Blue Diary (15 page)

“Little kids like you?”

“Dad!”

“Sorry.” Barney opens the cooler he always brings to games and fishes out the last two root beers for them to gulp down as they watch the sky deepen into azure, then damson, then inkberry blue.

“I'm older than you think,” Sophie says. “You should tell me when things happen to the people we know.”

Barney mulls this over while he finishes his root beer. He wonders if she'll feel even more betrayed when she finds out he hasn't told her the whole truth. “Okay. I'll try not to keep you out of the loop.”

“Does that mean you're going to tell me if he's guilty?” It's the question she and every other kid on the team want to ask. but Sophie is the only one with enough nerve to actually do so. Barney thinks of the way she looked when she was born, how tiny she'd been and how amazed he was that he could be party to the creation of something so perfect.

“Lawyer-client privilege.” This way he's not lying to Sophie, at least not directly. “In other words: none of your beeswax.”

They get into the Lexus, which Sophie thinks is ostentatious, a car Barney cares about far more than he should, especially when he runs into someone from high school out in the parking lot behind the courthouse.

“Like I said. You think I'm a baby.” Sophie is huffy and refuses to talk to him as they drive home. But when they get to the house, she helps Barney unload the equipment, and they're horsing around by the time they're headed for the door, tossing a ball back and forth, each trying for more height with every throw, aiming for the branches of the crabapple tree they walk beneath on the way to the house.

The remains of a pizza and some salad have been left out on the kitchen counter. Barney eats standing up, bolting his food. More and more often, he finds that he feels like an intruder in his own home, and there are times when he has the sense that he's blundered into the wrong house, that he was never meant to live in the posh neighborhood of Hillcrest, and that the life he's been leading is an experiment of sorts. Mark Derry is still working on the bathroom, and there is a fine film of plaster dust everywhere, a small price to pay, his daughters insist, for another shower and tub. Still, the dust in the house and the pipes left on the front lawn remind Barney of the house he grew up in, a cramped ranch knocked down years ago when the county offices were built, a place he is more nostalgic for than he'd ever imagined possible.

Dana Stark comes into the kitchen when she hears the racket as Sophie takes some mugs from the cabinet, then slams the refrigerator door, having collected a bottle of root beer and a pint of vanilla ice cream so she can fix one of the brown-cow floats her father always enjoys.

“What's happening with Ethan Ford?” Dana asks. She and Barney met in law school, and of the two, she was clearly the better student. Barney was surprised when she gave up working so soon after Kelly was born. Dana has an especially suspicious nature, which would have given her an edge had she chosen to practice law.

Barney nods to Sophie. “Don't you want to know if we won the game?”

Dana takes one look at her daughter's face; it's all she needs to determine that the Bluebirds have lost. “Better luck next time, kiddo.”

“She's psychic.” Sophie says with her mouth full. “Sees all. Knows all.”

“Chew your food,” Dana suggests. “Otherwise, I predict you'll choke.”

“Fred Hart's coming down from Boston in the morning. He's taking the case,” Barney tells his wife.

When Sophie takes her dishes to the sink and is out of earshot, Dana says, “I'm glad it won't be you. It could be a real stinking mess if he happens to be guilty.”

“I heard that.” Sophie calls. “I heard every word.”

After dinner. Barney gets back in his car, having decided to call on Jorie. But the truth is, he's hoping he'll run into Charlotte Kite again. Maybe if he saw her he could forget what he knows to be true about Ethan, at least for a little while. Funny how often he spies Charlotte in the neighborhood, and tonight it happens again; Charlotte is backing out of her driveway, so Barney slows to below the speed limit, then follows her car down Hilltop, through the posts that mark the entrance to the neighborhood, cruising behind her all the way across Front Street. At the stop sign on the corner of Maple and Westerly. Charlotte reaches out her window and signals for Barney to pull alongside. She has had a hellish day, first meeting with her doctor, then spending hours waiting to have her arm pricked, over and over, in the pre-surgery unit of Hamilton Hospital. She has blue circles under her eyes and her auburn hair is carelessly pulled away from her face. All the same, Barney Stark smiles when his car pulls up next to hers.

