A Sister's Forgiveness (24 page)

Jeannie set the plates on the counter and took a step toward him. “Why were you there at all? I mean, we could have gone together. Emma would have appreciated that—and Lars—and Sadie.”

Geoff’s features contracted with pain. “I have asked you not to mention that girl’s name, Jeannie. Can you do that much for me? For us?”

“That girl? She’s part of this family, Geoff.”

“She is as dead to me as Tessa is,” he replied and turned on his heel and went back to the den. A moment later, Jeannie heard the television volume go louder and become a jumble of channel surfing as Geoff punched the remote repeatedly.

Ignoring the cleanup of their supper, Jeannie walked slowly back to the den. “Please stop walking away from me,” she said as she reached over his shoulder and removed the remote from his hand. She aimed the device at the television and clicked the power off. “Talk to me,” she said calmly. “Tell me why you were at the courthouse at all.” She knelt next to his chair and took his hands in hers. “Help me understand, Geoff.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I went there to testify, but when she saw me, she started to scream, and the judge ordered a recess until Monday…”

“Sadie started to scream?”

He did not argue with her use of her name this time. “Yeah.” He actually shuddered at the memory. “It was like some wild animal howling in pain,” he said.

Tears filled Jeannie’s eyes. Would this never be over for them? Would the hurt just go on and on? “Emma?”

“She was there, and Lars. I thought he was going to punch me, but then I realized that he never would.”

“What did they say? Emma and Lars?”

“Nothing. Emma ran off to a side door where the guard had taken her…”

“Taken Sadie?”

Geoff gave her an impatient look and nodded. “The bailiff let Lars and Emma go to be with her and then cleared the room.”

“Who else was there?”

Geoff shrugged. “People I didn’t know, probably for other cases. Dan’s parents.” He must have seen the next question coming. “Dan testified.”

“So the judge ended it before you had to testify. Then it’s over now.” Jeannie knew that she was trying to reassure herself, knew that she wanted only to block out the realization that it wasn’t over at all. She so badly needed for something about this whole nightmare to turn out to be all right, and if that was that Geoff had been stopped from testifying so that he could reconsider, then she would take that crumb and thank God for it. “I’ll speak with Emma. I can simply explain that you’ve reconsidered, that you didn’t realize what testifying could mean. She and Lars will understand that you—”

“I’m going to testify, Jeannie.”

“But why?”

“How about asking the real question here, Jeannie? How about asking why not?” His voice was raspy, as if he didn’t have the strength to argue but was determined to fight on. “Isn’t that the question you should really be asking for Tessa’s sake?”

Jeannie stared up at him, this stranger with her husband’s face. She didn’t understand this side of him, this rage that seemed to build a little every day. “Help me understand why you would do this,” she pleaded.

“Because I saw what happened.” He ground out each word as if afraid she would miss one. “I was outside there. Your beloved niece almost struck me. Do you understand that you could have lost both of us?”

“But it was an accident, Geoff. A horrible accident. Sadie never intended to hurt anyone.”

Geoff looked at her as if she were as much a stranger to him as he had become in these last several days to her. “Do you hear yourself, Jeannie? It’s Emma or Sadie you worry about—not Tessa and certainly not me.” He stood up and stepped around her. “Well, here’s the thing, Jeannie. I know you love your sister and her family, but I’m not wired that way. My only child is gone—forever…”

“Stop it,” Jeannie hissed, getting to her feet to face him. “Stop talking like you’re the only one who has suffered the loss of Tessa—she was my child—my only child, too.”

“Then maybe you ought to start acting like it instead of looking for ways to defend her killer.” He turned away, grabbed his baseball cap, jammed it on his head, and left the house.

Jeannie waited for the sound of the car starting but instead heard the steady pound of his feet as he ran down the driveway and on down the street. She knew where to find him. He would be at the track at the school, running off his anger and grief. It was hardly the first time their evening had ended this way—with him running off steam and Jeannie at home alone.

Like a robot, she went through the motions of putting the kitchen in order and setting the coffeemaker timer for the following morning. Then she remembered that tomorrow was Friday and a teacher’s work day for Geoff. The weekend would start early.

Memories of the plans she and Emma would make to spend such days off with the girls—just the four of them—hit her like an unexpected wave at the seashore. This would be a long weekend, and weekends, she had discovered, were in many ways the worst. It was easier to get through the hours that Tessa would have been in school. But weekends were always a time when they did everything together. On Friday nights, they would all go to the football game and then out for pizza. On Saturdays she and Emma and Tessa and Sadie would spend the day together—working at the fruit co-op, shopping, or going to search for shells in the bay. And on Sunday after each family attended services at their separate churches, they would spend the rest of the day together, going on outings or just sharing an afternoon and evening of board games or shuffleboard followed by a potluck meal filled with chatter and laughter and togetherness.

As lights came on in houses up and down the block, she switched off the kitchen light and started upstairs, but then she turned and retraced her steps to the wall phone in the kitchen. She dialed the number for retrieving their voice mail.

“You have no new messages,” the electronic voice reported. “You have eighteen saved messages.”

