The Deadline (13 page)

“So the idea was to move higher, then, right?” Morgan asked.

“Get to the top,” Gilmartin brooded in his memory.   “Fuck, yeah.  The guys at the top, they didn’t die froze to their toilet.  That was the Ritz.  That was livin’.”

“So you got to the top.  You made it.”

“Damn straight.  They moved me to the middle six years after I got to the joint, and then to the top three years after that.  Was there for ten years.  It was the good life in the joint.”

“What happened?”

Gilmartin rubbed an invisible blemish from his naked thigh, trying to erase a stain as indelible as time.  He didn’t speak for a long while.

“I got stupid.  Back in ‘Sixty-seven, some punks on my steam crew wanted to make a run for it.  Had a plan and everything.  They busted some heater pipes, and then hid out in the repairman’s van.  He drove ‘em out the front gate.  Fuckin’ clean getaway.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“First, I was gonna go with them, but I got hinky.  I was up for parole in a year.  I stayed behind, but I kept my mouth shut.  The Man caught one of ‘em in a few days, but the other two was never caught, not to this day.  Goddam, I coulda been with ‘em.  Been free.”

Freedom had its cost, Morgan knew, even for a man who’d steal it.

“So how’d you get moved off the top tier?”

“The kid snitched after they caught him.  The little fucker,” Gilmartin spewed.  “Said I was in on the escape plan all the way.  Fuck, the worst thing I did was keep my trap shut.  I fought like hell, but the warden busted me back to the bottom anyhow.  Worse than that, I lost my chance for parole.  Nineteen years, I kept my nose clean, then I’m back at the bottom with the Ice Men, frozen in my time like a dead man.”

Morgan remembered what the parole director had told him, perhaps telegraphing Gilmartin’s difficulty:  Under Wyoming law, an escape attempt renders an inmate ineligible for parole during his natural sentence.  In Gilmartin’s case, that was the rest of his life.

He thought it was ironic that Neeley Gilmartin, who had avoided the lethal heat of the electric chair, was instead condemned to life in a frigid abyss.  Worse, the old man’s idea of freedom was dying alone in a whorehouse trailer, no needles, no tubes.  His only nurse was a Mexican maid who brought him food and sometimes made him feel like a man again.

“Did you ever try to tell anybody at the prison what you’ve told me?”

“Shit, paper boy, nobody in the joint ever did the crime.  Everybody’s innocent, to hear them tell it.  Sure I told some people, but nobody listens.  After eight or ten years of tellin’ the same story, you just stop.  You don’t even bother tryin’ anymore.  You just focus on stayin’ alive.”

“When they let you out, why’d you come back here?” Morgan wanted to know.

“No place else to go.  Lived here most of my life, except for the war and the joint.  And you were here.”

“Me?”

“I saw in the paper at the prison library, before I got out.  That’s how I taught myself to read in the joint, readin’ the newspapers.  Short words and lots of pictures.  I saw the story about you bein’ the new editor, and I knew you would help me.”

“Why me?”

“I don’t know.  Your picture looked honest maybe.  You ain’t one of them, you didn’t know.  Or maybe because you come back here, too.  We both come back here to save ourselves, didn’t we?  Huh?”

Morgan was still wary.  He’d been used by cons almost from the first week on the cop beat in Chicago.  Gilmartin, a tough jailhouse veteran who was by turns threatening and vulnerable, now seemed genuinely desperate.  But Morgan still believed they were far from kindred spirits.

The old man’s pain-dulled eyes were fixed on the television’s flickering screen, sometimes rolling upward as the drugs began seeping through his veins.  Grenades exploded and machine guns roared noiselessly in a dissonant war.  Van Johnson was still fighting his way across some Jap-infested island, making the world safe for democracy and, eventually, cheap electronics. 

“Tell me about the war.  Where did you serve?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, paper boy.  You ask too many questions.”

Morgan put away his notebook.

“You mentioned it a couple times before.  It sounds like you saw some action.”

Gilmartin huffed.  His speech began to sound sedated, soft.

“Shit, I saw action all right.”

“Where?”

“Goddammit, you’re a pesterin’ son of a bitch.  A fuckin’ nosey reporter.  Why don’t you go bug somebody else to find who killed that little girl?”

