Sister's Forgiveness

by Anna Schmidt

  He had closed the Bible and placed it back on the shelf before turning out the lamp by his chair and then walking through the darkness toward that light. When he’d opened the door, Emma was in her nightgown and sitting on the side of the bed brushing out her hair. Hair that fell in rich auburn waves well past her waist. Hair that only he as her husband saw this way—wild and free.

  He’d held out his arms to her, and she’d come to him. “I’m sorry,” she’d whispered.

  “I’ll see to the lawyer first thing tomorrow,” he had told her at the same moment.

  And now morning had come—or nearly so.

  Lars got up, dressed, and made his breakfast. He left coffee for Emma and set places for her and for Matt at the kitchen table. He wrote Emma a note and then he walked to town, leaving the car for Emma, and waited outside a storefront office door that read: JOSEPH P. COTTER, ATTORNEY AT LAW, SPECIALIZING IN CRIMINAL DEFENSE.

  He had ample time to consider the small brick building that looked as if by mistake someone had plunked it down not twenty yards from the front lawn of the far more impressive courthouse. The building seemed solid enough and at the same time a little vulnerable. For reasons he couldn’t understand, Lars found an element of comfort in that. He tried to imagine what Joseph Cotter himself might be like and envisioned a man, tall and slightly stooped by age, with white hair and alert blue eyes. Dressed in a suit that had cost far too much, he would wear a starched white shirt and a blue silk tie that matched his kind eyes.

  “Excuse me,” a male voice said, interrupting Lars’s daydream. He turned and came face-to-face with a man of about thirty, dressed in a rumpled shirt and tan cotton slacks, with sandy hair that was thick and unruly. He had an apologetic smile, not at all in keeping with the mischievous dimple that punctured his left cheek, and his eyes were the color of coffee with cream. They looked sad and weary as if they had witnessed far too much pain and suffering.

  Lars moved aside and watched as the young man produced a set of keys and began unlocking the door.

  “Do you work here?” Lars asked. It was, of course, obvious that he did, no doubt a clerk or assistant to Attorney Cotter.

  The younger man pointed toward the stenciled lettering on the window and grinned. “Yep. That’s me all right.” He chuckled and pushed the door open and flipped a switch. A ceiling fan started to slowly revolve. “Would you like to wait inside here? It’s going to be a scorcher. I’d say the humidity reading is already somewhere around drenching.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer but entered the office and kept talking. “I have one of those fancy new coffeemakers that makes a cup in a matter of seconds. Gift from the parents when I set up my practice.”

  He talked too fast and seemed to be in constant motion. He turned on the coffeemaker, opened an overstuffed briefcase, and removed a laptop computer, turned it on, and then set about rinsing out one of several mismatched coffee mugs, all the while continuing to talk about his family. Lars was drawn into the small, cluttered office in spite of his intention, now that he had actually seen Joseph Cotter, to look for Sadie’s representation elsewhere.

  “Just to make it official, I’m Joe Cotter.” He extended his right hand.

  “Lars Keller,” Lars said, accepting the handshake.

  “Mennonite, right?” Cotter was opening and closing a series of small drawers under the counter where the coffeemaker sat. “Thought I had some creamer here somewhere,” he muttered. “Or Amish?”

  “Both,” Lars found himself admitting. “Born Amish. Married and converted to Mennonite.” He could not think what it was about this vibrant young man that had him revealing personal details of his life, but he did not stop there. “My daughter, Sadie—perhaps you have heard of her case? She was arrested last week, and on Wednesday…”

  He saw that he had Cotter’s full attention now. “Auto accident last Thursday where another girl died?” He handed Lars a mug of steaming black coffee and then exchanged the small serving container for a fresh one before pushing a lighted button.

  “You know the case, then?” Lars felt the easing of the tight lump that he’d carried in the center of his chest from the moment that he and Emma had first arrived at the scene of the accident.

  Cotter picked up his coffee and took a sip. “In many ways, Sarasota is a small town, Mr. Keller, and a case like this? Well, it’s unusual to say the least.”

