Sister's Forgiveness

by Anna Schmidt

  “That is my way as well,” Joseph had assured Lars, “and I would not expect her to do otherwise. But telling the truth about what happened that morning and pleading guilty to vehicular homicide are two entirely different matters. I’m asking you to trust me.”

  “Joseph believes that he can get the charge reduced to just ‘culpable negligence,’” Lars told Emma.

  “I don’t understand these terms. Sadie certainly didn’t mean to…”

  “According to Joseph, the prosecution doesn’t have to show intent—that she meant to do harm—just that she was driving in such a way that harm could be the result.”

  Emma’s head was spinning with all this legal jargon. “Then explain to me why Dan… I mean, what about him and his responsibility in this?”

  “We must let his parents deal with that. We will pray for him, of course, but Sadie—”

  “Is a child. Surely that will count for a great deal.”

  Lars frowned, and she knew that she had not heard the worst of it. “What else?” she demanded, half sitting up.

  He swallowed once, twice, and then simply stared at her as if trying to decide something.

  “Tell me,” she growled.

  “If I understood what Joseph was saying, if the court agrees with the state, there is a good possibility that she could be sent somewhere across the state.”

  After her arraignment, Sadie had been taken back to the detention center in nearby Bradenton. She was to be held there while the lawyers built their cases—one for her and one against. Joseph had told them they’d be back in court in just three weeks. He’d made it sound like nothing, but three weeks without their Sadie at home and without the ability to see or talk with her whenever they chose seemed an eternity.

  It was a short drive for them to visit her, but the visits were already so limited. Only on certain days and for certain times. If they moved her somewhere far away…

  Emma began to shake, spasms that jerked her whole body and flung her head from side to side as the lump that had been in her throat ballooned in her chest. Lars pushed himself to a sitting position against the head of the bed and pulled her against him. “We will get through this, Emma,” he promised, but the way his voice shook, she understood that he was no surer of such a thing than she was.

  And lying there against him, she closed her eyes and gave herself up to the only One who could save their daughter. She prayed to God that somehow He would save Sadie, and them.

  Chapter 21

  Jeannie

  Three weeks after Tessa’s death, Jeannie left her house and started her morning run. The bay near the botanical gardens had become Jeannie’s refuge. For reasons she didn’t quite understand, it was the place where she felt closest to Tessa, so she marked the passing of the days and weeks since her death by going there. Each morning she crawled out of bed before dawn, pulled on sweats, and jogged the five miles from their home near Pinecraft, down Bahia Vista across Highway 41 to Orange Avenue and then around the corner to the place where the road curved near the botanical gardens and the exposed mud flats of the bay stretched out before her.

  Depending on the timing of the tides, she could walk on the hard-packed sand all the way out to the point where the mussel beds had formed without ever stepping in water higher than her ankles. Even when the tides weren’t with her, she would roll up her sweatpants, anchoring them above her knees. The clusters of shells were razor sharp, but the old pair of running shoes protected her feet as she picked her way carefully over the clumps. This was where Tessa had found her prized Florida conch shell—the one that sat in the center of the glass-topped table that dominated the screened porch at the back of their house. The lanai was where the three of them had so often gathered for supper on balmy nights. The place where she and Emma and Sadie and Tessa had played board games on hot summer afternoons once they had finished their chores and errands and volunteer work.

  Jeannie walked on tiptoe across the flats, changing course when her foot sank suddenly into a pocket of soft, mushy sand. Houseboats and sailing boats with their dinghies attached bobbed in the bay, their rigging clanking softly against the metal mast poles like wind chimes. A blue heron scolded her for invading its territory and then lost interest as it speared a small fish and swallowed it down.

  Breakfast, Jeannie thought. She had forgotten to set the timer for the coffee. Geoff would be annoyed. But then he often seemed either annoyed with or indifferent to her these days. At a time when the two of them should have drawn closer, they were drifting further and further apart.

