“I didn’t think I would see you here,” she said.
“He’s the only one who’s going to stand trial. He and your sister.”
In some ways that was the hardest part. The man who killed Edrard was dead. Edrard had killed him, but I still had an empty place in my soul. I’d convinced myself that seeing Tague Barnwell’s trial would fill it up, which wasn’t very Christian of me.
Another woman came into the restroom, and I had to step aside to let her in, but after she went into a stall, I stepped back to make sure Zee didn’t escape.
“I’m sorry. When they went, I didn’t know what—I should have stopped them.” Zee put her hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
“I bet you are, since your sister’s going to prison,” I said. Whenever I thought about it, I got angry. I knew I needed to forgive, but no matter how much my father prayed over me, I couldn’t let go of it. I didn’t know how to let go.
“She sent me here today. To pass him a note. But I couldn’t do it.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? That your conscience is bothering you? Because it doesn’t. It doesn’t do me any good for you to feel guilty.”
Zee nodded.
Other women went in and out of stalls, flushing, and washing their hands, while Zee stared at my feet. Almost like Gentry, except it was shame that kept her from looking at me.
“I need you to take me out to Bryn Carreg. Gentry’s place,” I said. “I need someone to take me, and I don’t have a car.”
“Do you—like right now? You want to go right now?”
“No. I have to go back in when the recess ends.”
“When do you want to go?” she said.
“I’ll call you.”
When I handed my prayer journal to Zee, she stared at it like she didn’t know what to do.
“Just write your number down,” I said. “I don’t have a cellphone.”
Finally, she scrawled her number in the middle of a random calendar page and handed the journal back to me. I let her go. After the recess I didn’t see her in the courtroom.
At almost three o’clock that afternoon, the defense rested, and the judge sent the jury to deliberate. Most of the spectators left then, but my brother wasn’t coming to pick me up until six, so I stayed and worked on my weaving.
The bailiff came back at four o’clock. Then two lawyers came scurrying in. The jury had a verdict. There was a half-hour crush of lawyers and reporters hurrying to get set up. Finally, the deputies wheeled Tague Barnwell back into the courtroom, and the jury filed in.
I wanted to feel free, but when the jury foreman said, “We find the defendant guilty,” I didn’t feel anything. Six times the foreman said, “We find the defendant guilty,” and none of them made me feel any differently.
When my brother picked me up, he didn’t even ask how I was, so I said, “It’s over.”
“Yeah? What’s the verdict?” He didn’t care, though. Like my father, he thought I was a fallen woman, because I’d run away from home and lived with Edrard without being married. They thought this was my punishment.
“Guilty,” I said. I might as well have been talking about myself.
“Good. Because you need to get this out of your system and do something useful. Mom and Abby need your help at home.”
“Okay.”
I was obedient and contrite, because that was the price of coming home. I bowed my head at dinner, while Dad prayed over me. When he said, “Lift up Becky and come back into her heart. Forgive her for her sins,” he meant my whole life was a sin that I needed to atone for.
If I had obeyed Dad, I would have gotten married right after high school and had kids, like my sisters did. Instead, I’d gone into strangers’ homes to babysit to pay for three semesters of college. Because I wouldn’t, my father had picked the man he thought I should marry, and invited him to dinner. Week after week, for two years, while the sand ran out in the hourglass of my father’s patience.
Then a girl in my theater class invited me to the Renaissance Festival in Bonner Springs. After I saw the ladies in their tippet sleeves, and the knights in their armor, I never wanted to go back to my old life. I didn’t want to wear modest clothes or get married or have four kids.
The night of Tague Barnwell’s verdict, while my nieces got ready for bed, I read my Bible like a good aunt. After the lights were out, I waited until they were asleep before I cried. For Edrard. Not for me. Because even though I hadn’t done what I was supposed to do, it was what I’d wanted. It was what I still wanted.
After everyone was asleep I took my prayer journal into the kitchen. Zee had the handwriting of a third grader. Big sloppy sixes and scribbled twos. I picked up the phone and dialed, liking the idea of bolting Zee out of bed in the middle of the night. A sliver of terror cutting through her sleep. Except she answered after two rings and she sounded awake.
“I just got home from work,” she said, when I asked if she’d been asleep.
“Where do you work?”
“At a bar.” That was all she said, and I remembered I hadn’t exactly treated her like a friend when I saw her at the courthouse.
“Can you go this Saturday? Out to Bryn Carreg.”
“We’d have to go early, because I work in the afternoon.” Then like she was talking to someone else in the room, she said, “Yeah, I know, Leon. We’re gonna go here in a minute.”
I gave her my folks’ address, and then we hung up. I sat holding the phone, trying to imagine where she was, who was with her, but all I knew was that she wasn’t alone. Not the way I was, awake in a house full of good Christians sleeping the sleep of the innocent and the righteous.
CHAPTER 56
Zee
When I went to pick Rosalinda up on Saturday, she walked around to the passenger side of my car, staring into the back seat the whole way.
“Is the dog coming with us?” she said.
“This is Leon. I didn’t want to leave him cooped up at home.”
“This is the Leon you were talking to the other night?”
“Yeah,” I said, even though I didn’t remember that. I’d been pretty high when she called. “I know he looks scary, but he’s safe. If it’s a problem—”
“No, it’s fine,” she said, but when she got in the car, she kept looking over her shoulder at Leon like she thought he was going to come over the center console and eat her.