Devils hand, p.21
Devil's Hand, page 21
Jessica swept all her papers and accessories into her briefcase, not caring if anything got out of order. She left Susan behind and walked right past her father and Bobby, who tried to get her attention, but she looked past them, went straight into the bathroom, and locked herself in a stall, the only place in the building she thought she could get any privacy for a moment. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on nothing but her breath. In and out, in and out. Slow it down. Peace in the body, peace in the mind.
When she felt her pulse slow down to normal, she reminded herself that Susan’s problems were not her problems. Jessica got to go home and hug Bobby and see her father and go about her life in the same way she did before she met Susan Wolan and her bizarre version of right and wrong.
Jessica opened the stall door and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The anger on her face made her laugh. If she looked this pissed off after calming down, how must she have looked coming out of the courtroom?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jessica ignored the text messages from Bobby and her father and headed to her office but first stopped at McDonald’s for a Happy Meal. She felt silly sucking on a juice pouch and pulling her food out of a cartooned box, but silly made her smile.
As Jessica walked through the front door of the office, Diane greeted her and pointed her chin at the food in Jessica’s hand. “That bad?”
They sat in Jessica’s office, and Jessica bit into the hamburger, embarrassed by how comforted she was by this objectively bad food. “Worse.” She swallowed her bite. “You wanna know who actually put those bruises on Susan? I’ll spare you the suspense: Jackson.”
“Jackson? Her son?” Diane leaned forward, in full gossip mode.
“Yup.”
Diane clapped her hands. “I knew there was something off about that woman!” Diane laughed, triumphant. “How did you find out? What happened?”
Diane’s glee irritated Jessica, but as tired and annoyed as she was, Jessica knew better than to get sidetracked by an argument with Diane. None of this was Diane’s fault, and she couldn’t take her crabby mood out on the wrong person. In between bites of hamburger and french fry, Jessica told Diane about her morning, then said, “I’m surprised my dad didn’t text you about the whole thing.”
Diane shook her head. “That man doesn’t text sentences. The only text I got from him was court done goin 2 lunch w bob. I figured you were with them until you showed up.”
“I couldn’t stand the thought of a court postmortem with people I couldn’t speak freely around.” That she couldn’t discuss the case with the two men who meant the most to her was about as frustrating as what had just happened in that courtroom. She shook her head to clear that thought and rubbed her thumb over the claddagh ring. “So what do I do?”
Diane clicked her acrylic nails against each other. “I’m not sure I understand the question. Sounds like you handled it as best you could, saved your own face, and rescued her from looking like a total liar. I knew that woman was off, but I really didn’t take her for a BS artist. Bearing false witness and all that.”
Jessica leaned back in her chair. “She’d tell you she didn’t lie. Just omitted pertinent facts.”
“Like there’s a difference.”
“That’s what I said!” Jessica leaned forward and slapped her hands on her desk.
“So you asked her point blank who did this to her, and she said, what?”
“I’m trying to remember.” Jessica scrubbed her face with her hands, causing Diane to lean over the desk, pull her hands away, and say, “Makeup!”
Jessica shook her head. “Honestly, I can’t remember the exact words she used. I do remember being frustrated that she wouldn’t answer my questions directly. She always used the passive voice. ‘It was Ray’s doing … Ray caused it to happen …’ That sort of thing.”
“This is what’s called a teachable moment. Now you know to pressure folks to answer you directly when you ask a direct question. Lesson learned. But honey, you have to admit you have a habit of seeing people the way you want to see them. You saw this strange, weak little woman and you wanted her to be a victim you could champion.”
Jessica felt something sickly slither inside her stomach. She wanted to say, “How was I supposed to know she wasn’t just quirky?” But Diane had known it was more. It was easier for Diane to judge someone’s faith than Jessica, largely because Diane had some of her own. If Jessica had only listened and dug a little deeper, asked more about those demons, perhaps she’d have gotten better answers, but even asking the question seemed like belittling Susan’s beliefs.
Still, it was Susan’s responsibility to tell her. Jessica tapped her fingers on her desk. “I still think Ray’s abusive. I think he created the atmosphere that made Jackson think he could do that to his mom and get away with it.”
“Talk to Susan. Have a come-to-Jesus.”
Jessica laughed. “I see what you did there. But wouldn’t you say I’m the last person equipped to bring anyone to Jesus?”
“You know what I mean. But this time, when she talks to you, listen. Not just to the words, but the subtext. And keep asking questions.”
The phone rang, and both women looked at the caller ID. Diane said, “Chris Carmichael. You wanna take this, or are you otherwise occupied?”
Jessica did not want to talk to Chris, but there was no advantage to putting off the call. Diane answered the phone, and Jessica took her time getting back to her own desk to pick it up. “What’s up, Chris?”
“I told you! Way back when, I sent you an email that said I’d love to give you a hand in figuring out how I know, but you just kept on believing your girl. I thought I was being obvious.”
Jessica forced herself to take a deep breath before responding. “Did you call to gloat?”
“Gloat? No, honestly, I’m just trying to help you. When someone dumps a giant clue in your lap, you need to examine it.”
