A Gift of Time (The Nine Minutes Trilogy Book 3) (19 page)

Chapter Thirty

Tommy

2001,
Fort Lauderdale

Tommy sat behind
his desk at Dillon & Davis Architects.
He was still a little high from what he’d learned that morning. He wanted to
call Ginny but knew she’d be right in the middle of her visit with Sister Mary
Katherine, and he didn’t want to interrupt her. Her plane would be getting in
tomorrow afternoon, and he decided he’d pick her up from the airport and take
her straight to a pricey hotel on Fort Lauderdale beach.

Not for sex,
although he wouldn’t say no to that. He wanted to celebrate his news, and he
wanted to do it in style. He’d already arranged for Carter to spend tomorrow
afternoon and Sunday night at their home and get the kids up and off to school
Monday morning so he and Ginny could have a night away.

He looked up
from his desk and saw her approaching. Her confident walk sickened him. She
still thought she’d won.

He couldn’t
hate her more.

“Working on
Saturday? What are Gin and the kids up to?” Sarah Jo took the seat in front of
Tommy’s desk and crossed her legs after she laid her purse on his desk. She
slowly perused his office, finally met his eyes, and yawned.

“Gin is
visiting an old friend, Mimi is working, and Jason has games all day.” His
voice was cold.

Sarah Jo
studied the fingernails on her right hand. “So what do you want? I wouldn’t be
here if I wasn’t shopping close by. You’re not calling the shots, remember?”

She was
surprised to see he was smiling.

“When are
you moving?” he asked.

“I’m not
moving, and you know that. We discussed this at that shithole diner a couple of
months ago. Or did you forget?” Condescension dripped from every word she
spoke.

“No. I
didn’t forget. What I can’t remember is why you think you don’t have to leave.”

“You know
why. I told you—”

“Yeah, I
remember. The threat to tell Ginny about the morning sickness remedy. Well,
I’ve decided it’s okay if you tell her. She won’t believe you.” He was
following Alec’s advice from before Thanksgiving. Advice Alec had offered about
a spiteful client who’d surprisingly become useful in Tommy’s secret feud with
Sarah Jo—call her bluff, Tom. Call her fucking bluff.

Sarah Jo
snorted. “What makes you so sure she won’t believe me?”

“Because
it’s your word against mine, and when I show her Moe’s journal, the one I told
you about, she’ll read for herself in Moe’s words how it was you who set up her
rape. Who’s she going to believe then, Jo?”

He leaned
back in his chair and idly tapped his pen on his knee. He was going out on a
limb here. He’d thrown Moe’s journal in the garbage months ago, but he never
told Jo that. He had one more hunch, and if he was right, he’d be able to see
it on her face. It was worth a try.

“And when
she finds out it was you, I mean Wendy, who tracked down Matthew Rockman and
fed him all that information over the phone about Grizz and his gang and who he
should talk to...”

He paused and
let the relevance of what he was saying sink in. He was certain by the
expression on her face that his intuition was right.

He leaned
forward, and stared at her. “You told me you had friends at Ginny’s high school
back in 1975. You would’ve heard the rumors about the school’s star running
back being tutored by the missing girl. Then, as time passed, you noticed him
making headlines with his legal career. You were always worried about Fess
getting in trouble, so you kept up with everything. It explains why Fess and I
weren’t on their radar immediately. You would never have implicated your
father.” His jaw tightened. “And I have to say, I do believe you thought you
were helping me out by not implicating me, too. But you would’ve known about
Froggy’s love for Willow—and his festering hatred for Grizz. You would’ve
known Blue’s marriage was falling apart. You told Rockman who he should go to.
He’d probably moved on and forgotten about Ginny, but you stirred it all up
again when you saw him in the news winning all his cases.”

She shifted
uncomfortably in her chair.

“So I
suppose Matthew told you this. That he heard from a Wendy, too? I don’t see how
you can be talking to a man you’re supposed to be testifying against.”

“No, Jo.
Your face just did. But I’m sure if I ask him if he’d ever been contacted by
someone named Wendy, he’d confirm it.”

She stood
up. “Fuck you! Fuck you all the way to hell, Tommy.”

She picked
up her purse and stomped out of his office. She made her way through the empty
and dark lobby, slamming the front door behind her.

Tommy stood
up then, too, but he didn’t smile. He didn’t feel victorious. He felt tired. He
was glad it was Saturday, and there was nobody in the other offices to witness
what just happened.

He also made
a decision. One he knew Ginny would agree with. He was supposed to testify in
Matthew Rockman’s murder trial. Tommy couldn’t implicate Grizz and Blue, but he
was smart enough to figure out a way to answer the questions in a manner that
would plant reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors. He might piss off the
prosecution, but he was willing to take that chance.

