by Karen Harter
Micki was at her side, supporting Sidney’s elbow when the car door slammed.
“Please, let me talk to him.” The deputy hesitated before reaching inside the driver’s door and lowering the window partway. There were a thousand questions to ask. Why did he run? Where had he been? How had he been eating and sleeping, surviving the cold autumn nights? She lowered her head, resting it on the upper rim of the window opening. “Ty,” she said softly.
The cuffs made him lean forward awkwardly. He didn’t look up. “I just wanted to tell you I’m okay,” he muttered.
Her tears threatened to choke her, but she wouldn’t let them come. Not yet. “Tyson, we’re going to work this out. You cooperate in every way. Do you hear me?”
“I won’t stay in jail. I can’t. I’d rather die.”
A chill ran through her body. This was something he had obviously given a lot of thought. “Nobody said you’re going to jail, Ty. A lot depends on you.” She really didn’t know how true that was. After all, he had committed a felony by pulling that pellet gun. “Now you be good. I’ll do whatever I can to help, but you have to quit making stupid mistakes. You got yourself here; now you’d better decide if you’re going to do the right things to get yourself out.” He finally looked up at her. He had the dark eyes and long lashes of his father. The eyes of her perdition. “I love you, Tyson.”
He tried to speak, but all that came from his quivering lips was a stifled “Ma . . .” She saw his face screw up like it did when he was small, like the times his little heart was broken by a father who found a better life and simply lost interest in the family he had started. Ty whipped his head away from her. A blade of dry grass stuck in the back of his dirty, tousled hair.
Sidney’s tears came then. Micki held her, kept her knees from hitting the ground as the bulletproof window slid up and the patrol car rolled away.
7
SIDNEY WAITED for almost three hours in the austere Winger County Juvenile Detention building before being allowed to see her son. How long did it take to book someone anyway? The place was eerie, with no daylight in the wide, echoing corridor except for the slice that ventured through a tiny oblong window at the far end. She sat against the wall in the middle of a row of vacant green plastic chairs that must have been there since before she was born. When a uniformed deputy finally escorted her to a visiting room, she passed him Sybil Tanner’s card. “Can you please call our attorney and let her know we can see him now?” Sybil’s office was just across the street in the courthouse, a much friendlier building with lots of windows, surrounded by neat gardens and stately trees.
Sidney waited alone in a room with a chicken-wire window in its door. Sybil arrived, her pregnant belly swollen dramatically since Sidney last saw her, barely having time to drop her neatly organized briefcase to the table and remove Ty’s file before the door opened again.
“Try to keep it to a half hour,” the deputy said, guiding Ty into the room with a firm hand on his upper arm. After the door latched behind the deputy, his uniformed shoulder remained visible through the small window.
Sidney’s breath caught. Tyson’s wrists were cuffed, chained to a belt locked around his waist. He wore a blue, short-sleeved jumpsuit and an expression of shame or hopelessness, maybe both. She inhaled deeply. I will not cry. I will not cry. Her chair scraped the floor as she rose to hug him. His body was slightly rigid, but he let her rub his back as she held her cheek to his. She savored the moment, the sensation of finally holding her son’s slim but developing body next to hers. There was a new firmness in his back, small but sinewy biceps now palpable on his arms. He smelled clean; he must have showered before donning the garb that marked him as a detainee.
“Sorry, Mom,” she heard him whisper through her hair.
“Hello, Tyson,” Sybil said. “Why don’t you join us here at the table? We don’t have much time.”
He dropped into a chair across the table from her.
“Okay.” She sighed deeply. “We have a real challenge in front of us. Why did you run? Didn’t you believe me when I warned you about breaking court orders?”
His eyes narrowed. “I got in a fight at school.”
Her intense blue eyes looked directly into his. “Tell me about it.”
He shrugged. “This jock kept riding me about what happened at Graber’s. He and his friends were on me since the first day of school. And lying about what really happened. They said I meant to kill that guy.” He scoffed bitterly. “With a pellet gun?”