  Once Geoff started back to work, his entire morning routine had changed. No longer did he come to the table for his usual bagel, fruit, and coffee. Instead, he filled a stainless steel travel mug with black coffee and headed out.

  Unable to face eating alone in that big, empty house, Jeannie had begun her routine of running every morning. But she had continued to set the timer for Geoff’s coffee. He counted on that coffee being there.

  “Too bad, so sad, “Jeannie remembered Sadie commenting once.

  Sadie.

  Her beloved niece was being held in juvenile detention, awaiting the hearing—or adjudication, as the newspaper had reported—of her case. According to a voice message that Geoff’s sister had left for Jeannie, she’d been fingerprinted and photographed like “any common criminal.” Geoff’s sister had reported this in a tone that indicated that the news should come as some sort of solace to Jeannie and Geoff. “Maybe there will be some justice for Tessa after all,” she had concluded.

  But that kind of justice—that eye-for-an-eye vengeance—was not what Jeannie had been raised to believe in. In the faith of generations of her family, finding true justice was about finding the path to forgiveness. And yet she and Geoff had lost their only child. No one involved had meant for that to happen, yet it had, and try as she might, Jeannie could not yet find it in her heart to forgive an act of such pure irresponsibility and selfishness. And neither could Geoff.

  From the moment they left the cemetery, she had watched him close himself off more and more. At the house, filled with mourners wanting only to offer support and comfort, Geoff had said something about needing some time and disappeared. People had come and gone all through the long afternoon and well into the evening, but Geoff had stayed away. Jeannie had assured everyone that he would be back any moment, but hours had passed without a sign of him.

  It was Zeke who had gone in search of him and finally located him, sitting alone in the bleachers of the athletic field at the school. Using the battered pay phone mounted on the back of the shuttered concession stand, Zeke had called the house to assure Jeannie that Geoff was unharmed.

  “He needs some time is all.”

  The idea of needing time had become the anthem of the entire horrible and unthinkable event. What good was time going to do? Time certainly would not bring Tessa back. Time stretched out in front of them like a life sentence—life without parole. Life without Tessa.

  And yet Jeannie was as guilty of using the excuse as anyone. She had heard Geoff send Emma away a few days after the funeral, telling her that Jeannie needed some time. She had avoided answering the door after Geoff returned to work, knowing it was some kind neighbor or fellow church member come to drop off a potted plant or covered dish. She had willingly allowed Geoff to steer her away from Sadie at the funeral, and later as she watched the uniformed guard escort Sadie from the cemetery, she had told herself that right now she needed to focus on Geoff—his needs, his pain.

  They needed time.

  But time was not working in their favor. The more time that passed, the wider the gap seemed to grow between Geoff and her. Each night he isolated himself in his den, citing the need to catch up on administrative reports or reviewing game tapes of the next football opponent and then coming to bed well after midnight. Even in the days between the funeral and his return to work, he had filled the hours with chores—repairing a shelf in the laundry room, resurfacing the driveway, trimming th
e shrubs that divided their house from the neighbor’s.

  They had taken to having their dinner—a meal that Jeannie created from the overflowing larder of food left by others—in front of the television. It had started a few nights after the funeral—after others had stopped filling the house with their whispers and covered dishes. Geoff had been watching the news, and Jeannie had called out that dinner was ready.

  “I’ll take mine in here,” Geoff had called back. “There’s a story coming up that I want to see.”

  Jeannie had prepared him a plate and then one for herself, and they had sat staring wordlessly at the television as they ate.

  Now it had been nearly a month since they had sat down for a meal together at their kitchen table. Just yesterday she had put the placemats and cloth napkins in the laundry, and once they were dry, she had put them away in a drawer instead of back on the table. Every action or inaction like that one felt like one step closer to giving up on ever being able to make a life together without Tessa.

  “Hey there, pretty lady,” a voice called, and Jeannie turned to see Zeke coming toward her in a barnacle-covered dingy powered by a trolling motor. “I brought you something.”

