would give him the dose myself, personally, if they'd let me. What he did . . . but never mind. John's a hometown boy. I've known him his whole life—he followed in his father's footsteps and became a fine lawyer. He's doing what he thinks is right—don't let it get in the way of you taking this job. I'm Ethel Wilcox, by the way.”

  “Kate Harris,” she said, shaking hands, surprised by the strong grip. The woman was in her seventies, and she was dressed like someone who'd spent five decades as a suburban mom: navy blue slacks, navy blue cardigan, small gold watch, brand-new Reeboks, short gray hair.

  “You seem like a serious person,” Ethel said, giving Kate the once-over. “And I hope you are. Because I can't bear to see these people let down again.”

  “Let down?”

  “By someone who doesn't intend to stay.”

  Kate took a deep breath. She was in difficult territory. Being interrogated—by a nosy, if caring, neighbor, no less—had not been part of this morning's plan. But Ethel Wilcox was staring at her as if she could read her mind, as if she had summed her up and realized she was all wrong for the O'Rourke family, so Kate stood up taller, her eyes direct and steady.

  “I intend to stay,” she said, bending the truth.

  “Good,” Mrs. Wilcox said, her mouth twitching, lifting in a smile that grew stronger. Kate felt a kick in the stomach, but she nodded in something like partnership with the woman next door.

  “Well, I'd better get them off to school,” Kate said.

  “Would you like some help?” Mrs. Wilcox asked. “I'm sure John wouldn't expect you to do it without help the first time, and since he's not here . . .”

  “I'm sure I can handle it,” Kate said, smiling, looking—she hoped—convincingly relaxed.

  Mrs. Wilcox peered into the front door, saw the two kids rummaging through their book bags. “Well, if I didn't have plans to go to Newport, I'd stay and help you anyway. But if you're sure . . .” The police had finished their work inside, and came out onto the porch. They had a few questions for Mrs. Wilcox; she looked at her gold watch and said she had fifteen minutes before her friend came to pick her up.