“Only on the outside.”
Her father pulled back at the sharpness in her voice and Iris regretted letting the bitter words out. She didn’t know what to say. The possibilities seemed either too flip—“What have you been up to?”—or, strangely, too personal. He might be her father, but they hadn’t communicated in more than two decades. She finally said, “I’ve missed you,” realizing that it was true.
“I’ve thought about you and prayed for you every day of these last twenty-three years.”
“I’m sorry.” What a pitiful, inadequate phrase.
Her father took a moment to absorb the words and finally accepted them with a tiny nod. “Your going was hard on your mother.”
She should have believed me, taken my side. Iris didn’t want to argue with her father within minutes of seeing him again, so she said nothing and his words hung between them until her father leaned forward to scratch behind his knee. The movement brought on a cough that wracked him for almost a minute. When it was over, he slumped in the chair, breathing cautiously, looking exhausted. He shook his head when she asked if she could get him some water. “Had the flu at the end of February and I haven’t been able to shake this cough.”
“What’s it like?”
“This? Prison?”
She regretted the question. What could he say? Prison had to suck.
“I’ve adjusted. I won’t deny it was hard early on, when I was in Bent County, partly because I could see my being a convict was hard on Marian. Partly because …” He paused and scratched behind his ear. “I can’t explain prison to you. Some of the men are animals—truly evil and I’ve witnessed things … Enough of that. Most are lost, confused—they’ve got substance abuse problems, or were abused as kids, and they made mistakes, sometimes horrible mistakes, and those mistakes will define them forever, in or out of prison. And it’s boring. You can’t imagine how boring, how draining and demoralizing that boredom is. Prisons are full of hopeless people, for the most part, just taking up space.”
Iris listened in growing horror. The thought that her gentle father was trapped here forever was like bees buzzing inside her head.
“Since they moved me here …” He twiddled a shirt button. “I make cubicles. You know, for offices. Fitting, right, that inmates make the prison walls for corporate jails? That’s what we say, anyway.” His gaze strayed to the window. Iris could see nothing through it except light. “I get three squares a day, and plenty of time to read my Bible. Jesus is a lot more present to me here than he ever was on the outside. It is in our weakness that God’s strength is made plain, and nowhere is that truer than here.”
The Jesus-words smothered Iris, who had long ago thrown off the illusory comfort of her childhood beliefs. Right about the time the Community saw fit to punish her for speaking the truth. Despite the way his words slid under her skin and made her itch, she didn’t want to argue with her father, to undermine whatever comfort he might have found.
As she searched for something neutral to say, he touched her hand lightly. “Tell me about you. Where did you go that night?”
“Kansas.” The single word loosed a torrent of memories and Iris found herself telling her father about dying her hair in the bus station and choosing her new name. “Iris” because she’d always loved the lavender flowers that grew alongside their house, and “Dashwood” from a Jane Austen paperback someone had left on the bus. She told him about drifting from town to town and working odd jobs or stealing to feed herself, avoiding the pimps who hung about bus stations, looking for runaways, who would have prostituted her. She skipped some of the harder and more sordid episodes, not wanting to re-live them or inflict them on her father. Fetching them each damp, plastic-tasting sandwiches from the vending machine, she told him about meeting Lassie, who introduced her to his godmother, Jane Ogden, when he saw her sketchbook one night, and how Jane had given her a job at the gallery, awarded her “scholarships” for art classes, and introduced her to a goldsmith who took her on as an apprentice.
“She saved my life,” Iris said. “She helped me discover that I was meant to design and make jewelry. She suggested I take self-defense classes so I’d feel safer. Without her—” She choked to a stop. Clearing her throat, she said, “I do pretty well. People like my designs. I’ll bring you some photos next time I come, if they’ll let me.” She nodded sideways toward a guard. The words “next time” had slipped out unconsciously, but she knew she’d visit her father again. She could afford to fly back a few times a year. I can’t make up for lost time, but I can damn sure be here for him now. He’s only in here because of me. The thought made her swallow hard.
