Still nodding.
“Give me a kiss?”
Molly smooched her face and then bolted back up to her feet so that the show could resume.
“I’m sure she’ll wear herself out,” Bren said as the show moved into another room. “It’s the only way I could get her to sleep last night, her knowing you were coming home and everything. She just about blew a gasket with all the singing and dancing.” Bren laughed. “I almost blew one, too, waiting for it to end.”
The show had continued to fade further away, getting a little muffled and distant.
“I have to soak it all up,” Clara said with a sigh. “Gotta enjoy it now while it lasts.”
“Nah,” Bren said. “Take your time.”
“I feel like I’ve aged twenty-five years from this shit. Molly too, probably. Pretty soon she’ll go the way of all teenaged daughters and not want to have anything to do with me.”
“Nah,” Bren said again. She was being polite.
“By the way, guys, thank you so much for not having some crazy surprise welcome-home party thing. I mean, it would have been a nice gesture and everything, but—”
“Oh, well, that reminds me,” Bren said.
“No . . .”
“Yep,” Sam said, nodding, grinning. “We’ve got a little something for you.”
“What is it?”
“Just a little something. Follow us to the dining room?”
“Come on guys . . .” Clara walked hesitantly behind Bren and Sam. At each step, she felt more dread for what was behind the dining room door. “I just want to take a shower and then go to bed forever. I’m serious.”
“Straight through here,” Sam said, holding open the door.
“No,” Clara said again, this time feeling her voice fading as her mental capacity went toward a slow acceptance of her fate with a surprise party. And then the quick preparation to be social and present, and to not look like a corpse.
“Surprise!”
18
Sam
Sam wasn’t looking at the surprise, but at Clara’s reaction to the little trick they’d just played. He stepped ahead of her so he could look back at her face as it brightened in open-mouthed amazement. She held her hand to her forehead and said nothing as Molly, dressed in the dazzling red and green sequins of her Christmas parade uniform, marched in place with high bouncing knees, one hand holding a baton, the other eternally jazz-handing.
“Oh, my God,” Clara squealed. “Look at her!”
It was a little something Sam and Bren had cooked up, the two of them, along with Molly, picking up her uniform the previous day from her school. It was the missing ingredient for Molly’s parade prep. She’d done weeks of after-school practice in boring, normal clothes, and, as she confessed, hadn’t felt very merry about it. But that costume, in all of its ridiculousness, was just the distraction she and Bren had needed. And now, this little private show for Mommy, which Sam had hoped to be another helpful distraction. Another way of saying, “life goes on.” Marching on.
The smiling Molly, now twirling the baton in her hand, seemed to exude another message. That not only did her Mommy’s life go on, but that they could have some crazy, stupid fun along the way.
“ . . .Go Molly. Go Molly. Go Molly . . .”
Molly tossed the tumbling baton high into the air as she spun around, the baton almost touching the ceiling before it tumbled down and into her hand at the great applause of the crowd.
When Sam looked back at the parade’s guest of honor, her face was wet. She was crying, smile-crying.
“Oh, my God,” she said again, rushing up to Molly when the show had ended. The two embraced tightly, Clara lifting up the little girl and leaning back with their hug so that her little toes only just touched the carpet. When Clara put her back down, she turned to the two architects of the surprise. “Ignore my tears. I’m just so happy it wasn’t a surprise party.” But her wiping at her eyes seemed to suggest another reason.
Sam felt better that at least one loose end had been taken care of. Clara was safe. A family reunited. He was on the road, after figuring it was the right time to leave and let Clara recover in peace at home. But he still had a few worries of his own. Sam hoped a check-in with Dave at Gulf A&M might make sleeping that night a little easier. So far, he’d only been able to pass out after the sedating effects of a beer and an allergy pill, in direct opposition to Jasper’s warning about mixing the two. It would be nice if he could figure out a natural sleeping pill, the result of some hard work that could finally lead to at least a sense of finality. When he solved the mystery currently plaguing him, Sam would get the best sleep he’d ever had.
At A&M, the campus protests had been waging on, their numbers and intensity ratcheted up from the mosque burning, and now the supposed terrorist attack. Sam listened to the chants and speeches as he walked through the campus. He wanted to give them a chance, try to be open to the message of the latest rally. Their prerogative now was to rally against the possibility of anti-Muslim backlash, taking a proactive stance. Essentially, protesting something that hadn’t even happened yet.
But then he thought about the mosque. He hoped so much for the sake of humanity that it wouldn’t be repeated now after the terrorist attack. Maybe proactive gestures were indeed necessary.
Sam found Dave like he had the first time, his door slightly ajar, his voice from inside sounding tired, nasally, and eternally grouchy.
“Can you stop playing games at my door like that?”
Sam walked in and shut the door behind him. He figured he would save the professor the trouble.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dave said, almost sneering. “You know I’m in here. Just walk in like a normal person.”