Morgan shrugged.  He’d encountered a lot of veterans who claimed they never told war stories, then with a little prodding, filled the air with their tales.  So he clicked his ballpoint pen and slid it back into his shirt pocket, a deliberate indication that he was finished with his questions.  He stood, smoothing his slacks where they’d rumpled around his hips, ready to leave.

“Hey, if you don’t want to talk about it, fine.  Some other time, huh?”

A war story couldn’t be shut away so easily.  Gilmartin’s shoulders slumped, relaxed by the Demerol, but he motioned Morgan to sit back down.  Morgan waited for him to begin.

“I was Navy, okay?  A gunner’s mate on a minelayer.  Saw the fuckin’ world before I was twenty, and saw too goddam much.  First tour, we laid down mines in Casablanca and then we laid down women in Norfolk.  Good duty, huh?  By ‘Forty-four, we was sent to the other side of the world, to Guadalcanal, the Carolines, the Marshalls and Tarawa ...”

Gilmartin drifted with his memories, as if the story continued silently in his head.  A cigarette burned down between his fingers as he sat there, slack-jawed.  His speech was slow and fatigued.

“Those were some pretty hot spots,”  Morgan prompted him.

“Not like Iwo.”

“You were at Iwo Jima?”

“Yeah.  What a crap hole.  We anchored in the harbor of a little island called Kerama Retto, on the south tip of Iwo.  We was the flagship for the Pacific mine fleet, and we took all the wounded from other ships.  My job was shootin’ a forty-millimeter gun, keepin’ an eye out for kamikazes.  Fuckin’ Japs was everywhere.  Shit, after a couple months, we seen it all:  Suicide swimmers, kamikaze boats and planes.  In April of ‘Forty-five we went to general quarters ninety-three times.  Can you believe that shit?  Every time you closed your eyes, some peckerhead Jap was trying to kill us.  I had a good job.  I shot back.”

“Hit any?”

Smoke wreathed Gilmartin’s squinted face.

“Sure.  It was my job.  Had a good eye, too.  Always had good eyes.  Expert shooter, and that’s no shit.  Daddy taught me on the rabbits.  I didn’t have no problems killin’ them bastards.  The Japs.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s ancient history, paper boy.”

“I’d still like to know.”

A cigarette haze enveloped him as he collected his thoughts.  He looked down at the floor as he spoke, transported back to another time.

“It was May Day in ‘Forty-five and my early-morning watch was almost over.  The smoking lamp wasn’t even lit, so it was before oh-four-hundred.  The smoking lamp come on when you could smoke.  It was my twenty-second birthday.  The sun wasn’t up, but the light was starting to seep through the smoke screen we laid down.  Man, I was needin’ some serious rack time.  Dead tired.  Then all of a sudden, four Jap planes come out of the smoke.”

Slowly, Gilmartin’s hands glided through the thick air, retracing the kamikaze’s flight path.  His sluggish, rheumy eyes followed them as if they were real, then he squinted as he got them in his imaginary sights again.

“It all happened so fuckin’ fast I was the only gun that got off a shot.  I kept my crosshairs on them and splashed that first motherfucker a hundred yards off the starboard bow.

“The next two come down from the stern, and I swung around on ‘em.  I musta hit the bomb on one and he lit up the sky in an orange fireball.  The third one I hit and he veered off back into the smoke and I heard him hit the water somewheres out there.

“The last one, he come in on the port beam behind me, banked around the stern and come straight at me on the starboard side.  It was misty gray, before dawn, but I swear I could see that fucker’s slope-eyes as he flew in.  Just me and him, like old-time gunfighters.  I poured everything I had at that prick.  If I hit him, it didn’t do no good.  Went through him like he was a goddam ghost.

“He slammed into the communications deck.  He hit so hard his goddam engine pierced through the steel bulkheads and landed in the wardroom.  Killed a bunch of guys eating breakfast.  The rest of his plane sheared off and hit the fifty-two turret, and that’s when his bomb exploded.”

Gilmartin’s right hand smacked into his left, his fingers splaying grotesquely.  He drew a deep breath and hacked a couple times.

“Them boys inside never had a chance,” he said, licking his dry lips.  “Six of ‘em in that closed-up turret.  Never got off a shot.  Fuckin’ shielded mounts on them five-inch guns never was meant to take a direct hit.  The crash crumpled it like a tin can so’s the door wouldn’t open, and they couldn’t get out.”

