Paradise Lost (18 page)

“What are you saying?” Joanna asked.

“I’m saying you have a choice,” Marianne said. “It’s one of those two paths diverging in the woods that Robert Frost talks about. You can go home and tell Jim Bob and Eva Lou and Jenny that something terrible has happened between you and Butch and that you’re headed for divorce court. Do that, and you risk losing everything. Or, you can pull yourself together, drive your butt back to the hotel, go to that damned wedding with a smile on your face and your head held high, and see if you can fix things before they get any worse.”

“Swallow my pride and go back to the hotel?” Joanna repeated. “That’s right.”

“Go to the wedding?”

“Absolutely, and give Butch a chance to tell you what went on. What’s going on. If he wants to bail out on the marriage and if you want to as well, then you’re right. There’s nothing left to fix and you’d better come home and be with Jenny when her heart gets broken again. But if there is something to be salvaged, you’re a whole lot better off doing it sooner than later.”

“I thought you were my friend, Mari. How can you turn on me like this?”

“I am your friend,” Marianne replied. “A good enough friend that I’m prepared to risk telling you what you may not want to hear. A friend who cares enough to send the very worst. Some things are worth fighting for, Joanna. Your marriage is one of them.”

Soon after, a spent Joanna ended the call. Butch had evidently given up trying to call, since the phone didn’t ring again. Sitting in the mall, with the overheated but silent telephone still cradled in her hand, Joanna sat staring blindly at the carefree Sunday after-noon throng moving past her.

And then, sitting with her back to the noisy fountain, Joanna could almost hear her father’s voice. “Never run away from a fight, Little Hank,” D. H. Lathrop had told her.

Joanna was back in seventh grade. It was the morning after she had been suspended from school for two days for fighting with the boys who had been picking on her new friend, Marianne Maculyea.

“No matter what your mother says,” her father had counseled in his slow, East Texas drawl,

“no matter what anyone says, you’re better off making a stand than you are running away “

“So other people won’t think you’re a coward?” Joanna had asked.

“No,” he had answered. “Soyou won’t think you’re a coward.”

The vivid memory left Joanna shaken. It was as though her father and Marianne were ganging up on her, with both of them telling her the exact same thing. They both wanted her to stop running and face whatever it was she was up against.

Standing up, Joanna stuffed the phone in her pocket and then headed for the mall entrance.

Getting into the Crown Victoria was like climbing into an oven. The steering wheel scorched her fingertips, but she barely noticed. With both her father’s and Marianne’s words still ringing in
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her heart and head, she started the engine and went looking for the side road that would take her away from the mall.

As she drove, she felt like a modern-day Humpty Dumpty. She had no idea if what had been broken could be put back together, but D. H. Lathrop and Marianne were right. Joanna couldn’t give up without a fight. Wouldn’t give up without a fight. Maybe she didn’t owe that much to Butch Dixon or even to Jenny, but Joanna Brady sure as hell owed it to herself.

It was almost two by the time Joanna returned to the hotel. She pulled up to the door, where a florist van was disgorging a moun-tain of flowers. Dodging through the lobby, Joanna held her breath for fear of meeting up with some of the other wedding guests. In her current woebegone state, she didn’t want to see anyone she knew.

When she opened the door to their room, the blackout cur twins were pulled. Butch, fully clothed, was lying on top of the covers, sound asleep. She tried to close the door silently, but the click of the lock awakened him. “Joey?” he asked, sitting up. “Is that you?”

She switched on a light. “Yes,” she said.

“You’re back. Where did you go?”

“Someplace where I could think,” she told him.

Rather than going near the bed, Joanna walked over to the table on the far side of the room.

Pulling out a chair, she sat down and folded her hands into her lap.

“What did you decide?” Butch asked.

“I talked to Marianne. She said I should cone back and hear what you have to say.”

“Nothing happened, Joey,” Butch said. “Between Lila and me, mean. Not now, anyway. Not last night.”

“But you used to be an item?”

“Yes, but that was a long time ago, before I met you. Still,” Butch added, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Joanna asked the question even though she feared what the answer might be. “If nothing happened, what do you have to be sorry for?”