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“My office hours are from one to three, so yes, it’s usually an extremely bad time all the way through.”
“For you or just your students?”
Dave shut the book he was reading, the big, heavy hardcover snapping shut and sending a puff of wind across his bangs. “You know what,” he said, “it’s actually a great time. We’ll pretend you’re a student so you can clog up the whole time block. That okay with you?”
“I can’t stay to three.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “Maybe by two I’ll have had enough.”
Sam knew enough about Dave to be a little concerned at the sight of his oily skin and glassed-over eyes. His hair, normally thick and exuberant, was matted flat and on a strange angle across the upper left quadrant of his head.
“Did you sleep here last night?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “So how are you doing?”
“I slept in my car.”
“Okay.”
“In the Walmart parking lot.”
Sam took a half second to visualize the law professor sleeping in the backseat under a pile of clothes, the harsh gray-green light of the parking lot lights filtered through fogged-up windows.
“But I don’t want to hear about it,” Dave said.
“The wife?”
“The everything.”
“Okay. Anything you want to talk about?”
“Not particularly.” He loosened his tie. “So I take it you got my message?”
“Yes,” Sam said. He cleared his throat, hoping to clear the whole mood of the suddenly boozy-smelling office. “And I really appreciate it, by the way.”
“No problem.”
“And the help with your friend at the courthouse, the assistant . . .”
Dave smiled a little. “Vivian?”
“Clara wants me to thank you for setting that up.”
“She’s a nice gal,” he said, still smiling.
“Clara?”
Dave’s eyes seemed to have cleared up, his hand reaching down to his desk and grabbing a pen, twirling it between his fingers. “Her, too.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Do you want to talk about the Somalis’ law
yer?”
“Please.”
“Well, he just quit the case,” Dave said. “It just happened this morning. I heard through the grapevine that it was a matter of personal ethics.”
“A lawyer with ethics?”
“Take it easy,” Dave frowned at him.
“Sorry.”
Dave shrugged and said, “The guy bugged out. It was too weird for him, apparently. Made him feel gross.”
Sam was about to joke about that, too, but Dave cut in with, “Save it.”
“Okay, but tell me about gross. What’s he talking about?”
“He seems to be of a similar belief as you, that these two, Kafi and Timir Khalid, are willing participants in the cover-up.”
“Of course they are. They’re patsies.”
“Precisely,” Dave said. “Martyrs, too. They have no intentions of fighting the case.”
Sam’s head nodded, his excitement welling up from deep within and ready to burst forth.
“But don’t get too excited,” Dave said. “They might be doing this for any number of reasons. They might think, and correctly so, that they have no chance in walking. So they could be after a deal, a lesser penalty.”
“But then why would their lawyer quit?”
Dave shrugged.
“He has to know more than we do. Maybe he knows where these kids are getting their higher orders.”
Dave shrugged again. “This could get all conspiracy crazy on us. I can already feel it. Don’t you?”
“Well, of course it’s a conspiracy,” Sam said. “It’s a big group, and they conspired with each other, with these two kids.” He watched how Dave sat, slumped, listening to him. There was something slightly broken with the professor. Something worse than just the obvious hangover.
The professor leaned forward. “Sam, I’m telling you right now, this could really eat you up if you keep obsessing over it.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. I texted you an hour ago and you’re already here. Shouldn’t you be with Clara right now?”
“She’s resting,” Sam said. “And your office was just on my way.”
“Sure.” Dave sat back in his chair and rolled his eyes.
“So what do you think the chances are of me getting some contact with Kafi and Timir?”
“What kind of contact? An interview?” Dave chuckled. “Absolutely fucking zero. Actually, even less than that.”
“Okay,” Sam said. He pressed the heel of his palm into his forehead, absentmindedly rubbing his head. How the hell he could get access to the two suspects? Real access. Not just through a closed-circuit TV monitor. He wanted to ask and listen and watch. “Okay, but . . . what if . . .?”
“Sam, come on.”
“What?”
“I think you need to focus elsewhere. Give it a rest.”
“Focus on what? The chemical agent? I’ve already got a guy working on that.”
“I mean, focus on Clara.”
“Trust me,” Sam said, chuckling. “I’m focused on her more than you think. Probably focused too much.”
“Well, it’s probably good for her right now. Her daughter, too. If there was any time that they needed a man . . .”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You need to watch that Kurt character.”
“I know that, too. Got any news on him?”
Dave took a deep breath.
“Or do you think you could put me in touch with Vivian?”
“No.”
“What? Why? She’s been such a great help to Clara.”
Dave’s hand was playing with the pen again, jiggling it. “I talked to her last night.”
Sam studied his friend, the way his eyes kept on his desk. “Dave?”
“It’s probably best to just leave her alone for awhile.”
“Dave . . .”
The professor loosened his tie even more and then slipped it over his head, the red tie looking for a brief second like a noose before it came around and off his head.
“That’s not good,” Sam said.
“What’s not good?”
