The Good Sister (29 page)

Cabot stepped back from the jury box. For the first time Roxanne saw the toll the last two weeks had taken on him. On his
drawn face he wore an expression of sadness and resignation as much as if Simone were his wife and he was about to say words
that described her.

“Simone Duran tried to kill her daughters because she
knew
it was the right and loving thing to do.” He let the words sink in. “She did it because, at that moment, she was insane.”

The jury was out for four days. The call came from David Cabot’s office when Roxanne and her students were in the middle of
a civics lesson. She went to the back of
the room and called Ty. There was no point trying not to be heard. Every kid in the classroom had turned to watch and listen.

“They’ve decided.”

“I’m on my way,” he said.

She shut her cell phone and pressed the school intercom to contact the front office. Students, faculty, and staff at Balboa
Middle School had been waiting and planning for this moment. The school’s head secretary had arranged for someone to be sent
to substitute in Roxanne’s class at a moment’s notice.

Roxanne turned to tell her class she had to leave them and saw that every child’s eyes were fixed on her. She stared back
at them, her mind just then a blank. She wasn’t going to pretend that nothing was going on. As Elizabeth had said, for her
students the semester had been a long lesson in how the country’s legal system worked. They had their opinions, of course;
and she had heard them discussing Simone’s guilt or innocence in the halls and huddled around their desks before class, going
suddenly silent when she came near. Some claimed to be sympathetic although she never quite trusted declarations of support
from children who depended on her to promote them from eighth to ninth grade. Other students—most, she suspected, though she
did not know for sure—had strong feelings against Simone. They were young enough to imagine themselves as helpless victims.
On the last day of the trial a girl had told her, “I like you, Ms. Callahan,
but what your sister did was evil. She’s gotta go to jail or else every mother be killing their babies.”

As she gathered her purse, coat, and umbrella she heard a voice from the back of the room. It was Ryan.

“Good luck, Ms. Callahan.”

A girl in the front row smirked. “Yeah. Good luck.”

The rest of the class said nothing. The sub came to take over for Roxanne, and they watched her go.

On her way out of the school she stopped in Elizabeth’s classroom and they stepped into the hall to speak privately. On the
other side of the room’s partly open door there was the kind of perfect and total silence that would normally mean trouble
in a roomful of adolescents, but in this case meant that every child was listening hard.

“Are you going to be okay?” Elizabeth asked. “Do you need someone to drive you? If the taxi’s not here…”

“The office called one for me. It’s out front now. Ty’s meeting me in court.”

Elizabeth hugged her. “I’m praying for you, honey.”

“Not me. Simone.”

“Yeah,” Elizabeth said. “Her too.”

It was raining again and traffic downtown was backed up at all the lights. David Cabot had promised Roxanne that he and Simone
wouldn’t go into the courtroom until she was in the gallery beside Johnny, but how long could he stall? A block from the courts
she paid the driver and
got out, running the rest of the way without opening her umbrella.

She found Ty in the crowd outside the courtroom and they entered together, taking their seats beside Johnny in the already
full gallery. Looking down she saw that Johnny’s trousers were wet halfway to the knees as if he’d waded through a flood to
reach the court in time. She grabbed his hand and held it as Ty was holding hers.

Roxanne heard the door behind her open, the voices of reporters calling out a gabble of questions. The door slammed shut,
and as Elizabeth’s classroom had been preternaturally quiet, so was the gallery. Two sets of footsteps came down the center
aisle. Simone and David stopped beside Johnny. Johnny stood and Simone automatically went to his embrace, neither of them
making a sound.

Roxanne realized how much she had missed her sister. Her thoughts went back to the last time they’d had fun together, sprawled
on the grass in the side yard. They’d laughed about Shawn Hutton and talked about sailing. Perhaps that conversation marked
the moment when the fatal shift began in Simone’s mind. She had reminisced about flying across the water and then she climbed
a tree and for a few moments remembered how it felt to be brave and free.

“I love you,” Roxanne said, not caring who in the gallery heard her.

Simone’s eyes reddened but did not fill with tears as they once had so easily. She turned away and went
with David Cabot to the front of the courtroom to await the verdict. Roxanne clutched Ty’s hand and held her breath.

The bailiff called the court to order and Judge MacArthur entered, his robes billowing behind him. He banged his gavel once
and spoke to the gallery before he sat down. “Ladies and gentlemen, in a minute the jury will take its seats and the verdict
will be read. I’m going to say something right now and I want you to hear me. Every one of you.”

For some reason his hair, his eyebrows, and his mustache looked more alarmingly bushy than ever.

He said, “I realize feelings run high in a case like this, and no matter how the verdict goes there are some among you who
won’t be happy. I’m telling you right now, keep your opinions to yourself. This courtroom is not a circus tent and this trial
is not an exhibit for your amusement.”

She wanted Judge MacArthur to stop talking; at the same time she hoped his harangue would go on, and they would never have
to hear the verdict pronounced against Simone.

“I have directed the officers of this court that anyone who makes an inappropriate public display will not be permitted to
leave the courtroom until I say they can go. I hope that’s clear because I’m not in the mood to be patient this afternoon.”
He turned to the clerk of the jury. “Call them in, please.”

The jurors entered in the same order they always did,
those seated at the far end of the jury box first. Roxanne scanned each one’s face, searching for some sign the verdict would
be not guilty by reason of insanity. N.G.I., David Cabot always said. The copy-shop owner had chewed away her lipstick but
the college student had taken the time to reapply hers. Bright red. The retired accountant had misbuttoned his jacket.

All but the copy-shop owner sat down. David had predicted this woman would be the jury foreperson. He was a smart attorney
and he’d given Simone a strong defense. A flutter of hope brushed over Roxanne.