“Who threw the first punch?”
He stared down at her pale, freckled arm as she scribbled notes. “I guess I did, but actually he hit me first. He’s a big dude. Has longer arms.”
“I’ll bet you were glad when the teachers broke it up.”
“Yeah. Until the counselor called the sheriff. That’s why I ran.” His voice cracked. “I knew they’d throw me in jail because of what you said. That I couldn’t get in any more trouble before my hearing.” His eyes searched her face. “What’s going to happen now?”
She hesitated, tapping her pen on the table with clamped lips. “I think you would have been better off facing the situation head-on.” She flipped through his file. “You were charged with a felony, in which case you may be tried as an adult. The judge was surprisingly lenient when he released you to your mother’s custody after the robbery.” She looked at him squarely with a slight shake of her head. “I’m not going to lie to you, Tyson. Judge Renkin is not one to mess with. He’s tough. Especially when he feels he hasn’t been taken seriously. I’m going to do the best I can.” She glanced over at Sidney. “If you’ve got family, gather them up and get them in that courtroom. Showing that Ty has support may have some influence on the outcome.” She turned back to Ty. “Prepare yourself. I’m sorry to say that you’re going to do some time. If you’re tried as an adult, the worst-case scenario is five years.”
Ty’s face went pale. He wheeled his head toward the wall with an audible whine. “No!” His chained hands struck the table’s edge and the terrible sounds resonated in the stark room. Sidney watched his shoulders rise and fall convulsively and heard the resolve in his breaking voice as he uttered, “I’d rather die.”
SIDNEY PARKED HER CAR in front of the Dunbar Traders Market and took a good, hard look at herself in the visor mirror. Her eyes were slightly red from crying, but no longer swollen. She swept a coat of mascara on her lashes. What did she think she was doing? Jack Mellon was probably married or at least engaged by now. He had wanted to settle down, to have a family. He was that kind of guy. A man who held a steady job, loved kids and sports—and, at one time, her.
But as long as she was already in Dunbar and Micki had the girls, it occurred to her that this might be the perfect time to connect with him again. She knew she was fooling herself, yet the image of Jack sitting beside her in court next Tuesday kept popping into her mind. Her mother was in Ohio. Micki and Dennis were the closest thing to family that she had locally, but they would be in Arizona for Dennis’s business convention on the day of the hearing. She ran a comb through her hair. It was longer now than when she and Jack had dated, falling on her shoulders, dark blond with lighter streaks that were no longer the result of spending hours in the sun like the highlights in Rebecca’s sleek tresses. Sidney’s rays of sunshine came from a box and were painted on. She applied tinted lip gloss and glared at herself one last time. “Okay, if you’re going to do this thing, do it,” she murmured aloud.
Inside the store, she grabbed a cart and began throwing a few items into it on her way to the meat department. Nothing frozen; it was a half-hour drive back to Ham Bone. How she would explain the out-of-town shopping trip to Jack, she still didn’t know. She was not one to lie. The seafood case came into view. Behind it, a young man wearing an apron and plastic gloves stooped to arrange salmon fillets on a bed of crushed ice. Sidney took a sharp right, not even daring a glance to the left where the red meats were displayed. After all, she never touched beef or pork.
Jack knew that better than anyone. It had been a standing joke with them while they dated. A red meat–loving butcher and a fanatic vegetarian. Jack had insisted that opposites attract, while Sidney was repelled by the hormone- and chemical-infused slabs of flesh that he consumed. He had corrupted Tyson on their outings, sneakily buying him hot dogs and pepperoni pizzas, barbecuing hamburgers on a portable hibachi that Jack kept in the back of his canopied truck. Long after their breakup, her son had begged her to stop at the Burger Barn every time she drove past.
In the safety of the organic produce section, Sidney collected her thoughts while weighing bunches of romaine lettuce in her hands. At $1.99 each, she was determined to get the heaviest one.