“Are you following me?” Charlotte asks him.

“I was going to see Jorie.” Barney is aware of the lump in his throat that he always feels in Charlotte's presence. He is known throughout the Commonwealth for his oratory skills and can argue against the best of them, but whenever he sees Charlotte words escape him; he is as mute as a bear walking through the apple orchards on the outskirts of town, and just as single-minded.

“Uh-uh.” Charlotte shakes her head.
“I'm
going to see Jorie.”

“That goes to show you. We're very much alike.” Barney Stark is staring at her, and he doesn't seem the least bit concerned that he's blocking the street, not even when a car comes up behind them. It's Warren Peck, the bartender from the Safehouse, who is said to be as angry as he is distraught over Ethan's arrest. Barney waves, then signals for Warren to drive around. “You've got plenty of room,” Barney calls.

“What do you think this is? A damn parking lot?” Warren shouts, and then he hits his horn and lets it blare until he disappears down Westerly.

“We are nothing alike,” Charlotte says through the window of her car. She thinks about the way Barney Stark used to galumph around the hallways in high school. She thinks about the moony expression he has on his face right now. They are worlds apart, that's the truth, and they always have been, and yet whenever Charlotte sees Barney something strange happens: she finds that she says whatever comes to mind, no matter how personal. Except for her health. She's definitely not talking about that. “I heard you refused to be Ethan's lawyer, I thought you were his friend.”

“I don't do criminal cases at that level. But Fred Hart from Boston is an excellent lawyer.”

“Are you saying that Ethan needs an excellent lawyer?”

Barney appraises Charlotte, fully appreciating both her insight and her common sense. “The situation will be cleared up. That's what the law is for.”

“I thought the law was meant to punish people.”

There's a Volkswagen honking madly behind him, and when Barney peers into the rearview mirror, he sees Grace Henley's familiar face. Barney signals for the librarian to go around his car, but Grace is stubborn; she won't cross over the yellow line. Instead, she continues to lean on her horn. Barney has no choice but to drive on with Grace Henley beeping at him like crazy.

“Just as well.” Charlotte tells him. “We can't both visit Jorie at the same time without her thinking we're ganging up on her. This time, it's my turn to check up on things.”

“Right.” Barney feels exactly as he used to back in high school; whenever he saw Charlotte he felt elated in some odd way. Her presence made him far more aware of everything around him, and it still does. He notices the inky coloring of the darkening sky; he spies the halo around the lamp lights and the thin wafer of an ice-colored moon already rising in the sky. “You're right,” he says, with such a strange expression on his face that Charlotte feels puzzled long after he has driven away.

“Guess who's been following me?” Charlotte lets herself in through the back door to Jorie's, the way she always does. “You'll never in a million years guess who.

Jorie, who's been loading a day's worth of dirty plates and cups into the dishwasher, is relieved to find that someone wants to discuss a topic other than Ethan. She would hate to have to lie to Charlotte outright, but she's not prepared to discuss the truth, not even with her dearest friend. She turns from the sink and nearly manages a smile. “Barney Stark.”

“There's something wrong with that man. He's absolutely peculiar.” Charlotte has had a nervous stomach today, and because she's starving she starts in on a box of wheat crackers left on the table. “He said he was coming to make sure you were all right, but I got the distinct impression that I was the one he was after. Why would he do that?”

“Barney Stark has always been after you; you just never noticed.”

Jorie turns her attention back to the dishes. She and Charlotte have been friends since nursery school, and their friendship has always been easy, but now things have changed. They've started to keep secrets from each other, and although they have each other's best interests at heart, in staying clear of the truth they've begun to forge a long, blue hallow where before there was only candor. If Jorie could speak, she would cry out that she's drowning in a thousand different ways, on dry land, in her own kitchen, prey to an undertow so dirty and deep she's unable to call for help. This is her best friend at the table, the woman who knows her dreams better than she herself does. But a nightmare is a different case entirely, it's a box of black shadows and vicious red stars, something to keep carefully closed, lest the ground below be broken in two.