Rockman may
have been guilty of being a manipulative, conniving son-of-a-bitch, but he
wasn’t a murderer.

Chapter Thirty-One

Ginny

2001,
Illinois

I stood frozen
and stared at the framed picture in my hand.
I could feel a pulsing in my ears as my heart raced. I was aware of every vein
in my body. It was almost as if I could feel the blood coursing its way through
every artery.

This
couldn’t be. It was too much of a coincidence. I remembered how Grizz had asked
me to give Mimi the middle name of Ruth. After Tommy told me about the early
part of Grizz’s real childhood, I’d suspected maybe Ruth was the name of his
little sister, though I couldn’t confirm it. I also had no proof he was raised
in Florida.

But I did
know he had a real love for Rottweilers and that he’d owned a bar named Razors.
My head was spinning with possibilities.

“What’s the
matter, child? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Sister Mary Katherine said
as she watched me.

She guided
me by the elbow to a comfortable chair. I sat without taking my eyes off the
picture.

“Sister
Agnes, where is Macon’s Grove?” My voice cracked.

“Oh, it was
so small it’s probably been swallowed up by some bigger city by now. It’s right
smack dab in the middle of Florida. Nothing but orange groves as far as the eye
could see,” she said.

By now my
hand was shaking, and Sister Mary Katherine grabbed the picture from me before
I dropped it.

“Guinevere?”

I swallowed
thickly and took a deep breath. “I’d like to come back after Sister Agnes’s nap
and ask her some more questions about this picture. That is, if you think it’s
okay and if she’ll remember.”

“I can hear
you, you know?” came the small voice from the bed. “And I may be blind and
infirm, but I can tell you the license plate number of my first car. All of a
sudden, I’m not so tired after all.” I could feel her blind eyes swivel toward
me. “What do you want to know about Ruthie and Razor?”

I looked at
Sister Mary Katherine. She nodded for me to continue.

“Everything.
Please, sister. Tell me everything you remember about them and why you still
have this picture.”

“Well, it
didn’t start with Ruthie and Razor. It started with another child. A baby boy.”
My heart thudded. Sister Agnes sat up straighter. “It was 1947, and I was just
twenty-two then. I’d lost my husband in the war and was aimlessly wandering
from relative to relative in the hopes of finding myself. I was so lost then. I
was visiting an elderly aunt who lived near Macon’s Grove. She didn’t live near
it since it was in the middle of nowhere, but she lived close enough that she
was sought by a man whose wife was in labor. My aunt had a decent reputation as
a midwife, and she was closer than a hospital, so when he showed up at her
door, she grabbed her supplies and took me with her.”

She paused
and asked Sister Mary Katherine for a drink of water. After she sipped her
water, she continued.

“It was sad.
So sad. This little house in the middle of some orange groves. The poor woman
was almost delirious with pain by the time we got there. I will never
understand why the man just didn’t drive her to a hospital. Anyway, she gave
birth to a beautiful baby boy. He was a big one, too. Came out screaming at the
top of his lungs. My aunt handed him off to me to get him cleaned up. I brought
him into the kitchen to wipe him down. I can still see his round little face.”

I gulped and
wondered if she could’ve been describing Grizz as a newborn. My head became
thick with the sound of my blood pulsing. I watched as Sister Agnes’s
expression turned wistful.

“When I
brought him back to his mother, I could hear my aunt telling her husband she
was concerned. The woman was bleeding more than normal, and my aunt thought she
should be taken to a hospital. The man left to drive to the closest neighbor
and call an ambulance. I guess we thought an ambulance would’ve brought medical
help quicker than if we tried to load her up in a car and drive her ourselves.
My aunt would later tell me it didn’t matter. Her blood loss was so quick and
so heavy it was doubtful she could’ve been saved.”

The holy
sister took a big breath. “While the husband was gone, the mother regained
consciousness and asked for her baby. We placed him in her arms and watched as
she kissed his little head and spoke to him in a low voice. She looked up at my
aunt then and in her very weakened state told us she wanted someone to know the
truth about her baby.”

I sat up
straighter in my chair. Sister Agnes’s voice was like a drug. I couldn’t hear
the next word fast enough. I was taking in every syllable, every inflection in
her voice, every detail. My heart was thumping so loudly I was certain the holy
sisters could hear it beating in my chest.

“She told us
she was raised in a little tiny town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge
Mountains. She’d been in love with the same boy since first grade. They’d made
plans to be married when he was called away in the final draft for World War
II. The same war I lost my husband in. She found herself pregnant and alone.”
Sister Agnes sighed. “She lived with an elderly uncle, a nasty old man who
would’ve kicked her out without a second thought. She’d written to her fiancé,
and never received a reply. Neither she nor his family could find anything out
about his whereabouts and before too long, her pregnancy would be noticeable.