The old man showed Morgan a burn scar on the inside of his arm, a long, liquefied swatch of skin from his wrist to the inside of his elbow that looked barely congealed.

“I tried to lever the steel door open, but the fire flared up and burned my arm and my hands.  We could hear them screaming in there.  They screamed going on fifteen minutes, then they stopped before we got the fire out and the wreckage cleared.  Them boys ...”

A rattle shuddered in his collapsed chest.  He cleared his constricted throat.

“...  them boys cooked to death inside.”

Gilmartin’s hands began to shake.  His brow tensed and his chin pressed his lips together hard.  He closed his eyes and wiped his forearm across his mouth.

“After the fire was out, I was detailed to help clean out that gun mount.  We pried open the door and found them.  Their blistery faces were roasted brown and leathery, like the skin of an overcooked turkey.  Where they touched the hot steel, their hands were almost melted away like wax.  When we picked ‘em up, their skin would just slip off the muscle.  You’d be standin’ there, holdin’ this patch of a man’s hide in your hands.  And the stink of it can’t ever be washed off.  I smell it in my sleep.”

“I’m sorry ...” Morgan started to say.

“You think I should be sorry, too, don’t you?  Fuck that.  I done what I could for them.  They was my buddies, too.  I spent that night puking over the rail.  I was twenty-two, a grown man compared to those dead boys.  But I never saw nothin’ like that in my life, these boys’ meat all cooked, their eyeballs exploded, their fingers reaching out to me.  Their mouths ... oh, God ... their mouths screaming but nothin’ coming out.”

Gilmartin was agitated now, more angry at himself and at the dead than at Morgan.

“Goddammit, I did everything I could.  I tried to splash that last fuckin’ Jap.  I tried.  I got the other three, didn’t I?  Why didn’t they shoot, too?  They gave me that fuckin’ medal, didn’t they?  I did my part.  I tried to save them.  It was like they was screaming to me while they cooked.  Their skin just come off  ...  But it wasn’t my fault.  Those poor fuckers could have shot --” his throat suffocated his words, even as he determined to speak them — “I ... tried.”

Gilmartin wept.

His memories and his cancer choked him.  The fire had burned him up inside, too.  It consumed his forgiveness and his spirit, and welded a hard core at the center of him.  Neeley Gilmartin’s war wound was deep within him where it couldn’t be seen.

For one single, sad moment, Morgan pitied Gilmartin.

Maybe the old man really did kill Aimee Little Spotted Horse and only confessed to avoid the electric chair.  But now there was an alternate, but equally plausible, explanation:  He so feared dying that way, he’d say anything to avoid it.

Maybe even take the fall for a crime he didn’t commit.

If his story was true, it could answer the question that nagged Morgan the most, why Gilmartin had pleaded guilty if he didn’t kill the girl.  It would also mean something that few people — perhaps even Gilmartin himself — knew:  Guilty or not, the convicted child-killer Gilmartin might have been a genuine war hero.

Morgan stood and touched Gilmartin’s heaving shoulder.  He knew he’d still have to check out the old man’s story, but he believed it because his cynical gut told him to believe it.

Gilmartin looked up with sad, red eyes.  He was fighting off his narcotic haze, his hands floating out of rhythm with his words.

“I didn’t kill that little girl, so help me God,” he said.  “You gotta help me.  I don’t want to die with it hanging over my head.  That would be worse than dyin’ in the chair.”

“I’ll do what I can, Mr. Gilmartin.  I promise.  Is there anything else I can get you for now?”

Gilmartin swiped the back of his hand across his eyes, gamely trying to wipe away most traces of his misery.  He grunted a little, breathed deeply and regained his familiar, steely composure.

“Yeah, paper boy,” he said.  “If you see Celestina, tell her to come see me tomorrow.  I got something she needs to handle.”

“I’ll do that,” Morgan said, smiling for the first time since he’d arrived.

He patted Gilmartin’s shoulder and headed toward the door.  It wouldn’t take long to investigate Gilmartin’s military background, if he got lucky and had the right information.  Halfway out the door, one last question stopped him.

“Mr. Gilmartin, it would help me if I knew what ship you served on.”

The old man hunched forward on his couch and raised his tee-shirt’s short sleeve over his gaunt, left shoulder, proudly bearing his tattoo.

“The USS Terror,” he said.

