“He had been shot at last week, by someone who looked like a grandmother. When I made a move to get that new cane and pull it out of its case, well, all he saw was the big bright handle and thought I was pulling out a gun,” she said dully.
Adrienne sputtered. “Like you look like someone who’s waiting to pop a cop? That’s ridiculous. And why did he stop you, anyway? What cause did he have?”
“A tip. Someone called in, gave them the make and license number of my car, said they had just seen a drug transaction go down and were reporting it.”
“Who was it?” Adrienne was suspicious.
“Anonymous.” Elizabeth really didn’t feel like talking.
“Convenient,” Ian noted, meeting his wife’s eyes, sharing his suspicions. “But why did they charge you with distribution? There wasn’t enough to warrant it.” Adrienne was indignant.
Elizabeth just shrugged slightly, feeling suddenly limp and worn from the day. “It had something to do with . . . Serenity packaged each joint in a plastic bag with . . . a tag on it. Something like that, anyway.”
Elizabeth pushed back the chair and began to get up. “Thank you both for coming to my rescue. I really appreciate it, but I need to get home. I need to rest.”
“Elizabeth, please spend the night here,” Adrienne implored, not liking the white pallor of Elizabeth’s skin or the shocking multicolored bruise. Talk about police brutality—not letting a poor woman get the cane she needed and then making her fall. Good grief.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll call you in the morning.” Elizabeth’s promise was faint. “I appreciate your taking me home, though. They said my car would be impounded probably until next week.”
The ride to her home was silent, Ian sensing her fatigue. He insisted on walking her inside the house and making sure she had everything she needed. He checked her refrigerator, pointing out some ideas for a simple meal later.
“Call us if you need anything,” he urged, wishing she would let them do more.
“I promise. I’ll call you both tomorrow. And thank you for coming and getting me,” she said, trying to smile and then stopping as the muscles protested.
What a mess, he thought, driving back home.
Adrienne was thinking much the same thing. He sat next to her at the table. “You know what I think?” she asked him, eyebrows arched.
“An inside job,” Ian said. “Not only did Serenity make a tidy profit, she set her client up for a very nasty fall—figuratively and literally.”
Adrienne nodded. “I don’t think Elizabeth’s put it together yet.”
Ian smiled, touching his wife’s hand. “But you’ll help her do that, won’t you?”
Her smile didn’t quite reach angry eyes as she squeezed back. “You bet I will.”
The first thing Elizabeth did after she rested was call Carol. She knew she would need a lawyer and at this moment, she really didn’t want to have to explain anything to Michael.
It had been an eye-opening conversation.
After she explained why she needed a lawyer, Carol demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have gotten you great stuff delivered to your door and no one would have ever known!”
“Carol,” Elizabeth’s voice was hushed with shock, “you do drugs?”
“Not anymore,” her cousin said impatiently. “Now, tell me—”
“You did drugs?” Elizabeth was floored. “When did this happen?”
“Another lifetime ago, okay?” Elizabeth could sense her cousin’s eyes rolling with annoyance. “Now tell me what you need me to do.” The subject was definitely changed.
“She what?”
Carol, scowling on the other end, held the receiver away from her ear. Then did some yelling of her own. “Michael, stop screaming in my ear and just listen. Are you sitting down?”
She waited for him to grumble a yes. In the next several minutes she explained what Elizabeth had told her. It had been hours since she had talked to her cousin, but “you weren’t home. She needs a lawyer, Michael. All the lawyers I know are in Los Angeles. I figured you would know who to call better than anyone and besides, Gordon is out of town at a conference.”
“I’ve got to see her. She’s at the house now, isn’t she? She’s not still in jail?”
“Michael, she doesn’t want you. She needs a lawyer. And right now she’s at a friend’s house. Okay? She told me to call you and see if you would get her a lawyer.”
Michael stood very still, trying to keep this from cracking him open. She didn’t want him? How could Elizabeth do this to him? He took a ragged breath. “I’ll get her one; don’t worry. I’ll look around and call you as soon as I have one lined up.” And he hung up the phone, leaning against it, feeling tears squeeze out of his eyes no matter how tightly he shut them.
It would be the end of the following week before the pictures of her began to appear in several of the local county papers that came out weekly. Those didn’t matter. What did matter enormously was that it appeared on the front of the city section in Richmond. She cringed when she imagined all the people she knew seeing it and then reading the caption.
The wife of city businessman Michael Whittaker, former member of the Richmond City Council, was arrested last Saturday for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute . . .
She forced herself to read the rest of it quickly. The picture made her shudder, and she wondered where they had gotten their information. She never said the first word about why she had marijuana in her car and yet unidentified sources said she suffered from MS and was using it for medicinal purposes. Those words had never come out of her mouth!
Her nose wrinkled at the words suffers and victim. Who said she suffered? Whoever said she was a victim? These two words had also never come out of her mouth; she had never used them in her entire life. Why couldn’t they all just leave her alone?
