The Sound of Light

by Claire Wallis

  Sondra’s words have now become the harshest gospel I’ll ever have to swallow. Because not only am I being forced to leave them, but with me goes their last chance for compassion. Their last chance for peace.

  And that’s how it will be for Evelyn Sinclair, if I’m not allowed to come back. Knowing she’s going to suffer makes my heart weep. Not just for her, but also for her grandson. Because he will have to watch it happen, desperate and hopeless and crippled by his own helplessness.

  I walk through the parking lot to the bus stop, sucking in a deep breath through my tears and thinking about Winston Sinclair. I think about why he did this, and what I’m going to have to do to make him take it back.

  I’m going to have to fix this myself. And I can’t wait to look him straight in the eye when I do.

  A SECOND AFTER I step into my apartment, my cell phone rings. It’s Adam. I’m surprised it took him so long.

  “Hey. I just got here. Where are you? They said you left.” The pitch of his voice is far higher than usual. It’s filled with confusion.

  “I’m at home.”

  “But you left early this morning. I thought you had to work today?”

  “I did. But I had to leave.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I’m not allowed to go into details, but I made a mistake. It got me suspended for a couple of days.”

  “What mistake?”

  “I said something I shouldn’t have.”

  “What?” The pitch of his voice has dropped. Anger has replaced his confusion.

  “Like I said, I’m not allowed to share any details.” I can hear him breathing on the other end of the line. It’s heavy and fast, like he’s walking somewhere in a hurry. “But, please know it’s being handled. Everything’s going to be all right.” I don’t tell him how I’m going to handle it.

  “The hell it is.” There’s more breathing. For several seconds, it’s the only sound coming through my phone. “I can’t believe he did this. I can’t believe he… Yes, I can. I can believe it.”

  I take a second to collect my thoughts before trying to reassure him. “Everyone at Pine Manor knows me. They know I didn’t do anything wrong. They’ve dealt with people like your father before. They’re just going through the motions to appease him. I’ll be back at work in a few days.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that.”

  I’m struck by the strength of his words. They tell me immediately he knows something I don’t. I wish I could see his face. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “Sorry, but it’s the truth. I know exactly what he’s doing. He’s using you to get to me.” I don’t understand. A long second passes before Adam adds, “He knows about us, K’acy.”

  “What?” My stomach drops and my chest tightens. What the hell is going on?

  “That’s the real reason he wanted to talk to me on Friday night.” He’s gathering his thoughts, carefully choosing his words. The resulting silence sends my mind reeling into a fit of apprehension. What if I can’t fix this? What if I never get to see them again? What if Adam is right, and I won’t be back at work in a few days? “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t think he’d take it this far.”

  “Take what this far?”

  “He saw me kiss you in the hallway on Thursday. And he had his driver sit in the parking lot on Friday. He saw us talking. He saw us leave together.”

  I immediately think of the dark sedan, backed into its spot in the far corner of the lot, quiet and watchful and still.

  Maybe that car has nothing to do with Latham Street after all.

  I hear Adam shuffling his cell phone around as he talks. Then I hear a car start.

  “Adam…” I don’t even know what to say next.

  “I’m not going to let him hurt you—and Gram—in some kind of stupid attempt to prove something to me.”

  “Prove what?”

  “That he still has control.”

  “Over what?”

  “Over everything. My life. What I do. Where I live. Who I love. Everything.” It only takes me an instant to understand. Now I know the real reason why his voice sounded so broken on Saturday morning.

  “Oh.” I nod in acknowledgement, as if he can see me through the phone. This whole thing has nothing to do with the sassy words I said to Winston Sinclair about his mother’s Alzheimer’s. In fact, it has nothing to do with my behavior toward him at all.

  Instead, it has everything to do with my behavior toward his son.

  “I’m not gonna let him do this.” A siren sounds in the background. Adam’s driving somewhere. Worry streaks through me.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to see my father.”

  No. No. No. “Don’t. Just…let’s talk about this first, okay? Let’s figure it out together.”

  “There’s nothing to figure out here, K’acy. I’m gonna take care of it.” His words are hot and angry, as if he’s turned into somebody new. Somebody with a point to get across.

  Adam doesn’t even wait for me to respond before he says a quick, “I’ll see you later,” and hangs up. I’m left standing alone in my living room with a silent phone at my ear, wondering what the hell he’s going to do.

  A FEW MINUTES LATER, I’m sitting at my table, folding laundry and thinking about what’s about to happen in Winston Sinclair’s hotel room. Just as I fold a pair of jeans down over my forearm, the doorbell rings. I quickly finish folding the jeans, set them down on the table, and walk over to the door. Relief swells in my chest at the thought of Adam coming here instead of heading to his father’s.

  But when I open the door, Adam isn’t the one standing there.

  CHAPTER 25

  Harlan Webber—Room number 122

  I spent most of my life in prison. I checked into the place a few days after my twenty-second birthday and wasn’t paroled until I was sixty-eight. My sentence was fifty years. I served forty-six of them before they let me out. And truth be told, I wish they never had.