  “My daughter needs a lawyer, Mr. Cotter.”

  “It’s Joe or Joseph, okay? And there are far more experienced defense attorneys, sir.”

  Lars appreciated the young man’s honesty, but he realized that Cotter had not said there were better lawyers—only more experienced ones. “I came here and waited for you.”

  Cotter grinned as he sipped his coffee again. “Well, I did set up shop in the very shadow of the courthouse, so I guess that old real estate adage is correct.”

  Lars had no idea what the young man was talking about.

  “You know, the bit about location, location, location?”

  “I have not heard this saying.”

  “So, let me be serious here. I could give you the names of some other lawyers to call,” Cotter offered. “Of course, they tend to have full caseloads.”

  Lars considered the unorganized piles of paper and file folders that covered the desk where Joseph had placed his computer. He thought about the young man’s age and warning that there were more experienced lawyers, but overriding all of that was a gut feeling that this was the man God wanted him to hire. This was the man who would ultimately bring Sadie home to them.

  “So if I wait to see one of those more experienced lawyers, Joseph, I could be waiting far past the nine o’clock hour on Wednesday when my daughter will appear before the judge?”

  Joseph shrugged.

  “I don’t know why you got to your office so early this morning, Joseph Cotter, but you did, and perhaps that is God’s way of telling me that if you are willing to take Sadie’s case, then I should hire you to represent her.”

  “Okay, let’s get to work,” Cotter said, lifting his coffee mug in a kind of toast. He set the mug down, hefted a pile of books from a straight-backed aluminum chair, and indicated that Lars should sit. Meanwhile he sat on the opposite side of the large wooden desk and rolled the black upholstered chair closer as he tapped the mouse on his computer, drained the last of his coffee, and glanced at the clock while he waited for the computer to warm up. “Wednesday at nine?”

  “Ja. And our niece’s funeral is this afternoon at three, and I was wondering—”

  Joseph studied him for a long moment, his youthful features contracting as if he were uncertain of how best to convey all that he was feeling. “You want your daughter to be there. Let me talk to the powers that be and see what I can do, okay?” He picked up a pen and pulled a yellow notepad closer. “Okay, Mr. Keller, tell me what happened. Start from first thing the morning of the accident, and give me every detail.”

  Chapter 18

  Jeannie

  She made her way moment by exhausting moment through the days and nights that marked the time from the moment the doctor had given them the news to the funeral that loomed over every minute of their lives. She observed the comings and goings of others as if she were watching a play or television show. She felt no connection to the activity that took place around her other than as a disinterested spectator. People gathered in her house, talking always in hushed tones but always turning the conversation to her well-being the minute she entered the room. Emma ran between the hospital, where Sadie had been kept overnight, and Jeannie’s house, making sure everything was being taken care of. Geoff was gone for long hours at a time, and when he returned, his answer to her inquiry of where he had been was always the same.

  “There are things that need to be done, Jeannie.”

  Lars had made the coffin in the shop where he normally crafted pieces of fine furniture. The workshop sat just outside the kitchen door of Emma’s house. Tessa had loved to go there
, loved the smell of the sawdust. Loved the fact that it was her uncle who created furniture designed specifically for the homes of the tourists who poured into Pinecraft during the winter months.

  Jeannie had insisted on going to the funeral home with Geoff to see for herself that the staff there had dressed Tessa in the clothes Emma had convinced Jeannie to substitute for those she had originally chosen. She had stared down at her daughter, lying in the smooth pine box.

  …laid Him in a manger… Random thoughts and bits of scripture memorized in childhood, apropos to nothing, flitted across Jeannie’s mind from time to time. It was as if she were sleepwalking, her dreams surrounding her in no particular order. Nothing made sense, least of all that Tessa would never be coming home again.

