Wedding Ring (20 page)

She nodded, waiting.

“I’m joining the Navy. I already talked to them, and they said they’ll have me. We won’t have much time together at first, but after that, you can come and be with me, wherever I’m stationed. You’ll see the world with me. It’s the only way I can think of to make something of myself and make a home good enough for you.”

“I can’t leave my mama, not now, Fate. I can’t go far away.”

“You won’t have to. You’ll stay here until…she doesn’t need you anymore. By that time, maybe I’ll be settled somewhere, and you can come and be with me.”

“But I want her to see me get married. I don’t want to wait until…”

He touched her cheek. “Then marry me as soon as I’m done with my training. We’ll be married, we just won’t be together. Not for a while.”

It was so perfect that no complications occurred to her. She would marry the man she loved. Fate would be a sailor, and she would stay home and take care of Delilah. Someday in the future she would join him. She would see new places, meet new people, have a life she’d never dared to dream about.

She knew Fate would be a success. He worked hard; he was intelligent and strong. An endless happy progression of days stretched before them.

“When do you have to go?” she asked.

“Two days.”

It was sooner than she’d thought, and not long enough to plan any kind of wedding. “And how long before you come home for a little while?”

“Three months, they tell me.”

“Will you be here long enough then? Is there time to get married before you ship out?”

“It only takes a few minutes to say ‘I do.’”

“I do,” she repeated. “Oh yes, I do want to marry you!”

He flung his arms around her again, and as more firecrackers exploded and the wily guests streamed out to the front porch to congratulate them, Fate kissed her once more.

A
t first Mack planned to see the judge who had sentenced Robert Owens by himself. The two men knew each other from political fund-raisers and had close mutual friends. Mack didn’t practice law in Virginia, so there was no conflict in pressuring him on the subject of Robert’s release. Avery Lutz suggested an early breakfast meeting and asked if Tessa would be coming.

Mack heard himself saying yes and wondered just what he thought might come of it.

He expected her to come into town the night before, but Tessa claimed her grandmother needed company at a Sunday night benefit supper for the local volunteer fire department. Instead she said she would drive in early to avoid the worst of rush hour. On Monday morning Mack was still in bed when she arrived. He heard her key turn in the lock, then her footsteps in the hallway. As he expected, they stopped well before the master bedroom.

He rose and shaved, showered and dressed. It wasn’t even seven o’clock, but he had been wide awake for at least an hour. He wasn’t sure how much sleep he’d gotten, and Tessa had probably gotten next to none, with the long drive and a pivotal breakfast meeting ahead of her.

Coffee scented the air by the time he entered the kitchen, adding a homey note that was otherwise lacking. The house’s exterior was sleek and modern. The interior was the same. White walls, polished wood floors adorned by only a few muted Moroccan tribal rugs. At first glance their furniture looked uncomfortable, but, of course, it wasn’t. It was simply pared down, as simple and functional as everything else in the house. Sometimes he longed for clutter, for too many pillows spilling off sofas, plants dropping leaves on the carpet, collections of Depression glass or Florida seashells.

The kitchen had frameless maple cabinets and black granite countertops. The appliances were stainless steel. Once he’d bought magnets, foolish plastic bananas and apples, to hang notes on the refrigerator, but at the last moment he had hidden them in his desk drawer, daunted by the perfect gray expanse unbroken by so much as a smudge.

The house had not been nearly so perfect when Kayley lived in it.

“Would you like a cup?” Tessa asked in greeting.

She wore white today, a dress that bared her arms and covered her knees. Turquoise earrings nestled in her earlobes, and her hair was pulled away from her face. She looked cool and casual, as if her entire world didn’t hinge on Avery Lutz’s decision.

“Maybe it will help me wake up.” He watched as she poured. She swayed unconsciously, arched a wrist, cupped a hand around the porcelain mug. He had always loved the way his wife danced her way through the most common of chores. Now the sexual promise it implied only saddened him.

She added milk to his mug and passed it toward him. “You’re nearly out of coffee.”

“I’m nearly out of a lot of things. I’ve been eating most of my meals out.”

“I guess it’s a lot of trouble to cook for one person.”

He didn’t mind the cooking. He minded eating alone in this house. Tessa had systematically stripped it of their daughter’s presence, but she hadn’t been able to strip away the memories of their life together.

