Stuart shook his head. “Not that I can think of.”
“We don’t think so either. Our guys are pretty thorough, but we always like to look deeper than our opponents will look, and I’m telling you that they will dig deeply. You can count on it. The days of nonpartisan judicial campaigns are long gone. So you think about my question and if anything, and I do mean anything, comes to mind, you let me know. Now, this is important: You think of anything, no matter how small, you tell me and let me decide if it’s worth knowing. In this case, it’s truly better to be safe than sorry. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, good. I believe that answers all of my questions. Do you have any for me?”
“Is there anything I should be doing?”
Judge Mac shook his head. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t change a thing. We’re buying the man you are, not making you into the man we want you to be. That’s a much harder job, but I’ve had to do it before and I can do it again if need be. It’s just not needed in your case. Judge Elway is not resigning until the end of this year, the beginning of next year, which gives us about six to nine months to prepare. Anything else?”
Stuart shook his head. “Not really.”
“Okay, then. I’ll get you a schedule for the next six months that lays out our strategy, and I’ll be in touch with you pretty regularly to keep you up-to-date on where things stand. The governor won’t make a formal announcement until we get closer to Elway’s resignation date. Until that time, we want to keep the rumors going but we don’t want to confirm any of them. Of course, you can discuss this with the people closest to you. We just don’t want you to make any public statements until we’re ready to do so. That also gives you some time to make sure this is a step you want to take, because once you do, your life will never be the same.”
“That’s fine with me,” Stuart said.
Judge Mac pushed up on his cane and got out of his chair. “The sky’s the limit for you, Stuart,” he said, gruffness in his voice. “I don’t say this lightly. You’ve got what it takes to go beyond the Georgia bench, if you want it.”
Stuart wasn’t sure what to say, so he said nothing.
“You’re surprised, aren’t you?”
“To put it mildly.”
“Well, that’s good, too. We don’t need career politicians on the bench, and we don’t need men with long-standing aspirations for more and more power.”
Stuart followed the older man to the door and held it open for him. “I appreciate your confidence in me, Judge Mac. I won’t let you down.”
Judge Mac turned to him when he reached the door. “Don’t worry about letting me down, Stuart. You were doing what you needed to do before you met me. We need men like you. The problems we face as a society are big and getting bigger every day. It’s going to take big men to find reasonable and workable solutions. You’re a big man. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
Stuart closed the door after Judge Mac left, and continued to meditate on his words. Stuart Rogers, a Georgia Supreme Court jurist? Who would have thought it, Marie? He lifted his head and uttered a short prayer for guidance and in thanks.
~ ~ ~
Anger radiated from Dawn when she walked into the funeral home later that afternoon. Ms. Fredericka had ruined her spa time. The woman had the nerve to try some contrition act on her as if she could make up for sleeping with Sly. Well, Dawn wasn’t going for it. You don’t ruin somebody’s life and then expect her to forgive you. The woman must be stupid or think that Dawn was. Her line obviously hadn’t worked on her husband, so why did she think it would work on Dawn?
“Mrs. Tate’s here, Ms. Dawn,” her assistant said from her office doorway.
Dawn forced a smile for the girl’s sake. “Thanks, Tina.” As Dawn followed Tina to the outer office, she thought again how right she’d been to hire the teen part-time. She helped out a lot around the office, didn’t cost them a lot of money, and gave Amen-Ray an opportunity to support the community by hiring some of its young people. Tina was one of three on their payroll. Two young men did various odd jobs.
“Mrs. Tate,” Dawn said, clasping the younger woman’s hands in hers. Lord, give me wisdom. Still holding one of her hands, she led the woman into her office. Instead of taking her to the chairs at the desk, Dawn led Mrs. Tate to the sitting area she’d recently sectioned off in her office for times like this. She seated Mrs. Tate on the soft leather sofa and sat down next to her.