“You always were artistic,” he said. “We were so proud when your painting won the ribbon at the state fair that time. Remember?”
Ice wormed its way down Iris’s spine. She remembered what that prize had led to. “I decided I preferred stones and metal to paint,” she said. Noticing with surprise that the clock was ticking its way toward the end of visiting hours, Iris reached for her father’s hand. “Look, Dad, I always wanted to say … thanks.”
“You sent me a note.”
“You got it?”
He nodded. “Made it worth it.”
Iris folded her lips in and blinked back tears. “You don’t know what it meant to me,” she said, “to realize you believed me. When Mom accused me of lying, and the whole Community … Well, when you didn’t stop it, I figured you didn’t believe me either. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, when I saw the article about your sentencing, that I knew you’d believed me after all. You punished Pastor Matt for—”
“What?” His brow wrinkled, pulling his ears slightly forward.
The young couple were hugging goodbye within earshot. “You beat up Pastor Matt,” she whispered. “You beat him into a coma. For what he did to me.”
His mouth dropped open and he snapped it closed, a look Iris couldn’t interpret settling on his features. “I didn’t attack Matthew Brozek, Mercy,” he said finally. “I told the police I did so they wouldn’t go after you.”
“You—” Iris stared at him. His words didn’t make sense.
“I thought you did it.” He looked as stunned as she felt.
“C’mon, Asher,” a corrections officer said, putting a heavy hand on her father’s shoulder. Another coughing fit seized him.
“Can we have a couple more—” Iris started, desperate to continue the conversation, to seek clarity. Surely her father hadn’t meant—. Did he mean he hadn’t done it, hadn’t beaten Pastor Matt, that his confession was a lie? No way. The impossible thoughts whirling in her head weighted her down like a lead apron, rooting her to the chair.
“Sorry, miss. Time’s up.” He started to lead her father away. He went easily, accustomed to following the rules, acceding to the guards’ authority, not drawing attention.
Iris wrenched herself out of the chair and ran after them. A beefy guard blocked her way, expression stern. “Settle down, miss—”
She craned her neck to see around the officer’s bulk, getting a sour whiff of chewing tobacco as he breathed open-mouthed. Her father paused at the door, looking back at her over his shoulder, his expression equal parts confusion, desperation and hope. “I don’t belong here, Mercy. I’m not—. Get me out.”
“Dad—” But he was gone.
At least he hadn’t said “God works in mysterious ways,” Iris thought savagely, pushing the rental car past ninety miles an hour as she drove away from the prison. Dun-colored prairie flashed past. A pronghorn bounded away. Traffic was light. The inside of the car felt too warm, like a mohair blanket wrapped around her, and Iris rolled down the window, preferring the slash of cool air against her face and bare arms. He hadn’t believed her, after all. No one had believed her. Tears pricked behind her eyelids. Talk about ironic, or a comedy of errors. One of the Greek playwrights must have written something like
this. A man takes the blame for something he didn’t do, thinking he’s saving his daughter, while the daughter makes a hero of the man for doing the thing he didn’t really do. Iris shook her head violently to clear the confusing thoughts, and the car swerved onto the shoulder. The wheels juddered over fractured asphalt and weed clumps before she swung the car back on the pavement. The speedometer inched toward one hundred.
An hour later she was almost back to Colorado Springs, forced to slow by clotting traffic, when the shock drained away enough for her to look at her father’s actions in another light. He might not have believed her, but he’d gone to prison for what he thought was her crime. Her lungs burned and it was hard to breathe through the toxic mix of anger and grief that swelled within her at the realization that he thought her capable of beating a man, even Pastor Matt, into a coma. She coughed and breathed deeply, her chest expanding against the seatbelt. He’d spent twenty-three years locked up to protect her. Twenty-three years for a crime he didn’t commit. Resolve tightened Iris’s grip on the steering wheel. She had to get him out.
