Reason To Believe (9 page)

"I never met a math teacher yet who had a sense of humor," Ben said with a deferential smile. "This one maybe doesn't appreciate"—he arched an eyebrow— "Indian humor?"

"He did make
a
comment that..." Clara's frustrated gesture and the guarded look in her eyes reflected a struggle that left her no room for humor. "Actually his rather rude remark led me to think..."

"But you've asked for a different class for her, so that should solve that problem," Officer Turnbull determined, turning abruptly to Anna. "The important thing now, Anna, is that you must not skip school. You've had a serious run-in with the law, and you don't want to add truancy to your record. Or anything else, for that matter." She flipped through the pages of her
Anna Pipestone
file. "Has there been anything else?"

"Skipping class was the major problem we've had this week," Clara said quietly as she, too, turned to her daughter. "I'm really pleased that you told Mrs. Turnbull about that yourself, Anna."

"Might as well," Anna said with a shrug. Then she turned wide, innocent eyes on her probation officer. "I've got
a
question."

"Ask away."

"If I wanna go out of town, or even
a
little ways out of state, like, to see my grandfather, can I do that without getting arrested or something?"

"I think it's a good idea for you to visit your grandfather. Your parents can certainly take you..." Turnbull glanced from one parent to the other. "Or a
parent,
either one."

"Yeah, but what if I just wanna, like, go on the ride with my grandfather? It lasts two weeks. But it'll be during Christmas vacation."

"A two-week trail ride in December?" Turnbull did
a
little shoulder shimmy and set her cheeks ajiggle with
a
mock shiver. "Brrr."

"Anna..."

Anna shot her mother
a
warning glance. "No,
I'm
serious. I really wanna go."

"That's up to your parents. I would need to be notified, and I would want one or preferably both of them to accompany you." The probation officer gave a self-satisfied smile as she closed the file on her desk. "It sounds like quite a trip. I'd love to go with you if they were doing it in the summer."

"Trouble is, it's a
memorial
ride." Ben looked the woman right in the eye and affected a charming smile in a halfhearted attempt to sweeten the sarcasm. "The army didn't chase the Sioux down to Wounded Knee Creek and shoot them in the summer. You're gonna do something like that, you do it in the winter, right?"

"I guess so," Turnbull allowed gingerly. "But is it safe? What happens if the weather gets bad?"

"Then the Indians stay put, and the massacre gets put off a few days." Shifting in his chair, he caught Clara stifling a chuckle. But Turnbull clearly didn't know how to take it, so he just shrugged. "I don't do the ride myself. It was started by a group of guys from down on Cheyenne River Reservation, younger guys, and my dad can't get it through his head that he's not as young as he used to be."

"That's why I'm going with him," Anna declared.

"Let me know what you decide. Anna's going to need to check in with me." Officer Turnbull rose from her chair. "You have four more months, Anna. You want to get through this, get it behind you, and get back on track. I do think a visit with your grandfather would be good for you." She bestowed a smile on her charge's parents. "Family is so important."

"I agree," Clara said tightly.

"How do you feel about that, Mr. Pipestone?"

"I'm all for family," Ben said, extending his hand. "You've got my vote, Officer."

"How come nobody told her what I did last night?" Anna wondered aloud when they were finally back in the car and on their way home.

Ben knew why he hadn't mentioned it. Paying a visit to the police station was unappealing enough, but being there on his daughter's behalf was like leading her through a jungle without a map. He wanted to put her in a steel crate and carry her on his back, but he figured that wasn't the way these things were supposed to be handled by the conscientious mainstream parent. Annie had gotten herself into this mess. He wasn't sure how much of a mess it was, or what was expected of him, which left him watching for clues, trying to follow Clara's lead. She was the epitome of the conscientious mainstream parent.

"You told her you'd skipped school, and I thought that was enough for now," Clara said. "I thought we should talk privately about the other part."

"So how about the three of us going out for lunch and hashing it over?" Anna suggested, cheerful now that she had her parents right where she wanted them—together, for the moment, anyway.

"I'd rather hash it over at home," Ben said. Basically he was with Annie on this. He wanted to stretch the moment out as long as he could, and since he'd moved out of the house, he and his daughter had discovered that when they hadn't seen each other in a while and they didn't know how long it would be before they'd share another meal out of fast-food boxes, it could take an hour to consume an extra-large order of French fries.

But today he was trying to satisfy everybody. He slid Clara a quick glance. "I'd rather go... like Mom said, someplace private."

"Yeah, but..." Anna's tone readily took a downturn toward the child side. "Can't we just glide past a drive-through window?"

Can't we just buy a little more time?

Clara heard the plea in Anna's voice.

It was the same plea she saw in Ben's eyes. They looked at each other, kept looking at each other, as though neither one remembered how to make a decision. She was tired of saying no, couldn't remember how to give a simple yes.
Yes
was the happy answer, the one people wanted to hear. But it was an answer that required stipulations these days. Parameters. Safety nets. Only if you behave, be careful, be trustworthy. Suddenly Anna couldn't manage any of those things. And Clara was very much afraid that she had no answers anymore. No way to steer her daughter on the right, the correct, the
safe
and proper course.

And Anna's father, damn him, was looking to Clara for an answer, too. Or an invitation.
Is it okay if I buy us a little more time?

From the backseat Anna seized the moment. "Turn right at the Golden Arches, Dad. C'mon, I haven't had anything to eat today."