“How have you been, Mack?” She perched on a stool at the center island and propped her feet on the bottom rung.

“Busy.”

“The work’s pouring in?”

“More than we can handle. We’re hiring another associate.”

“That’s good.”

“For us, not for all the people in trouble.”

She sipped her coffee. Clearly she had run out of small talk. He wondered what it felt like to have a conversation with his wife that wasn’t laden with tension. He couldn’t remember.

“How are things on Fitch Crossing?” he said to break the silence.

“We found another money tin. Gram was absolutely thrilled. It’s almost like somebody else put it there and she just discovered it. Sometimes I think she’s trying to forget it was her money in the first place because it’s more fun that way.”

He realized the calendar would be changing in three days. Nearly a month had passed since she’d moved to Toms Brook, and there still seemed to be so little to say to each other. “Are you planning to stay there for August?”

She gave the slightest of shrugs. “There’s still so much to do. If she leaves and goes to Richmond with Mom, the house will have to be ready to sell. If she stays, we need to make sure the house is in good condition, and we need to find help for her. She just can’t manage it alone.”

“She won’t like that.”

“Oh, I know she won’t. She’s making sure there are no good alternatives.”

He leaned against the island, an arm’s length away. “Tessa, about this breakfast. Avery already told me not to get my hopes up. He’s willing to talk to us, but he wasn’t encouraging.”

For the first time since her arrival, emotion flickered in her eyes. “How can they let that monster out to kill another child?”

He saw no point in answering that. What could he say? The state of Virginia was notoriously tough on crime, applying the death penalty with more exuberance than any state except Texas. MADD gave the state high ratings for the way it cracked down on drinking and driving, but there was probably no state that would refuse to give a young man like Robert Owens a second chance. By all accounts he had been a model inmate, participating in his own rehabilitation with enthusiasm and courage. Mack had spent a fair portion of his career struggling to find justice for men and women who hadn’t performed half so well.

“Don’t tell me you agree with this decision,” Tessa demanded when he didn’t answer.

“Tessa, if it were up to me, I’d sentence him to forever and a day. But that’s a father talking, not an officer of the court.”

“Will Judge Lutz listen? Will he hear anything we say? Should I bring Kayley’s baby pictures?”

“Do we still
have
Kayley’s baby pictures?”

She looked stricken, but she didn’t answer. She stood and took her cup to the sink, pouring the contents down the drain, washing and rinsing it before she spoke. “I’m going to work hard to change his mind. I hope you’ll help me.”

He wanted to put his arms around her, to ask her forgiveness for what had been an ill-timed shot. But he knew better than to attempt such a thing.

“I’ll say everything I can say, but please don’t expect to change his mind,” Mack said. “Avery Lutz heard every sentence of testimony at the trial. There’s nothing new we can say to him. If the decision’s been made to put Owens on probation, there’s very little we can do.”

After the breakfast with Judge Lutz, Tessa wanted to get in her car and drive back to her grandmother’s house. But she had driven to the restaurant in Mack’s car, and now she had to wait for him to take her back to Fairfax. And as upset as she was, she knew better than to leave him without a word. She and Mack had to talk. If they were going to preserve even a shred of their tattered marriage, they had to discuss what had just happened.

Mack pulled into their driveway and cut the engine. Neither of them had said anything since leaving the restaurant.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he sounded sincere. “I really am. I didn’t think he would help us, I wasn’t even sure he could, but I’m still disappointed.”

She replayed the conversation they’d had over scrambled eggs from the breakfast buffet. At least they hadn’t had to sit and engage in polite conversation while the waitress brought their meals. Instead, their food had been sitting right in front of them when the judge told them there was nothing he could do to help them.

“You know,” she said at last, “when he told you it was out of his hands, you didn’t sound disappointed. You were reasonable and thoughtful. If I hadn’t known better, I would have believed you agreed with the decision.”

“If Owens hadn’t killed my daughter, I
would
have agreed with it.”

“Maybe you should have mentioned that first part a little more, then. The part about him being a murderer.”

Mack unhooked his seat belt, but he didn’t get out. He turned so he could see her better. “Robert Owens is not a murderer, not in the strictest sense. He didn’t set out to kill anybody.”

