Robin turned up her street.
Donovan followed, chuckling now. “Like you said, I carry a camera around town with me. Everyone knows I take pictures. I can’t remember every shot.”
She shrugged as best she could while gripping the crutches and maneuvered around a fire hydrant. “I guess I can understand that. I don’t exactly remember every mermaid I’ve ever made.”
“But those were good pictures. You were having a good time.” He caught up with her and glanced at her. “That doesn’t happen often enough, does it?”
“What?” She frowned. “Having a good time? I have fun every single day I’m alive.”
“Oh, come on. You expect me to believe that? When you’re running out of breath just trying to get home after work?”
Hot words filled her mind, but she refused to engage them. Her life, the quality of it, was none of his business. She angled her way to a nearby cut in the curb and edged her way to the street. After checking for traffic and seeing the road empty of any golf carts, she started across.
Donovan followed. “Look, I’m not trying to make you feel bad. But don’t think I don’t know how it is. You’re wanting to be normal, but your legs won’t let you. They call it putting up a brave front, right? Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
“Actually, no.” Robin gripped the crutches tighter and swung herself harder along the street. So what if she was out of breath. She didn’t consider herself broken or damaged. Not now, not anymore. Donovan, in all his arrogance and condescension, had taught her that, at least.
Funny how God had used him to teach her.
“No, really. I know better. Just like with that kid, that Kerry. He talks nonsense all the time. Can’t walk right and can barely pronounce one word in twenty. And he thinks he’s perfect.”
Robin stopped within a foot of the opposite curb to round on the man. “He. Is.” The words scraped through her gritted teeth.
His eyes widened, and he backed up a step. “How can you say that? Anyone can look at him and see he’s not right.”
“Donovan, that’s a really horrible attitude. Yes, Kerry has handicaps. I’m not denying that. So do I. But that doesn’t make us damaged, and it doesn’t make us worthless either.”
His mouth dropped open, and he stared at her for several, eon-length seconds before he recovered, stammering. “Look, no, I never said you were worthless. No. You’re one of the best—you, and Kerry, too. He’s a great guy. But you can’t go around pretending you’re happy with your handicaps. That’s ridiculous.”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Sure, I get it. I see you all the time. I see him. I see the other kids. I see how hard it is. I wish I could do something to make you better. That’s all, Robin.” Passion twisted his features. “I just want you to be perfect, to have perfect lives. What’s wrong with that?” He pounded the side of a fist against his temple. “You’re the one who doesn’t get it, Robin. You don’t understand. I’m trying so hard to show you, but you just won’t.” For the first time, she saw emotion in his ice-colored eyes.
But there was so much wrong with his words.
“Listen to me. If my legs worked just fine, I wouldn’t be on the team. I wouldn’t know all the kids, all my teammates, and the runners, and the people who come to support us. I wouldn’t know Kerry. And that would handicap me far more than not being able to run.”
But his expression didn’t change from fierce determination to any kind of understanding.
She looked up and saw her front door. “Look, I’m home, and I’m tired. I’ll see you sometime, OK?”
Donovan glanced over at the house. “You use crutches and live in a two-story building?”
“That’s right. Bye.” Robin banged up the steps and unlocked her front door.
He wanted to help.
Couldn’t she just let go of her anger enough to let him?
Becca and Jake both stared when Mr. Bird came in with the new clothes. Becca didn’t feel like moving, and anyway, it was her turn to hide the hole. Jake kept telling her they had to make it deeper, not wider. She didn’t get it until he showed her with a pile of dirty sheets. So now she leaned against the wall, her thumb in her mouth.
Mr. Bird dropped the paper bag and held up a sweater. It was bright, blue or green, and it looked soft.
Becca wanted to lay down on it, and wrap it around her. The sheets weren’t very warm and she almost always had goose bumps on her arms and legs.
“Remember the job you’re going to do for me? This is what you’re going to wear. Pretty, isn’t it? It’s almost the same color as my little robin’s eyes.”
Becca didn’t want to wear it anymore.
He squatted in front of her. “What’s the matter, little robin? You’re getting pale. Are you sick?”
She stared at his face and sucked her thumb.
He shook his head and gathered the clothes together. “I’ll keep these safe. Don’t want them getting all dirty in here. But you’ll get to wear them when we finish off the story. That won’t be long. I promise.”
After Mr. Bird went away again, Jake crawled onto the bed next to Becca. “Don’t you let him beat you down. Don’t you let him.”
Without taking her thumb out of her mouth, Becca said, “He din’ hi’ me.”
“I’m not talking about him hitting you.” Jake put his arm around her. Nobody had touched her in so long, and Becca leaned into his skinny chest. “I mean, don’t let him make you give up. Don’t stop trying.”
“But I’m too scared to try.” She dug her head into his chest. “I’m so scared.”
With Sam as her protector gone, it seemed Robin ran into Donovan everywhere: at the co-op, at the grocery store, leaving church on Sunday morning.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said after she’d left after the service. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his baggy slacks. “We can’t prove Sam isn’t the killer because he hasn’t got all the alibis he needs.”
Robin stared at her crutch tips and nodded.
