You have made mistakes.
I’ve made mistakes? I have? I didn’t do anything! He attacked me. Who were the clients for this project? Had they supplied the text or had one of Ron’s copywriters made this up?
Regina would not normally have altered text given to her for a brochure, but this time, she revised freely, then lifted out key phrases for the posters, cards, and backdrops. Phrases like, You had your reasons and We’re here to get you started on the life you deserve. This is not what you asked for. Words she would have liked to hear. By the time she packed up, dressed, and drove to Richmond, she was satisfied with her work, calm and sure.
On the drive, she worried about not visiting her father at all the previous day. He was better, she reassured herself, but Mary’s cautions immediately came back to her, that he might be rallying for the last time. Repeatedly, she second-guessed her decision not to visit him the night before. Berated herself for putting her job first and for letting her fear of encountering the rest of the family stand in her way. Although she had reconciled with her father on one level, she worried that she hadn’t addressed the central fact that he had abandoned her, that she’d retaliated for that, and that she had not forgiven him or asked for forgiveness, though in truth she didn’t know how she would begin to talk about all of that or even whether she should. She might never have a chance. But, she told herself, he’s rallied, they said so. She’d get the presentation done and head right back to Piedmont, directly to the hospital.
“Hey, Rosa.”
“Hey, yourself.” Rosa popped up from her desk and followed Regina back to her office. “Ron’s a nervous wreck about this project.”
“Why?” She unlocked the door and opened her portfolio on the desk. “I told him I’d have everything ready today.” She leaned her head by Rosa’s. “He doesn’t need to know I was up all night finishing.”
She spread out the materials and looked with a critical eye. As confident as she’d been earlier, she felt butterflies stirring now.
But Rosa gasped and clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Oh, I love it!”
“Do you really?”
“Oh my gosh, yes. It’s beautiful.” She read silently while Regina watched her face, then said again, “I love it.”
“It’s not what he asked for.”
“I know, but it’s better.”
“Than what he told me to do? He might not think so.”
“Oh, go on. You’ll be fine. Trust me.”
Briskly, her manner betraying none of her doubts, Regina entered the conference room and laid out her work on the big oval table.
Ron drifted in with a coffee cup and bobbed his head at her. His soft brown hair was tousled, jacket open, tie pulled loose. He leaned over her drawings and said, “Oh!”
A positive initial reaction, but pleasure gave way to pause, and a questioning look devolved into a frown as he realized she had completely disregarded his suggestions and directions.
Steven—wiry, middle height, with black hair and mustache—wandered in with a coffee cup. His dark, quick-moving eyes landed on the table. He moved a few pieces, looked through it all in a matter of seconds—searching, she imagined, for the image of the disgraced runaway’s face. She tensed as it dawned on her that she shouldn’t have laid it all out, should have made them wait for her to present it the way she saw it.
Ron had brought in one of the salesmen, a plump, easygoing guy. He glanced at the table, caught Regina’s eye, and winked.
Regina stepped forward, poised to regain the lead, but before she could speak, Steven said, “So we got the three posters, the flier and the brochure, the artwork for a backdrop.”
The salesman looked at Regina, but Ron said to Steven, “What do you think?”
Regina hesitated while another opportunity to take control slipped by. She might as well not have been in the room.
“It’s beautiful work, as usual,” Steven said, and Regina’s jaw tightened at the way he left his words hanging. But. “This is about runaway girls. We’re supposed to reach out to them and connect. They need to know that we understand what it’s like for them, so they can come forward to us.”
That you understand what it’s like for us! Goaded, Regina said, “My idea for this—”
Steven cut her off. “The colors are gorgeous, but they’re bright and strong. This is almost lighthearted in tone. Where is the fear and helplessness?” He spun on his heel and spoke to Ron. “Ron, we talked about the piece I did for Haven Acres. I thought we were going to base this project on that model?”
Regina found her voice at last. “I think we need a different approach on this one. If you want to connect with these girls, you have to show them some respect. Who is going to turn herself in to an organization that considers her a disgrace?”
Ron looked back at Regina’s jewel-like designs. “I don’t know, Regina. This is beautiful work, but Steven does have experience in this subject matter.”
Throwing caution to the winds, she said to Steven, “You ran away from home?”
“What?” Steven puffed out an incredulous little laugh.
The guy from marketing laughed outright, but stifled it when Ron said, “That’s uncalled for.” He looked a good bit less friendly, but he lifted his hands in a peacemaking gesture. “Anyway, it’s not up to us, it’s up to the clients, and you never know what they’re going to say. We need more than one option. We’ll show them this and the Haven Acres project. We’ll let them choose.”
Ron looked at Steven, who shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure, let’s show them both concepts. I’m not saying they won’t like what you’ve done, Regina. I’m just saying what I think their message needs to be.”
The guy from marketing looked up. “I don’t like the idea of showing them something we did for another client, especially if we think they’d like that one better than what we did for them.” He looked at Regina. “Which I don’t necessarily agree with. I like this. It’s real positive. Upbeat.”
