Slipping into the chair opposite Elly's, Will wondered if she could feel the floor tremble from his thudding heart.
For a full ten seconds they stared.
"Hello, Will," Elly greeted with a sad smile in her eyes.
"Hello."
Their words, though softly spoken, echoed clearly through the room.
Will's palms were sweating and his neck felt hot as he drank in the sight of her and suppressed the awful need to reach for her hands across the table.
"I'm sorry about the grand jury decision. I thought ... well, I hoped you'd be home today."
"So did I. But Collins warned me not to get my hopes up, especially when he couldn't be in there to tell our side of it."
"It don't seem fair, Will. I mean, how can they keep your lawyer out of the hearing room?"
"Collins says that's how the law works, and our chance will come when we go to trial by traverse jury."
"Traverse jury?" Her brow wrinkled.
"The big one, the one that lets us tell our side."
"Oh."
The thought of it shook them both as they gazed at each other, wishing futile wishes, regretting the harsh words of their last meeting. Elly kept a two-handed grip on her purse while Will dried his palms on his thighs.
"Elly, I..."
Tell her you're sorry, fool.
But Hess stood guard, listening to every word, and apologizing was hard enough in private. The thought of baring his heart before an audience seemed to paralyze Will's tongue. So instead he told Elly, "I like Collins. He's a good one, I think. Thanks for hiring him."
"Don't be silly. Did you think I wouldn't hire a lawyer for my own husband?"
The words pressed up against Will's throat, and Hess or no Hess, he had to speak them. "I didn't know what to think after the way I talked to you last time."
Elly's eyes skittered aside. "I'd already hired him before I saw you."
"Oh." Will felt justly stung. His hands, only moments ago sweating, grew suddenly icy.
So what'd you expect, Parker, after the way you talked to her?
Again came the aching desire to ask her forgiveness, followed by the godawful fear that she wouldn't warm again, and if that happened, he'd have no reason to fight his way out of here. So he sat in misery, with his heart painfully clamoring and a lump in his throat that felt the size of a baseball.
"You okay?" Elly inquired, letting her glance waver back to him. "They feedin' you okay in here?"
Will swallowed the lump and managed to sound normal. "Pretty good. The sheriff's wife's got the cooking contract."
"Well ... you look good." She flashed a nervous smile.
Silence again, made more awkward by the passing minutes and the fact that they spoke of everything except what was paramount on their minds.
"How did you get here?" He found himself obsessed with an irrational greed to know everything she'd done and thought since he'd been in here, to fill in the blanks of the time he was forced to forfeit. Life had grown so precious to him since she'd become part of it that he felt doubly robbed of his freedom.
"Oh, I caught a ride," she said evasively.
Distractedly, Elly scratched at the clasp of her purse and they both studied her hands until their eyes seemed to burn. Finally she opened the purse and told him quietly, "I know you told me not to come, Will, but I had to bring these presents from the kids." From the purse she withdrew two scrolled papers and handed them across the table.
"Wait!" Hess ordered sharply and leaped forward to confiscate them.
Elly glanced up, injured. "It's only greetings from the kids."
He examined them, rerolled them and handed them back, then returned to his post beside the door.
Again Elly offered the papers. "Here, Will."
He unrolled them to find a crude color- crayon drawing of flowers and stick people, and the message
I love you, Will
faithfully duplicated in nearly indecipherable printing, followed by their names: Donald Wade and Thomas. Will had never had to work so hard to keep tears from springing.
"Gosh," he remarked thickly, eyes downcast for fear she'd read how closely he treaded the borderline of control.
"They miss you," she whispered plaintively, thinking,
And I miss you. I ache without you. Home is terrible, work is pointless, living hurts.
But she was afraid to say it, afraid of being rebuffed again.
"I miss 'em, too." Will's chin remained flattened to his chest. "How are they?"
"They're fine. They're at
Lydia
's house today, all three of 'em. Donald Wade, he gets off the schoolbus there. He loves it at
Lydia
's. Him and Sally're buildin' a fort."
Will cleared his throat and looked up, his heart still tripping in double-time, wishing futilely that she need not see him in this place that so reduced a man's self-respect, wishing for the hundredth time that he hadn't said what he had the last time he saw her, needing terribly to know if she, like the children, still loved him.
Tell her you're sorry, Parker! Just lay it out there and this misery will be over!
He opened his lips to apologize but she spoke first. "Miss Beasley says Mr. Collins is the best."
"I trust her judgment." He cleared his throat and sat up straighter. "But I don't know where we're gonna get the money to pay him, Elly."
"Don't you worry about that. The honey run was good and we got money in he bank, and Miss Beasley's offered to help."