As if on cue, the phone began ringing again, and she waited for the answering machine to screen it. This morning so far had brought voices she’d ignored. Either friends expressing concern or media outlets wanting comments. There were also shocked friends, either from here or the city. “How could you, Elizabeth?” or “How long have you been a drug addict? You taught my daughter in Sunday school; were you using then?” The voices of outrage and righteousness rankled the most.
One voice called her name and she snatched up the phone.
“Mom?” Kellan’s voice.
She grabbed it. “Kellan?”
“Are you all right? A friend who gets the Richmond newspaper just showed me her copy. I saw the picture. What have you been doing out there? Is that why you left to go live at the river?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes, wondering how to answer such a complicated question. “That and for other reasons. You see, there is a woman who lives here who . . . has the same illness. She’d been on one of the therapies available, but was still feeling awful. One of her friends brought her a joint to smoke and she’s amazingly better. She’s even running, Kellan. Think of it! So, we—the members of my support group, some of us anyway—decided to try it ourselves. There are volumes of anecdotal information about marijuana that offers . . . hope. That’s why we were doing it, just hoping it would help . . .”
“Did it?”
Elizabeth grimaced and wished with all her heart she could shout yes! “No, not like it helped our friend. One man who is in a lot of pain says it has helped him, but that’s about it. When I got stopped yesterday, we were using it for the last time. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Has Dad called?”
“No. I don’t know if your father even knows—well—I’d be surprised if he hasn’t heard yet, but no . . . he hasn’t called.” Oddly, she felt a pang about being ignored. Perhaps she had hoped he would call, but after all, he was only doing what she had asked him to do months ago—leave her alone.
“What can I do? Surely I can come to help with something. Moral support, if nothing else.” Kellan was insistent. “I really need to see that you’
re all right, okay?”
“Don’t you have classes?”
“I can take off tomorrow. Look, I’ll leave in just a little while, spend the night, and get back here tomorrow afternoon. I’ll still be able to make the evening lecture. And if not, then I can get the notes from a friend.”
Kellan wouldn’t take no for an answer so Elizabeth finally gave in. It would be wonderful to see her daughter, after all.
The next phone call was one she really didn’t want.
“Elizabeth? If you’re there, pick up. If you’re not I’ll call the hospital, which is where you should be after that fall—”
“Mother? I’m all right, don’t worry.” Elizabeth tried to sound soothing, but her mother was already out of control.
“What on earth is going on there? Who ever forced you to buy drugs for them? My heaven’s, Elizabeth, do you have any idea how awful this is? I’ve never been so humiliated in my life, seeing my poor daughter’s picture on the front page. Everyone in the world I have ever known has called me this morning, and I don’t know what to tell them!” Her mother’s excited chatter turned Elizabeth to ice.
“What bothers you the most, Mother? Being embarrassed or not knowing what to say?” Elizabeth quietly hung up.
Virginia Mae looked at the phone like it was a mistake. Their conversation must have got cut off. This was too important! She dialed the number again and got the answering machine. This did not make sense because she knew Elizabeth was there. She dialed the operator and asked that her line and her daughter’s line be checked.
It was only after the operator had patiently checked the numbers twice and assured her everything was working perfectly that Virginia Mae suddenly considered the astonishing idea that her daughter had actually hung up on her . . . again.
It lasted just for a moment. It was too ridiculous; something else must have happened. And she called Carol and got no answers to her questions. She called Michael and got an answering machine.
Virginia Mae continued to field phone calls for the rest of the morning from her friends who wanted to know about Elizabeth. She finally turned her own answering machine on and went out to visit her sister, feeling indignant about her life at this moment and eager to confide in someone with an understanding ear.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Kellan arrived by mid-afternoon, an expectant smile fading when she saw her mother’s face. “How could they have done this to you?” She hugged her mother gently, hoping there had been no other bruises, before pulling back and scrutinizing her. “Have you seen a doctor?”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“Why not?” Kellan asked, concern sharpening her voice. “Something could be broken.”
Elizabeth hooked her arm around her daughter’s and walked inside the house with her. “Because it’s better than it was yesterday. Truly. So don’t worry. Tell me what you’ve been doing.”
Kellan flopped down on one of the kitchen chairs, looked at her poor beat-up mother, then grinned. “Nothing as exciting as you. Same old college grind. Papers, books, reading, projects, exams. Now, let’s get back to this drug deal—do you have a lawyer, or are you going to plead guilty or what?”
Elizabeth tore a piece of a paper napkin into little balls and rubbed them around on the table, enjoying the feeling of something underneath her fingertips. It gave her something mindless to do while she put together an answer.
“I talked with Carol. She said she would call around and see what she could find. She offered me one of her lawyers but they’re all in LA, and since I’m not going to pay a lot for a legal defense, she said she’d find someone local.”
When the phone began ringing again, Elizabeth listened to the machine. When she heard Carol’s voice on the other end, she picked it up. “Hi, Carol, guess who’s come to see me. No, not . . . Kellan, yeah. Someone showed her my picture in the paper and she insisted on checking up on me. Sure, I’ll put her on. What’s that? Oh, you talked to Michael? How was he—upset?” She listened intently, frowning. “I never said I didn’t want to talk to him; I said I didn’t want to bother him. There is a difference. He found me someone? That’s great. Sure, here she is.” Elizabeth handed the phone over, murmuring, “Your fairy godmother.”
