“I got engaged tonight,” she said. She curled her hand into a ball when Maddie’s eyes darted toward her finger. “To my best friend.”
Maddie’s chest heaved a few times with deep breaths, but the anguish and anger seemed to have left her. “You are really lucky,” she said. “Take my advice. Don’t ever take your fiancé for granted. Live every single moment together like it’s your last. You have no idea how many regrets your mind can dig up after the person you love has gone.”
Joanna glanced over at her coffee and pie. She wished she’d brought it to the table with her. The distraction would be helpful.
Maddie tilted her head to the side. “You’re not happy,” she said with wonder.
“I’m happy,” Joanna said.
“No, you’re not. I can tell. Something’s wrong. Don’t you love him?”
“Of course I do. He’s my best friend.”
“That’s not the same thing, though,” Maddie said. She rested her head on her hand, propped up on one elbow. “When Michael proposed, I couldn’t wait to tell the whole world. I showed everyone the ring. It was one of the best times of my life. But you’re here, in the middle of the night, and I know that means you’re not happy because I’m here in the middle of the night and I’m not happy.”
“It’s just a lot to take in all at once, I guess,” Joanna said.
“Was it a surprise proposal?”
“Definitely.” Joanna chuckled, patted her hand on the tabletop a few times. “I was definitely surprised. I should get back to my coffee. Getting cold, I’m sure.” She slid out of the booth and started back to the counter, but was stopped when Maddie reached out and grabbed her shirttail.
“Thank you for helping me with the baby names,” she said.
“I didn’t really help with anything.”
Maddie let her hand drop. “Well, I’m not crying anymore, so you must have done something.” She paused. “Listen, I know you guys are trying to be there for me. And I’m sorry I’m so difficult to help. I’m trying to put my life back together, but it’s hard when you don’t really even want to have a life. I’d rather be with Michael than trying to gut this out alone, and that’s a feeling that won’t go away. I don’t think the other chick understands that.”
Joanna shook her head. “Probably not.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. “But she’s trying to comfort me. I can see that. I just don’t always want to see it. I keep being mean to her, and then I feel bad, which only makes everything worse.”
Joanna crouched back into the booth seat across from Maddie. “Are you getting help?”
“My mom’s around. I sent her home tonight to get some rest and take care of my dad, but I really just wanted some time alone.”
“To kill yourself?” Joanna asked.
Maddie’s hands worried themselves along the spiral edge of her notebook. She shrugged. “I came here, didn’t I?”
She had a point, although Joanna wondered if she was here only because it was a lot harder to fling yourself into traffic at three in the morning than it was during rush hour. “I’m glad you did,” Joanna said softly.
“Why are you all so into making sure I survive, anyway?” Maddie asked.
“Because we were there,” Joanna replied. “I can’t really explain it. We weren’t even friends before the crash. We’d never met before. Now we see each other every day and we text each other at night. Something happened that day to bind us all together. You, too.”
“Maybe it was Michael,” Maddie said, but she said it in a voice so low, Joanna could barely hear her, and when Joanna asked her to repeat herself, she shook her head. “Anyway. Your coffee.”
“Yeah,” Joanna said. She slid out of the booth again and headed toward the counter, where her coffee and pie still awaited her. Annie appeared within moments of her return.
“She okay, or should I be calling the cops?”
Joanna glanced back over at Maddie, who was bent over her notebook again, writing. “She’s okay, I think,” Joanna said. “For now, anyway.”
But as she dug into her pie and nursed her coffee, she began to wonder how long Maddie Routh would stay okay.
NINETEEN
Her jail-visiting outfit made much more sense in February. The sweater, which had trapped heat in during the fall, did an okay job of keeping the cold out—but the wind’s fingers found ways to claw through and dig into her skin, making her duck her chin into the cowl-neck and wrap her arms around herself, grabbing fabric in her fists and squeezing tight.
She’d never visited in the winter before and wasn’t sure how coats worked in the jail. She didn’t want to take hers off, or go for an extra pat down, so she just left it in her car and promised herself that she would walk fast. Faster than the wind blows, Karen, she thought, bent forward against the wind.
March was almost here. Surely it would bring better weather. Blue skies and sunshine. A break from the bluster and blow. It was hard to believe that she’d almost gone a whole season without her son by her side. It was even harder to believe she’d gone all that time without her grandson.
Travis looked sickly, coming to the window. He’d lost weight. He’d had a bad haircut. He’d acquired a very crudely drawn tattoo that began on his neck and snaked its way up onto his cheek. He had a cut needling out from under one eyebrow and up his forehead. It looked as if it had been Steri-Stripped and was now healing into what would definitely be a permanent scar. Travis liked scars—always had. He thought they made him look tough.
Karen thought he looked like a thug. Before, she had always been visiting her baby boy in jail. Now she was visiting her thug son. He looked the part, which was a bad sign.
She sat across from him and picked up the phone.
“What happened to your eye?” she asked.
He reached up and touched the wound. Grinned. Just the way you would expect a thug to do, she thought. “Some asshole thought he was tougher than me,” he said. “He’s missing part of his tongue now.”
