Absence of Grace (34 page)

“Clen? Are you okay?”

She clamped tight on a sob, agony spreading through her chest into her head. An excuse. She needed an excuse...her head, throbbing with a steady pain. “Migraine. I need to lie down.”

“You go right ahead. I can finish this up.”

Thank God she hadn’t yet moved out of her room at the lodge, although she rarely slept there anymore. She tipped two acetaminophen tablets into her hand, swallowed them with a gulp of water, then stood with her forehead against the cool of the windowpane.

Dear God, what am I going to do?

She undressed and lay down, pulling a pillow over her face to block out the light, but it couldn’t block the images in her mind. Gerrum and Hailey locked in each other’s arms, Gerrum’s hand smoothing Hailey’s hair which was loose and wild. Hailey’s hair, the color of amber...Amber, the woman Paul took to St. Thomas. The four figures twined together, Amber and Paul, Hailey and Gerrum, their faces staring, their mouths open, laughing at her. Except Gerrum wasn’t like Paul. She would have bet her life on it.

Good thing she hadn’t.

She stopped trying to hold back the sobs, just muffled them with the pillow. Eventually, she drifted into exhausted slumber and awoke to the weight of the pillow on her face. She pulled it tight against her nose and mouth, an older, darker memory taking hold.

Eventually, she slept again and had a dream, one where she felt wide awake. She couldn’t be, though, because Thomasina was sitting in the corner by the window.

“I remember the first time I met you, Clen. Your hair was sticking up in random cowlicks and, of all the horrors, you were wearing slacks.”

No question, Thomasina was in one of her tongue-in-cheek moods.

“Why did we stop talking?” In the disembodied way of dreams, Clen felt she could say anything to Thomasina and the nun would answer.

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I was busy. You weren’t getting demerits anymore. Perhaps that was why.” Thomasina spoke quietly, her voice calm and uninflected, the kind of voice one might use to pray routine prayers.

“It was after the garden sister died.”

“Garden sister?”

“I called her Sister Gladiolus.”

“Ah. Sister Gladys...Glad. Yes. You may be right.” A faint thread of sorrow began to color Thomasina’s even tones.

“You loved her more than you loved me.”

“Was it a competition, Clen?”

“Of course. It always is.” She wished she could see Thomasina’s face, but she couldn’t seem to raise her head off the pillow.

“I did love Glad. We were supposed to love without holding on.” Thomasina sighed softly. “Glad was the only one who understood why I picked the name Thomasina.”

“Not because of the cat?”

If this weren’t a dream, Thomasina would snort. Instead, her voice remained pensive. “Of course not.”

“Then why?”

“For Thomas, the apostle. Doubting Thomas.”

“You had doubts?”

“Oh my, yes.”

“I thought you had all the answers.”

“You were so young, my dear.”

For a time, Clen lay silent, the night quiet bestowing its gift of peace. She knew without turning her head, Thomasina was still there. “I have to leave Wrangell.”

“Why?”

“It hurts too much to stay.”

“Will leaving make it hurt less?”

“It’s a start.”

“You should know by now, Clen, it doesn’t work that way. Our past always comes with us. It shakes us up, no matter where we try to hide.”

“I can’t believe it shook you up, Thomasina.”

“Then you didn’t know me at all.”

“I tried to know you. But I was just one of the girls.”

“Of course you weren’t. You were much more. The daughter I once hoped for. Ah, but that’s all so long ago.”

“It still hurts, what happened to us.”

“It hurts me too.” Thomasina fell silent, and after a time Clen knew she was gone.

Quiet lapped around her then, like water touching gently along the
Ever Joyful
’s hull, and when morning came she awakened to the sound of birds and a cool breeze lifting the curtains. She lay for a time, thinking about her night visitor. She looked at the spot where Thomasina sat last night. Nothing there, not even a chair. Yet what they’d said to each other...all of it true. Clen had thought she was competing for Thomasina’s love and approval and she’d acted no better than a two-year-old and with the same degree of understanding of how love worked. For when it seemed Thomasina was rejecting her, Clen turned her back, firmly and finally, on the nun.

It all happened years ago. By now, she should no longer miss Thomasina. Odd that she did, while she could barely remember Paul or what it was like to be married to him. Of course, she had been another person married to Paul. A person encased by duty and habit. Numb to both grief and joy. Mummified until Gerrum set her free.

Gerrum. God, how that loss hurt.