Yes, he’d used the word hand in his email, but his use of give you a hand hadn’t been so odd it called for dissection. “Clue or no clue, whether it was Ray’s hand or Jackson’s or the hand of Jesus himself, Ray still abuses Susan.”
Chris’s laugh made Jessica want to reach her own hand through the telephone line and slap him. “Abuses Susan? I thought we just went through this. Your girl threw Ray the Puss under the bus to protect the kid. If there’s any abuse here, it’s Susan abusing Ray.”
“Abuse is more than physical violence. It’s control. For crying out loud, she’s in her forties and doesn’t even know how much money is in her bank account. You don’t think that’s abuse?” Jessica pounded on her desk with the side of her fist, trying as hard as she could to expend the violent energy swirling in her limbs.
Chris laughed again, softer this time, but it was no less irritating. “Sounds like pampering to me. Hot damn, I’d sure like a life where all I had to do was make dinner and someone else worried about everything else.”
“Is there any substance to this phone call, Chris?”
“Jesus, Jessica, unbunch your panties, why don’tcha? I really am trying to be helpful. You gotta be careful what you say in public, or you’re gonna get a reputation. Don’t go accusing people of things that aren’t true, especially people in power. It will come back to bite you in your sweet little ass.”
The thought of Chris ogling her ass brought Jessica to a new level of irritation. “I’m hanging up now.” She hung up the phone on Chris’s laughter burbling out through the receiver.
Jessica lay her head on her desk and had only a few moments of quiet before she heard Bobby and Michael coming through the door of her outer office. “Jumpkin!” Michael called. “Where are you?”
Jessica sighed. She rose from her desk, relaxing her bunched-up features into a pleasantly neutral expression, and walked out into the lobby to greet her father. Bobby stood behind him, gripping the handles of the wheelchair. “Hi, Dad. Hi, Bobby.” She kissed each of them on the cheek.
“I was so proud of you,” Michael said, clapping his hands. “It was just like TV! Only it was my baby girl. I had no idea you were so good.”
Jessica gave him a half smile. Court had been a shitshow, but if he wanted to look at her with Dad goggles, then let him. “Wouldn’t you assume I was good?”
“Well, a father hopes … but to see it live and in person! So proud.”
Bobby cleared his throat. “I have a question. Did you know about Jackson being the real perp before Chris’s cross-exam? We were debating that.”
The smile on Jessica’s face, left over from the playful teasing with Michael, suddenly felt fake, but she held it there as a shield. “You know I can’t tell you that.” She changed the subject. “What do you think the judge will do?”
“I don’t think he has much of a choice,” Michael said.
Jessica squinted at her father. “How so?”
“I mean, it doesn’t much matter if your lady is a liar or not. What you said is right. If everyone agrees she’s going to have the kids and therefore she needs child support, and everyone agrees she needs some money for herself because she doesn’t have a job, he just needs to give her an amount she can manage on her own. I think back to when I was getting divorced, and if I had to talk to Donna every time she went grocery shopping, it might have killed me.”
“Dad!”
“I don’t mean your mom was a bad person. I just mean I had a whole lot of … of feelings at the time, and interacting with her stirred them up. I needed to keep my distance.”
Bobby, God bless his timing, stood up and said, “I need to get back to work.”
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Jessica said.
“Bye, Bob,” said Michael, sticking out his hand to shake Bobby’s. “It was good to get to know you better today, son.”
“It was.”
Jessica practically shoved him out the door.
Outside, Bobby turned toward Jessica. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this escort?” One side of his mouth twitched toward a smile.
Jessica pushed his chest with a groan, then grabbed his shirt, pulled him back, and wrapped him in a hug. “Is he independent enough now that I can leave him at home?”
“Probably. I think he likes hanging out with you, though.”
“I feel … supervised. I don’t like it.”
Bobby grasped her shoulders and held her away from him, assessing her. “You did do a good job, you know. You don’t have to confirm or deny anything, but I know you were caught unawares with that whole Jackson thing. Honestly, Jess, I don’t know how you do that—argue on behalf of people who have really pissed you off. It’s one of your really impressive qualities.”
“Hmph.” Jessica scrunched up her face. “I don’t know about that. I might die of bleeding ulcer before I’m forty.”
Bobby planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Don’t do that. At least stay alive for dinner tonight.”
She smiled up at him. “Depends. What’s for dinner?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Later that night at Bobby’s house, Jessica and Bobby stood side by side in front of his and hers sinks in his bathroom. She rinsed her mouth of toothpaste, then watched in the mirror as he twisted dental floss around his fingers. Bobby wore plaid, blue cotton sleep pants, and no shirt, his long, lean, pale torso sprinkled with dark hair and brown freckles. She became so distracted by the casual domesticity of the scene she almost forgot what she was going to say. Then she remembered. “May I ask you something?”
Bobby froze, the dental floss caught between his lower middle teeth. “Am I in trouble?”
Jessica laughed. “No. Just … Diane said my biggest problem is that I see people for who I want them to be instead of who they are. Do you think that’s true?”
