“Prison?” Sara felt her heart sink. She hated to hear when one of her kids turned out bad, even if she couldn’t quite recall what he looked like. “What did he do?”
“He didn’t do anything, ma’am. That’s the point.”
“Okay.” Sara rephrased the question. “What was he convicted of?”
“Nothing as far as I know. He doesn’t even know if he’s arrested or what.”
Sara assumed the girl had confused prison with jail. “He’s at the police station on Main Street?” Tessa shot her a look and Sara shrugged, helpless to explain.
Julie told her, “Yes, ma’am. They got him downtown.”
“Okay, what do they think he did?”
“I guess they think he killed Allison, but there ain’t no way he—”
“Murder.” Sara did not let her finish the sentence. “I’m not sure what he wants me to do.” She felt compelled to add, “For this sort of situation, he needs a lawyer, not a doctor.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know the difference between a doctor and a lawyer.” Julie didn’t sound insulted by Sara’s clarification. “It’s just that he said he really needed someone who would listen to him, because they don’t believe that he was with Pippy all night, and he said that you were the only one who ever listened to him, and that one cop, she’s been really hard on him. She keeps staring at him like—”
Sara put her hand to her throat. “What cop?”
“I’m not sure. Some lady.”
That narrowed things down enough. Sara tried not to sound cold. “I really can’t get involved in this, Julie. If Tommy has been arrested, then by law, they have to provide him with a lawyer. Tell him to ask for Buddy Conford. He’s very good at helping people in these sorts of situations. All right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She sounded disappointed, but not surprised. “Okay, then. I told him I’d try.”
“Well …” Sara did not know what else to say. “Good luck. To both of you.”
“Thank you, ma’am, and like I said, I’m sorry to bother you’uns over the holiday.”
“It’s all right.” Sara waited for the girl to respond, but there was only the sound of a flushing toilet, then a dead line.
Tessa asked, “What was that about?”
Sara hung up the phone and sat down at the table. “One of my old patients is in jail. They think he killed somebody. Not Brad—someone named Allison.”
Tessa asked, “Which patient was she calling about? I bet it’s the boy who stabbed Brad.”
Cathy slammed the refrigerator door to express her disapproval.
Still, Tessa pressed, “What’s his name?”
Sara studiously avoided her mother’s disapproving gaze. “Tommy Braham.”
“That’s the one. Mama, didn’t he used to cut our grass?”
Cathy gave a clipped “Yes,” not adding anything else to the conversation.
Sara said, “For the life of me, I can’t remember what he looks like. Not too bright. I think his father is an electrician. Why can’t I remember his face?”
Cathy tsked her tongue as she spread Duke’s mayonnaise onto slices of white bread. “Age will do that to you.”
Tessa smiled smugly. “You should know.”
Cathy made a biting retort, but Sara tuned out the exchange. She strained to remember more details about Tommy Braham, trying to place him. His father stuck out more than the son; a gruff, muscled man who was uncomfortable being at the clinic, as if he found the public act of caring for his son to be emasculating. The wife had run off—Sara remembered that at least. There had been quite a scandal around her departure, mostly because she had left in the middle of the night with the youth minister of the Primitive Baptist church.
Tommy must have been around eight or nine when Sara first saw him as a patient. All boys looked the same at that age: bowl hair cuts, T-shirts, blue jeans that looked impossibly small and bunched up over bright white tennis shoes. Had he had a crush on her? She couldn’t remember. What stuck out the most was that he had been silly and a bit slow. She imagined if he’d committed murder, it was because someone else had put him up to it.
She asked, “Who is Tommy supposed to have killed?”
Tessa answered, “A student from the college. They pulled her out of the lake at the crack of dawn. At first they thought it was a suicide, then they didn’t, so they went to her house, which happens to be that crappy garage Gordon Braham rents out to students. You know the one?”
Sara nodded. She had once helped her father pump the septic tank outside the Braham house while she was on a holiday break from college, an event that had spurred her to work doubly hard to get into medical school.
Tessa supplied, “So, Tommy was there in the garage with a knife. He attacked Frank and ran out into the street. Brad chased after him and he stabbed Brad, too.”
Sara shook her head. She had been thinking something small—a convenience store holdup, an accidental discharge of a gun. “That doesn’t sound like Tommy.”
“Half the neighborhood saw it,” Tessa told her. “Brad was chasing him down the street and Tommy turned around and stabbed him in the gut.”
Sara thought it through to the next step. Tommy hadn’t stabbed a civilian. He had stabbed a cop. There were different rules when a police officer was involved. Assault turned into attempted murder. Manslaughter turned into murder in the first.
Tessa mumbled, “I hear Frank got a little rough with him.”
Cathy voiced her disapproval as she took plates down from the cabinets. “It’s very disappointing when people you respect behave badly.”
Sara tried to imagine the scene: Brad running after Tommy, Frank bringing up the rear. But it wouldn’t have just been Frank. He wouldn’t waste his time pounding on a suspect while Brad was bleeding out. Someone else would have been there. Someone who had probably caused the whole takedown to go bad in the first place.
Sara felt anger spread like fire inside her chest. “Where was Lena during all of this?”
Cathy dropped a plate on the floor. It shattered at her feet, but she did not bend to pick up the pieces. Her lips went into a thin line and her nostrils flared. Sara could tell she was struggling to speak. “Don’t you dare say that hateful woman’s name in my house ever again. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sara looked down at her hands. Lena Adams. Jeffrey’s star detective. The woman who was supposed to have Jeffrey’s back at all times. The woman whose cowardice and fear had gotten Jeffrey murdered.
Tessa struggled to kneel down and help her mother clean up the broken dish. Sara stayed where she was, frozen in place.
The darkness was back, a suffocating cloud of misery that made her want to curl into a ball. This kitchen had been filled with laughter all of Sara’s life—the good-natured bickering between her mother and sister, the bad puns and practical jokes from her father. Sara did not belong here anymore. She should find an excuse to leave. She should go back to Atlanta and let her family enjoy their holiday in peace rather than dredging up the collective sorrow of the last four years.
No one spoke until the phone rang again. Tessa was closest. She picked up the receiver. “Linton residence.” She didn’t make small talk. She handed the phone to Sara.