Karen winced. “Travis, that kind of thing just makes it harder for Frank Sidwell to defend you. You know that, right? You have to keep your nose clean.”
“The guy hit me first,” he said, his shoulders rounding and his fingertips touching his chest. The innocent act—she’d seen it so many times. Once, she’d believed it. Those days were long, long gone. “What was I supposed to do? Let him kill me?”
“No, of course not,” she said. “But you have to stay away from guys like that.”
“Mom, this isn’t recess at boarding school. There is no staying away from these guys if they want to get to you. That’s just the way it works. I have to defend myself, or I’ll be on the news next week. Did you come to lecture me or what? Because I don’t need this right now.”
“I’m not lecturing,” Karen said, though it was hard not to get stuck on his words. She didn’t realize until that moment that she’d been waiting a long time to see him on the news. Had been expecting it. Dreading, but in an inevitable sort of way. “I just wanted to check in with you. Have you talked to Kendall?”
He gave another wry smile, as if nothing was worth taking seriously anymore. How long had he been doing that? Longer than Karen wanted to admit. She remembered looking at that smirk of his as far back as junior high school, and wanting to shake him and scream at him: Take things seriously! This is serious, dammit!
“That bitch,” he murmured. “Let me guess. She’s asking for money.”
No, in fact, she was asking for nothing. She was saying nothing. She wasn’t around, as far as Karen could tell. After the New Year’s Eve text, Karen had gotten radio silence. Kendall was making good on her threat, Karen supposed, trying not to kick herself for her decision. As much as she loved Marcus, and wanted to spend time with him, wanted him in her life, she knew that if she gave Kendall another dime, she would never get out from under the reque
sts.
“I haven’t heard from her,” Karen said. “You either?”
“Fuck no. She’s probably off fucking some other guy by now. God knows where Marcus is. Probably dead.”
Karen pressed her hand over her heart. “Travis!” she exclaimed. “Don’t say things like that. He’s your son.”
“In theory,” he said.
“In reality,” she countered. Though she supposed he could be right. With Kendall, you never really could tell, but Karen had taken that baby into her heart. She had imprinted him with family connection. She wasn’t ready to let that go. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“Well, I wouldn’t count on hearing from her again,” Travis said. “Did you give her money?”
“No, but she asked. More like demanded.”
He sniffed. “Sounds like Kendall. So what have you heard from Sidwell lately? He gonna get me off pretty soon or what?”
“I talked to him this morning,” she said. “He still feels confident we can get a plea deal, but he says you’re not interested.”
Travis leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “Hell, no, I’m not interested in no plea deal. I take that deal and I’m gonna be sitting in here for even longer.”
“But if you don’t take the deal, you could be found guilty, and then what?”
“I ain’t worried. I been found guilty lots of times and never stayed in here for long.”
Karen swallowed. “Travis. This time is different. You’re a repeat offender. The family is going to press for a harsh penalty. This guy has been in a coma for months, Travis. He could die.”
Travis scratched his neck uncomfortably, but still maintained that maddening air of nonchalance. “Yeah, whatever,” he said. “Not my problem.”
“Are you kidding me?” Karen started to stand up—her best lecturing position—but the phone cord wouldn’t allow such generous movement, and she plopped down again. “It is your biggest problem. I don’t think you understand what will happen to you if this guy dies, Travis. You will have murdered him.”
“He asked for it.”
Karen sat back in her chair, stunned, blinking. She remembered the biggest fight she’d ever had with her mother. It had been the day she’d found out she was pregnant. Her mother had cried, raged, accused her of stupidity. You don’t know the first thing about raising a child, she had said. You will make stupid mistakes. You will put this child at risk because you’re just a child yourself.
She’d disregarded her mother at the time. Hated her for those words, actually. She’d struck out alone, written off getting any help from the negative woman. If she couldn’t believe in her own daughter, then she didn’t deserve to have a daughter anymore.
But now, as she sat across from this frightening man, a filthy bulletproof window separating them, talking to him through a jail phone for the millionth time, hearing the callousness in his voice, the total disregard for human suffering, for feelings, for life, her mother’s words had never rung truer.
She’d thought she’d known what she was doing, but that was what made her dangerous. She’d made stupid mistakes, and was so stupid herself, she couldn’t even pinpoint them now. Was it the time she threw the fit at the day care for putting him in time-out after he’d retaliated against the little boy who’d flung a block at him? The boy had left a small mark on Travis’s cheek, but Travis had bitten a chunk out of the boy’s arm. Was it all those times she turned a blind eye when she knew he was doing something irresponsible, or illegal, or dangerous, just because harmony with her one and only son was more important to her than making sure he chose wisely? Was it doing everything she could to get him off the hook every time he was busted?
She’d spanked him. She’d grounded him. She’d lost her temper and screamed at him. But mostly, she’d loved him. She’d let him call the shots because things were just easier when he did.
She’d put her child at risk, just as her mother had predicted she’d do. But what was worse was that she’d put other people’s children at risk at the same time.