“Well, back
then, ‘nice girls’ didn’t have unmarried relations. At least, they weren’t
supposed to. She was ashamed and embarrassed. In hindsight, she wished she’d
have risked the shame and stayed there. Wished she’d confessed to his parents
she was carrying their son’s baby. When the man who’d later become her husband
passed through her town as part of a logging crew and showed some interest, she
jumped. Even after she explained her situation, he didn’t care. I could
understand that. She was a real beauty. She left with him and never went back.”

I couldn’t
believe what I was hearing. I knew Grizz’s real mother had died in childbirth
and that the man who’d raised him wasn’t his biological father. Could this be
Grizz’s mother Sister Agnes was telling me about? Was I hearing about Grizz’s
birth?

“How did the
picture of Ruthie and Razor, which would’ve been taken years after this baby’s
birth, come to be?” I was almost bouncing in my chair.

“I’ll get to
that, child,” Sister Agnes said softly. “After she told us this story, she
kissed her baby and, with her last breath, told us to tell her husband what she
wanted him to be named. Although, she asked us not to tell him why. She wanted
his first name to be her mother’s maiden name. It would be the only connection
to her home and family that she could leave her baby boy. She died while
holding him in her arms. I cried myself to sleep that night.

“I stayed
with my aunt a little while longer after that and found myself driving out to
the lonely farmhouse on occasion to check on that baby boy. When I finally
decided what my calling was, I left my aunt, but asked her to keep checking on
the family. She did for a while. I remember getting a letter from her telling
me the baby had grown into a robust toddler with the brightest green eyes she’d
ever seen. Brighter than the greenest grass on a spring morning.”

Grizz. I
gasped then, and Sister Mary Katherine looked at me, eyes filled with concern.
I respectfully shook my head.

“I’m sorry,
Sister Agnes. Please finish.”

“Well, my
aunt also said she had a bad feeling, that maybe the child was a bit neglected,
but she hoped things would get better when he finally remarried. My aunt died,
and I never went back to that farmhouse.” She paused. “That is, until 1956.”

“I’d joined
the Catholic Church by then and taken my vows and had been living in different
states. When I found myself back in Florida, I made it a point to visit that
little house in Macon’s Grove. That’s when I came upon Ruthie and Razor playing
in the front yard. I remember Razor growled at me as I approached, but little
Ruthie shushed him. I asked if her mother was home, and she said she was in the
back yard. I asked who she lived there with, and she told me she had a daddy
and a brother. I’d wondered if her brother was the baby I’d delivered all those
years ago. I asked his name, but Ruthie just called him Brother. She was a
beautiful child, but there was something sad and distant in her eyes. It was
only when I asked more about her brother that her little face lit up.

“Anyway, I
always carried my camera, and I started taking pictures of them playing in the
grass. Then her mother, who wasn’t a very nice woman, came barreling around the
side of the house and told me to mind my own business. I tried to explain that
I’d been to this house years earlier, and I was just checking to see how the
family was doing. Well, she told me in words that a nun and a child should
never have to hear what I could do with myself. And what business did I have
taking pictures of her child? I apologized and said that if she told me her
address, I would be sure to send her a picture after I had my film developed.
Which I did. It was a picture similar to the one you’re holding. I mailed it
off to her as soon as I had it developed.”

She sighed
then. I could tell the story was wearing her out, but I wanted her to finish.
As if sensing my desperation, she continued in a voice laced with sadness.

“To make a
long story short, I was sent to India right after that. Many, many years later
I came back to the states and found myself in Macon’s Grove once again. I found
the house, but all traces of the family were long gone. I asked around town,
and people said the family packed up and left town without telling a soul.” She
shook her head. “Ruthie and Razor have been on my unanswered prayers table ever
since. I guess I think of them as the only connection to the baby I once held.
He didn’t have green eyes when I held him right after he was born, but I’ve
been haunted by them nonetheless. I guess I was living off a memory that
belonged to my aunt. That baby boy, that little girl, and her dog, they’ve all
left an imprint on my soul that won’t go away. They are most definitely one of
my unanswered prayers.”

A few silent
minutes passed as what she’d told me sank in. I was waiting for the elderly nun
to continue when I heard soft snores and realized she’d fallen asleep. I turned
to Sister Mary Katherine.

“Sister, can
I come back after she wakes up?”

“Of course,
Guinevere. May I ask why?” she asked as we walked arm-in-arm to the door of
Sister Agnes’s room.

I stopped
and looked into her lined and intelligent face.

“Because I’m
not sure, but I think you might be able to add Ruthie and Razor’s picture to
Sister Agnes’s answered prayers drawer.”