  The day I walked outta there was the scariest day of my life. I spent forty-six years having three square meals a day and living with absolute structure. Then I got out. For the next eight years, I was lucky if I managed to eat six meals in a whole week. Nobody would hire me once they found out about my conviction. I had no skills, no decent clothes, and no address. Plus, I was old. I wouldn’t have hired me either.

  The Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility was my home. The real world was not.

  There were days when I thought I should’ve done it again, just to get back inside, where life was predictable and I had friends. It was easy the first time, so I always figured the second time would’ve been easier still. Those young girls were always talking to each other, never paying attention to what was happening around them. I could’ve grabbed one of them on their way out of the community rec center and landed myself back in lock-up by dusk of the same day. Sometimes I’d sit on the curb across the street and watch them walking in and outta there, wearing outfits that showed off their little girl bodies in all the right ways. But I never could bring myself to do it again. Maybe it was my seventy-year-old pecker that stopped me, or maybe it was ’cause of the prison therapist. The reason why doesn’t matter; I let them be and just kept living under the Barkley Street overpass, begging for the occasional dollar and sleeping on a cardboard mat.

  When I was seventy-six, I got run over. I was crossing the street, on my way to nowhere, when some drunk lady ran the red light and damn near killed me. I was in the hospital for a long time. Head injury, broken pelvis, internal bleeding. But I survived. As soon as I could, I called myself a lawyer and filed a personal injury case.

  All the reading I did at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility’s law library finally got me something besides a failed appeal. It got me a settlement.

  Even after paying all my medical bills, I had enough money left to spend the rest of my life sleeping on a mattress, instead of on a cardboard mat. Th
e only trouble was, the mattress I slept on wasn’t in a house or even in an apartment. It was in a nursing home.

  After the accident, I couldn’t walk without a walker, and I couldn’t make my hands work right anymore. Buttoning my shirt and wiping my own ass became the two biggest challenges of my life. The head injury messed me up more than anything else. I knew I couldn’t take care of myself, so I had the social worker assigned to my case find me a nice place to live.

  She did a good job when she picked Pine Manor. I started getting three squares again, and the scheduled structure of the place wasn’t that different from the penitentiary’s. I spent seven years at Pine Manor, playing checkers, reading the newspaper, yelling bingo!, and watching all the pretty little great-granddaughters who came to visit every Sunday afternoon.

  I wasn’t an “inmate” anymore; I was a “resident.” And it was a damn good seven years.

  I died when I was eighty-four. I got pneumonia and told the doctor I didn’t want any treatment for it. I told him to just let me alone. He did.

  But she didn’t. She kept coming around. All the time. She never tried to give me any medicine or talk me into going to the hospital. She just sat with me and talked. A lot. I tried to shoo her away, but she wouldn’t have it. So, one day, when I’d had enough of her chit-chat, I told her about me. I told her what I’d done on a summer night sixty-two years ago. I gave her every detail, hoping she’d despise me like everyone else who knew what I’d done. I confessed my sins and told her the secrets I’d been holding in for all those years. I told her so she’d go away and let me die by myself.

  But it didn’t work. In fact, she seemed to want to sit with me even more after that. Her talking stopped, though, and she’d just sit there, silent and stone-faced, probably thinking about how I deserved every second of the ugly death headed my way.

  I hate to admit it, but eventually, her presence became more comforting than it was annoying. Sometimes she’d hold my hand while she was there, something no one had ever done in my whole life. Not even my mother. Or she’d comb my hair or give me a shave. But it wasn’t like she was doing it as part of her job. It was like she was doing it ’cause she cared.

  There are lots of people in this world who would’ve enjoyed watching me suffer, but she wasn’t one of them. I ended up suffering way less than those two little girls did all those years ago. Some would say there was no justice in my death, that I deserved to suffer more, but maybe my accident was enough penance for what I’d done. Maybe the years of pain it caused were enough for God to call it even. I don’t know.

  All I know is, at the end, when I left the world, she was there with me, silent and stone-faced and giving me the compassion I never deserved.

  CHAPTER 26

  Winston Sinclair is wearing a dark suit with a crimson tie. His hair is perfectly in place, and the gray at his temples looks far more extensive here than it does under the fluorescent lights of Pine Manor. The man is well over six feet tall, and if I didn’t already know what a horrible person he is, I’d actually think he seems like a decent guy. He looks fit and well-groomed and smart, just like his son. But, I know better. I know, in this case, looks are incredibly deceiving.

  The smirk on his face is a good indication of what’s underneath the slick facade.

  At first, I’m at a loss. I just stand in the doorway, not knowing what to do or say. Of course, I know what I want to do and say, but now that I’m alone with him in the doorway of my apartment, I’m not sure either would be the best idea. My stomach jumps into my throat, choking me with fear. A hit of fight-or-flight-invoking adrenaline surges through my veins. And yet, I don’t let it take over my body. I don’t move a single muscle. I just stand here, trying to process the hows and whys of his unexpected visit and what I’m going to do about it.

  “May I come in?”

  This is it. This is the only chance I’ll probably ever have to make him take it back. It isn’t the way I planned, but I swallow my fear and buckle up for the ride. To hell with the risks.