It was only mid-afternoon when she got back to the motel, but Iris was tempted to head for the nearest bar, slug back a couple of beers, and see what the local action looked like. The melancholy anonymity of the motel room had a calming effect, however, and by the time she’d showered off the probably imaginary prison stink and changed into faded jeans and a Henley shirt, she’d plotted her next step. She needed an Internet café to find the name and address of her father’s lawyer. Giving her jewelry-making tools a wistful look, Iris slung her computer bag over her shoulder and closed the motel door firmly behind her. Maybe she’d try to sketch some designs for the new commission this evening, after energizing her father’s lawyer for a new appeal or whatever it took to free him.
fourteen
iris
The law firm of Weber and Parrish was located on Tejon Street in downtown Colorado Springs. Beyond noting brown stone and tinted glass, Iris gave the building little thought as she fed the meter, checked the lobby directory, and headed for the elevator. It spit her out on the seventh floor, and she found herself facing a travertine counter behind which sat a male receptionist talking on the phone. When the man hung up and gave Iris an enquiring look, she stepped forward.
“I’m Iris Dashwood. I’d like to talk to Susan Tzudiker about the Neil Asher case. I don’t have an appointment.”
The receptionist’s brows twitched together. “I’m afraid Ms. Tzudiker is no longer with the firm. She’s gone over to the other side.”
Iris hated coy references to death. “She died?”
The receptionist permitted himself a prim smile. “She joined the DA’s office. Lawyer joke.”
“I’m really not in the mood for jokes,” Iris said. “Just hook me up with whoever took over Neil Asher’s case when Ms. Tzudiker moved on.”
“What is your interest in the case?” the receptionist asked, clearly miffed by Iris’s tone. He picked up his phone and pushed an intercom button.
“I’m Neil Asher’s daughter.” She’d been avoiding talking about her family for so long that claiming the relationship out loud felt strange.
The receptionist’s brows soared and he turned away from Iris to murmur into the phone. “Someone will be with you in just a few minutes,” he said more cordially, gesturing toward a small sitting area.
Too restless to sit, Iris prowled the reception area, inspecting the artwork on the walls, the predictable magazines on the glass-topped table, the array of plaques that extolled the firm’s contributions to the city. She’d looked at them all twice over before a man’s footsteps sounded behind her. She turned.
“My God, it is you. Mercy Asher. I thought you were dead.”
The man standing there, immaculate in a suit and tie, was still recognizable as the eighteen-year-old she’d last seen in jeans and worn leather jacket the night of her humiliation. There were crow’s feet around his brown eyes now, and silver strands in the black hair, but he still wore it in a low ponytail. The establishment suit dimmed the electric charge he used to give off; he’d been a wire thinly wrapped in leather and denim, apt to burn through at any moment. They’d met in Spanish class when Cade was a senior and Iris a sophomore. The attraction was mutual and violent. She knew her parents would never let her hang out with a friend who wasn’t from the Community, so she used to sneak out to meet him in the woods, on the rockslide, or in his car. She’d gotten good at lying to her parents about her whereabouts when she was meeting Pastor Matt—oh, irony—and she put the training to good use to steal an hour here and there with Cade.
The faint odor of cigarette smoke clung to him. Iris’s lips tingled, as they had when he’d kissed her for hours on end, making her flush with heat, and she put two fingers against her mouth. Like Pavlov’s dogs, she thought, annoyed with her body for its instantaneous reaction to the stimulus of her former boyfriend’s presence. “Cade? What—?”
“Let’s go into my office, Ms. Asher,” Cade Zuniga said with a meaningful glance at the curious receptionist.
“Dashwood. Iris Dashwood.” Without another word, Iris trailed him through the carpeted hallways to a corner office guarded by a secretary’s desk, currently empty. “A lawyer, huh? I’d never have guessed. You’ve done well for a boy who wasn’t sure he’d graduate on time,” she said, glancing at the Pikes Peak view from the window before her gaze caught on the photos of a dark-haired boy and girl, maybe four and six, on the desk. She swallowed hard.
“The DWI conviction didn’t help, either,” he agreed, closing the door. An expensive watch gleamed from his wrist and a band of white on his ring finger testified to the recent presence of a wedding ring.
“I didn’t know about that.”
