The Kindness of Strangers (50 page)

Mom’s forehead crinkled. “I don’t understand.”

“You . . . you were so mad at Nate, and I was just worried.” He tugged the tape off his cut.

Mom reached across the table and gently stopped Jordan’s hands. She pressed the tape back into place and asked, “You thought . . . you thought I might hurt the rabbit because I was angry at Nate?” Nate was glad she kept her voice calm.

Jordan shrugged. “I . . . I was wrong. I’m sorry. I forgot he was in there, when I—” He looked up at Nate, and his pale face flushed red. A tear broke free and rolled down his cheek. Jordan swiped at it roughly with his bandaged hand.

Danny inhaled sharply, and Nate turned to him. Danny’s eyes widened, and he looked sad. He said quietly, “He probably worried because his mom and dad killed his cat.”

Jordan flashed panic. “That was . . . that was just a story.”

“But you used to have a cat,” Nate said, a chill on the back of his neck shivering through him as it dawned on him what might’ve happened. “You told me so.”

“A cat named Raja,” Danny said.

Nate watched Mom’s face register this information. Kramble and Mackenzie, too.

Kramble asked, “They
killed
your cat?”

Jordan looked down at his hand and said, “It was just a story.”

Bullshit,
Nate thought.

The room was so quiet it felt like pressure in Nate’s ears.

Danny touched Nate’s arm. “Can I hold him?” Nate handed Danny the rabbit. Klezmer butted Danny’s chin with his head.

Mackenzie’s eyes were pink.

Jordan’s stomach growled, loud and demanding, like a small, ferocious animal under the table. Everyone looked startled. Nate laughed. The others laughed, too. Even Jordan smiled. He put a hand on his belly. The kid must be starving, but he’d never say so himself.

Nate saw Mom’s face and knew she was thinking of what she could make. He also knew she was nearing forty hours with no sleep, and she looked it. She rubbed her eyes and, without looking at Nate, said, “How ’bout we order some pizzas?”

Nate grinned. “That’d be cool.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a phone book. Mom had suggested the pizzas especially for him, he knew. He looked up from the Yellow Pages. He wanted to do something for her.

So he turned to Kramble and asked, “What do you like on your pizza?”

Chapter Twenty-eight
Sarah

S
arah woke at six o’clock. She lay in bed, not wanting to move at first, wishing that if she just stayed still here, time would stop. This day would not unfold.

Courtney appeared in court today for a pretrial hearing.

The actual trial was still months away, most likely, but this was a beginning, a date to mark on the calendar, leading to more dates to come.

Sarah sat up in bed. The breeze from the open window was cool after last night’s thunderstorm. It stirred the curtains and moved the wind chimes in Lila’s backyard. The faint tinkle sounded hopeful, but Sarah knew that whatever the outcome in this trial, there would be more hurt and turmoil. More loss.

She got out of bed and put on her white cotton robe. The sky was just beginning to lighten as she left her bedroom. Jordan’s door stood open, his bed already made. Sarah crossed to the window and peered down into the backyard. A robin gave itself a dust bath in the sandbox. The gargoyle stood dwarfed by the blooming garden it surveyed, the bean tepee covered in white blossoms. Jordan’s dogwood looked forlorn and scrawny next to Nate’s tall, seventeen-year-old tree. A tiny flash of movement caught Sarah’s eye, and she saw Jordan. There he sat, just visible, inside the bean tepee with the rabbit in his lap. In a matter of days, the vines and leaves would be so thick that she wouldn’t be able to see inside the tepee from here.

God help her, please don’t let the trial be full of stories like what she imagined. All the scenarios she created to explain what happened to Jordan’s cat. She remembered his cat, black and white, just like the rabbit. It had sat in the Kendricks’ kitchen window and watched her when she’d cooked for them, and then, last fall, she’d stopped seeing it. She never thought to ask about it. The house was so huge, so sprawling, Sarah just assumed it was bored with her and off prowling elsewhere.