At the reminder, something essential inside of her clenched with misery.

It required a day and a half of phone tag with his contact in the Seattle prosecutor’s office for Gerrum to come up with the name and number for the clerk of courts for the Johnson County Kansas District Court. The morning after he spoke to that individual, Gerrum stuck his head in ZimoviArt and invited Hailey for coffee. She put up the back-in-fifteen-minutes sign, locked the door, and walked with him over to Maude’s. Once they had mugs of coffee in front of them, he outlined what he’d learned.

“Bottom line, while the county should still have the transcript, they might not be willing to go looking for it, but if they do, they’ll charge you for a copy. A one-week trial could run you several hundred dollars.”

Hailey’s face fell at the news.

“However, since it was first degree murder, there’s another possibility. The verdict was likely appealed. That means the defense attorney may have a copy of the transcript.”

“But he might be retired.” Hailey wrinkled her brow. “Or dead. He was old.”

Adults all look old to children the age Hailey had been. At least Gerrum hoped that was true, or he’d have little chance of getting his hands on the transcript, and he wanted to be able to do that for her.

“You have to decide. If you go ahead, it’s going to take time and effort to track this down.”

She was silent a long time, looking past him out the window. Finally she sighed. “I want to try. Will you help me? I’ll pay you for your time.”

“I’m happy to help, but only as a friend.”

“You’re a good man, Gerrum Kirsey. If Clen didn’t have a firm hold on your heart, I’d be tempted to hang in there.” She smiled.

It wasn’t much of a smile, but he smiled back, feeling uncomfortable and at a total loss for a more appropriate response.

A helpful clerk at the Kansas Bar Association helped him locate Mr. Dillon.

“Kenny Connelly, sixty-seven?” Dillon said. “Sure, I remember it. My first murder one case. Got trounced. Figured on a second degree guilty. Jury surprised me. Recollect that little gal, too. Sweet little gal. Held it together real well. Did better than most of the grownups. Give her my regards, will you. Be happy to send the transcript. Only kept it because it was my first.”

When it arrived, the transcript was the size of
War and Peace
. Gerrum delivered it to Hailey’s house, and she invited him in for a cup of coffee. While he sipped, she removed the stack of onion skin pages from the box and piled them on her kitchen table. The last thing she took from the box was a large brown envelope, its flap secured with red twine. She opened it, glanced inside, then re-fastened the twine and dropped the envelope back into the box.

Gerrum knew she eventually began to read it, because at intervals over the next several days, she waylaid him to ask questions. The first was about jury selection. She told him the twelve people originally called were retained, despite one of them being acquainted with a prosecution witness.

“Does that make any sense, Gerrum? Why didn’t Mr. Dillon challenge her?” she asked.

“Well, you usually go by your gut instincts on a jury, Hailey. Although attorneys do have some information about potential jury members. But a juror acquainted with a prosecution witness...” He trailed off as Maude arrived to top off his cup. He waited until she moved out of earshot before continuing. “If it was my case, I’d remove that person. Take my chances on the rest of the pool.”

“So why do you think Mr. Dillon kept her?”

“It could have been an attempt to bluff the jurors into believing he was confident his client wasn’t guilty. But it might have been inexperience. He told me he remembered the case because it was his first murder trial. And he did say the jury surprised him.”

“Surprised him how?”

“He said he expected a guilty verdict but on a lesser charge.”

Hailey bit her lip so hard it turned white.

He laid a hand on her arm. “Are you okay?”

She ducked her head, blinking fast.

“Kenny Connelly’s your father, isn’t he?”

She hitched in a breath. “Of course. Stupid of me to think you wouldn’t figure that out.”

He picked up her hand, which was icy, and chafed it between his.

“S-so you’re saying Dillon thought he was g-guilty.”

“Or, he knew he had a weak case.”

“But if a person is innocent, it shouldn’t matter.” She looked up briefly, her eyes swimming with tears.

“You’re thinking in moral terms, Hailey. The law deals with what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s why defendants are found not guilty instead of innocent.” He held her hand until her breathing smoothed out, then he let go.

She brushed at the dampness in her eyes. “There’s something else I need to ask you. Every time a witness starts to tell the jury something my mom said, the defense objects, and the judge always sustains the objection. Why is that?”

“Judges follow rules of evidence to ensure fundamental fairness. It means they usually exclude testimony relating a one-on-one conversation with the deceased since it would be impossible to corroborate.”