CHAPTER NINE

A
plump clerk named Ellen, whose discount-store bifocals hung around her thick neck on a chain of yellowish faux pearls, led him into the county records vault.  It was a sort of governmental library, four long walls lined with cumbersome, leather-bound deed books.  They encircled a row of thick-legged work tables, built to bear the weight of the vast history surrounding them.

“Here they are,” Ellen said, drawing her hand efficiently across the spines of four small volumes.  “They’re in order, from the First World War to the Gulf War, although there’s not too many of those.  These are all certified copies, some of the old ones made by hand.  We file them for free in case the originals are ever lost.  Let me know if I can help you find anything else.”

Few people, even veteran courthouse reporters, know county clerks routinely register soldiers’ discharge papers as a permanent record of their service.  Morgan had stumbled on the documents years ago while researching a Vietnam veteran’s murder case, and found them to be a wealth of biographical and military data taken directly from official records.

If Gilmartin’s tattoo wasn’t a symbol of an evil disposition, but of his patriotism, then Morgan’s gut wasn’t failsafe.  He came to the courthouse to find out.

The clerk left Morgan alone in the vault’s dead air.  Volume Three, the thickest, contained records from World War Two.  Scanning through the hand-written cross-index, he quickly found Neeley Gilmartin’s discharge papers.

The pertinent, provable facts of his life were all there, in the government’s orderly, detail-obsessed shorthand:

Neeley Gilmartin had been born May 1, 1923, in Sand Flats, Wyoming, a railroad enclave long gone from any map.  He attended school through the eighth grade, not uncommon for rural children in the Depression.  He joined the Navy in 1942 at the Naval Recruiting Station in Cheyenne, then was sent to basic training in San Diego.  After a short stint in gunnery school, he was assigned to the USS Terror (CM5), a minelayer home-ported at Norfolk.  A few years later, he spent some time in the U.S. Naval Hospital in Aiea Heights in Hawaii — to be treated for the severe burn on his arm after the kamikaze attack, Morgan surmised — then was discharged in February 1946 by the Navy’s processing center in Bremerton, Washington.  According to his discharge papers, he’d served four years, one month and twelve days in a war that would haunt him forever.

He left the service with a Good Conduct Medal, medals for serving in both the European and Pacific theaters, the World War Two Victory medal and a Purple Heart.

And the Navy Cross
.  It was the service’s highest honor for heroism, second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Morgan could hardly believe it.  Gilmartin was a bona fide hero.  Alone in the gathering light of dawn on his twenty-second birthday, he’d shot down three kamikazes, saving not only dozens of lives, but perhaps his ship, the
USS Terror
, itself.  For that, he got a handful of precious scrap iron hung from pretty ribbons.

Perhaps more important to Gilmartin at the time, the Navy also gave him one hundred dollars for bus fare after mustering out, according to his discharge records.

In the winter of 1946, Neeley Gilmartin disembarked from the
USS Terror
for the last time.  She was berthed in San Francisco for repairs when he was discharged.  Within a month, he was back in Perry County, according to the filing date stamped on the document.  A long bus ride or a long drunk, Morgan thought.  Maybe both.

A few numbered boxes at the bottom of the faded page suggested somebody cared what he’d do after he left the service.  Under two questions about his future job preferences and plans for further training, he responded “None.”

The government’s records reflected that Gunner’s Mate Second Class Neeley Gilmartin had served his country honorably.  They didn’t say, however, that he left the Navy with little more than a handful of medals and scars, inside and out, that would never heal properly.

He was a hero without hope, on a bus to oblivion.

When Jefferson Morgan returned to
The Bullet
late Thursday afternoon, the mayor had already called to complain about his dog-pound editorial, someone had stolen all the papers from five of his twelve newsstands, and Bob Buck of Bob Buck Buick had refused to pay for his ad because he claimed the picture in it made him look fat.

“Do we ever do anything right?” Morgan asked Crystal as she handed him a small stack of pink phone messages.  There were at least a dozen.

“If we did, they’d start to expect it every week,” she said, pressing her ruby lips into a sorry smile.  Morgan truly believed she was the only one of his employees making a game effort to help him.

Morgan thumbed through the messages as he sat at his desk.  He started with the first one and worked his way through the pile.

The mayor, a clammy, retired schoolteacher who tolerated no heat in his political kitchen, chided him for being too negative.

“You media guys are all alike, always focusing on the negative just to sell your papers,” he said, then hung up abruptly.