She sat on Jordan’s twin bed. The room now looked like his. Her eyes stung as she pictured him packing and leaving. What started today might lead them to that.

Sarah had gone to see Courtney last week, even though both Bobby and Reece had urged her not to. She’d gone expecting to face the washed-out, cadaverous version of her once radiant friend, that version that had snuck into Sarah’s home. But a different version of Courtney sat down on the other side of the glass.

Courtney’s hair was neatly combed, pulled back into a ponytail, the buttery blond dangerously normal. Her face, though free of makeup, had regained some natural rosiness, and her eyes were confident, almost mocking. “I’m so glad you came to see me, Sarah,” she said, as if they were sitting down to lunch at a sidewalk café.

A greenish purple bruise shone from Courtney’s left temple, a black scab connecting it to her hairline. She seemed to follow Sarah’s gaze and touched the bruise with her fingers. “They think I’m the lowest of the low here,” she said as explanation. She unbuttoned her blue denim jumpsuit enough to show Sarah a raw, scraped shoulder. “Each time it happens, I’m actually glad. This”—she waved a hand behind her, at the guards, the prison—“is horrible but easy enough to endure. But this”—she touched her bruised head again—“brings me closer to him, evens out the score.”

Sarah’s nostrils flared. “
Score?
This isn’t about points. You getting hurt doesn’t
undo
the hurt you inflicted.” Even so, Sarah hated that bruise and what it meant. That didn’t fix anything; it didn’t change any reality for Jordan.

Courtney leaned toward the glass, touching it with her fingertips. “They’ve helped me here, Sarah. I can finally stop Mark and keep Jordan safe.”

Reece had told Sarah that some sex offenders were so ashamed of their behavior that they were not
capable
of admitting it. But for Courtney to continue to deny it in the face of overwhelming evidence astounded Sarah.

“
I saw the disk, Courtney
. I saw you . . . having sex with your son.”

Courtney leaned closer, her nose nearly touching the glass. “I’m
glad
we have that disk. I didn’t want to do those things. Mark made me. Do you think I
want
people to see that? Do you think I want to remember that? But I’m willing to put it out there, to show people the kind of life Jordan and I were trapped in.”

Sarah remembered Courtney’s tearful face in the photos and knew that people would believe these manipulative, cunning words. “But you weren’t trapped. I don’t believe that. You
chose
to do this, over and over again.”

Courtney’s mouth convulsed as she fought not to cry. “Sarah, don’t do this. You know me, you know I would never—”

“I
don’t
know you.”

Courtney gasped as if Sarah had punched her.

“I
thought
I knew you. I
miss
you. I miss who I thought you were, but I didn’t know you at all. Tell me, Courtney, I need to know.” Sarah was surprised to feel tears streaming down her own cheeks, matching Courtney’s. “Were you after my son all along? All those years of friendship, all that you did for me, was it only to get close to my son?”

Courtney’s forehead wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”

“You touched my son. On top of all the depraved things you did to your own,
you touched my son
.”

Courtney frowned. Damn her, she was good.

“I saw the pictures of Danny. Did you forget about those?”

Courtney blinked.
“Danny?”
Then she laughed, as if Sarah were being unreasonable. “The boys were
swimming
! Those are harmless pictures. Why are you acting like this?”

“Do you know how
lucky
you are your son saved mine? If Jordan hadn’t made Danny leave, if you’d harmed him in any way, I’d find a way to hurt you. So help me God, I would.”

Courtney’s mouth dropped open. “Sarah, I would never hurt—”

“I don’t think you can
help
it. I saw your face in that picture, pushing your breasts all over Danny. I saw your face when you were hurting Jordan in my front yard. You’re sick. You shouldn’t be around
any
children, ever, much less a child of your own.”

“I’m getting my son back!” An edge of hysteria hinted under Courtney’s still-controlled voice. “I’m earning him back, and I’ll take care of him. He’s
my
son, don’t forget.”

“You don’t deserve him.”

Courtney shut her eyes, squeezing tears down her gaunt cheeks.