“Have you reached a verdict?” Judge MacArthur asked.

“We have, Your Honor.” She handed a folded piece of paper to the bailiff, who handed it up to the judge, who read it without
a flicker of emotion and passed it back.

“How do you find?”

The foreperson rubbed the heel of her hand across her mouth before she spoke. “On the charge of attempted murder, the jury
finds Simone Duran not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Roxanne cried out and covered her face with her hands. Johnny ran toward the front of the courtroom. Despite Judge MacArthur’s
warning, the gallery erupted.

August, Three Years Later

T
y would accompany Roxanne if she asked him, but she preferred to go to St. Anne’s Hospital alone. And he preferred to stay
home. He liked the daddy time with their son, Liam, who was eighteen months old, a towheaded boy who collected roly-poly bugs
from under rocks and slept with a pink velour spider.

She appreciated having a few hours alone before she saw her sister; and afterward the long return drive allowed her time to
resettle her emotions and focus on her family as she wanted to, not forgetting Simone, but putting her in a corner of her
mind where she was no longer Roxanne’s first concern. Roxanne calculated that she’d traveled the winding road to St. Anne’s
thirty-three times; and at the current pace of Simone’s therapy, it seemed likely she would drive it that many times again.
Lately she
had begun to wonder if her sister might never return to her family.

During the first several months of her incarceration Simone had seen no visitors, and when the ban was lifted she sent word
through Dr. Lennox that she wanted to see Roxanne. The reunion was less awkward than Roxanne had feared. For two hours they
sat in the hospital’s recreation room and played Monopoly. This was what Simone wanted to do; and Roxanne, remembering their
weekend at the lake cottage, was struck by how like the twins she was: misering over her money, squealing with delight when
Roxanne landed on one of her properties, and grabbing for two hundred dollars every time she passed Go as if Roxanne wanted
to keep her from having what the game owed her.

Before each visit Roxanne spent time with her sister’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lennox. Sometimes she thought he had become her doctor
as well as Simone’s. She sat in his office, and as always in the beginning, she was tense and wary of his questions. Today
he began by telling her what she knew already.

“Simone is angry.”

“No kidding.”

“She says you all ruined her life.”

Roxanne’s first instinct was resentful and defensive; but her protest went unspoken because she couldn’t blame her sister
for being angry. Dr. Balch had testified, and
Roxanne knew, that along with Ellen and BJ and Johnny she had done her part to stymie whatever self-reliance might have struggled
inside Simone. In Roxanne’s mind her sister’s thwarted longing to sail had become symbolic of all the roads and byways she
had not been allowed to explore, the trips and falls her family had protected her from, the disasters large and small that
were a necessary part of growing up.

Liam had been walking since he was ten months old and fallen a hundred times. Ty encouraged him to run and climb; and when
he took a tumble, Roxanne, hearing his cry, wanted to scoop him up and put him in a bubble where nothing could ever hurt him.
Instead she kissed his sore knee, applied Band-Aids when needed, and let him go. Sometimes it took every ounce of her will
to do it.

Johnny visited Simone when she invited him, which was not often. Once on their anniversary he had come, and she had turned
him away. Afterward he sat on the stone bench in the visitors’ garden and wept as he never had, not even during the trial
or after the verdict. Simone said she loved him, but Dr. Lennox said she might never go back to him. She feared being lured
back into their dance of submission, helplessness, and control.

Dr. Lennox said Simone and Roxanne also danced. “Simone won’t stop dipping and spinning until you do.” His voice was kind
and quiet, but Roxanne thought he was scolding her so she turned her deaf ear and watched
the birds at the feeder outside his office window. It was interesting, perplexing: something about St. Anne’s and Dr. Lennox
brought out her stubbornness.

Johnny still worked long hours, but he spent every free moment with his five girls. Olivia and Claire were charming little
creatures, close as twins in their looks and sweet ways. Valli and Victoria remembered the day in the garage; but their memories
didn’t hold together. Soon they would slip apart, disintegrate like threads of cheesecloth.

To Roxanne it seemed Merell had, in lying to protect her mother, sacrificed her innocence. She was almost a teenager now,
a bright, wild, and unpredictable girl, sensitive as a hot wire. Her teachers complained that she was unmotivated, secretive,
and unreliable. They wished that she would make friends. Johnny talked of sending her to boarding school in Monterey, but
Ty and Roxanne had convinced him not to and wanted her to live with them for a while. They had a roomy second story, a guest
bedroom with beautiful windows.

Two years ago, when Johnny announced his plan to build a new house on the beach in Leucadia, Ellen had stayed behind in the
city and bought a town house near her office in Little Italy, where there was always something going on. She had a wide circle
of friends, and her real estate business was a small but thriving concern specializing in homes considered difficult to sell.

In his office Dr. Lennox told Roxanne, “Simone still feels as helpless as she did the day she first came to St. Anne’s. She’s
stuck and that’s why she’s angry. She’s like a little girl in a woman’s body, and she knows that until she grows up, she’s
never going to leave this hospital.”

Though Lennox was a superior doctor and highly professional, he spoke to Roxanne in a commonplace way, friend to friend, in
a language they both understood.

“You’ve been a good sister, but now it’s time to take the next step.” Dr. Lennox leaned forward across his desk, fixing Roxanne
with his gray eyes. “I can’t tell you what goes on in your sister’s therapy, but I can tell you she’s been very brave. And
she knows that she won’t be able to go home without your help.”

A flash of anger. “You’re saying it’s up to me. Again?” She liked Lennox and trusted him, but there were times when her patience
with the whole therapeutic regime ran out. “Why is it always up to me? She’s the one who put the girls in the car and turned
on the gas.”