She heard them talk without listening to what they said, thinking about Carol. Michael was upset because he thought she didn’t want him to call her, but it wasn’t true. She would love to hear from him . . . but she didn’t want to see him, not yet. Especially not with a bruised face; she shuddered thinking of his reaction. Still, memories and feelings suddenly swamped her and she felt her eyes burn with a wetness she would not let out. The past was the past. She could deal only with the present.
Would things always be this complicated?
Elizabeth mouthed she was going to the bathroom and left. After a few moments of chatter, Kellan hung up the phone and was rooting around the refrigerator for a snack when the doorbell rang.
“Kellan, get that please?”
“Sure.” She shut the fridge and walked quickly to the foyer.
She opened the door, and for the rest of her life Kellan would never forget this defining moment. Hearing the door open, the tall man turned to look at her from the bottom step.
Blue eyes met brown ones and time stopped. A hush swelled between them, a moment of anticipation. A humming started as two unique melodies waited to meet for the first inevitable time.
Kellan and Gregory had both done a dangerous thing. They had put shutters on their souls, an act of control that is only an illusion. It’s an act of will that in reality only exposes the most vulnerable places. By refusing all the gifts that love has to offer, they allowed its surprise to cut right into their hearts.
Kellan, standing very still, fell into his smile with a wonder as new and old as time itself. Gregory’s heart was thumping wildly, tangling with emotions he thought were under his control.
Elizabeth looked over Kellan’s shoulder. “Gregory? Hello.”
The startled shock on his face made her hand reach up to cover the bruise. “It’s getting better.”
His breath came out in a rush. “Elizabeth, I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do—” He felt awful; her cheek was swollen, an angry mottle of purples and blues.
“No, I don’t need a thing. Won’t you come in? Oh, and this is my daughter, Kellan. Kellan, Gregory Jamison.”
Kellan shivered at the brief touch of his skin and then the handshake was over. They followed Elizabeth into the kitchen and sat around the table. “Can I get you anything?”
Gregory blinked; for a moment he forgot why he had even come.
“Um, no, thank you, ma’am, no. I was visiting my mother and while I was at the store for her, I saw Dr. Meade. You know him, don’t you?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“He saw the story and the picture about you and said to tell that little girl he’d be glad to testify on her behalf if she needs anyone from the medical community to back her up on the use of medicinal marijuana.”
“He did?” She was touched. “Thank him for me, please. I’ll certainly tell my lawyer about his offer. Everything is . . . a jumble right now. I won’t be sure of what I’ll be doing until I see the lawyer my husband has found for me.”
He smiled.
“Who’s Dr. Meade, Mom?” Kellan thought it was time she got into this conversation.
As Elizabeth explained, Gregory kept glancing her way and tried to ignore this tug at his heart that had started the moment their eyes met. He sternly reminded himself this was Elizabeth’s daughter. One person in the family with an awful illness was more than enough.
He forced his eyes elsewhere while he got his thoughts under control. As soon as there was a lull in the conversation, he rose to leave.
“Well, that’s all I came to tell you. Let me know if you or your lawyer wants to talk to him. You’ve got my number, right?”
“Yes, I believe I do. It’s on the membership roster, right?”
H
e colored slightly. “Right. Call anytime.”
“Do you have to go?” The words flew out of Kellan’s mouth before the thought had even formed. It was important he not leave. Not yet.
Elizabeth agreed, wanting to do something for this young man who was nice enough to go out of his way for her.
“Yes, Gregory, you have to stay. It’s certainly close enough to dinnertime. I’ll order pizza and you and Kellan can go pick it up. I’ve got a salad in the refrigerator, and I’ll toast some garlic bread.” She rummaged in her purse for cash and then picked up the phone and began dialing.
“I didn’t come to eat,” he protested. He didn’t think this was a good idea, but he stopped abruptly when Kellan’s hand pressed his arm. That pulled him around to look at her, and his heart danced and skipped into a new rhythm.
“Maybe you didn’t, but you are now.” Her smile was welcome, and he suddenly felt himself relax in it. What could one meal matter?
He was pulling out of the driveway when she asked him where he lived and he told her. “I’ve never been to Fredericksburg,” she lied. “I’d love to see it.” Her lovely face looked expectant.
“Sure . . . we’ll have to plan on it,” he said vaguely, knowing it would never happen. “Elizabeth has mentioned that you’re at UVA?”
“Yes. I’ll have to go back tomorrow afternoon.” He pulled onto the highway and headed east. He could feel her eyes on him and was glad he had to keep his on the road.
“How do you know my mother, Gregory?” She wanted to know everything about him and more.
His hands clenched the steering wheel tightly and then he forced himself to relax. This is where it all hits the fan, he thought. He knew honesty would be his protection, but he was surprised as he tasted the hollowness of regret.
He told her everything, not holding anything back because he knew this was where it all ended. “Now you know more about me than my own mother.”
“Does my mother know?”
He nodded. “Only her and Adrienne Moore. And Dr. Meade. That’s it.”
A Sundog Moment Page 29