by Shawna Seed
“It says here the body was found by a friend.” Joan looked up. “Was that you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Sharlah.” Joan settled her bulk back in her office chair. “It says that the police can’t find her boyfriend, and then there’s all this business about maybe her death is tied to a violent drug ring. Is that what Brian’s mixed up in?”
“People are saying a lot of things about Brian,” Sharlah said. “He’s innocent until proven guilty.”
Joan gave her a pitying look. “Sharlah, I like you. You’re reliable, and you try to do right by this job. I just wish you’d try as hard to do right by Sharlah.”
All she wanted was permission to leave work early, and now Sharlah was going to be stuck listening to one of Joan’s lectures. She tried not to let her impatience show.
Joan took off her glasses and turned her head. She pointed to a star-shaped scar on her temple. “My ex-husband did that to me. Bashed me in the head with a glass ash tray.”
Sharlah couldn’t let that go. “Brian would never hit me! He’s nicer to me than anybody’s ever been. Don’t judge him because of what’s in the paper.”
Joan sighed and put her glasses back on. “I know a thing or two about letting men drag you down, Sharlah, and I hate to see it happen to you. You’ve got so much potential.”
“Brian’s not dragging me down,” Sharlah insisted. “He loves me.”
She and Joan stared at each other across the small desk.
“Nobody wants unsolicited advice, Sharlah, but I’m going to give you some anyway. You need to ask yourself whether being with Brian is the best thing for you. I know you might think you’re nothing without him, but you’re wrong about that.”
Sharlah started to get mad, but then she reined herself in. There was no point in arguing with Joan, especially not when she was trying to get a favor from her.
“I guess that’s something to think about,” Sharlah said, hoping to get Joan off her back. She waited for more advice, but Joan seemed to have run out of steam.
“Try to get your tables wrapped up by 10:30,” Joan said, finally. “And the next time you need to leave early, you let me know ahead of time.”
“I will,” Sharlah said. “I promise. Thank you. I won’t do this to you again.”
Joan waved her hand in dismissal. “Get back to work.”
Sharlah hesitated a moment.
“What?” Joan said.
“Can I have the paper?”
At 10:30, Sharlah was still waiting for her big table of the morning, eight older women, to quit lingering over their coffee and settle the bill. At 10:35, one of them flagged her and asked for a refill. Then everybody wanted a refill.
At 10:40, Joan told Sharlah to go, that Robin would wrap up the table. Sharlah hated to give up on such a big table, because she knew Robin would lie about how much they tipped and shortchange her. But she didn’t have any choice.
She sprinted to her car and grabbed her clothes. Back inside, she locked herself in the biggest stall in the restroom and peeled off her uniform and pantyhose. She pulled the polo shirt over head, stepped into the skirt and jammed her feet into her sandals.
She stopped at the mirror to fluff up her hair and then dashed out to her car. It was 10:48, but she thought she’d probably still be OK on time.
And she would have been, if she’d found a parking place closer to the courthouse.
Instead, she pounded up the stairs and arrived in the hallway outside the courtroom at 11:12, seconds before Renee Lowry burst out of the courtroom, trailed by Mitch, Kevin and Brian’s lawyer.
Sharlah rushed down the hall to catch up with them.
“Sorry I’m late. Is it over already?”
Renee glared at her. Mitch looked haggard. Kevin’s expression was unreadable.
“Let’s find a quiet spot down the hall where we can talk about this,” Ingersoll said.
Sharlah looked back toward the courtroom, confused. “Where’s Brian?”
Ingersoll looked at Mitch, then Renee. When they didn’t speak up, he took a step toward Sharlah. “Brian was denied bail.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s a lot of things,” Ingersoll said. “The seriousness of the charges, but mostly…”
“My brother killed a guy, and he got bail!”
Renee Lowry actually staggered. “Dear God,” she whispered.
Belatedly, Sharlah realized that Brian had never told his parents about Wayne.
“Not here, Renee,” Mitch said, taking her elbow. “Not here.”