  He cut the motor and beached the boat, then climbed out and dragged it onto higher ground. He wore ragged jeans rolled to midcalf, a faded T-shirt, and an old baseball cap. He was barefoot and had tied his long black hair back into a ponytail. He greeted her with the kind of sad, how-you-holding-up? smile that Jeannie had come to expect whenever she ran into anyone she knew these days.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, “and hold out your hands.”

  It was such an incredibly normal request that Jeannie allowed herself to let go of all the should’s and ought to’s of how she was supposed to be feeling and did as he asked.

  He laid something in her hands. Small and slender, hard but also, she realized, a little fragile.

  “Angel wings,” he said softly as she opened her eyes and saw a petite matched pair of pure white ruffled seashells that carried the name so fitting to them.

  “Oh Zeke, they’re smaller than any I’ve ever seen and so perfect. Where did you find them?”

  He shrugged. “Coming down the creek. They were covered over pretty good, but there’s no mistaking that pure white color.”

  Jeannie ran her finger over the ridges of the shells. Surely this was a sign, a prayer answered. It was unusual enough to find a half of the bivalve. To find a matched pair was rare indeed. “Thank you, Zeke.”

  “No wor…” Zeke’s tanned face turned a deeper shade of burnished red. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “No worries,” she said. “It’s okay, Zeke. I know what you mean.”

  Most of the time a gesture like this would bring tears to her eyes, but what she felt now was something different. The gift had given her a feeling that had been absent for days now. The perfection of the matched shells gave her a glimmer of hope.

  “Would you like to go for a cup of coffee?” she asked Zeke and realized it was the first effort she had made since the funeral to reach out to someone other than Geoff.

  Zeke studied her sweats and frowned. “You didn’t bring any money, did you?”

  He was right, and it was her turn to blush. “You could come to the house. The pot’s all set. I just need to turn it on.”

  Zeke grinned. “You wouldn’t have any of those cinnamon rolls you make, would you?”

  “Not that I made, but certainly plenty made by some of the best cooks in Pinecraft.”

  “Emma?”

  With one word he had changed the lighter mood he was working so hard to establish. But then that was Zeke’s way. Just when she thought she had him figured out, he would surprise her by changing course.

  “How is she?” Jeannie asked, knowing that Zeke wouldn’t judge her for not knowing the answer herself.

  “Sadie’s in detention. They dodged a bullet when the state’s attorney decided against taking the case into adult court, but the kid’s still locked up.”

  He took Jeannie’s elbow as she climbed into the dingy, then pushed the small craft into deeper water before getting in and pulling the cord to start the motor.

  “And Dan Kline?”

  Zeke shrugged. “His parents know people—you know how that works. He got ticketed and his license was suspended. Then he was sent home, but then I imagine Geoff already told you that.”

  “Not really,” she murmured, thinking about how little she and Geoff shared.

  Zeke frowned but made no comment. “You should call Emma.”

  “I know.” But she couldn’t bring herself to promise that she would. Besides, there were circumstances beyond what Zeke or others might think that kept her from reconnecting with her sister. As Geoff had reminded her on more than one occasion, things had changed. She still woke up every morning thinking that if she hadn’t taken Sadie for her learner’s permit, none of this would have happened. Then just as quickly she would repress that thought, unwilling to pile guilt on top of the already staggering load of her grief.

  Emma had left numerous phone messages—none of which Jeannie had responded to, all of which she had saved. One morning her sister had even taped a note to their back door. Jeannie had found it when she came back from her run. “I’m here,” it had read. “Call when you can.”

  Jeannie cradled the angel wings in one palm, fingering them as Zeke navigated around the sandbars of the bay. It was an unusual day for September—cooler and less humid. A perfect day for a boat ride. Jeannie was so very tired of the pain and the sadness and the pressing stone of loss she carried with her every minute of every hour. She leaned back and closed her eyes as Zeke guided the boat up the channel to the creek that wound its way to Pinecraft.

