Two years later
Jude
I stare at the paper in my hands.
Calvin Jacob Friess will be appearing in front of the parole board in fourteen days. I know Corinne will fly out there for the hearing. She’s done everything in her power, along with our attorneys, to get her father granted parole. With her testimony about the rape he walked in on and how she herself killed Joe Gibson in self-defense, it does give him more credibility that he’s not a monster.
He was protecting his daughter, something any man would do.
He’s not a menace to society.
He’s not even mentally unstable.
It was a lie he told to protect his daughter.
I put the letter in my study. I’ll give it to Corinne tomorrow. For now, we’ve got another obstacle to hurdle tonight.
Venturing down the hall, I find my wife and daughter in our bright kitchen.
“We don’t have to do this,” I mention to Corinne as she tugs the Halloween costume onto AnnaBelle’s writhing body.
“Hold still,” Corinne tells her, laughing. AnnaBelle stares at her indignantly, her golden curls bouncing as she shakes her head.
“No,” she pouts.
“Why did she have to learn that word so well?” Corinne sighs, straightening the princess crown on our daughter’s head.
“Because she’s petulant like you,” I suggest. Corinne swats at me.
“But seriously,” I add. “We don’t have to take her trick-or-treating. She’s not even two. She won’t know the difference.”
“But I will,” Corinne says. “It’s okay, Ju. I’m okay. It’s only taken a year of intense therapy, but I can do it.”
Corinne always handles things in that way, with sarcasm, and wry humor, and a little bit of self-diminishment.
“You’re the bravest person I know,” I tell her honestly. “You really are.”
She rolls her eyes now and turns AnnaBelle loose. Our daughter runs away, with Rx right on her heels, chasing her princess skirt. The little-girl giggles echo through the halls of our Oregon home.
“It’s going to rain,” I tell her. “Will that be a trigger for you?”
Corinne chuckles. “It’s Portland. It always rains. I’ve learned to deal with it.”
She walks into the living room to empty candy into a bowl, and I follow.
“Want me to take AnnaBelle trick-or-treating, or should I stay here to hand out candy?”
“What? And miss her first trick-or-treating? I think not. We’ll go for a while, take a bunch of pictures and then come back to pass out candy.” Corinne kisses my cheek and turns.
She pauses, then turns back.
“Jude, want to hear something great?”
“Always,” I tell her immediately. We’ve made a habit out of trying to make each other smile every day. It started out as a method of healing, but it’s turned into something we truly enjoy.
“I’m pregnant,” she says simply.
And my grin is as big as the ocean. I gather her into my arms in a bear hug, and my wife smiles into my neck.
“For sure?”
She nods. “Yeah. I just found out yesterday. I wanted to wait and tell you when the time was perfect...but I haven’t made you smile yet today. So there you go. Your daily smile.”
I shake my head. “You make me smile every day just by being here.”
She could’ve left me. I know that. Yet she didn’t. She chose to fight it out with me, and in doing so, our marriage has turned into something bigger and better than we could ever have dreamed.
Corinne squeezes me tighter, and for a second, a blissful amazing second, the world seems perfect.
“It’s all working out,” she finally says, with tears in her eyes and joy in her smile.
“Yes,” I agree. “And it always will. We’ll make it so.”
We hold each other for a while, standing in the living room of the home we’ve made together, in this new life that we’ve built, while the rain starts lightly pelting the windows.
Corinne laughs. “I’ll get the umbrella.”
As she does, I finger the St. Michael’s medallion that Corinne bought me last year.
“Michel is always going to watch out for you,” she’d told me. “This will just be a tangible reminder of that.” I’m not too proud to say that I cried. I wear it every minute of the day, and I do allow myself the luxury of thinking my brother is always with me.
One way or another, he is.
Corinne and I bundle up our daughter, take the umbrella and head down the driveway. Behind us, the jack-o’-lanterns on our porch twinkle as the candles inside of them burn.
I briefly wonder if my wife is okay, with all of the Halloween decorations around us, and she looks at me.
“Memories can’t hurt us anymore,” Corinne tells me softly, as though she can read my mind. “We’re okay. We’re safe.”
And we really are.
Our daughter toddles to the neighbor’s door, her candy bucket in her hand, a giggle on her lips, and Corinne and I share a smile, and her fingers flutter to cup her still-flat belly where my child grows.
We really are.
* * * * *