  How could that possibly be? The house was so filled with her essence. Her toothbrush lay on the side of the bathroom sink. In spite of the fact that Jeannie’s parents and Geoff’s mother took turns coming every day performing the usual household chores—making beds, dealing with the endless parade of food people brought, doing dishes, and so on—Jeannie insisted on doing some chores simply to keep herself occupied. In the kitchen she poured Geoff’s coffee into the mug Tessa had decorated for him with the words WORLD’S GREATEST DAD, and then she reconsidered and poured the coffee into one of the regular cups from their set of dishes. She washed out the mug that Tessa had painted and placed it in the very back of the cabinet. But later that morning when she went to get something from Geoff’s desk, the mug was there, half filled with coffee gone cold.

  So many little reminders of her.

  Outside were the orchids that Tessa had carefully planted in the trees. On the back screened porch were the shoes she wore to the bay to search for shells, and on the round glass table was the large Florida conch shell she had found only two weeks earlier. She’d spent hours soaking it in bleach and scraping off barnacles, then soaking it again to coax out the true sunset-orange color of the shell. She had been thrilled to find one so large and without flaws, especially one that held no living animal. Tessa would never take a live shell, and she had no problem reprimanding anyone who did.

  Every room of the house that Jeannie and Geoff had bought the year before she was born shouted Tessa’s name. How odd was that given that Tessa herself had been such a calm and quiet child? A girl who much preferred the background, who liked observing others rather than being observed. Jeannie was the outgoing one. Jeannie and Sadie…

  Sadie.

  On the morning of the funeral, she overheard her mother and mother-in-law talking. Apparently Sadie had stayed only one night and most of the following day in the hospital, but late on Friday she’d been discharged and taken downtown to the Juvenile Assessment Center after she’d been arrested and charged. From there she had gone directly to a detention center. Surely, Jeannie thought, she had heard that wrong.

  “Sadie’s in jail?” she asked her mother.

  “Oh honey, Emma didn’t want to worry you with this.”

  “Is she or not?” Jeannie asked, her voice shaking.

  “Yes,” Geoff’s mother said. “She’s been charged with one count of vehicular homicide and one count of culpable negligence.”

  Jeannie’s head started to spin. “But why?”

  Geoff’s mother looked at her as if she had just uttered a swear word. Her mother put her arm around her. “It’s their way,” she said softly. “When an accident like this one ends with someone dying, the authorities have to investigate, and in this case…”

  “But Sadie? I could understand Dan being arrested, but—”

  “Sadie was driving,” Geoff’s mother said as if stating a fact that everyone already knew.

  “No. She couldn’t have been.” Jeannie turned to her mother-in-law. “Sadie only has a learner’s permit, and Dan is only eighteen. Sadie knows full well that—”

  “She was behind the wheel, Jeannie,” her mother-in-law told her, her voice gentler now, as if realizing that she was breaking more bad news. “I thought you knew. I thought Geoff told you.”

  Jeannie shook her head. “I need to…” she mumbled without finishing the statement as she stumbled from the room and out onto the lanai.

  Sadie was under arrest, charged with the ominous-sounding vehicular homicide. Her mother-in-law followed her. “You may as well know the whole story,” she said.

  “Yes, please,” Jeannie agreed and nodded to her mother who had come to her rescue. “It’s all right. I need to hear this,” she said.

  “According to reports in the paper and on television, the attorney for the state hopes to use the case to send a message about the rising fatality count among teenage drivers and their passengers,” her mother-in-law said. “On Wednesday morning, Sadie will go before the judge for the first time. Until then she is being held in the juvenile detention center in Bradenton.”

  Jeannie could not begin to imagine how scared Sadie must be nor how worried Emma and Lars were. “But…”

  Her mother-in-law patted her arm. “It will all work out, Jeannie. You needn’t worry about it, especially not now. The courts will find the right way to handle this matter.”

  But Emma and Lars did not believe in the courts of the outside world. They did not vote or take part in the systems that governed the world they considered separate from their conservative faith. And yet she had nothing to offer them. It was everything she could do just to get out of bed in the mornings once she realized anew that this was day two—or three or five in this case—since Tessa had died.