"Yeah, well, wonder why." Ben glanced out the window as he signaled for the turn she'd suggested.

"We can take the food home," Clara said quietly, feeling strangely relieved.

Anna and Ben ordered their usual favorites, but Clara wanted nothing more than hot tea. She knew her stomach wouldn't tolerate anything else. Not when she'd worked so hard to build an ark to save herself and her daughter, and it had started listing again. One damn rocky shoal after another. She hated it when things went so badly awry that she couldn't fend off that awful little-girl-lost feeling. She hadn't been able to fend it off the day the police had called her to come to the station.

Anna was waiting, chin in hands, elbows planted on the long white table, when Clara was ushered into the barren, windowless room. Her dark eyes met her mother's immediately, but they betrayed nothing. No guilt or remorse. No fear or confusion. Nothing but
here I am.

And here Clara was, every inch of her Anna's mother. She took a deep breath and spoke quietly. "Is this true, Anna? Did you take something from a store without paying?" She couldn't quite say the word
shoplift.
She didn't want to imagine her daughter actually doing the deed.

Anna glanced at the female officer sitting across the table from her, then at the young man in street clothes sitting at the far end.

"You've made a mistake," Clara said to the woman in uniform. "Anna wouldn't—"

"I
made the mistake, Mom. By getting caught."

"Oh, Anna." It was all Clara could say, and even that much came hard. The man who'd brought her to the room wheeled a chair in her direction, and she melted into it like snow hit by a March wind. She barely heard the introductions. The younger man was from Dalton's security. Clara would have taken him for a high school kid, and if he'd approached her daughter on the street, she would have kept strict maternal vigilance. He looked greasy.

He was writing up an incident report on Anna's crime. "Native American?" he asked without looking up from his clipboard. A brown wad of chew peeked over his fat lower lip. He glanced up, and Anna gave a curt nod. He put a check mark on his report.

"What does that have to do with it?" Clara asked, a mental red light suddenly galvanizing her.

She and Anna both grimaced as the security man spat into a paper cup.

He curled his forefinger and carefully wiped his lower lip with his knuckle. "These are just routine questions I gotta ask. You the biological mother?"

"Is that on there, too?" Clara demanded, her voice gaining defensive strength. "Is there a space marked
'biological
mother'?"

"Legal parent, then?"

"Yes." Looking the man in the eye, Clara straightened slowly, gaining her full, regal stature like Phoenix rising. She enunciated each syllable purposefully. "I am Anna's mother in every way, shape, and form."

"That's all I gotta know." The little man shrank back from his report once he'd marked the box. "See, she's a minor."

"I realize that. And she's not a criminal. She's never done... anything like this—"

And so it had gone. Clara had recovered her poise in defense of her daughter. There was something about the bits of chew stuck between the security officer's teeth that had taken away his power to intimidate her. Anna had done something wrong, and the man had a job to do. So did Clara. But she had something over on him, she decided. She had class. She always managed to pull herself together on the inside and take care of business on the outside with a good deal of reason and some measure of dignity.

She had done the right thing when she'd finally called Ben, she assured herself as she led the way into the house. It was the reasonable, sensible... it was the
classy
thing to do. It just proved that now that Ben was getting his own life in order, she was going to be able to handle this awkward separate-household parenting in a civilized manner, which meant acknowledging that Anna needed her father. The two of them needed to have a good talk, and it was perfectly all right to let him come home for that.
Someplace private.
She wasn't backing down. She was simply being civilized.

She set the dining room table with place mats and dinnerware, even forks she knew they wouldn't use. Neither Ben nor Anna said anything as they sat down to their burgers and fries, but Clara read their amusement in the glance they exchanged. She resolved to keep quiet. She knew that if she waited until the food was at least halfway digested, Ben would eventually launch the requisite discussion.

And he did, leaning back in his chair, staring at his empty plate in his old familiar way. "Tell you one thing I learned when I was in treatment, Annie." No lead-in, no tell-us-why-you-did-it, just
boom.
"The younger you are when you start hittin' the bottle, the more likely you are to get hooked."

"How old were you?" Anna asked innocently, clearly hoping to divert her father into a storytelling mood.

Ben rubbed his chin for a moment, as though he were sifting through memories, trying to decide just how much of his vast experience he ought to reveal. Clara watched him, anticipating his approach. He was bound to say he was even younger than Anna was, thinking something like
twelve
would really shock her.

He frowned slightly as he stared at his plate and ran his thumb back and forth over the rim. "Some older kids got me really drunk—and really sick—when I was about five. Made a strong impression on me, and I swore off."

"Five?" Anna gasped. "You swore off when you were
five?"

"Hey, I was smart back then." He glanced up, smiling ruefully. Then he reached for the quart-size paper cup full of pop he'd been nursing through a straw. "But I started flirtin' around with it again when I was about your age."

"You never told me that story," Clara said, unconsciously taking a new interest.

"It's not the kind of information a guy likes to volunteer. Even a drunk knows it doesn't sound too good."

"I still don't believe you were ever a
drunk,
not—" Clara shook her head quickly and slid a reassuring glance at Anna "—not in the
true
sense of the word."

"Whatever the hell that is," Ben said with a dry chuckle. He looked at her across the table, smiled patiently. "You mean I didn't spend a lot of time passed out in the gutter. Well, the truth is, I had a few good friends and a lovin' wife, kept pickin' me up when I was down."