After she was seated, Mrs. Tate said, “Call me Glenda. I feel like we’re friends.”
“Okay, Glenda, but you’ll have to call me Dawn.”
The woman lowered her head and tears built in the back of Dawn’s eyes. Her heart ached for this young woman, only married two years when her husband was killed in a tragic car accident.
“I don’t mean to bother you,” Glenda said, still not looking up. “But I couldn’t sit in that house and I didn’t have anybody else to talk to.” She looked up then with tortured eyes. “I miss him so much. I loved him so much. He was such a good man.” Her eyes filled with tears and she began to weep.
Dawn leaned close and pulled the grieving woman into her arms. “It’s hard to lose the ones we love. We keep thinking it’s a dream. We’ll wake up and they’ll be back.” Dawn knew that was how she herself felt, and her husband was alive and well. It was her dreams that had died.
Glenda peered up at her. “That’s why I like to sleep. When I sleep, he’s with me. I can pretend he’s still with me.”
Dawn blinked her eyes a few times to keep her own tears at bay. These days, she knew a lot about pretending. But this wasn’t about her. It was about Glenda. Like her grandmother before her, Dawn found this part of her job the most fulfilling, even though it was also the most difficult and most draining part of it. She liked to think the Lord used her to comfort the people who walked through her door. “That’s common, Glenda. Though you don’t believe it now, there’ll come a time when you’ll know he’s with you and you’re wide awake.”
Glenda sniffled. “I know Ted’s with the Lord, but I want him with me. I don’t care that he’s in a better place. I want him here. We had such a wonderful life planned.” The woman pulled out of Dawn’s embrace. “It’s not fair. It’s really not fair.”
“No, it’s not fair.” Dawn tried, but she couldn’t stop her own tears. Her personal losses crowded her mind. Her grandfather taken so suddenly, followed so quickly by her grandmother. And now her marriage seemed to be dying a slow, agonizing death.
Neither woman said anything for a while. A lot of things happened in life that weren’t fair, and you had to learn to live through them, Dawn thought.
“I feel so empty,” Glenda said. “I can’t even feel God. Now when I need to feel Him most, I can’t feel Him.”
“I know what you mean, Glenda. I’ve been there.” I am there. “But you know, He’s right here with you nonetheless.” Dawn reached behind her, picked up a framed picture of a sunset beach, and handed it to Glenda. “Read this.”
She saw Glenda’s lips quiver when she realized what it was. “I’ve seen this before,” she said as she read Mary Stevenson’s “Footprints in the Sand.”
“It’s one of my favorites,” Dawn said as the woman began to weep again, this time more quietly. “It’s the times when we don’t feel Him that He’s doing our work and His. He’ll never leave us alone when we need Him. Like the poem says, when we only see one set of footprints, they’re His footprints and He’s carrying us. Now’s the time to hold to that truth, Glenda. You don’t have to feel Him to know He’s there, but when you’re ready, you’ll feel Him, because He’s right here.” Dawn rested her hand lightly across Glenda’s heart. “He promised that He’d never leave us and that He’d not put more on us than we can bear. We have to hold tight to both those promises.”
Dawn sat quietly while Glenda dried her tears. “He’s here in you too,” Glenda said, pointing to Dawn. “You’ve been such a comfort to me, Dawn. Sinc
e the first day I came in here, you’ve made me feel better, like I could really get through this.” She stared at Dawn for a long minute. “I sense you’ve had your own share of grief. That’s why you’re so good with others. Your grandparents were wonderful people. I know they’d be proud of you for what you’re doing with the funeral home.”
Dawn breathed deeply. She didn’t want to start boo-booing. “I still feel their presence. I like working here, knowing they once worked here too. In a way, I feel, all of us feel, that we’re carrying on their work in an important way. It helps to keep them close. That doesn’t mean I don’t miss them. It’s just not as piercing as it was at first.”
Glenda nodded and the two women sat together in quietness, Dawn enduring her own kind of grief.