“What you just did.”
Dave sat quietly for a moment, holding his tie, and then he tossed it into his drawer and slammed it shut.
“I think I really fucked things up, Sam.”
“Yeah? How’d it happen?”
“Have you seen this girl? Vivian?”
“No.”
“And she comes over here, talking about how I owed her a favor now, and, man . . .
“What?”
“She’s always been a little flirty, but . . . I guess I just got too excited. Acted a fool.” He covered his face with his hands. Dave exhaled heavily through his fingers, cursing at himself a few times.
“Hey, Dave. How about we wrap up office hours for now?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I can’t drink any more even if I wanted to.”
“I meant to just go for a walk.”
He drew his hands from his face and took another breath. “I’m alright,” he said. “I’m alright.”
“So you wanna go?”
“Yeah.”
Outside in the fresh air, Dave did seem to be a little more “alright.” Or maybe it was because the conversation had returned to other people’s problems. This latest problem, of course, fell again on Clara’s already burdened shoulders.
“That was why I was encouraging you to focus on her,” Dave said. “Instead of this terror attack. Leave that up to the Feds.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“And stop bothering them, by the way. You want them to do their job, right?”
That that was precisely the problem. They hadn’t been doing their jobs. Sam looked out across the campus, watching all of the innocent students walking by. Maybe it was part of his inner professor coming through, but he was worried about them. He was even worried about the protestors, whom he could still vaguely hear. There was also the faint odor of tear gas wafting in the breeze.
“Okay,” Sam said, running a hand through his hair. “So tell me about Kurt.”
“That’s actually the main reason I called you over here. That, and getting me out of office hours.” Dave paused for a moment, watching the slender bare legs of a pretty young student as she passed by.
“Dave?”
“So Kurt went missing from his halfway house.”
“Missing?”
“He’s court-ordered to stay there, like house arrest, for two months. But he only managed two days.”
Sam felt a chill right down to his bones. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
“Well, hold on.”
“He’s here,” Sam said. “I saw him the day of the attack. I swear I did.”
“You saw him where?”
“Out front of the courthouse, with everyone else. This was right after. He seemed to be walking around, looking around. I think he was looking for Clara.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Dave said. “But the latest records show that he’s switched the location of his parole meeting from Angola to New Orleans.”
“Dave, he’s already here. He was there.”
Dave slowed his walk. His head turned to Sam, his eyebrows raised. “You’re not seriously implicating Kurt in this, too, now, are you?”
“No,” Sam said, trying not to make it sound like an obvious lie. But it also wasn’t an obvious implication. He just thought it was weird, so very fucking weird that Kurt had been at the crime scene, and that he’d been acting the way he did. Sam remembered how he’d been inspecting the damage, as if he was compiling a report about it.
“Sam? Don’t start up with all that conspiracy shit again . . .”
“Well, it’s not so crazy anymore. You just said he’s got a parole meeting in New Orleans. You’ve just corroborated with me.”
“If that’s the way you want to look at it,” Dave said, picking up his pace again. “I can’t stop you from being irrational. But if you actually want my opinion, whi
ch lately I’m suspecting more and more that you don’t care for . . . But my opinion is that you refocus on Clara, and do it before it’s too late.”
Sam was beginning to feel a little tired of getting that same lecture from the man who, as it sounded, had stepped out on his wife and kids with some young legal assistant—especially since this assistant was being so helpful to Clara. Why would Dave go ahead and try to fuck all that up?
“You want to start compiling evidence,” Dave said. “Everything. The phone calls, the threats, Kurt going rogue from the halfway house. You especially want to include him showing up at her place of work. That’s a huge red flag. If you follow my advice, and put everything together, all the right pieces, maybe throw Vivian a few bucks and have her take the case . . . If you do all those things, then she should be able to get a restraining order, no problem.”
“Vivian’s not putting one out on you, is she?”
“No,” Dave said. “But your face might want one from my fist.”
Sam believed him.
19
Clara
Clara took a bite of her steak, her eyes closing involuntarily at the savory burst of flavor. Since the hospital, her sense of taste seemed to have intensified. All of her senses, in fact, everything coming alive again just as she was reborn to this amazing reality. It was all so vivid, as was Clara’s appreciation for her unique second chance. And for Sam, especially.
Clara had a hard time not smiling when she opened her eyes, when she saw that he was still there, that they were still in a restaurant. That they were still together and, so far, feeling like nothing terrible had happened only a few days before.
He’d caught her staring. “What?”
“You’re back in front of your shrimp and grits,” she said. “All must be right in the world.”
“It feels that way.” Sam put his fork down and reached for a glistening glass of white wine. “Back at Maison Rouge.”
“Mm-hmm . . .”
“Back in front of you. I think it’s all about that last part.”
“Back in front of me?”
He took a sip of wine, his eyes on her throughout. He licked his lips after, and said, “I wasn’t sure if I would have any of this ever again.”
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