The red-meat thing was not the reason she gave Jack the “Let’s just be friends” line two years ago. It had been more than that. When Jack fell in love with her, she just panicked. Suddenly the fun and comfort of having a relationship with someone of the opposite sex had drained away. He wanted a commitment. ’Til death do us part. It shouldn’t have terrified her; she could see that clearly now. Jack was a good man. He was nothing like Dodge.
Besides, hadn’t she known from the start that Dodge Walker was a dangerous man?
She had met Dodge the winter of her freshman year. Sidney had grown up in Ohio, but came out west to attend Western Washington University. It seemed like a good idea at the time. A grand adventure. If she had known back then what she knew now, that a stranger named Dodge Walker would pop out from between a couple of those famous Washington State evergreens to reroute her life forever, she would have stayed close to home and gone to OSU like most of her friends.
Sidney and her cousin Tara were stomping through a tree farm searching for the perfect Christmas tree for the lobby in their dorm. It was dusk when a young man suddenly emerged between two firs, wielding a crosscut saw.
“Ladies, I couldn’t help overhearing your discussion. You need something big. Something all you college women can gather around in your shorty pajamas while you paint your toenails.” He grinned mischievously and winked. “I’ve got the tree of your dreams.” He walked away without looking back. They followed the dark and dashing stranger down a path of slushy snow between rows of fragrant evergreens, both girls more intrigued by the salesman at that point than the prospect of a perfect tree. He eventually stopped short of a nine-foot-tall alpine, surveying it from top to bottom, and whistled. “Trust me. They don’t make ’em any better than this.” His eyebrows shot up and he flashed another cocky grin. Black curls fringed the edges of his wool knit cap. His eyes were brown like coffee with the sun shining through it, and when they stayed fixed on Sidney too long, she felt herself blush.
“I wouldn’t sell this to just anybody,” he said. “This baby took a lot of coddling, years of precision pruning. Look at the symmetry. These branches are so level you could serve dinner on them.”
“The alpines are, like, $60, aren’t they?” Tara asked.
“What’s the matter? You don’t like it?”
She nodded. “Sure, but—”
“It’s yours then.” He gave Sidney a long and suggestive look, raising his saw. “It happens that I’m in a very good mood today.”
“Wow. Thanks. But it’s too big,” Tara lamented. “There’s no way we can tie that on the top of my Honda.”
Dodge had answered her without taking his eyes off Sidney. “I deliver.” He reached out to brush a snow crystal from her lip.
It made her angry whenever she thought back on it. Not that he, a perfect stranger, had the gall to touch her like that. Not even when she found out after the tree had already been erected and decorated that Dodge didn’t work for the tree farm. He had tossed the artfully sculpted evergreen into the back of his pickup truck, which was parked in a roped-off field-turned-parking-lot, as if he owned the place, without so much as a glance over his shoulder toward the pay station in the barn. What irked her was that she had fallen for his blatant seduction like the naive schoolgirl that she was. Blinded by infatuation.
Sidney gazed at the produce. She needed some things, but she couldn’t think of them now. Instead, her mind reasoned. She had imagined flaws in Jack. She had let certain mannerisms bother her as a means of self-protection. How stupid was that? He had been the very salve to heal her wounds and those of her children, but she had sent him away.
For all Sidney knew, Jack wasn’t even working today. If he wasn’t there, she would know this encounter, this reconnection, was not meant to be. That would be that. From then on she would do her shopping in Ham Bone, where she knew her way around the store and she could get the frozen blueberries home before they became a sloppy mess. She tossed a bag of fresh broccoli into the cart and pushed it around the corner again, this time heading straight for the meat department.