“If that's true, it just goes to show you what a fool Barney Stark is,” Charlotte says. for who but a fool would love a woman like herself? Her luck is about to take another terrible turn; she is on the edge of the terrible kingdom of illness. Charlotte's biopsy will confirm what her doctor suspects, that the lump in her breast is malignant. Sitting in Jorie's kitchen, Charlotte already knows this, she's certain of it in the way people in this part of the country can tell when snow is about to fall simply by taking note of the stillness of the air, or the huddled sparrows on the lawn, or the cold blue bark of the lilacs. All the same, Charlotte keeps her secret close, a painful ember tucked beneath her skin.

“How's Collie?” she asks. Collie was the one child whose presence on earth Charlotte did not resent while she was trying, and failing, to get pregnant.

“Locked in his room. He won't even open the door for Kat Williams. She's been hanging around, waiting for him. I finally had to tell her to go home. Not that she necessarily listened to me.” Jorie goes to her window and lifts the curtain. She gazes at the trailing peas in her garden, the flowers drooping in the heat. “I think she's still camped out in our yard.”

“What about you?” Charlotte has come to stand beside her friend. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yeah. I have to be, don't I?”

Jorie is relieved that Charlotte doesn't go on and on about Ethan's innocence, the way her mother and sister did earlier in the day when they came to pledge their support. Jorie's mother, Ruth, vowed to mortgage the girls' childhood home on Smithfield Lane, along with everything in it if need be, to help pay the legal bills. Anne, always so chilly and disinterested, had hugged Jorie, insisting she was on her side, one hundred percent of the way. Jorie had thanked her mother, she'd kissed her sister, and when they'd left, she watched them walk down the path with a liar's distance between them. She could no more bring herself to tell her family the truth than she could report that the sky was now the earth and that the blue vista above them would forevermore be the stuff they walked upon. How could she tell them that wrong had become right and everything they once believed now needed to be restrung on another cord entirely, glittering pearls of faith that have turned out to be nothing more than a strand of worthless stones.

“I'm fine,” she vows again tonight, as she sends Charlotte on her way, although when she hugs her friend at the door, Jorie is no more substantial than a bundle of sticks. She'll break if she's held too close; she'll fall into splinters right there in the doorway.

“Will you call me if you need me?” Charlotte asks, but already the door has closed behind her. Charlotte walks along to her car slowly, like a woman trekking through snow even though the weather is fine and golden, with the pale evening sky falling into the darkness of the night. It is long past supper now, the time when the families in town are safe in their houses, glad that they have nothing more serious to worry about than woodchucks in the garden, mice in the basement, peeling tiles in the hall. Out in the heavens, the harp star is rising in Lyra, higher and higher, a beacon in the night. The air smells fresh, the streets are empty, and only the loneliest individuals in town are seated at the Safehouse bar, ordering a tonic for what they think ails them, hoping in vain to discover a cure for the way that they feel inside.

It is the hour Jorie once longed for, that blue hour when she and Ethan would stand in the kitchen with the lights turned off stealing a kiss before they finished the evening's chores. Now it's a time like any other, long minutes, tedious seconds, nothing more than flat time moving forward, like it or not. Jorie has taken to forgetting the simplest things—dinner, for instance—and so now she brings a tray upstairs. She knocks at the bedroom door, and when Collie doesn't answer, she leaves his supper in the hallway, nothing fancy, just a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. Decent enough fare, but wasted all the same, as she knows he won't eat.

Perhaps Collie wants to sit in his room until the present blows over them, beyond rooftops and orchards, until it's gone so far away they can once again open their windows and doors. But Jorie knows her poor boy can wait forever, he can sit in his locked bedroom until he is an old man, and this thing that has befallen them will not go away, It has come to settle; it is here to stay. They could talk about this if they could talk at all, but as it's true with Charlotte so it is true with Collie as well: keep a wicked secret and soon enough there'll be no choice in the matter. Before long, they'll have lost the ability to speak.