  “Certainly,” I answer, but I don’t step aside. I plant my feet into the floor. He hesitates for a moment, examining my face carefully before turning himself sideways and sliding in between my body and the doorframe. I look straight into his eyes as he walks past, catching a quick, intense flash of what’s to come.

  I close the door and turn around to find him checking out my apartment. His back is to me as his head pivots and examines the place from top to bottom. He puts his hands in his pockets and turns to face me. “Not exactly Buckingham Palace, is it?”

  My stare is unyielding, absorbing every detail his eyes will share. I’m watching his future—studying it—with an energy unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

  “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Sinclair?” I move one step closer to him.

  “I know what you two are doing, and I want it to stop. I know everything about you, young lady, and I’m here to ask you nicely to walk away from my son.”

  He’s here to what?

  “I’m certain you don’t know everything about me, Mr. Sinclair.”

  “Ahh…but I do know everything.” He nods his head and narrows his eyes. “A man in my position has a very easy time discovering such things. All I have to do is ask the right people, and I can get whatever information I need.”

  If his driver is the one who’s been watching me from the black car, then Mr. Sinclair knew Adam was in Philadelphia long before he decided to show up at Pine Manor. Apparently that’s what being a giant political dickhead will get you. The ability to know what you don’t deserve to.

  “Even if you did know everything there is to know about me, what would any of it have to do with Adam?”

  “Everything,” he says. “He deserves far better than what you have to offer.”

  “Is that why you filed the complaint? To get rid of me?”

  “I filed the complaint to get your attention.” He takes his hands out of his pockets and runs one of them against the back edge of my sofa. “And if you don’t walk away from him, I’m capable of doing far worse.”

  “You don’t get to decide who your son loves.”

  “Who he loves? Loves?” His face splits into a gigantic smile. “He doesn’t love you. He only thinks he does because you’re the exact opposite of what his family wants for him. You are his way of getting back at us for whatever he thinks we’ve done wrong. And, while we’re at it, you don’t love him, either. You only love his multimillion-dollar trust fund because you’ve got nothing to your name but a couple sets of scrubs and a guitar.”

  I want to kick him in the crotch. “Your informant seems to have missed a few details when they told you about me, Mr. Sinclair.” I sound calm and sweet, even though inside I am spitting fire. “Your son’s trust fund means nothing to me. I don’t care about money. I only care about happiness.”

  “Thank you for the refresher course in childish idealism, sweetheart.” He picks his hand up off the back edge of the couch and crosses his arms over his chest. “But I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s just that, if what you say is true, I’m going to need some proof.” His words are slow. Calculated. “So how about this…how about I give you a choice between money and happiness, and see which one you pick?”

  Winston Sinclair steps up to me, lowering his face to mine. My gaze drills into his eyes, unwavering and watchful and deep. It’s like a movie, and I’m going to watch it until the end. I won’t look away until I’ve memorized every single detail. I’m absorbing it all.

  “You have two choices,” he continues. “One: you can do what I say and walk away from Adam. If you do, I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars, and I’ll let you keep your so-called career. But you’ll have to leave Pine Manor and work somewhere else. End of story. Or, two: you can stay with my son and have your happiness. But if you do, I’ll file a lawsuit against Pine Manor and have your license revoked. I’ll pay one of your coworkers whatever the hell they want to testify
they saw you hurt my mother. And when that happens, I have no doubt Adam will be the one leaving you.” He smiles and tilts his head to the side, as if he’s the cleverest thing to ever set foot on the planet. “When I’m done, you’ll never work in this state again. But then, I’m sure your sister would love to have you back in Houma.”

  Anger surges through me, ripping apart my self-control. I’m sorting out what to say when he adds, “And if you tell Adam about any of this, you won’t have a choice at all. Everything will be gone. I’ll take it all away. I will ruin any chance you’ve ever had for happiness or money.” He uncrosses his arms and puts his hands back in his pockets, rocking back on his heels as he does. “You and I both know people who hurt the elderly never fare well in the prison system, K’acy.”

  The words don’t come to me fast enough. Nothing does. I’m frozen. But in that moment of absolute stillness, I finally see it. I see everything there is to see. The movie in his eyes ends, and all the bitterness and fear instantly drain from my body because I know something Winston Sinclair does not.

  “I’ll take the twenty thousand dollars.”

  After the words are out, a huge smile settles across my face. And his.

  “So much for childish idealism. Looks like money wins again.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “You’re smarter than you look, young lady, I’ll give you that.” He nods in smug satisfaction. “I’ll withdraw my complaint first thing tomorrow morning, and my driver will drop off half of your cash at noon. You’ll get the other half at week’s end, just to be sure you’re holding up your end of the bargain.” He offers his hand to me, and I take it, knowing what will happen when I do. The instant our palms connect, fire pulses though my veins, initiating a jacked-up, menacing version of “Soul to Squeeze.” Raw and aggressive bass notes burn through me, igniting my soul with strength and purpose. Confirming that I’ve made the right choice. “I’ll give you a week to leave Pine Manor. And my son. But you might not want to wait until the last minute. In my experience, quicker is always better.”