“Again, it’s beautiful,” Steven said. “I just think the approach needs to be a little more—” He stopped to choose a word.
Regina said, “Pathetic?”
“Empathetic,” Ron said, and Regina winced at a momentary flash of anger in his eyes. But Ron was a mild-mannered man. “All right, look. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll show them this proposal. You’ve put a lot of time into it. But we’ll offer an alternative.” He looked at his watch. “Regina, you’ve got the artwork from Haven Acres. The meeting is at noon tomorrow. Do what you can to work up at least one poster and a brochure.”
The salesman shook his head. “What if they’ve seen the Haven Acres project? Non-profit, delinquent girls. They’re in the same field. They’ll see we’re charging them for artwork we’ve used before for other clients.”
“Maybe that’s why we got the job, because they’ve seen the Haven Acres project,” Steven said. “Have we thought of that?”
Ron lifted his hands. “I say we let the customer choose. Regina, see what you can do with the Haven Acres artwork and the text I gave you. I want that up my sleeve in case they’re looking for a darker mood.”
Regina said, “Sure,” easily, as though it were nothing, but her cheeks and neck were hot.
The meeting broke up, and Ron’s assistant, Beckie, started straightening the chairs.
Steven said, “Great job, Regina. I mean it. I was just speculating about the perspective I got from a similar job.”
Then he cornered Ron and they left together.
Beckie caught Regina’s eye with a sympathetic smile. “I love it.”
Regina didn’t trust herself to answer.
Rosa jumped up and followed when Regina passed by on the way back to her office. “How’d it go?”
“Fine. Terrific. Steven ripped it to pieces.”
“What?” Rosa’s round face crumpled. “You don’t mean he ripped it up?”
“Not literally. He thinks the whole idea’s all wrong. Ron wants to show the
clients a Haven Acres-type version as a second option. He doesn’t think they’ll like mine.”
“But why? It’s beautiful.”
“He doesn’t think it conveys the right message. He thinks we need to show how helpless and messed up the girls are.”
Rosa made a sympathetic little moan. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll call you if I need you. Thanks.” She paused at the door of her office until Rosa backed off reluctantly.
Inside her office, with the door closed, Regina slapped her portfolio on the desk and sat down, thinking there was absolutely nothing she could do. Now that the meeting was over, she was furious with herself for not defending her work better. She should have taken back control of the presentation. Argued her case. Why couldn’t she ever stand up for herself?
She spent a futile twenty minutes trying to sketch out a design using the Haven Acres artwork, then gave up. Her fingers refused to accept the Safe Haven message. She sat back and said, “What in the world am I going to do?” She slumped. Hopeless.
A light knock at the door.
“Come in.”
Al said, “Bad time?”
“No. I mean, it is, but it can’t get any worse.” She told him what had happened and showed him her project. “So now I’m supposed to redo it with different artwork, a completely different concept. I can’t do it. I’m going to lose my job.”
He looked it over, picked up one of her posters, and said, “This is beautiful. I always liked your art. Everybody does. And I like the idea.” He read aloud, “‘We’re here to help you start out on the life you choose to lead.’”
“It’s not at all what Ron told me to do.”
Al scratched his head and looked so woebegone that she made a little rueful smile to reassure him. “It’s okay.” Then she washed her hands over her face and pulled her hair up into a ponytail. “Not only have I wrecked my job, I made everybody hate me even more at home.”
She told him about the deputy arriving to take a statement from Alice.
“Oh, no. That’s my fault.”
“No, it isn’t. You only did what I asked you to do. And that’s not all I did. I also accused my sister’s husband of murder.”
His eyebrows jumped. “The one who accused Tiberius Rawley?”
She nodded, rearranging her hair on her shoulders. “I figured out that he had that same schedule—Richmond during the week and Piedmont on the weekends. He was working in Church Hill too, at Saint John’s.”
“Ree, that’s not much reason to accuse him of murder.”
“It’s no less reason than he had to accuse Tiberius Rawley.”
Al nodded. Let a moment go by. “But…”
“But what?”
“But why would he have done it?”
“Because he’s a pervert.”
“Is that what you told your family?” A half-grin played over his face as if he thought she was joking, then he saw she wasn’t.
“They asked the same question you did, why would he do it. And I told them, same reason the Shockoe Killer killed the other little girls. Because he assaulted them, molested them.” She was sitting quietly now, hands folded in front of her on the desk.
He was standing in front of her, leaning on his hands on the desk. After a long moment, he said, “Why do you think that?”
“Because he molested me.” It was even easier to say the third time. She got up and went to the window. “So I told them that, but of course they didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe me before either.”
He leaned against the wall by the window, giving her space but staying where he could see her face. “Before? When?”
“When I was in high school.”
“That’s why you left.”
She looked down. “It was getting worse and worse. I had to get away.”
“I wish I’d known. I don’t know what I could have done to help, but I wish I’d known anyway.”
“He was—this is so sick—he was insanely jealous of me.” She met his eyes. “And of you.”