“I shouldn’t have been with Lila in the first place,” Butch admitted at once. “After the rehearsal dinner, she offered me a ride back to the hotel. I should have come back with someone else, but I didn’t. I was pissed at you, and I’d had a few drinks. So I came back with Lila instead. At the time, it didn’t seem like that bad an idea.”

“I see,” Joanna returned stiffly.

“No,” Butch said. “I don’t think you see at all.”

“What I’m hearing is that your defense consists of your claim-ing that nothing happened, but even if it did happen, you’re not responsible because you were drunk at the time.”

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“My defense is that nothingdid happen,” he replied. “But it could have. It might have, and I shouldn’t have run that risk. She’s dying, you see.”

“Who’s dying?”

“Lila.”

“Of what?” Joanna scoffed derisively, remembering the willowy blonde who had accompanied Butch through the lobby. “She didn’t look sick to me.”

“But she is,” Butch replied. “She has ALS. Do you know what that is?”

Joanna thought for a minute. “Lou Gehrig’s disease?”

Butch nodded. “She just got the final diagnosis last week. She hasn’t told anyone yet, including Tammy and Roy. She didn’t want to spoil their wedding.”

“But, assuming it’s true, she went ahead and told you,” Joanna said. “How come?”

“I told you. Lila and I used to be an item, Joey. We broke up long before you and I ever met.

She married somebody else and moved to San Diego, but the guy she married walked out on her two months ago,” Butch continued.

She got dumped and now she wants you back,Joanna thought. She felt as though she were listening to one of those interminable shaggy-dog stories with no hope of cutting straight to the punch line. “So this is a rebound thing for her?” Joanna asked. “Or is that what I was for you?”

Her voice sounded brittle. There was a metal-lic taste in her mouth.

“Joey, please listen,” Butch pleaded. “What do you know about ALS?”

Joanna shrugged. “Not much. It’s incurable, I guess.”

“Right. Lila went to see her doctor because her back was both-ering her. She thought maybe she’d pulled a muscle or something. The doctor gave her the bad news on Thursday. Even though she’s not that sick yet, she will be. It’ll get worse and worse. The doctor told her that most ALS patients die within two to five years of diag-nosis. She’s putting her San Diego house on the market. She’s going to Texas to be close to her parents.

“Lila needed to talk about all this, Joey,” Butch continued. “She needed somebody to be there with her, to listen and sympathize. happened to be handy. We talked all night long. I held her, and she cried on my shoulder.”

“You held her,” Joanna said.

“And listened,” Butch said.

“And nothing else?”

“Nothing. I swear to God.”

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“And why should I believe you?” Joanna asked.

Butch got off the bed. He came across the room to the table, where he sat down opposite Joanna. As he did so, his lips curved into a tentative smile. “Because I wouldn’t do something like that, Joey. I’m lucky enough to be married to the woman I love. She’s also somebody who carries two loaded weapons at all times and who, I have it on good authority, knows exactly how to use them. What do you think I am, stupid?”

Joanna thought about that for a minute. Then she asked another question. “You said you were pissed at me. Why?”

“That’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“Tammy and Roy and the rest of the people at the wedding are all my friends,” he said slowly.

“I had just finished spending the last three days up at Page being sheriff’s spouse-under-glass.

Don’t get me wrong. Antiquing aside, I was glad to do it. But turnabout’s fair play, Joey. I really wanted you to be here with me last night at the rehearsal dinner. I wanted to show you off to my old buddies and be able to say, `Hey, you guys, lucky me. Look what I found!’ But then duty called and off you went.

“As soon as you said you were going, I knew you’d never make it back in time for the dinner, and I think you did, too. But did you say so? No. You did your best imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger saying, Ì’ll be back,’ which, of course, you weren’t. You left in the afternoon and didn’t turn back up until sometime in the middle of the night. I know you weren’t back earlier because I, too, was call-ing the room periodically all evening long in hopes you’d be back and able to join in the fun. Either you weren’t in yet, or else you didn’t bother answering the phone.”

“You didn’t leave a message,” Joanna said accusingly. “And you could have tried calling my cell phone.”

“Right, but that would have meant interrupting you while you were working.”