“The only way to clear him is to prove it’s someone else.”
He said the words as though he’d never considered the possibility before. But they’d gone over it countless times, and Robin sighed. Repeating what they needed to do didn’t get it done.
“I thought you agreed?”
Robin stopped, straightening to glare at him. “I thought we were going to do something.”
“Well, yeah. When we figure out what.” He turned, looking her. “The thing is, whoever it is has a thing for you. I don’t know if you’d worked that out.” His gaze slanted towards her. “I mean, he made the dead bodies look like you. I already told you that.”
“We discussed it, yes. I remember.” She shifted a crutch. “And Alan Bricker told me, and Macias keeps reminding me. Didn’t they question you just because you know me?”
“Well, yeah.”
She edged over dry grass at the edge of the walkway to pass him, and he immediately started to walk alongside her again.
“So they looked at everyone you know?”
She nodded.
“That’s how they got onto Sam?”
“They didn’t tell me.”
The church lot, usually full of golf carts after a service, had emptied, leaving only a few. Reluctantly, Robin asked, “Do you need a ride?”
“It’s too beautiful a day to waste in a vehicle. Anyway, you need the exercise.”
Clenching her teeth, Robin ground out, “I get plenty of exercise.”
“Yeah, but if you didn’t use crutches, you could take walks and get fit like anybody else. And better than that, we could hold hands while we walked.”
She might be able to hold hands with Sam, too. But then, she’d have no reason to lean into his embrace every time she went up to bat. Robin stowed her crutches in the hold and lifted herself into the cart.
Why did she need this guy anyway? Sure, he promised to help her clear
Sam, but it wasn’t his job any more than it was hers. Macias had made that clear.
“Robin?”
“Later, OK?”
“Wait.” He gripped the roof of the cart and swung himself inside.
Robin let out a breath of frustration but didn’t ask him to get out. He wasn’t bad, just colossally insensitive.
“Just FYI.” She spun the cart to head for the road leading to the town center and her grandmother’s house. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t hold your hand.”
“Oh, understood.” He chuckled. “You’re Sam’s girl.”
She went up over the curb. With a struggle, she coaxed the cart back onto the road.
Donovan waited until they were underway again, and said, “You made it sound like you don’t think I’m doing anything to help. But I’ve been making some lists. I want to show them to you.”
She let the cart stall and stared at him.
“Really. Here. I got them with me.” He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a crumpled mass of lined paper, which he unfolded. “Remember I said to watch Danny? Here’s all the reasons why. Here. Look at this one.” He pointed to some scrawled words, and despite her inner shrinking away from that idea, Robin leaned forward to read them.
6. Acts like Robin is his property. Uber protective. Forgets she’s an adult who can make her own decisions.
Robin frowned. “There’s nothing wrong with this, Donovan. He’s protective of all the team members.”
“Yeah, well, the rest of them are kids.”
“No, they’re not. Have you even looked at them?”
“What do you think? I take pictures of them all the time. I told you, Robin. I see things other people don’t.” He gave her a look full of significance she couldn’t read. “I see things.”
She flipped the start button on the cart and pulled it back onto the road. “First you accused Sam without having much of a reason, and now you’re stuck on Danny.”
She pulled into the small parking area in front of her grandmother’s house. “You can make it to wherever you’re going, right?” Since he’d just touted the benefits of walking, she didn’t feel the need to coddle him.
“Sure.” He put one leg out of the cart and leaned back in, moving fast.
Only seconds before his mouth reached hers, Robin realized his intentions and turned her head.
“Hey! You let Sam kiss you!”
Rather than demand how he knew, she pointed to the street. “That’s enough. You should go now.”
At four fifty that afternoon, Sam looked up to see a warden, followed by Detective Macias, stop outside his cell door. He was alone in the jail. In the last three days two kids, both high on meth, had been admitted and released, and several drunks had spent time in the tank. Sam had been the only constant, and though they hadn’t formally charged him with kidnapping and murder, he knew it was just a waiting game. One he didn’t want to play.
“Detective.” He stood and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Sam.” The man motioned to the warden, who opened the cell and stepped back.
Sam raised his eyebrows. They were setting him free? Odd. He didn’t move.
“Come on out.” Macias waved a large hand and moved out of Sam’s way.
“What’s going on?”
“We can only hold you for seventy-two hours without charging you, but we don’t have enough evidence.” Macias glared at him as though Sam had arranged to hide evidence solely to thwart him.
“But I’m still a suspect.”
“Number one.” Macias seemed to be biting the inside of his mouth.
“So you’re just going to let me go?” Sam edged out of the door, past the warden, who slammed it after him. The relief of knowing he was on the outside filled his chest with happiness and something more, something that seemed to have sprouted wings, but the look on the detective’s face warned him to keep his celebration hidden, at least for a while.
Macias glowered at him, his head bent so his brows looked heavy and menacing. “You’ll be under surveillance. If I were you, I’d line up my alibis really carefully. Make sure you’re with someone at all times.”
Sam snorted. “I’m single. You suggesting I go shack up with someone every night just to stay out of jail?”
