forty-eight

Anya and I moved briskly toward my car.

“I will need to interview you about the shooting and the other problems with Brenda Detweiler,” John Henry called after me. “You obviously have an airtight alibi, but I must still ask you a few questions. I hope you won’t mind.”

“Whether I do or not is irrelevant.”

I unlocked the passenger side door for Anya and Gracie, who had to be coaxed inside. She cast longing looks at Detweiler, but I didn’t. I was pretty ticked at him.

After getting my passengers situated, I walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in.

“Mom? You okay to drive?”

“I think so.”

I backed out slowly and did a three-point turn. Detweiler walked over to the side of the driveway. He stood with shoulders hunched, and one hand shoved deep into his jeans pocket. If I hadn’t been so angry, I would have burst into tears at the sight of him, seeming so defeated.

But I wasn’t about to back down. No way. I waved and drove out slowly, not to seem like I was overly excited.

But I was.

I got lost three times on the way to the hospital in Alton.

I parked under a tree in the visitors’ lot. Anya and I cracked the windows so Gracie wouldn’t get hot. But even then, since the internal temperature in a car can jump up alarmingly, I couldn’t leave my dog in the car.

“How about if you go see Sheila first? I’ll wait here. When you come back, I’ll go. That’ll give me time to calm down.”

Anya turned those denim blue eyes of hers on me. Her brows met in a knot of concern. “Will he still want to marry you?” Her fingers snaked over to twine with mine.

Her question caught me off-guard. I tried to answer honestly. “I think so.”

“Do you still want to marry him?”

I hesitated.

Flipping her blond hair over her shoulder so it didn’t tickle her face, she edged closer to me and rested her head on my shoulder. “Mom, you do love him, don’t you? You said you do.”

“Yes.” That came quickly. “Yes, but you can’t bake a cake with sugar as your only ingredient.”

“Oh, brother. Why do I sense a lecture coming on? I should have gotten out of the car while I had a chance!” Anya reached for the door handle. She had her father’s hands, slender with long thin fingers.

I touched her other hand and held it.

“Wait. You need to hear this. See, it takes more than love to make a marriage work. I know the Beatles wrote, ‘All you need is love,’ but they were wrong. You have to have the same goals. And respect. Communication. Especially that. I mean, it’s not enough to love someone. You have to pull in the same direction, or you’ll pull apart.”

“I thought you and Detweiler had all that.”

“I thought we did, too. I hope we still do. This will probably be our toughest time as a couple. I’m not ready to throw in the towel. Not at all. But I am curious as to how we’ll get our act together. There’s this marriage counselor who predicts whether couples will stay together. One important trait of a happy couple is the ability for them to make up. Think about it, and you’ll see why. Sometimes one person would initiate the forgiveness process. Sometimes the other, but there had to be a peacemaker in every argument, and the other person had to respond in kind. Does that make sense?”

Leaning back, Anya pursed her lips and let her eyes roam the interior of the black ragtop. “Kinda. But here’s what really confuses me. You used to never get mad. Never talked back to people. Gran could walk all over you. Anybody could, really. But today, you really gave it to Detweiler. And his family. And his attorney, too! You didn’t hold anything back. So I’m wondering, what happened to the old mom?” She sat up to stare at me. “Is this because of your head injury? Robbie told me that can make people weird. Or is it because you shot a man and you’re all, like, macho now?”

I’d been expecting her to bring up the shooting. In fact, I’d hoped she would so we could discuss it. Clear the air.

“Maybe both. Maybe neither. I grew up watching Disney films and reading fairy tales. Thinking that a white knight or a handsome prince would rescue me, because, well, my home life was so terrible. When your father came along, I thought maybe he was the guy. But he wasn’t. Not exactly. When Brenda forced me into the car, I kept telling myself that Detweiler would find me. Or Robbie Holmes. But they didn’t come. I thought Johnny had a plan. That he would take care of … things. Then he was shot. I tried to stop the bleeding, but I couldn’t, and I realized he was going to die. And that awful man was strangling Sheila.”

I took a shuddering breath. Anya squeezed my hand encouragingly. “I kept thinking, ‘I can’t shoot Bill Ballard! I can’t do this! I’m just a mom! A nice person!’ and I started to get angry that Detweiler or Robbie or Johnny couldn’t rescue me. And suddenly I had an epiphany. You know what that is?”

She shook her head no. That little face of hers was so solemn, so focused, that I nearly laughed out loud.

“An epiphany happens when you suddenly see the light. When you understand something, especially something you’ve been struggling with. See, I realized that had Detweiler or Robbie or Johnny shot Bill Ballard that would be okay with me, but I didn’t want to be the person to pull the trigger. In other words, I was being a hypocrite. After all, if it was okay for them to shoot, why wasn’t it okay for me? Of course, it was!”

I swallowed hard and kept going. “I wish I could honestly tell you that all of this is clear in my mind. Or that I’ve come to grips with it. But I haven’t. Not totally. All I know is that I really, really wanted to see you grow up, and to save my baby, and of course, to save Sheila and Johnny. At first, I was resigned and thought, ‘So this is how I’m going to die?’ And just as fast, I realized I could save myself. And two other people I love.”

I squeezed both Anya’s hands, those soft, sweet hands that had trustingly held mine so often. “I asked myself, why was I waiting for a man to rescue me? Suddenly, I saw how silly that was.”

She frowned. “So I guess you are different. I guess it did change you. That makes sense. It was a pretty big deal, after all.”

My voice dropped to a whisper. I was talking to myself more than to my daughter as I said, “The question is, did I change for the better? I’m not sure …”