Ingersoll pointed toward an empty bench down the hall. “Let’s have a seat down there and discuss this.”
They all filed down the hall and sat on the bench. Sharlah picked the spot next to Kevin. That seemed to be the safest place to be.
Ingersoll squatted in front of them. “This is a temporary setback. We’ll ask for a new hearing.”
Sharlah had just begun to realize that Brian wasn’t coming home. “But why won’t they give him bail? I don’t understand.”
“The main thing is that the judge found Brian to be a flight risk,” Ingersoll said.
“But Brian doesn’t even like to fly!”
Renee snorted, and Sharlah swiveled from Renee to the lawyer, unsure what she had said wrong.
“It doesn’t literally mean flying,” Ingersoll said. “It means running away. They have evidence Brian was planning to leave the country. Something about Costa Rica.”
“He talked to someone about that? He never told me,” Sharlah said.
“Maybe his plans didn’t include you,” Renee said. Mitch reached for her hand, but Renee jerked it away.
Kevin started to say something and got as far as, “Mom…” before thinking better of it.
“No, I know he likes to talk about Costa Rica,” Sharlah said, “but that wasn’t for real! It was just something we imagined doing, like me wanting to go to New York City.”
“This is crazy,” Mitch said. “Brian’s never even been out of the country.”
Sharlah sneaked a glance at Kevin. That wasn’t true, and he knew it. When Brian was 16, he’d tagged along with Cliff and Kevin to South Padre Island, and the three of them had gone over the border to Matamoros. The older boys tried to get Brian to go to a brothel, but he wouldn’t do it.
Kevin didn’t meet her eyes. He was studying the floor, as though some important message were spelled out in the tile. Sharlah had never seen Kevin so subdued.
“They’re playing hardball, and for now the judge is going to let them,” Ingersoll said. “They’re trying to make a big case, and Brian’s all they’ve got. They think sitting in jail will make him more cooperative.”
Kevin abruptly checked his watch. “Dad, I have to go. Lynn’s doctor’s appointment is at 1:30. I promised her I’d make this one.”
“That’s all right son, you go on,” Mitch said. “I’ll call you later. Give Lynn our love.”
Kevin strode down the hall and stabbed at the elevator button with his thumb. He waited for a second, then turned and started down the stairs.
With Kevin gone, Sharlah scooted down the bench a little closer to Brian’s dad, but not too close. “Does it take a long time to get a new hearing?”
“Hard to say,” Ingersoll said. “In the meantime, there’s jail visitation on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Brian’s allowed two visits per week, and two people can visit at a time.”
He opened his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper, which he handed to Mitch. “This covers the rules. Brian could use a visit. He needs support.”
He closed up the briefcase. “I’m sorry we didn’t get better news today, but this is just one battle. Don’t get too discouraged.”
He shook hands with Mitch, then nodded at Renee and Sharlah. “I’ll be in touch.”
He was barely down the hall when Renee hissed, “Mitchell, that man…”
“Not now, Renee.”
Sharlah held out her hand for the visitation schedu
le. “Can I look at that?”
Mitch absentmindedly handed it to her.
“You saw Brian in court, right?” She leaned forward, trying to make eye contact with Mitch. “How did he seem?”
Renee answered before Mitch could say anything. “Oh, honestly, Sharlah, how do you expect he seemed? He’s an inmate.”
“Renee,” Mitch said. He patted her knee. Renee crossed her arms and stared off into the distance.
“I’m so worried about him,” Sharlah said. “I saw him for a minute at the police station yesterday, when they had us there about Missy. He didn’t seem good.”
Mitch looked her in the face for the first time. His eyes – the same blue as Brian’s – were bloodshot, and he looked pale despite his tan. “Seems like we get a fresh piece of bad news every day,” he said. “That just breaks my heart about Missy.”
She always thought Brian’s dad looked pretty good, for an old guy in his forties, but today he seemed like all the starch had gone out of him.
Sharlah wished she knew what to say. She never could figure out how to talk to Brian’s parents.
