“Or maybe they love each other and they wanted to work it out because they had a kid?”
“That’s real pretty talk coming from you, doll.” He’d smoked his cigarette down to the filter. He tossed it into a planter by the door. “Guess it don’t matter now. Rusty’s not gonna pay me to track down this shit from the grave.”
“Whoever takes over the case will need someone on the ground.”
He winced, as if the thought caused him injury. “Dunno if I got it in me to work for a lawyer who’s not your dad. Present company excluded. But shit, lawyers don’t pay their bills and they just basically suck as human beings.”
Charlie did not disagree.
He winked at her. “All right, dolly, go back to listening to these dirtbags. Those dickholes inside didn’t know your dad. Not good enough to hold a cup of his piss if you ask me.”
Charlie smiled. “Thank you.”
Jimmy Jack clicked his tongue as he gave her a wink. Charlie watched him work his way through the crowd. He slapped a few backs, did a few fist bumps as he made his way toward the doors and, presumably, the open bar. He tipped his fedora to the woman who had gotten her kids back. She put her hand on her hip, and Charlie got the impression that neither of them were going to be alone tonight.
A car horn beeped.
They all looked out at the parking lot.
Ben was behind the wheel of his truck. Sam sat beside him.
The last time a boy had beeped a car horn at Charlie, Rusty had put her on restriction for crawling out her bedroom window in the middle of the night.
Ben beeped the horn again. He waved Charlie over.
She made her excuses to the group, though she assumed that many of them had at one point in their lives run toward a truck idling in a parking lot.
Sam got out, her hand resting on the open door. Charlie could hear the truck’s muffler belching from thirty feet away. Ben’s Datsun was twenty years old, the only thing they could afford after the canceled trip to Colorado. They had sold his SUV for the loan pay-off. A week later, the buyer was not amenable to selling it back to them. Rusty and Lenore had offered to let them keep the loaned money, but Charlie couldn’t bring herself to do it. The clinic in Colorado had refunded the wire within days. The problem was the other bills: the flight and hotel cancellations, surcharges on their credit cards for cash advances, then the post-miscarriage hospital bills, surgical bills, specialist bills, anesthesiology bills, radiology bills, doctors’ bills, pharmacy bills and a ton of co-pays and an avalanche of no-pays. At the time, the debt was so crushing that they’d been lucky they could afford to pay cash for the piece-of-shit truck.
They had spent an entire weekend scraping the giant Confederate flag decal off the back window.
Sam said, “Ben offered to help me escape. I couldn’t take being in that crowd for much longer.”
“Me, either,” Charlie said, though she would rather congregate with known felons than suffer through what she assumed was Sam’s lame attempt at matchmaking.
Charlie had an awkward moment over the gearshift, which jutted out of the hump in the floor. She started to hike up her dress to straddle it, but Ben had made it clear the other night that he did not want his knob between her legs.
“You okay?” Ben asked.
“Sure.” Charlie ended up sitting sidesaddle, knees clenched together, legs at an angle, like Bonnie Blue Butler before the fall.
The door groaned on rusty hinges as Sam pulled it shut. “A spray lubricant would alleviate that noise.”
Ben said, “I tried some WD-40.”
“That’s a solvent, not a lubricant.” She told Charlie, “I thought we could spend some time together at the farmhouse.”
Charlie did a double take. She could not imagine why her sister would want to spend two seconds at that detestable place. The night before Sam had left for Stanford, she had made a not completely unfunny joke about the most efficient way to burn it to the ground.
Ben shifted the gear into drive. He made a tight U-turn around a cluster of parked cars. BMWs. Audis. Mercedes. Charlie hoped none of Rusty’s mourners boosted them.
“Shit,” Ben muttered.
Two police cars were parked on the median by the exit. Charlie recognized Jonah Vickery, Greg Brenner, and most of the other cops from the middle school. They were waiting to do the funeral escort, leaning against their cruisers, smoking cigarettes.
They recognized Charlie, too.
Jonah made circles with his fingers and put them to his eyes. The rest of the gang joined in, laughing like hyenas as they made raccoon eyes in honor of Charlie’s bruises.
“Fuckers.” Ben grabbed the handle and rolled down the window.
“Babe,” Charlie said, alarmed.
He leaned out the window, fist raised. “Motherfuckers.”
“Ben!” Charlie tried to pull him back in. He was almost yelling. What the hell had gotten into her passive husband? “Ben, what are—”
“Go fuck yourselves.” Ben flipped them the bird with both hands. “Assholes.”
The cops were no longer laughing. They stared Ben down as the truck pulled out onto the highway.
“Are you crazy?” Charlie demanded. She was supposed to be the unhinged one. “They could beat your ass.”
“Let them.”
“Let them kill you?” Charlie asked. “Jesus, Ben. They’re dangerous. Like sharks. With switchblades.”
Sam said, “Surely not switchblades? They’re illegal.”
Charlie felt a strangled groan die in her throat.
Ben rolled the window back up. “I’m so sick of this fucking place.” He wrenched the gearshift into third, then pushed it into fourth as he sped up the highway.
Charlie stared at the empty road ahead.
He had never been sick of this place before.
“Well.”
Sam cleared her throat. “I love living in New York. The culture. The arts. The restaurants.”
“I couldn’t live up north,” Ben said, as if entertaining the thought. “Maybe Atlanta.”
Sam said, “I’m sure the public defender’s office would be happy to have you.”
Charlie glared at her sister, mouthing a “What the fuck?”
Sam shrugged, her expression unreadable.
Ben loosened his tie. He unbuttoned his collar. “I’ve done my time for the greater good. I want to join the dark side.”
Charlie could almost feel her mind boggling. “What?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Ben said. “I’m tired of being a poor civil servant. I want to make some money. I want to own a boat.”
Charlie pressed together her lips, the same as she had done when Lenore told her she was moving to Florida. Ben was generally easy-going about most things, but Charlie had learned that his mind, once made up, was not likely to change. He had clearly made up his mind about changing careers. Maybe he had made up his mind about leaving. There was something different about him. He seemed relaxed, almost giddy, like a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders.
Charlie assumed that the burden was her.
Sam offered, “We have some Atlanta firms we work with in cases of criminal litigation. I could certainly write some letters of recommendation.”
Charlie glared at her sister again.
“Thanks. I’ll let you know after I do some research.” Ben unknotted his tie. The material made a thwip sound as he pulled it through his collar. He tossed it behind the seat. “Kelly confessed on the hospital tape.”
“Jesus!” Charlie’s voice was high enough to break glass. “Ben, you can’t tell us that.”
“You’ve still got spousal privilege and her—” He laughed. “God, Sam, you scared the shit out of Coin. I could practically hear the crap coming out of his ass when you started to parry with the judge.”
Charlie grabbed his arm. “What is wrong with you? You could get fired for—”
“I resigned last night.”