  “So, about Emma—you’ll call her?” Zeke pressed.

  “Can we just talk about something else—just for now?”

  “Why talk at all?”

  Jeannie gave him a half smile. “Sometimes it helps to remind myself that the rest of the world has moved on even though our world…”

  “Oh, you want normal, do you? Right. Well, the fruit co-op is booming. Hard to keep up with everything, and here we are on the brink of a new growing season. First calls are starting to come in from folks wanting to schedule the volunteers to come pick fruit from their yards.”

  It had been a little over a year since Hester and others had organized volunteers from the Mennonite community to offer a service of collecting fruit from the yards of private citizens requesting the service. The fruit was then delivered to a packing house on the property that Zeke’s brother, Malcolm, had purchased and set up as a foundation for the project. There Zeke and others from the community who were homeless or preferred a more unorthodox lifestyle came to sort and box the fruit and deliver it to the various food pantries in the area.

  The project mirrored the work of similar co-ops operating as far west as California and as nearby as Tampa. But the Pinecraft co-op also offered Emma’s strawberry jam as well as homemade orange marmalade and pies for sale at local farmers’ markets. “Like I said, it’s starting to get busy, and we could use some help. Might be good for you to come on back, as well. I mean, now that Geoff’s gone back to work and all.”

  Jeannie and Emma and their daughters had volunteered regularly at the co-op from the day it first opened. Sadie had been a wonder at getting local publicity for the project, and Jeannie’s phone had rung constantly with homeowners wanting to schedule a pickup of fruit from their yards. Tessa had been responsible for setting up a schedule that kept everything running smoothly.

  Lars used to call them “the Fruit Loops” with that dry sense of humor that was his trademark. How Geoff had laughed at that. He and Matt had picked up on the tag and even made up a song about it.

  They had laughed together so often through the years. Jeannie could not imagine laughing over such silliness ever again.

  “I’ll tie up at the park, and we can walk from there to your house, okay?”

&n
bsp; “Sure.” Leaving the boat at the park meant walking through Pinecraft to reach her house, which could mean crossing paths with Emma. Jeannie mentally ran through her sister’s routine. It was Thursday. On Thursday she joined other women for the weekly cleaning of the church.

  “Emma’s in court today,” Zeke said, reading her mind. “No worries.”

  But Jeannie did not miss the hint of sarcasm with which he delivered his trademark phrase, and for the rest of the trip, he said nothing more.

  Chapter 22

  Emma

  On the day that Sadie’s hearing was to begin—and possibly end—Lars and Emma arrived at the courthouse early. They parked in back and then walked past Joseph Cotter’s small office, peering in the window to see if the young lawyer was inside.

  “He’s probably already left for court,” Lars said.

  Inside the courthouse lobby, they endured the curious glances of the uniformed staff as they went through the security checkpoint and then took the stairs to the third floor as instructed.

  “This way,” Lars said, pausing a minute to check room numbers. The corridor was carpeted and there were chairs and benches outside the closed doors that lined the wall opposite a wall of windows. “This one,” he said, stopping at one of the doors and then trying the knob. It was not the courtroom where the arraignment had taken place. That courtroom was two doors down the hall. So many courtrooms, Emma found herself thinking, and she couldn’t help but think that if the system needed more than one courtroom to handle all of the problems coming before the judges, then perhaps the world had far bigger problems than she’d ever imagined.

  The door was locked. Through narrow glass windows to either side, Emma could see that the room was identical to the one they had been in three weeks earlier. Chairs like those she and Lars had sat in when Sadie was arraigned were lined up to either side of a center aisle and were separated from the area where the court’s business would take place by a low polished wooden wall.

  “We’re too early,” she said and took a seat on one of the benches positioned so that she could continue to monitor the activity in the courtroom. She tried to imagine Sadie riding in the locked van from the detention center in Bradenton. Would she be with other teens or alone? Emma hoped that she was alone, although what did it matter?