  “You should get dressed, Jeannie,” her mother said. “We need to leave for the church in an hour.”

  So on that Monday afternoon—a day that by two o’clock had already seemed twice as long as any normal day—she and Geoff arrived at their church to receive mourners before the service. There was Sadie. She was dressed in a gray cotton skirt and a shapeless black sweater. She looked gaunt and hollow-eyed as she stood to one side of the room reserved for family to receive mourners before the service. Standing with her was a uniformed woman and, of course, Emma. Lars was there as well, standing with Matt, who looked lost in his too-big suit jacket bought larger so that it might last more than one season.

  “He’s growing so fast,” Emma had sighed when the sisters had gone shopping for the suit at the Pinecraft thrift store.

  Jeannie fastened her attention on Sadie—examining the rush of feelings that swept through her upon seeing her niece for the first time since that horrible day. Her lively and vivacious niece, who could work a room full of people like any politician, now stood pressed against the wall, her shoulders hunched, her head bowed. In spite of her family around her, she looked so very alone. She looked the way Jeannie felt—as if the world had gone mad and she didn’t know how to cope with that. Instinctively Jeannie’s heart went out to her. She started toward her, but at that very moment, Geoff appeared at Jeannie’s side and restrained her with a gentle touch. He took hold of her hand. “Honey, it’s time.”

  Time. There was no time. Time had run out—for Tessa and now for Jeannie to cling to the hope that there had been some cruel mistake. The events of the last five days raced through her mind in fast-forward: breakfast… missing keys… the search… keys found… Tessa out the door with a blown kiss to meet Sadie… Jeannie more nervous about this first day of high school than her daughter was… Geoff out the door with a similar blown kiss and an umbrella for Tessa… Emma on the phone… a shout… the scream of car brakes… a dull thud… silence…

  It occurred to Jeannie now that she had observed everything that happened after that in silence as if she were underwater. There were noises around her but none of them clear. Ambulance sirens, strangers huddled around Tessa, the ride to the hospital, the ER, the race to surgery, the interminable wait…

  And here’s where her recall of that day went from fast-forward to slow motion. Jeannie would never forget the way the doctor walked toward her. She relived every detail of his appearance in that moment. His surgical mask pulled d
own around his neck, his surgical cap and scrubs sweat-stained, his eyes refusing to meet hers or Geoff’s, his long strides covering the distance. And the worst part was that she had known the minute he came through the door what he had come to tell them.

  Leaning heavily now on Geoff as he led her into the sanctuary, she started to shake as she relived that moment that had changed their lives forever. Geoff wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. So close that she could feel his warmth seeping into her suddenly cold limbs. His lips were so close to her temple that she could actually feel his breath.

  She glanced up at him and saw that his jaw was set in that forward thrust that was so familiar to her. His eyes were blazing with the glitter of tears held at bay for far too long now. She grasped his free hand, offering him her warmth and strength in return. He looked down at her, and just as they took their seats in the front pew, his lower lip began to quiver.

  The service seemed to go on for an eternity, but Jeannie did not want it to end, knowing what was yet to come. She tried to focus on the words of the minister—words about how death was no more than a passage to the other side, to heaven where Tessa, who had just a year earlier been baptized into the faith and accepted Christ as her Savior, would spend eternity. Words about how those present had best prepare themselves for the day when they would be called. Words about God’s plan and how this was just a piece of that grander plan.

  This? Jeannie felt like shouting. This is my child, my only child, my baby, snatched from us before we had a chance to truly know her, before she had a chance to realize all that she could become, before…

  She knit her fingers together and then felt every fiber of her being tighten in unspoken protest to the outrage that her daughter was lying there before them in a wooden box. Try as she might, she could not open her heart to the idea that taking her child was something God needed to do for the greater good. She closed her eyes against the bile of anger that threatened to overcome her.

  And then behind her, a throng of people rose as one and sang the words that had been a comfort to her all of her life.