~ ~ ~
A few hours later, Sly walked into Dawn’s office and found his wife sitting on the sofa, crying softly. He often found her like this and her tears cut him more deeply than any harsh words she spoke. Tina had told him about Glenda’s visit earlier in the day, so a part of him hoped she was the reason for Dawn’s tears, but a part of him knew that her tears were because of what he’d done. Praying for strength, he went to her. “What’s wrong, baby?” He rubbed his wife’s shoulders. “Are you sure this isn’t too much for you—dealing with all the families? You don’t have to do it by yourself. You don’t have to do it at all if it makes you this sad.”
Dawn sniffled. “It’s not that. The work is rewarding.”
Sly sat down next to his wife. He took her hand in his and rubbed.
“What happened to us, Sly? How did we end up like this? Did we start wrong so we had to end wrong?”
Sly held her hand tighter. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I did, but it’s nothing we can’t fix.”
“You sound so sure.”
Sly pulled her close since she seemed to be in a mood to accept his touch. “I’m sure because I love you.”
She looked up at him. “I love you too, Sylvester,” she said, reciting the words he’d wondered if he’d ever hear from her lips again. “I love you so much. I always have, but I don’t know if it’s enough.”
“It’s enough,” he said. “It has to be enough.”
She pulled away from him and wiped her eyes. “I saw Fredericka today.”
He sat back on the couch, knowing the brief interlude of peace between them was over. “Where?”
“I went to the spa this morning after Francine decided to spend the day with Mother Harris.” She sighed. “It still hurts, Sly. It hurts as much as it did when I first found out. Shouldn’t I feel the pain less each day? Why does it still hurt so much?”
Each of her words worked its way into Sly’s heart, and he felt her pain and his own. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t have any answers. I’m willing to try counseling if you are. Maybe that’ll help.”
Dawn shook her head. “I can’t tell our business to strangers. I can’t.”
“We have to do something, Dawn. We can’t go on like we are forever.”
She sighed deeply “Walter left Freddie.”
“I know.”
She looked up at him. “How did you know? I thought you hadn’t spoken with her.”
Now it was his turn to sigh. “I suppose I know from the same source as you. Walter told me. Didn’t he tell you?”
She nodded. “I didn’t know you had spoken with him.”
“Well, he did most of the talking.” Actually, what he had done was shout, and Sylvester hadn’t even been able to defend himself. “Dawn, I need you to consider the counseling. I don’t know what we’re going to do if you don’t. Every day I feel you pulling farther and farther away from me. I’m afraid you’re going to get so far away that we’ll never be able to get back together. It’s not what I want to happen, but it’s what I fear will happen if we don’t fight for what we have, for what we had. You have to decide how much you want this marriage. I know how much I want it.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. Every day I have to wake up and look at myself and know that I caused all of our problems. Some days it’s hard to even get out of bed, but I do, and I do it because I still have hope for us, hope in us.”
She chuckled, a dry chuckle, but a chuckle no less.
“What’s funny?”
“I was just thinking that if we go to counseling, both of the Amen sisters will be in therapy. I wonder if that would surprise our grandparents? Probably not, huh? They always said we drove them crazy. I guess we drove ourselves crazy too.”
“Don’t say that,” he commanded. “You’re not crazy. I broke our marriage vows. You didn’t. If anybody is crazy, it’s me. If I could fix all this by myself, I would, but I can’t. I need your help. I need you to trust me, or at least, to want to trust me again. Until you get to that point, I don’t think there’s anywhere else for us to go.”
A quiver of what felt like fear flared up in her as she looked up at him. “Are you telling me you’re getting tired of waiting?”
He cupped her face in his hands and stared deeply into her eyes. “No, I’m not telling you that. I’m telling you that I’m afraid that you’re walking so far away from me that we won’t be able to reconnect. That’s what I’m saying and that’s all I’m saying. I slept in the bed with you last night, Dawn, our bodies less than a foot apart, and I’ve never felt farther away from you. I know you have to feel the distance.”