Bobby turned toward her. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I think we all do to some degree. I don’t know that it’s a problem.” He finished flossing his lower teeth. “I think we all see people as a mirror of ourselves. Like, if you want to know what someone has done, check out what they’re accusing their opponent of doing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think most people assume that other people are like them, in that people have the same motivations that they do. So if they’re inclined to lie or steal, they’ll accuse someone else of lying or stealing. If they’re inclined to be honest, they’ll assume everyone around them is being honest. I think that’s your problem, if you want to call it a problem. You are what you are. You’re sincere, and you really want to do right, so you assume other people’s motives are as pure as your own. Then you’re surprised when they aren’t. And if someone’s values don’t line up with yours, you tend to think they’re flat-out wrong instead of just different. There’s a lot more gray out there. People are really complicated, and I think you have a tendency to categorize them too simply and too quickly.”
If Bobby had ripped off her nightshirt, Jessica couldn’t have felt more naked. She felt simple and shallow. She’d immediately slotted Coach in the dumb jock category, and while he was, in many ways, a stereotypical meathead, he wasn’t dumb. There was a depth to him that took time to uncover. And years earlier, she’d made countless assumptions about her father’s motivations, which had cost her a dozen or more years of what might have been a satisfying relationship.
Had she made a similar mistake with Susan Wolan? Assumed she understood what was what based on relatively little information? She’d asked Susan about what happened every way she knew how, and Susan always answered in the same way, using the passive voice that seemed so in keeping with the passive nature of her personality. Susan hadn’t seemed sophisticated enough for deliberate rhetorical tricks. And her talk of demons doing the damage? That seemed so obviously metaphorical. How could Jessica have known Susan meant it literally? This was the twenty-first century, not the seventeenth.
Was it possible Jessica’s ability to process ideas so quickly was at the root of an enormous problem she didn’t even know she had? Was it possible that she too quickly settled on conclusions without letting the concepts marinate sufficiently? If so, the possible repercussions were dizzying. How far back would she have to look to unearth all the ideas and people she’d buried under a pile of assumptions?
What had she gotten wrong about Bobby? About Diane? Even herself?
Bobby took a tentative step toward her. “Are you okay? Are you angry? I didn’t mean to hurt you. You asked a question, and I just … I just answered it.” He reached out and gingerly touched her shoulder.
Jessica fell into him, pressing herself against his warm chest, breathing in the soap-and-toothpaste smell of getting-ready-for-bed Bobby. “I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I’m mad at me for being so stupid.”
She felt his laugh as much as heard it. “You’re not stupid. You’re human. I do the same thing. I think everyone does. I made assumptions about you.”
Jessica pulled back and looked into his eyes. “Like what?”
“Like I just assumed you wanted what I wanted.” He took her hand and led her to the bed, then stretched out above the covers and continued talking, staring at the ceiling. She lay down next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and braced herself. “You know, house, kid, dog, another kid …”
Jessica turned toward him. “We could get a dog.”
“Jessica.”
She rolled back and stared at the ceiling. “Do we have to have this conversation tonight?”
“It’s never going to be a good night to have it.”
He had a point. But … “Today has been horrific. My brain is completely fuzzy and full. It may never be a good night to have it, but I promise you this is a bad one.”
Bobby sighed. “We can’t put this off forever. If what we want out of life is fundamentally different, I don’t know. Every day, I fall in just a little bit harder. If I’m going to have to get over you, I need to start as soon as I can.”
Holy shit. Jessica wasn’t expecting that. She rolled onto her side, kissed his cheek, and slung her arm over his chest. “If you want to get over me now, I’m perfectly willing to get under you …”
“Jessica, I’m serious.”
The thought of losing him made her want to get on her knees and promise him a thousand babies. But she knew that was panic talking. “I love you, Bobby.” It was all she could think to say.
“I love you, too.” He squeezed her hand, then moved away from her and settled his head on his pillow.
Jessica tried not to cry. The day had been too much. Eventually, Bobby’s breathing settled into the rhythm of sleep, and she wanted to retreat to her side of the bed to wallow in her thoughts, but on this night, she also felt the need to stay close, so she laid her arm across him and watched him sleep until the sun began to rise.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
At breakfast the next morning, Bobby mercifully didn’t say a word about their bedtime conversation. Instead, he asked, “When does your dad go back to the doctor?”
“Tomorrow. I hope he gets clearance to travel. I’m starting to think he moved in.”
“Yeah, I like the guy, but …”
“I get it. He’s totally derailed my routine, and I don’t like the idea of Diane practically living at my house.”
“You just don’t like the idea of having to call Diane ‘Mom.’”
Jessica raised a fist at him. “Shut your mouth, Bobby Turnbull, before I shut it for you.”
Bobby held his hands up in a “don’t shoot” gesture. “Just kidding, just kidding. She’s more of a Mee-Maw type.”
Jessica let her fist fly, landing on the side of his arm, probably a little harder than she intended.
“Easy there, slugger.” Bobby rubbed his arm.
Jessica gasped, “I didn’t mean to hurt you!” Or had she?
Bobby leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Of course not. Just pull your punches a little more. You’re stronger than you think.”
