so that I could have a dad. And that meant I had to
step up to the plate, and be a son."
"I never meant to obligate you to ..."
"That's okay," he went on impatiently, "it worked
out okay. Only once in a while I'd be getting along
with him all right, and suddenly it would pop into my
head that I ought to be punching his lights out. For
what he did."
He turned to me. "I mean, that smack he gave you,
that was just the cherry on the cake. There was so
much more, but I was a little kid, it was what I could
understand."
So it represented something to him. "Okay. And
now?"
Sam sighed heavily. "Now we've ... I don't
know. Built around it, or something. And I guess it's
not such a huge deal, to talk about him in court. Like
you said, he's already told them stuff. But, Mom, he's
so weird. And with the school thing going on, too, like
maybe not wanting to go ... I'm afraid he'll decide
I'm doing it all to punish him. School, court, everything."
He gazed at me in youthful appeal. "Like, that I've
been saving it, like it was my big guns, you know? And
now I'm taking my chance to hit back at him any way I
can."
Which for Victor was not only possible, it was
likely. "Not because it makes any logical sense,
but ..."
Sam nodded energetically. "He thinks he deserves
it. I know he does. That trauma-center thing means a
lot to him 'cause it's a way to make something decent
work out with you. Mom, I think he'd marry you again
if he could. I bet that's what he was sitting out there
thinking about, in the cemetery."
Now there was an idea right out of my absolute
worst nightmare. "You do know it's not going to happen,"
I said evenly.
"Yeah, yeah. Don't worry, Mom, if that ever
started looking possible I'd tie you up and smuggle you
out of here on one of the fishing boats. Or Wade
would."
He managed a laugh, sobered instantly. "It's like
he's been on this shaky little raft, though. And now it's
sinking, and he might think I'm, like, secretly glad, like
I think it serves him right. And you know Dad: if he
feels bad ..."
Right. He would find a way to make you feel bad
too. He was, as Sam said, so weird.
"And then it'll all get messed up again," Sam finished.
"The whole Dad thing. Like a boat you've been
working so hard building and then it gets smashed."
"Sam, I'm going to do my very best to try to prevent
that," I told him as we pulled into our driveway.
"Really."
"Yeah. I know you are."
He smiled weakly at me. But he didn't sound at all
convinced that I would be successful, and at the moment
neither was I.
Inside, Sam went upstairs and stayed there while I
checked on Monday, whose nose was healing nicely. I
gave her a liver biscuit, which she took delicately, carrying
it under the dining-room table to gloat over it
before she ate it.
Then I called Bennet. "Listen, Mr. Hot-Shot Attorney,"
I began when his secretary put him on. "I don't
know what you were thinking when you said it was
okay to--"
"I know," Bennet cut in tiredly. "Jacobia, I'm
sorry. I just found out myself. This is what happens
when you're in one state and your client is in jail in
another."
"Right, a state of confusion, and by that I mean
both of you. What happened to the criminal lawyer
you were supposed to be lining up? Where's the skilled,
on-top-of-it-all defense he's supposed to be getting,
preferably from someone who has seen an actual copy
of the criminal codes and is in the same area code as
Victor?"
Bennet let me rant on this way a little longer, until
I ran out of breath. Then:
"Jacobia, he's demanding to interview them." Ben
net sounded very discouraged. "Wants to make sure he
feels they're competent, he says."
"Competent? Bennet, he's the one who
needs ..."
A competency hearing, I was about to say. Then I
realized that Bennet's glum tone wasn't only the result
of my being angry with him; during the divorce, he had
absorbed the equivalent of white-hot lava and had
never lost his chipper, we'11-get-through-this professional
attitude.
"Bad news," I guessed aloud, and he sighed heavily.
"Victor took advantage of the attorney-client privilege
a little while ago," he said quietly, "on the phone
to me. Right after he told me that the war of words you
two had for a marriage escalated to more than words.
And he'd told the cops about it."
"He slapped me on one occasion. One only, Ben
net, and that was ..."
"Drugs they found in Reuben's system," Bennet
said, ignoring me. "Sedative drugs. Ever wonder where
he got them?"
"Well, it could be anywhere," I said, nonplussed. It
was, I'd thought, the hardest part about it all to nail
down. "How would I know where ... Oh. Oh, Ben
net, you don't mean ..."
Thanks for that other thing, Reuben had said to
Victor on his way out of La Sardina.