Joanna thought about that for a moment. They had both made an effort to reduce the number of personal phone calls between them while she was working. Still, she wasn’t entirely satisfied.

“That’s why you were pissed then?” she asked. “Because I missed the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner and wasn’t around for you to show me off to your old pals?”

“Pretty much,” Butch admitted. “I guess it sounds pretty lane, but that’s the way it was.”

A long silence followed. Joanna was thinking about her mother and father, about Eleanor and Big Hank Lathrop. How many times had Sheriff Lathrop used the call of duty to provide an excused absence for himself from one of Eleanor’s numerous social func-tions? How often had he hidden behind his badge to avoid being part of some school program or church potluck or a meeting of the Bisbee Historical Society?

Joanna loved her mother, but she didn’t much like her. And the last thing she ever wanted was tobe like Eleanor Lathrop Winfield. Still, there were times now, when Joanna would be talking
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to Jenny or bawling her out for something, when it seemed as though Eleanor’s words and voice were coming through Joanna’s own lips. There were other times, too, when, glancing in a mirror, it seemed as though Eleanor’s face were staring back at her. That was how genetics worked. But now, through some strange quirk in her DNA, Joanna found herself resembling her father rather than her mother. Here she was doing the same kind of unintentional harm to Butch that ll. H.

Lathrop had done to his wife, Eleanor. And Joanna could see now that although she had been hurt by her belief in Butch’s infidelity—his presumed infidelity—she wasn’t the only one. Butch had been hurt, too.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I called, too,” she said contritely. “I left messages on the room’s voice mail trying to let you know what was going on—that all hell had broken loose and I was going to have to go to Bisbee. You never got any of them. They were all still listed as new mes-sages when I came in.”

“This sounds serious,” Butch said. “Tell me now.”

And so Joanna went on to tell Butch about going to see Maggie MacFerson and finding the woman drunk in the unlocked house that belonged to her dead sister. Joanna told Butch about the loaded gun and the smashed glass and the bleeding cuts on Mag-gie’s hands that had triggered a trip to the emergency room. She told him about Eleanor’s blowing the whistle to Child Protective Services and how a zealous caseworker had wrested a screamingly unhappy Dora away from Jim and Eva Lou’s care at High Lone-some Ranch.

“What a mess!” Butch said when she finished. “How’s Jenny taking all this?”

“That’s why I stayed over in Bisbee. To be with Jenny, but she’s okay, I think. At least sheseemed to be okay.”

“I read the article on the front page of theReporter,” Butch said. “How can that woman—Maggie MacFerson—get away with putting Jenny’s and Dora’s names in an article like that? I didn’t think newspapers were supposed to publish kids’ names.”

“They usually don’t with juveniles who are victims of crimes or with juvenile offenders, either.

In this case, Dora and Jenny weren’t either. They were kids who found a body. That means their names go in the papers.”

“It wasn’t exactly a flattering portrait of either one of them—or of you, either,” Butch added.

She gave Butch a half-smile. “I’m getting used to it.”

“Is Marianne the only person you talked to?” he asked. “Today, I mean. After the little scene down in the lobby.”

“She’s the only one.”

“That way, even though nothing happened, at least it won’t be all over town that I’m the villain of the piece. Marianne is totally trustworthy. She also seems to be of the opinion that you’re right and I’m wrong. She told me to get my butt in the car and head straight back here, to the hotel.”

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Butch shook his head. “I think we were both wrong, Joey,” he said after a pause. “I’m a married man. No matter what, I shouldn’t have been spending all night alone with an unmarried ex--girlfriend, sick or not. And I had no right to want you to take a pass on your job. Being sheriff is important, Joey—to you and to me as well as to the people who elected you. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be jealous on occasion.” He grinned then. “And the same goes for you. I mean, if you want to be jealous of me, have a ball.”

Which, of course, she had been, Joanna realized. More so than she ever would have thought possible.

“I still don’t understand why Lila had to talk to you about all that,” she said. “Doesn’t she have any other friends she could have talked to?”

Butch shrugged. “Bartenders are the poor man’s psychologists. We listen and nod and say uh-huh, and all we charge is the price of a drink or two.”