After a few moments, Courtney looked Sarah right in the eye and said with a sincerity that chilled her, “I will do everything in my power to keep him safe.”

Sarah hesitated, a fraction of her heart wanting to open some small part of her willing to pity this sick, beaten woman. But she shook her head, refusing herself to allow it. “You can’t keep him safe, Courtney. You know you can’t. You’ll only do it again.”

“No! I only did it because Mark made me. Only once.”

“That isn’t true. It happened more than once. Lots more than once. Jordan said so.”

And it finally happened—Courtney’s face changed, and that blank shine hardened her eyes. Just as Sarah’d seen in her yard that day when Courtney dug her nails into Jordan’s mouth. That expression made Sarah breathe again.

Courtney jabbed her finger into the glass. “Listen, I’m calling Children’s Services! I’m getting Jordan put into another foster home! You’re filling up his head with this bullshit and—”

Sarah hung up her phone. Courtney continued screaming, even pounding on the glass. Sarah walked away when a guard on the other side grabbed Courtney’s arms.

When Courtney didn’t show that hint of her other self, her normalcy was chillingly convincing. It had fooled everyone for years. Sarah understood that Courtney believed what she said—that she loved Jordan, that she’d protect him. That’s what made Sarah’s stomach flutter this morning, sitting on Jordan’s bed, at this stepping-stone to the trial. Courtney might be able to fool a jury, a judge, her attorney.

But Courtney couldn’t fool Sarah anymore. And Sarah wasn’t sure she fooled Jordan. His insistence that his mother would be all right had become rote, passionless, and although he used to jabber constantly about the trial, since that night he’d run away he rarely initiated any conversation about his mother at all.

Sarah had taken down the photo calendar and shoved it in a drawer. She didn’t want to look at that photo of her and Courtney again. Since that day in the jail, Sarah had felt as if Courtney had died, too.

And Sarah was sick of losing the people she loved.

The floor creaked in the hallway, and she started as if she’d been caught snooping through Jordan’s things. Nate entered, wearing only blue boxer underwear. When he saw her, he jumped. “Damn, Mom! What are you doing in here?”

“Just thinking. What are you doing?” She looked away from his almost nude body. It amazed her that the chubby, colicky infant she’d once held now possessed a body so athletic and beautiful. She hated Courtney for making her feel squeamish for looking at her own son.

Nate sat on the bed and drew his knees up in front of him as if hiding himself. Sarah knew that he, too, probably experienced this newfound shamefulness. For God’s sake, he went to public swimming pools revealing as much as this. “I saw him in the yard,” Nate said. “I was going to leave something in here for him. It’s no big deal. I just, you know, thought . . .” He opened his hand, revealing his autographed Wayne Gretzky hockey puck.

“Nate! This is worth a lot of money now.”

“I know. But what is it, really? I mean, I use it as a paperweight.”

“Are you sure you want to part with this? Your father gave it to you.”

Lines appeared on his forehead. “Are you mad at me? That I’d give it away?”

“No.” She bit her lip, suddenly afraid she’d cry. She managed to smile. “I think your dad would be very proud of you. I am.”

He exhaled an awkward laugh. He put the puck on Jordan’s dresser. “I’m getting in the shower,” he said, and left the room.

Sarah looked at the puck, and an overwhelming need pressed against her chest and throat, so strong it hurt her. She ached for Roy to be here, to see Nate become a person in the world, a person to admire.

Again that sense came over her, that if she sat still here, she could hold back the day. She might not have to take a step closer to letting go of someone else.

Chapter Twenty-nine
Jordan

A
phone rang somewhere in the house. Jordan pulled the sheet up around his ears and tried to return to the dream he’d been having. In it Klezmer and Raja spoke to him in English. The cat and the rabbit had sat at a table eating pie with Jordan’s mother, who said she’d just dropped by to tell him she was really sorry and things would be better now. But the phone distracted him. Who would call so early? He opened one eye to check his clock. Six-thirty. Someone had picked it up after the third ring. Probably Sarah.