“Me!”
“He flipped out when he saw the dress I was planning to wear to the prom.”
“The blue one?”
“Yes, the one I showed you.” She smiled wryly. “It came out nice. I loved it. But—” She sighed. “He tried to tear it off me.”
“What?”
“Ruined it, but that was the least of it. Mary showed up in time to stop him. Nothing happened.”
“I wouldn’t call that nothing.”
“The deputy said the same thing. Anyway, Bebe was there too. See, when this kind of thing happened, he would always immediately play innocent and shocked and righteous and say I started it, that I was behaving like a slut. Ugh, it’s too awful to talk about. Anyway, Mary knew what was going on, but Bebe sided with him.”
“Bebe…”
“She’s the one that really hates me.”
“Even more than all the others?”
She looked up, saw that he was gently kidding her, and smiled. She felt some of the tension leaving her. “Anyway, they walked in just in time. He said I was deliberately tempting him because I was so evil, and Bebe chose to believe him.” She hung her head. “Mary knew I wasn’t what he said I was.”
“This all happened the night of the prom? Before I came to get you?”
“The day before. I was finishing the dress on Mary’s sewing machine and I tried it on.”
You come to my bed, do you, harlot?
She whirled violently at a touch on her elbow and almost fell.
Al caught her by the shoulders and steadied her. “Ree?”
“Oh my gosh. Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, really. I was just remembering. Whoo.” She fanned her face and laughed shakily. “So anyway, now you know why I ran off the way I did. By the time you came to pick me up that night, I was on a Greyhound bus to Savannah.” She laid her hands on his chest. “I’m so sorry, Al. I know you came and I wasn’t there. I didn’t mean it the way it must have looked to you.”
“De nada. Considering.” He squeezed her shoulders gently.
With a huge sigh, she broke away and returned to her desk. “So yesterday, Bebe told the whole family that I got caught half-dressed in my sister’s husband’s bedroom. I never told anybody what happened, and I guess Mary didn’t either.” She glanced at the clock. Noon.
“Are you sure I’m not keeping you from something you have to do?”
“No, it’s fine. That”—she pointed generally at the Haven Acres artwork spread out on her desk—“is hopeless. So anyway, I accused Robert of murder and sexual assault and caused a huge uproar. Then when the deputy came, I told her Robert did it.”
He whistled under his breath. “Did she believe you?”
“She believed me when I told her he assaulted me. She wasn’t so sure about him murdering Eugenie.” It sounded fantastic to her own ears at this point. “Oh, but get this.”
“What?”
“Sam Rawley’s wife had Eugenie’s hairpin.”
“What?”
She explained about the pin, Arletta, Maisie. “So now I’m back to the Rawleys. In fact, I’m wondering.” She moved back to the window and studied the trees without seeing them. Seeing the woods at Blue Lake in her mind’s eye. “Sam Rawley was around for both drownings.” She turned to face him. “They were awfully similar.” Al’s expression was not encouraging, but she pressed on. “The girls were similar, and they died the same way.”
“Ree.”
“What? Why not? What if those two deaths are connected?”
“No one has ever suggested that the first one was a murder.”
“Alice saw somebody when my sister died. She couldn’t be mistaken about it being a man.” She paced, thinking out loud. “It must have been from a distance or else he’d have attacked her too. Right? Maybe she saw somebody both times.” She blew out all her breath and shook herself with frus
tration. “If only I could talk to her about it. Just once, calmly.”
“Ree, it’s time to stop. This isn’t doing anybody any good, and you can’t prove anything after all these years.”
She grabbed her purse from her desk, found the pin, and held it up. “Am I supposed to just ignore what I see? Al, the old man hates my family. His wife’s sister killed herself because of them, and my father turned him out of his home. And he had Eugenie’s hairpin.”
“You don’t know how he got that pin. There could be any number of explanations. All this happened twenty, thirty, forty years ago. Who cares?”
“Well, obviously I care.”
“It doesn’t matter what happened.”
“It matters to me!”
“Because of these drownings, Maisie hanged herself. Tiberius lost his job. The accusations need to stop.”
She glared at him, breathing hard. “Well, it’s not my decision.”
“What do you mean? Whose is it?”
She wavered. “Laura’s. The deputy’s.” She sighed and met his eyes. “She gave me her number, said to call if there was anything else. I did. I called her this morning and told her about the pin.”
Her phone let out half a ring. Neither of them moved.
Half a minute later, Rosa knocked and, without waiting, peeked in the door. “I’m sorry. Excuse me. I thought you wouldn’t want to be interrupted, so I took the call, but your sister’s on the phone about your dad. I think it’s important.” She made a little shrinking move at Al. “Sorry!”
Al stirred and backed away. “I ought to get back.” He sounded distant. To Regina’s ears, cool.
Regina picked up the phone. “Mary?”
It was Edith. “Ree? I’m sorry to bother you at work. Mary’s with Mama, and she asked me to call you. She thought you should know that we just heard from the hospital. Papa has taken a turn for the worse. We’re all going now.”
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