“The night you left.” He didn’t move, but his gaze flicked over her before returning to her face. “You’re looking well. Beautiful.”
“And you. Well, I mean.”
“It’s good to see you. Really good. I worried about you.” He paused and the tip of his tongue moistened his lips. “I would have gone with you, if you’d told me you were going.”
Exactly why she hadn’t told him. “You couldn’t. Your sister, your grandfather—. How’s your grandmother?” Cade had been raised by his grandparents after the courts took him and his sister away from their parents. Cade’s mother had later kicked her drug habit, but Cade and his sister had remained with their grandparents.
“Still kicking. Still the church secretary, even though she’s pushing eighty. The fathers make noises about her retiring now and then, but the parish would fall apart without her and they know it.”
Iris smiled at her memories of the four-foot-nine dynamo, her thick hair pulled into a low bun, laying down the law to her husband and Cade. She could easily imagine her bossing the priests around. “Say ‘hello’ to her for me.”
“Aw, hell.” Cade rubbed a hand down his tanned face and moved toward his desk. As if the movement had snapped him back to the present, his voice assumed a professional overtone, less raw, more distant. “Bernard said you were asking for Susan Tzudiker, so obviously you didn’t come here looking for me.”
“I did if you’re my father’s lawyer. How did you end up representing him?” Without waiting for Cade to ask her to sit, Iris settled into a squashy blue chair positioned in front of the desk. She shifted it so she wasn’t gazing directly at the photos of Cade’s children. Reaching out, she let her fingers trail along the smooth bird’s eye maple of the desk before dropping her hand back in her lap.
“When Susan left, his file came over to me.”
She fixed her gaze on Cade’s face. “He didn’t do it.”
“He told you that?”
“He thought I did it.”
Cade didn’t express the surprise she’d been expecting. “Even though he confessed, I had trouble thinking of your dad as the violent type.”
“He wasn’t. He’s not. I—we—need to get him out of prison.”
“It’s not so easy, Mer—Iris.”
“Can’t you file an appeal or get them to re-open the case or something?”
“Not without new evidence.”
“But he said—”
Cade was shaking his head. “Retracting his confession at this stage isn’t going to make a difference.” He depressed a button on his phone. “Lib, bring me the Asher file, please.” Leaning back in his chair, he tapped a pencil on the desk. Iris well remembered his inability to be still; he was always pacing, or fiddling with something. “Where have you been?” he asked, his gaze settling on her.
“Around. Early on, I moved a lot. I finally put together a life, my Iris life, soon after I turned twenty. In Portland mostly. I design and make jewelry. I’ve been in Oregon the last couple of years, but I’ve been thinking that it’s time to try someplace new again.” Iris wished the paralegal would show up with the file, and end the awkwardness.
“All that moving around must be hard on your family.” Cade’s dark eyes never left hers and she knew what he was asking.
“No family. Well, except Jane and Edgar. Her cat.”
“Sounds lonely.”
She slanted a self-mocking smile. “Not so much. I don’t have any trouble finding companionship when I want it.” Before he could respond, she added, “You’ve got kids.”
He fingered the photos and smiled. “Stephen and Elena. We—”
A brief knock heralded the entrance of a middle-aged woman. “Here’s the Asher file, Cade,” she said, shooting a curious look at Iris. Handing over a two-inch-thick expandable folder, she left reluctantly when Cade thanked her.
“I can sum this up for you in twenty-five words or less,” Cade said, slapping a hand on the file. “The vic’s daughter called 911 to say Matthew Brozek was injured and needed an ambulance. The police arrived before the EMTs and found Neil standing over Brozek in a cottage on the property, covered in Brozek’s blood. They snapped the cuffs on him. He originally said he walked in and found Brozek injured and tried to help him, which is how he got the blood on himself. Hours later, though, he confessed to beating Brozek, but wouldn’t say why. There were plenty of folks in Lone Pine, however, quick to tell the police about your accusations and what happened to you. The cops figured that added up to motive and labeled the case ‘closed’ before the week was out.”
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