"Victor prescribed them for him," Rennet confirmed.
"Tate was pushing him around and one of the
things he demanded was drugs. A pick-me-up, Victor
says Tate called it."
"But these were--"
"Yeah. Victor got the bright idea that what this
guy really needed was a tranquilizer. So he wrote him a
'scrip, but not with a brand name that Tate would have
recognized. He used the drug's generic name, the chemical
name. And he knows Tate filled it from the local
pharmacy, 'cause the druggist called him, checking to
make sure it really was a legitimate prescription. Tate
being the kind of guy, I guess, who everyone knew
would steal prescription pads if he got a chance. But
this time he hadn't."
"Oh, hell," I said, sinking onto the chair in the
telephone alcove. "He didn't look sedated in the bar."
"Just got the 'scrip that afternoon. Took some after
you saw him, maybe. Victor says on top of alcohol, the
stuff would really knock you for a loop."
"So it could look like Victor was setting him up to
kill him. Has Victor told anyone else about this, Ben
net?"
The attorney let out an exasperated breath. "No.
This is the thing he's really worried about. I can't seem
to make him see it, that it's nothing compared to his
real troubles. That he wrote a prescription that wasn't
warranted ..."
But it was precisely the kind of thing that Victor
would get his britches in a twist over: his precious medical
integrity.
"... And it's what he was doing out there in the
graveyard," Bennet finished. "Agonizing about it."
"And now he's sitting down there in a cell without
any legal counsel. What did you tell him?"
"To stop being a damned idiot. That he's as able to
judge the competence of attorneys as I am to judge
brain surgeons. To get off the dime, pick a lawyer from
the list I faxed up, and do what the lawyer tells him.
Think it'll work?" He laughed.
The advantage of dealing with the attorney who
handled your bitter, go-for-the jugular divorce is a
shared appreciation for black humor; the chances of
Victor's putting his trust in a lawyer he'd picked from a
list was about the same as his dialing 1-800SHYSTER
and throwing himself on the mercy of whoever answered.
"Okay, Bennet," I said. "Keep on keeping on,
please. I know you're doing your best. And hey, it
could be worse."
I told him what Sam had said about Victor sitting
out there maybe thinking about remarrying me.
Bennet laughed again. "You two ever tried that, I'd
come up there and murder you both myself. It'd be a
mercy killing."
Soon after, we hung up, Bennet because his day
had made him thirsty for a vodka gimlet, and me because
the kitchen had that bright, clean-asa-whistle
look that meant it must be time to start dirtying it up
again, by cooking dinner.
I thought it might cheer Sam up, too, but he didn't
appear downstairs. I'd made fish and potatoes, a
hearty, strengthening meal, but Sam's portion had gotten
all shriveled and dried in the warming oven by the
time Tommy Daigle came over at around eight o'clock,
went upstairs, and stayed for a couple of hours.
Later, when I saw him coming down again, his
freckled face looked troubled.
"So, what have the two of you been up to?" I
asked lightly.
But Tommy wasn't fooled; he had a mother himself,
and knew all the information-getting tricks. "Oh,
nothin'. Doing the Morse thing, gettin' decent at that.
And fooling around with the Ouija board. Man, but
isn't that thing some wicked strange, though."
It was downeast Maine phrasing; as far as I knew,
Tommy had never been farther from Eastport than
Bangor, three hours away. He pulled his jacket on, remembered
something in the pocket.
"Hey, my mom found this at the library, said I
ought to give it to you."
He pulled out a folder. I couldn't think what
Tommy's mother might have found for me at the library;
some recipes maybe, or curtain patterns. She
was ferociously domestic. As he handed it to me, I noticed
the red, inflamed mark on the back of his hand.
Seeing me blink at it, he shrugged embarrassedly.
"Reached for the salt instead of asking to have it
passed. Ma smacked me with a serving spoon."
"I see," I replied carefully. "You get smacked
often?"
"Oh, no, Mrs. Tiptree. Don't you go thinkin' that.
Jeez, that kind of story got around, Ma would kill me
for sure."
Tommy grinned earnestly at me as he said this, to
show he was only joking. "Paddled my behind some
when I was a kid. Guess I earned it. My uncle, he was a
one, though."
He winced, as if remembering. "Gave me this
here." Pointing to the dent over his eyebrow, shaped
like a ...