“He drank himself into a stupor, then he got behind the wheel of a car. What else was he planning? To stop at every stop sign? To take nice neat corners and observe the speed limit?”

“He wasn’t planning anything. He was
drunk
. Drunks don’t plan. Their judgment is impaired. Half the time they can’t remember their own names and addresses.”

“Anybody knows that, Mack. Surely Robert did, too. But he got in the car after a whole night of drinking God knows how much and drove away. That makes him a murderer.”

“I’m not going to argue the fine points of the law with you. We don’t have any control over it. And, unfortunately, we have to abide by decisions the same way Owens does. There’s nothing we can do about this.”

“Except put a big circle around his name in the newspaper next time he kills somebody.”

“His license has been revoked,” Mack said. “It will be a long time before he’s able to drive again—”

“Do you think that will stop him?” Tessa heard her voice rising, but she was powerless to lower it. “Do you know how many people are driving Virginia’s roads with suspended licenses? I’ll be glad to send you the statistics next time I’m at the MADD office. The minute nobody’s paying attention to him, Robert Owens will get back behind the wheel of a car and resume his normal life. And normal for him means drinking and driving. In that order.”

“He’s in AA, Tessa. You heard Avery. He plans to continue—in fact, continuing is part of his probation agreement.”

“Wouldn’t you say the same thing if you were in his shoes?”

“Yes, and I might mean it, too.” Mack put his hand on her arm. “Do you think I miss her any less than you do? I don’t. You know I don’t. But do I have the right to insist this young man hasn’t been rehabilitated? Do you? Do we have the right to assume he’s the same person he was when he went to prison?”

“He’s a drunk and a murderer!”

Mack shook his head. “It’s the hardest thing we’ll ever have to do, but now we have to give him the benefit of the doubt. So far he’s done everything he was required to do and then some. He’s going home to live with his mother, and from all accounts she’s a good woman and a good influence.”

“Then why didn’t she stop him before he killed our daughter!”

But Tessa knew the story, and as Mack dropped his hand and waited for her to gain control of herself, the facts played through her head, the way they’d played out in the courtroom.

Robert Owens’s parents divorced when he was thirteen. The boy suffered after the split, acting out and getting himself into minor scrapes. Although his mother had custody, he insisted she was too strict, so he ran away from her home in Manassas to live with his father in Fairfax. And despite his mother’s pleas to the court, despite evidence that the father was a bad influence who made no attempts to control his son’s behavior, the courts had not stepped in.

“She couldn’t control him when he was a teenager,” Tessa said. “What makes you think she can do it now?”

“Robert has to control himself,” Mack said. “But she’ll provide the kind of home he needs to get back on his feet. The father’s not around any longer to corrupt the process.”

Robert’s father had died while he was in prison, and Tessa hadn’t felt a pang of sympathy for the man or his son. She shifted in her seat, longing to get out. “Did you tell Judge Lutz this? When you were setting up the appointment? Did you tell him that
you
understood why they were setting Kayley’s murderer free, but you thought I needed to hear it right from his lips?”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “No. I told him we were
both
upset, that we’d been assured that Owens would serve out the full four years before he was put on probation. I asked him to help us.”

She felt a prick of shame. Mack was not manipulative. If anything, he was honest to a fault. She knew he would never have taken her to see the judge under false pretenses.

She looked away. She wanted to blame somebody for this travesty of justice, and Mack was sitting right there. She had blamed him after Kayley’s death for the same reason. If only he had taken Kayley to school as he promised. If only he hadn’t put his job first.

What she had learned in the sad aftermath was that there was really only one person to blame, and he had been sent to jail for only a few short years.

“I’m sorry.” She stared out the window at the gray cedar siding, the careful groupings of evergreens, mulch and strategically placed rocks that were their front yard. “Of course you did.”

“There is nothing we can do now,” he said. “We have to let go of this, as hard as that’s going to be. The law will follow through. Avery said he’ll talk to Owens’s probation officer himself and make sure he or she understands that any slip at all and he’s back in prison serving out the full term. He’ll monitor his progress himself. It’s more than he has to do. Much more.”

“What if there
was
something we could do?” She turned her head to look at him again. “What if we aren’t helpless after all?”