Jack was nowhere in sight. The disappointment caught her by surprise. She stopped and stared into a cooler case of bacon and sausages, not really seeing them. She was suddenly weary. It had been an emotionally wrenching day. Hadn’t it been enough seeing her son thrown to the ground and hauled away by the sheriff? Driving frantically to the detention center only to be kept waiting for hours? The attorney’s frankly pessimistic forecast of what was to come at the hearing? This whole idea had been idiotic. She should be home now helping the girls get ready for bed.
She sighed, hugging herself against the chill of the refrigerated display case, too consumed by hopelessness to move on. She was all alone with nobody to help. Nobody but God. She wished she knew Him like her mother.
Her mom had the kind of faith that expected miracles and got them. Like the time she emptied out her wallet for a homeless woman while shopping in downtown Cleveland and then realized she didn’t have bus fare to get back home. She had just shrugged and smiled. “The Lord will provide.” Sidney and her sister were hungry. Their mother led them back to the bus stop and they waited. Then out of the blue, there was their neighbor, Mrs. Sanford, coming out of the florist shop. A neighbor, from way out in the suburbs! They all piled into her big Cadillac, and Mrs. Sanford, delighted with their company, had insisted on springing for dinner on the way home.
When things like that happened, Mom was not surprised. She just cast a glance and a wave to the sky. “Thank you, Jesus!”
“Excuse me. Have you decided yet?”
The woman startled her. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Sidney pushed her cart out of the way. “How long was I standing there?”
The middle-aged lady laughed. “Well, long enough to plan a few menus, I suppose.”
Now Sidney laughed. “I was off in la-la land. It’s a good thing you said something. I might have kept you waiting until they turned the lights off on us.”
“Sidney?”
She whipped her head around. “Jack.”
“I’d know that laugh anywhere,” he said. He was pushing a tiered cart laden with beef. The other shopper placed some sausage links in her cart and moved on. The first thing Sidney noticed was his tan. Her eyes flitted to his hand. His ring finger, along with the others, was concealed inside yellow disposable gloves.
“How are you? You look great, Jack.” He really did. He was pretty buff for a guy who ate beef and potato chips and greasy fried chicken. He wasn’t terribly short, but Sidney remembered feeling a little uncomfortable around him when she wore high heels.
He smiled, a little cautiously. “Thanks. You’re as pretty as ever yourself. What are you doing in Dunbar? Did you move?”
“I moved, but not out of Ham Bone. We’ve got a house now—well, a double-wide mobile home anyway. It’s got a big yard and backs up to a wood full of cedar and firs. I can’t see moving out of town as long as the kids are in school. We have good schools.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’ve heard. How are the kids?”
“Good. Growing like they’re standing in fertilizer.” This was not the time to tell him that Ty was locked up. “So what have you been up to? Do you still fly model planes?”
He swiped at his nose with his rol
led-up sleeve. One of the things that had annoyed her back when she was looking for reasons not to fall in love. “Not much. I started building one about a year ago, but there it sits, unfinished. I played baseball on the Traders Market team all summer; we took second in the tournament. Now I coach peewee football.”
“Good for you. You were always great with kids.”
There was an awkward silence. She thought she should fill it before the “What are you doing in Dunbar?” question came up again. “I’m really glad to run into you, Jack. I’ve missed you.”
“You have?”
She looked him square in his blue eyes. “Yes. I’ve actually been thinking of you a lot lately.”
He stared at her blankly. Oh, crap. He was married.
“I mean, we had some good times, didn’t we? My kids sure liked you. Do you have any kids of your own yet?”
He wheeled his cart across the aisle and began stocking beef roasts in the cooler case. “Nope.” He glanced back at her as if reading her face, then went back to work.
Had she been dismissed? It seemed, if she had any dignity at all, like a good time to wrap this conversation up and head for the dog food aisle. “Well, I can see you’re busy—”
“Why did you break it off with me?”
His question shocked her. She had expected only small talk. Her eyes were riveted on the back of his head while his arms swiftly packed roasts as if they were sandbags and the river was about to flood. “I don’t know. I can’t even remember anymore.”