The next four messages came from parents of 4-H kids who were convinced Morgan hated ranchers because he’d omitted the weekly club report.  Morgan tried to explain calmly that he’d never received it and he had no such animosity toward ranchers, but they didn’t believe him.  Three of them hung up on him.

The next message was from Claire, who called to see if he’d like to come home for a late lunch.  Too late.  It was already after four o’clock, so he set it aside and called the car dealer Bob Buck instead.

“I pay you a lot of money to make me look good.  I can’t believe you’d put such a terrible picture of me in the paper and expect to get paid for it.  You’d better get your act together, mister, and realize who’s butterin’ your bread.  I won’t pay a thin dime for that atrocity and I expect this will teach you a lesson to take better care of your customers.”

Then Bob Buck, who was, in fact, fat and wore a bad toupee to boot, hung up.

Morgan had owned
The Bullet
for only six weeks, and Bob Buck had refused to pay for his ads — the biggest in the paper — four times.  Morgan decided it was true what he’d heard from his friends on the
Tribune
’s sales staff:  Car dealers are, at the same time, the best advertisers and the worst clients.

According to Crystal’s other messages, three angry ex-readers only wanted him to know they had canceled their subscriptions for various reasons (one didn’t like a particular letter to the editor, one believed the photographs were too dull, and the third was canceling on behalf of his Uncle Gerve, who died and wouldn’t be needing his paper anymore).

The next pink slip was from an anonymous caller, who gleefully pointed out a minor typographical error in a headline.

The last message was from Hamilton Tasker, the president of the First Wyoming Bank who’d signed off on the Morgans’ loan for
The Bullet
.  He had been genial enough back then, a little too obsequious for Claire, but far more pleasant than one expected a banker to be.

Morgan glanced at the newsroom clock.  It was after four, but he dialed anyway.  A bank secretary answered.

“Hello.  This is Jefferson Morgan, returning Mr. Tasker’s call,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” she said, a note of recognition in her voice.  “He’s been expecting you to call all afternoon.”

Ham Tasker got on the line, his deep baritone voice immediately foreshadowing serious news.  It was clear this was no social call.  Tasker was all business and he got directly to the point.

“Jeff, thank you for calling.  I just wanted to let you know that we’ve had a little trouble on your payment.  You have insufficient funds to cover it.”

“That’s impossible,” Morgan said, feeling his face grow hot.  “I deposited ten thousand dollars earlier this week.”

“That’s the other problem, Jeff.  There were no funds to cover
that
check.  All of your mother’s accounts together have less than two thousand dollars in them.  I’m sorry you had to hear it from me, but we need to clear this up rather quickly.”

“Could there be some mistake?  Jesus, Ham, a mother wouldn’t write a bad check to her son.”

“Look, Jeff, I don’t know all the circumstances, but I’m sure you understand our predicament and would like to settle any little problems before they become big ones.  I’d sure hate to see you get started out on the wrong foot because of a little misunderstanding.  We’ll need exactly five thousand, eight hundred and twenty-seven dollars by the close of business tomorrow, Jeff.  Can I expect to see you here at the bank by that time?”

Morgan didn’t know what to say.  He had no hope of scraping together that much money in less than twenty-four hours.

“Can I have a couple days?”

Tasker got the job of collecting late debts because he was good at it.  He wouldn’t budge. 

“Really, I’d like to get this cleared up as quickly as possible.”

  “That’ll be damn near impossible, Ham.  This first month has just been a nightmare.  Old Bell got all the receivables, and the cash flow just hasn’t started yet.”

Hamilton Tasker paused for a long, uncomfortable moment.

“Yes, well, maybe it’s just a little time management problem.”

“Meaning what?” Morgan asked.

“Some people tell me you’ve been spending a lot of time picking at some old scabs that are better left alone.  Maybe there are, shall we say, ‘more productive’ things you could be working on.  I’m sure you understand.  Tomorrow then?”

“Hold on, Ham,” Morgan said, suddenly confused and a little angry.  “What wounds would those be?”

“We try to focus on the future, not the past.  Progress is good for a town, and progress looks forward.  Looking back is bad for business.  Why bring up something awful and painful for no good reason?  Maybe it sells a few papers, but what does it really accomplish?”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Do I need to spell it out, Jeff?  You might find it easier to do business if you saw things our way.”

“Your way?  What’s your way?”