Eighteen saved messages—all of them from Emma. None of them returned. She hadn’t known what to say. Aware that Geoff needed time to forgive Sadie, she had kept her distance from Emma and Lars out of respect for Geoff. She had hoped that once the funeral was over and he had gone back to work, he would realize that Emma and Lars and Matt—and yes, Sadie—were family. But it was clear that he was going to need more time, and she would not abandon him when he was in such obvious pain.

Still she needed support as well, and in the absence of Geoff’s ability to offer her that, she pressed the key to retrieve the first message and give herself the gift of the comfort and strength that she knew she could find in her sister’s voice.

Chapter 26

Geoff

B
y the time Geoff reached the track, he was already soaked with sweat. He had run full out from the house to the athletic field where he had spent so many good times, celebrated so many victories with his teams, coached and cajoled and parented young boys into the fine young men they had become. This place was the setting for his success. The house he had run from had turned out to be the setting of his greatest failure.

His anger and guilt combined to push him forward in spite of the burning pain in his chest and the heaviness of his legs. He was out of shape. The extra duties as vice principal had cut into the time he usually took to work out at the end of every school day. Work out here with his players, or on off days, run with Matt, who was always hanging around waiting for practice to end and hoping for an invitation to join Geoff in laps around the track.

The kid was an excellent runner, and once he filled out a little, he’d make a good running back. Matt had an instinct for the game of football that was impossible to teach. He had a phenomenal grasp of the intricate plays that often had to be dumbed down for others.

But ever since the funeral, Geoff had avoided any contact with his nephew. After practice if he saw Matt hanging around, he headed back inside the school with his players without so much as a glance at Matt. It wasn’t the kid’s fault. Geoff knew that, and it certainly wasn’t fair to him. But Matt reminded him of Lars and Emma, and that reminded him of Sadie, and that took his mind places that he really didn’t want to go.

It was the same at home. It had gotten so that he had to bite his tongue sometimes to keep from reminding Jeannie that none of this would be happening to them if she had thought before she took Sadie for that learner’s permit. But that was a line he would not cross. Jeannie would be devastated if she knew for one minute that he harbored this thought. At the same time, Geoff suspected that she already carried the weight of regretting that impulsive act with her every waking hour. Speaking the accusation aloud would take their marriage to a place so dark that they’d have no hope of ever recovering, and it scared him to think how close he’d come to shouting that very accusation at her earlier.

He took another lap and focused on his breathing, steady outbursts of air as he pushed his way around the track, quarter mile by quarter mile. He tried to empty his mind, to focus on nothing more than the uniformity of his stride, the form with which he ran. But each puff of his breath came out sounding like Jeannie’s question:
“Why?”

Because a child has died needlessly.…

Because our child was that child.…

Because justice demands that Tessa’s death come with a cost for the one who caused it.…

Because Sadie has always been too free-spirited, too oblivious to consequences, too reckless in the way she treats others.…

Because testifying against Sadie gave him back a feeling that he had control over the situation, that he could do something to make things right.

Testifying was the only way he’d come up with to dampen his own overwhelming guilt—the guilt that he’d carried with him from the moment he’d realized that in trying to protect her he had actually sent Tessa to the exact spot where the car had hit her. Every time he relived the force of that blow, he forgot how to breathe.

Why couldn’t Jeannie understand that?

Why did she always choose her sister and her sister’s family over her own? How many times in all the years of their marriage had he heard her say, “but Emma needs” or “Emma doesn’t understand” or “Emma says” or “Emma thinks”? How many times had they changed the plans he had made with others to include Emma and Lars and their kids? And worst of all, how many times had Jeannie turned to Emma for support or comfort or advice instead of to him?

He heard footfalls behind him. Jeannie was a good runner, and if she had decided to come after him, maybe she had begun to understand things from his point of view.

“Hey, man, hold up.”

He stopped running and turned to see Zeke Shepherd bent nearly double, his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. Geoff walked slowly back toward his friend.

“You okay?”

“No worries,” Zeke gasped, but he took a minute longer to catch his breath.

“Did Jeannie send you?”

Zeke glanced up, and the way he cocked his head suggested that his friend had no idea what he was talking about. “Actually, I was going to camp out here tonight under the bleachers. Forecast said something about rain and…” He blinked up at Geoff. “Why would Jeannie send me to find you?” Zeke stood up straight, still massaging his side.

The streetlights outside the ball field were dim enough and distant enough to cast the field and track in shadows. “We had a fight.”

Zeke released a long sigh. “Well, I can’t say I didn’t see that one coming. Okay, I lied. I heard about you being in court today, so I stopped by. Jeannie was on the phone and told me you’d gone for a run, but she didn’t send me to get you.”

“Probably calling Emma so the two of them could commiserate over what a terrible guy I am.”

“Whoa. So it’s a pity party we’re having. Got it.”

Geoff felt a twitch of a smile. Nobody but Zeke had ever talked so straight to him—he wouldn’t allow it from anybody else. But from the time Zeke and his family had moved in across the street from Geoff when both boys were ten years old, Zeke had shown Geoff that he was not especially impressed with Geoff’s size or athletic ability.