She looked at the visitation schedule. “It says here that you can go Monday from 4 to 6 p.m.,” she said. “Did you all want to go this afternoon, since you’re already in town? I could go on Wednesday, but it’s noon to 3, and I have to work. Saturday might be better for me, maybe with Kevin, if he wanted to go?”
She hoped the Lowrys would say that they had to get back to Houston, that she could see Brian by herself.
She didn’t want to wait until Saturday to see him, but she also wanted the Lowrys to realize she was willing to work with them, for Brian’s sake.
“Let me see that.” Renee stretched her hand out across her husband, and Sharlah gave her the schedule.
Renee put it in her purse, which she snapped closed. The click echoed in the empty corridor.
“Are you going to go this afternoon, then? Or should…”
Renee cut Sharlah off. “Brian’s schedule is not something we need to discuss with you.”
Sharlah stuffed her hands under her thighs so that Renee wouldn’t see them shake and steadied her voice. “I think Brian should get a say in this.”
“Brian is in no position to dictate to us,” Renee said, biting off the words. “And you certainly are not, not after getting him into this immoral lifestyle of yours. No one in our family had a minute’s trouble with the law before you came along.”
“Excuse me?” Sharlah sprang up from the bench. “You’re saying this is my fault somehow, because of my brother? I was in sixth grade when that happened!”
Mitch stood and positioned himself between the two women. “Renee, honey, that’s enough. Sharlah, this has been a tough time for everybody and we’re all on edge. Go on home. We’ll work this out, and we’ll give you a call.”
Sharlah didn’t budge, and Mitch put his hand on her arm. “We’ll work this out. You have my word on it. Go on home now.”
Back in her car, Sharlah leaned her head against the steering wheel and cried.
Then she got mad.
If she didn’t hear from Brian’s dad, she would call Kevin and enlist his help. She would call Brian’s lawyer, too. He’d said his job was to represent Brian’s interests. Brian wanted to see her, and his parents shouldn’t be allowed to stand in the way. If she had to, she’d go to the jail during visiting hours and dare the Lowrys to throw her out.
Sharlah tried to start the car, but her hands were shaking, so she sat for another minute trying to calm down. Her head was pounding, probably because she cried but also because she hadn’t eaten anything since her sandwich the night before.
She needed groceries. She didn’t really want to go to the store in these stupid shoes that hurt her feet, but it was a waste of gas to go change first.
With a sigh, she opened her purse and counted her tips, mentally setting her budget.
Sharlah didn’t think of herself as having a lot of talents, but she was good at keeping a running tally in her head at the store. Brian tried sneaking things into the cart to mess her up, but she always knew, within a quarter or so, how much the bill would be.
She pushed her cart quickly down the aisles, adding in her head as she went. Milk. Bread. Cereal. The ground beef, she decided, was too high. She rooted around in the case, hoping to find a package closer to expiration marked down, but no luck.
She started feeling better about the money situation as she shopped. Brian was the big eater in the house. She could get three meals, maybe four, out of one box of mac and cheese. She’d eat PBJ and cereal and apples. She didn’t need meat.
Back home, Sharlah put away the groceries, made herself a sandwich and sat down on the couch to read the paper she’d bummed from Joan.
There wasn’t a whole lot in it about Missy that she didn’t already know. The story said her death might be linked to a ring that moved drugs up the I-45 corridor. The ring was tied, the paper said, to a violent gang suspected in several murders.
Sharlah read the story twice, trying to reconcile the facts there with her Brian.
Brian had never even yelled at her. He quit football after eighth grade because he didn’t like hitting people. That took guts, too, because Kevin had been a star linebacker, and Brian was supposed to be just like him.
Brian was a big guy – 6-2, close to 190 pounds – but he didn’t act like a big guy. He never tried to intimidate anyone. Sharlah thought it was because Brian, tall and muscular as he was, had always been smaller than Kevin.