“At the moment, there’s more of our money at risk than yours.  We need to come to ... an understanding about this story you’re working on.  As your new partners in this newspaper, we’d prefer that you spent your time of more positive news.”

“Jesus, Ham, are you suggesting I drop a story or lose my newspaper?  It sure sounds like you are, and that’s not a choice I’m willing to make.  And I resent your implication that by loaning me money you assume some editorial privilege at my newspaper.  Pardon me, but that’s pure bullshit.”

His message delivered, Hamilton Tasker remained cool and unruffled. 

“Why, I’m saying nothing of the kind, Jeff.  I’m only telling you what people are saying.  And some of my bank officers are watching your operation quite closely.  They might be a little more understanding if you merely ‘re-arranged’ your priorities.  Right now, I need to know you’ll be here tomorrow to put this little problem behind us.”

“Sure, Ham,” Morgan said through clenched teeth.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Incensed, he hung up.

“No money at all?”

Claire was incredulous.  The corners of her mouth fell and she closed her eyes as they rocked gently on the porch swing.  Children were playing in the street in front of the house, but their laughter drifted off in another direction.

“Nothing,” Morgan said.  “She’s got nothing.  A couple thousand bucks.  That’s it.”

“Maybe she’s got some stock or a retirement fund someplace,” Claire said.  “Maybe there’s a fund transfer that’s been delayed.”

“Dad didn’t believe in the stock market and after he died, we checked everywhere for any money he might have stashed away for retirement.  There wasn’t any.”

“How has she been supporting herself then?”

“The house was paid off, so she doesn’t need much.  She leases out most of the land to a neighbor, who runs a few cows and horses on it.  Mom was so eager to get out from under the hardware store, she sold it cheap.  She made a little money, but not much.  I guess I thought she was doing better.  That’s a whole different problem.”

“Have you talked to her yet?”

“I don’t know what I’d say.  ‘Mom, your check bounced and you’re damn near broke’?”

“God, Jeff, she needs your help.  You don’t want your mom to be a bag lady, do you?”

Frustrated, Morgan raised his hands to stop the conversation about his mother’s finances.

“One thing at a time, Claire.  I’ll take care of my mother.  She won’t be homeless.  Right now, I’m worried about us being homeless.  I won’t be much help to my mother if I’m on welfare myself.”

Claire braved a smile and touched her husband’s forearm.

“Okay, so we have a little problem.  Let’s not panic.  We have exactly one hundred and fifty-two dollars in the bank, Jeff,” she said.  “Tomorrow you need to come up with almost six thousand dollars.  No sweat.  Any ideas?”

Morgan shrugged.  He watched two little girls from next door drawing endless hopscotch boxes on their sidewalk with colorful chalk.  They were circumscribing the entire block, earnestly working their way back home in a big circle.

“The paper’s payroll account has a couple thousand, but if I raid it, I can’t pay anybody next week,” he said.  “We could sell one of the cars, but that’s only two or three thousand, at best, and we can’t do it by tomorrow.”

“How about your computer?  Could we get anything for that?” Claire asked.

Morgan looked as if she’d suggested selling the family scrapbook.  He’d used his IBM 760ED laptop, one of the most powerful portable computers on the market when he bought it, and a database search program called Paradox to help find the serial killer P.D. Comeaux.  There was no way in hell he’d sell it to some pimply kid to use as a souped-up GameBoy. 

“No, Claire.  Not that.  It wouldn’t bring much either, but I wouldn’t sell it.”

Claire took a deep breath.

“What if I called my dad and asked for a loan?” she said.  “He could wire it to the bank tomorrow.  He’d be happy to help.”

Claire’s parents, especially her father, hadn’t been pleased to hear their daughter would be moving to Wyoming.  To them, it was a wild place where few people except cowboys and prospectors could scratch out a living.  They also hated the idea of Claire being so far away.  Of course, they blamed Morgan, although they were too kind to ever say it out loud.

Morgan considered the possibility — then dismissed it.

“Let’s keep that as a last resort, Claire,” he said.  “The bank won’t foreclose just because the first payment is a little late.  They just want to be sure it’s not going to be a habit.  Maybe we can work something out without cutting holes in our safety net.”

Claire watched some children playing kick the can in the dying light on the shaded street.  She was frightened, Morgan could tell, but she tried not to let it show at times like this.  She always said something hopeful just when the outlook seemed nearly hopeless.