She felt it all right. “Believe it or not, I don’t like it either. I just don’t seem to be able to do anything to change it.”
“That’s why we need counseling.”
She looked away and his hands fell from her face. The thought of listening to Sly talk to another person about his relationship with Freddie was too much for her to bear. “I’ll think about it Sly. That’s all I can do at this point.”
He pressed a kiss against her forehead. “It’s a start, baby. It’s a start.” Please, Lord, we desperately need Your help.
Chapter 7
Stuart had a lot on his mind as he left the courthouse: Judge Mac, Francine and Monika, Marie. Too much. He needed to decompress before he went home. He wanted to talk to Sly, but given the problems his friend was having with his wife, Stuart was reluctant to go by their house. He decided to drive by the funeral home. If Sly’s car was still there, he’d stop and talk. If it wasn’t, he’d wait until tomorrow.
Fortunately, as Stuart slowed down in front of the funeral home, he was able to pick out Sly’s Cadillac from all the others present by his vanity plate, RAY ONE. He pulled into the space next to Sly’s and made his way into the foyer of the funeral home. He went first to Sly’s office, and when he didn’t find him there, he went back to the preparation room where the embalming was done. Though Sly had embalmers to do the task, he was a licensed embalmer himself and often took part in the work. That’s where Stuart found him. The smell of formaldehyde greeted him at the door, and he wondered again how they kept the smell from permeating the entire funeral home. He knew that was Dawn’s doing; the smell of fresh-cut flowers, not formaldehyde, was the aroma that visitors remembered.
Since Sly was observing and not actually carrying out the procedure, Stuart decided it was okay to interrupt. He rapped on the doorframe to get everybody’s attention. “May a layperson enter?” he asked when all three of the men present looked up.
“No need,” Sly said, glancing over at him. “I was about to leave.” He turned to the two men with him. “If I’m not here when you leave, be sure to leave your status report in my box. I appreciate you guys working over like this.”
“What brings you by?” Sly asked when he reached Stuart. “It’s been a while since you’ve been here.”
Stuart fell into step with Sly and followed him back down the hallway to his office. “I was in the neighborhood,” he said.
Sly opened his office door and went straight to the mini-refrigerator that he kept there. He tossed a bottle of mineral water to Stuart and
then took out one for himself. Loosening his tie, he dropped down in his chair and propped his feet up on his desk. “Now, what really brings you by?”
Following Sly’s lead, Stuart loosened his own tie, sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the desk, and propped his feet up too. “This is the life,” he said. “A great way to end the day. All we need is a television and some football.”
Sly chuckled. “Or a pool table.”
Stuart grunted his agreement. “It’s been a tough day.”
“Tell me about it,” Sly said, taking a swig from his water bottle. “Want to bet on who had the worse day?”
Stuart shook his head. “The way my day’s going, I’d lose.”
Sly chuckled. “Really, what happened?”
Stuart dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward. “I was approached today about taking over Judge Elway’s seat on the Georgia Supreme Court.”
Sly’s hand stopped with his bottle of mineral water midway to his mouth. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“The Georgia Supreme Court? Are you serious?”
“It looks that way.”
Sly dropped his feet to the floor and walked around his desk. “Get out of that chair so I can congratulate you.” When Stuart stood, Sly clapped him on the back. “I’m proud of you, man. I know you’ll do a great job.”
Sly leaned back against his desk as Stuart sat back down. “Nothing’s official yet,” Stuart said, “so you can’t spread the word. I was approached and asked if I was interested.”
“You’d better tell me you told them you were.”
“I did.”
“What else could you say?” Sly said, shaking his head. “You’re not crazy. I can’t believe it. I’m going to be good friends with a Supreme Court jurist. Does this mean no more parking tickets for me?”
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