Sharlah leafed through the rest of the paper, but there wasn’t anything interesting. President Reagan was visiting Mexico. A trough of low pressure had formed in the Gulf.
She had just flipped to the help-wanted ads when someone knocked on her door.
When she opened it, Mitch Lowry was standing on the walk with one foot on the bottom step of the porch. A brown Oldsmobile – Renee’s car – idled at the curb. She was in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead.
“Hi, Mr. Lowry,” Sharlah said. Even though in her head she always called them Mitch and Renee, Sharlah never addressed the Lowrys that way in person.
“I’m sorry to drop by without calling, Sharlah. Can I come in?”
Sharlah stood back to admit him. “Does Mrs. Lowry want to come in?”
“She’ll wait in the car.” Mitch took a step inside and looked at the coffee table. “I’ve interrupted your lunch.”
“It’s just PBJ,” Sharlah said. “It’s not going to get cold or anything.”
Sharlah was a little unnerved to have Mitch Lowry in the house. Neither of Brian’s parents had visited before, because they didn’t approve of living together. Sharlah thought that was kind of a joke, considering anyone who could count knew Brian’s mother was pregnant with Kevin when she got married.
But they disapproved, and so they hadn’t come to the house.
Sharlah tried to remember what she’d seen people on TV do when they had company. “Do you want something to drink? Ice water is about all I’ve got.”
“A glass of ice water would be nice,” Mitch said.
Sharlah picked up her plate and went to the kitchen. She let the water from the tap run for a few seconds to get cold while she cracked the ice tray and put four cubes in a glass, checking to make sure it wasn’t one of the ones with a chip. Brian liked a lot of ice in his drinks, and she figured his dad might be the same. The Lowrys had an icemaker; they never worried about running out.
She carried the glass back to the living room and stopped, dumbstruck.
Mitch Lowry was sitting on her battered plaid couch, his face buried in his hands, his shoulders heaving in silent sobs.
She took a tentative step toward him. “Mr. Lowry? Are you OK?”
He pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and mopped his face. “Sorry,” he mumbled into the hankie. “Don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
Sharlah put the water in front of him on the coffee table and retreated across the ro
om to sit in the armchair. She pulled her bare feet up under her and waited.
Mitch took a long drink of water and caught his breath before he spoke.
“Sharlah, it’s no secret that Brian’s mother and I don’t approve of this relationship. Even before this happened, we felt like he was wasting his potential. To be honest, we just don’t think you’re right for him. But I think you’ll agree that we all have to work together here.”
He fixed her with those eyes that reminded her so much of Brian. “Renee and I, well, we don’t hold a lot of sway right now. Never have, I suppose.”
“That’s not true,” Sharlah said. “Brian cares a lot what you think.”
Mitch smiled weakly. “I wish that was true. The person with the most influence over Brian right now is you, whether we like that or not. We think it’s best if you go see Brian this afternoon.”
Under different circumstances, Sharlah would have been thrilled to have Brian’s parents acknowledge her place in his life. Now, though, she felt a little awed by the responsibility.
“I’ll make him see what he has to do,” Sharlah said, expressing more confidence than she really felt. It would be hard to talk Brian out of covering for Cliff. He was loyal to a fault.
“I have no idea what he’s thinking, telling his lawyer he won’t play ball,” Mitch said. “I have no idea what the hell he’s thinking, period. What do you make of all of this?”
“I’m as surprised as you are, Mr. Lowry. I never saw any drugs.” She waved her hand around the sparsely furnished living room. “I sure as hell didn’t see any money.”
“His mother thinks this is Brian’s way of thumbing his nose at us.”
Of course she does, Sharlah thought, because she assumes everything is about her.
“Brian’s not spiteful like that,” Sharlah said. “None of this makes sense. It says in the paper the drugs are tied to some violent gang. You know that’s not Brian.”
“I don’t know what I know anymore,” Mitch said. “I can’t imagine why Brian would get mixed up in something like this, unless…”
Sharlah waited, halfway expecting a suggestion that the whole thing was her fault.