“I’m suggesting you make sure no one can pin it on you. Either that, or make sure no one else gets kidnapped or killed.”
Sam watched the warden disappear into the break room and followed Macias to the front of the police station. “What are you saying?”
Macias said nothing while Sam’s things were returned to him. A few minutes later, Sam was once again dressed in his own clothing and out in the open air. The sunshine he’d been missing had disappeared, and heavy clouds rolled across the sky. He didn’t care. A storm, while he was free and outside to experience it, was a thousand times more precious than sunshine he couldn’t feel.
As soon as the heavy doors closed behind them, Macias said, “Sam, Bricker admitted he’d told you.”
“He did? When?”
Macias turned and stared hard into Sam’s eyes. He’d stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and gestured with his hands surrounded by material. “When I asked him. Three days ago.”
Fury started a small fire in Sam’s chest. “You said he denied it.”
“Yeah, I did. But there’s still the question of that baby. You found her where we’d already searched. So I put you in jail.”
“I told you I had a feeling.”
“I think you had prior knowledge. Unfortunately, that’s all I have on you at the moment, but I swear, Albrecht, I’ll be watching you.”
14
Becca squatted by the door with her thumb in her mouth and watched Jake. He crouched next to her mattress, bent tight like a ball, and scraped the hole with the handle of her toothbrush. He’d already broken his in half. But the hole was huge now, big enough that she could have crawled through it, if there was anywhere to go. But there wasn’t. Instead, bits of wood stopped her. When Becca first ran into all that wood, she’d thrown her toothbrush at Jake and cried.
Jake had tried to break the strips. He’d tried kicking them. He’d said a couple words that made Becca look over her shoulder, waiting for someone to yell at him. No one did, of course. Mr. Bird hadn’t been there since the night before, and her stomach rumbled.
Something snapped, and with another string of words, Jake flopped onto his back on the mattress, two more bits of toothbrush handle in his hands.
Becca popped her thumb out for a minute. “Are you gonna give up?”
“No, I’m not gonna give up.” He stood up, glared at the wall for a few minutes, pushed the mattress back in place, shoved her pillow over the dust and pushed the sheets over it. Now it just looked like a messy bed. And it looked like he was giving up after all.
“What are you gonna do?”
“Stop whining.” He sat down on his mattress and jerked his hand at her. “You don’t have to listen for a while, OK? I’m gonna think.”
She got up and stood in the middle of the room, watching him. He put his knees up, and leaned his arms on them with his head tipped back against the wall.
She stepped closer. “Can we pray?”
“What good’s that gonna do?”
“God always answers. He loves us.” That’s what her mommy and daddy always told her. Just because praying made her feel bad didn’t mean Jesus wasn’t listening. He probably felt bad for her, too.
“Yeah, yeah. But we’re still stuck in this dungeon, and nobody’s helping us get out.”
“We should pray anyway.”
Jake shrugged and got up. “Go ahead. I’m gonna look in the bathroom again. Hey, get me the end of your toothbrush. Not the brush part, the other part. Maybe I can use that. Maybe I can dig through the wood with it. That wood’s all splintery.”
Becca hunkered down and felt along the wall until she grabbed the bit of plastic. The unbroken end had worn down, a
nd the broken end was twisted. But it had a few sharp points. They might be able to do something with it.
She took it to the bathroom. “Here. I gotta go.”
“OK.” Jake left the bathroom and let her do what she needed to. After she washed her hands, she opened the door.
Mr. Bird had come in.
Becca plopped down on her mattress and stuck her thumb back in her mouth. What if he looked behind her pillow? What if he already knew what they were doing? What if he decided to check their toothbrushes to see if they’d been brushing their teeth?
And what if he’d caught Jake with the end of her toothbrush? She looked at Jake.
He stared up at Mr. Bird. His hands were behind his back, and he looked like he expected Mr. Bird to hit him. But Mr. Bird didn’t seem interested in Jake at all.
He held out a couple sandwiches and boxes of milk with straws already in them. “You want some lunch?”
She nodded. She didn’t mention not having had any breakfast, and neither did Jake.
“Listen, kids. Things are changing. I talked to both your parents—”
Jake made a face like he didn’t believe anything Mr. Bird said.
“Well, your mom, anyway, and they might be coming to get you sooner than I thought. We’re gonna get you two fixed up for them.”
“Fixed up?” Jake put his sandwich down on the floor and stared up at Mr. Bird.
“Yeah. Haircuts, and some new clothes. Stuff like that.” Mr. Bird reached down and stroked Becca’s messy head. “I’m going to put something in your hair to make it not so tangled. It’ll turn it black but that’s OK. That’ll go away.”
“No.” Jake stood up.
“What?” Mr. Bird looked mean when he turned to Jake.
“No, you’re not gonna dye her hair.”
“No, you’re right, I’m not. It’s for the tangles.”
“You’re lying.” Jake glared up at Mr. Bird like he wanted to punch him. His hands made tight fists that he pressed to his sides. “You’re planning to dye her hair just like you did to Lehanie, but I’m not gonna let you.”
“Like you could do anything.” Mr. Bird shook his head. “Stupid kid.”
Fixing Perfect Page 14