Karen swallowed, feeling tears press behind her cheekbones. “What should I tell Mr. Sidwell, then?”
“I’ve already told him. I’m not interested in his plea deals, so he can stop bringing it up. Just tell him to get me the hell out of here. That’s what I’m paying him for.”
Correction, she thought. You’re not paying him for anything; I am. But that didn’t seem like an important distinction to make at the moment. It was bad enough that her employer had met with this insolent man and associated him with her. It was all the humiliation she needed.
“I think you’re making a mistake,” she said. “But it’s your life.”
“I think my time’s up,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the guard who stood by the door.
“I love you, son,” she said, pressing her free hand against the dirty glass, no matter what she imagined might be on it from past visitors.
He gazed at her hand, ducked his head, a sour look passing over his face, the first sign that he felt anything in this place at all. “I love you, too,” he mumbled, but never moved to touch the glass between them. He hung up the phone, swung out of his chair, and disappeared through the door leading back to his cell before Karen could even replace the receiver.
• • •
She’d tried to call Kendall dozens of times since New Year’s Eve, and always the call went directly to voice mail, without even ringing. As if she’d been blocked. Or as if someone was looking at her number and rejecting the call.
Regardless, she tried again after leaving the jail. She sat in her car, the heat blowing feeling back into her body, warming the sweater, thawing her frozen fingers.
To her surprise, someone picked up.
“Hello?” A male voice.
Karen pulled the phone away from her ear, double-checked the number she’d dialed. “Um, hello? Is Kendall available?”
“Who’s this?” the man asked. Guarded. Chip on his shoulder.
“This is Karen. Travis’s mom.”
“Who the hell’s Travis? Hey, Kendall! Who the hell’s Travis?” he yelled. Karen heard the pouty whimper of a toddler in the background.
Karen closed her eyes and leaned her forehead on the steering wheel. Who the hell is Travis? His son is crying wherever you are, and you don’t even know who he is? she wanted to rail. But she didn’t have the chance. She heard the crying come closer to the phone, paired with Kendall’s voice, which was spouting curse words at a fast speed.
“’Lo?” she finally heard.
“Kendall? It’s Karen.”
“I know.”
“I’ve just been wondering about the baby.”
“Shut him up—I can’t hear anything,” Kendall said, away from the phone, and then came back. “What?”
“I’ve been wondering about Marcus.”
“What about him?”
The pressure behind Karen’s eyes got even stronger. “How is he doing? Where are you?”
“I told you that you wouldn’t see him again if you didn’t help me out. You didn’t help me out, so we blew.”
Karen took a deep breath, tried to steady herself. “Kendall, please. I’ve helped you so many times. He’s my grandson. I care about him.”
“Yeah, but who cares about me, huh?” Kendall said. Her voice sounded funny—staccato, strung out. “Your loser son didn’t care, you don’t care, my own family doesn’t care. The only one who cares about me is Marcus. And I’m not going to share him with you so you can turn him against me, too. You know?”
“I wouldn’t ever,” Karen said. “I have never done anything but support you.”
There was a puff of air in the phone. Sardonic laughter. “Oh, you would.”
“I just want to know if he’s close,” Karen said. “Can you at least tell me if he’s close? If he
’s safe?”
“What the hell? Of course he’s safe. He’s with his mother. What do you think, I’d let something happen to him?”
Well, something happened to Travis when he was with his mother, Karen thought wildly. Something big and wrong. “No, I wasn’t saying that,” she said. “I’m just wondering where you guys are.”
“It’s our business where we are. And with no money, who knows how long we’ll stay here? Who knows how long I’ll even have this phone?”
Gamey. God, how Karen hated gamey. She couldn’t understand what had ever attracted Travis to this girl. She could only imagine what it must be like to be trapped in a relationship with her. Life would be one constant passive-aggressive threat. One betrayal or drunken fight after another. She supposed that was what Travis liked in a girl; they’d all been just like this.
Or maybe that kind of girl was the only kind of girl Travis could get—a thought that terrified and saddened Karen.
What kind of woman would Marcus grow up thinking was the best kind of woman? Would he perpetuate the cycle of jail and baby mamas and dying strangers in the hospital? Would there be no one in his life to help him break it?
“I’ll give you money,” she blurted in a panic. “I want to see Marcus. How much do you need?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, and when Kendall spoke again, Karen was sure she could hear a smile in the girl’s voice. “That’s so nice of you, Mom.”
• • •
“You should come over,” Antoinette told her thirty minutes later. “Sal’s out of town on business. I have wine and a spare bed.”
“I don’t know,” Karen said, balling another tissue in her hand. She’d just spent the past half hour sobbing as she wired a couple grand to Kendall, on a prayer that the girl would actually do something right and show up with the baby after she got the money. She was finally able to find out that Kendall was in Iowa. Who, or what, brought her there, only the good Lord knew, but at least Iowa wasn’t far. At least if Kendall decided to do the right thing, she would have only a few hours’ drive to do it. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
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