"She has?"
Elly nodded. "But I don't aim to take her up on it unless we have to."
"That's probably wise," he added.
Again came the oppressive silence and the swelling compulsion to touch fingertips. But he was afraid to reach and she was afraid Hess would jump all over her again, so neither of them moved.
"Well, listen." She lifted her face and smiled a big jack-o-lantern smile, as false as if it had been carved in a pumpkin by a knife. "I have to go 'cause I been leaving the kids at
Lydia
's an awful lot lately and I don't want to start takin' her for granted."
Panic swamped Will. He hadn't done any of the things he'd intended—he hadn't touched her, apologized, complimented her on her pretty new dress, told her he loved her, said any of the things crowding his heart. But it was probably best to let her off the hook. No matter what Collins said, the cards were stacked against him. He was a born loser. Innocent or not, he was bound to lose this trial, too, and when he did they'd lock him up for good. They did that on a second murder conviction, he knew. And no woman should have to wait for a man who'd be sixty—or seventy—when he got out. If he got out.
Elly edged forward on her chair.
"Well..." She rose uncertainly, still with a two-fisted grip on her small black purse. He didn't remember her ever carrying a purse before; it made him feel as if he'd been incarcerated for nine years instead of nine days, as if she were changing subtly while he wasn't there to see.
He, too, stood, tightening the roll of paper with both hands to keep from reaching out for her. "Thanks for coming, Elly. Say hi to the kids and tell the boys thanks for these pictures."
"I will."
"Kiss Lizzy P. for me."
"I w—" The word broke in half. Her chin began trembling and she forcibly tensed it.
They stared at each other until their eyes burned and their heartbeats hurt.
"Elly..." he whispered, and reached.
Their hands clung, flattening the scroll of paper—a tense, forlorn message of all that had not been said.
Tears glimmered on. her lower eyelids. "I got to g-go, Will," she whispered and slowly pulled free. She backed up a step and he saw her chest began to heave as if she were already sobbing internally.
Desperate, he swung away and strode toward the door. "I'm ready, Hess!" The words resounded in the bare room as Will left Elly to shed her tears unobserved. She didn't come back again. But Miss Beasley did, the next day, with her mouth puckered like a two-day-old pudding and a look of stern reproof on her face.
"So, what have you done to that child?" she demanded before Will even touched his chair.
"What?" His eyes widened in surprise.
"What have you done to Eleanor? She came to my house crying her heart out last night and said you don't love her anymore."
"It's best if she believes that."
"
Bullwhacky!
"
The word resounded from the walls, taking Will aback. He sat in silence while Miss Beasley raged on. "She's your wife, Mr. Parker! How dare you treat her like some passing acquaintance!"
"If you came here to give me hell, you can—"
"That's precisely why I came here, you young upstart! And don't speak to me in that tone of voice!"
Will let his weight drop to the chair and sat back in an insolent sprawl. "Y' know, you're just what I needed today, Miss Beasley."
"What you need, young man, is a good dressing down, and you're going to get it. Whatever you said to that young woman to put her in that state was untenable. If there was ever a time when you need to stand by her, this is it."
"Me stand by her!" Will stiffened and splayed two hands on his chest. "Ask her about standing by me!"
"Oh, I suppose you're sitting in here sulking because she had to take ten seconds to digest Reece Goodloe's accusation before coming to grips with it."
"Digest! She did more than digest!" He pointed toward Whitney. "She thought I
did
it! She actually thought I killed
"Oh, she did, did she? Then why is she running ads in the Whitney and Calhoun newspapers offering rewards for any information leading to your acquittal? Why has she single-handedly rounded up a dozen witnesses to testify on your behalf? Why has she learned how to drive a car and refused—"
"Drive a car!"
"—my financial help and run all over
Will finally got a word in edgewise. "Who's Hazel Pride?"
"Our local realtor, that's who. Eleanor has put her grandfather's house up for sale to pay your lawyer's fee, to see that you get the best defense a man can possibly get in this state. But to do it she had to face that house, and a town full of despicable ...
horses' posteriors
who don't deserve to be groveled to. But grovel she did, and she did it for you, Mr. Parker! Because she loves you so much she would face anything in this world for you. And you pay her back by withholding your forgiveness for a reaction that would have been as natural to you had she been the one with the prison record who was being accused again." Miss Beasley collected herself and sat back self-righteously. "Perhaps I was mistaken about what kind of person you are."
Will was so dazed, he commented on the most incidental fact.
"She told me she caught a ride to Calhoun."
"Caught a ride—hmph! She drives that deplorable automobile you stuck together with spit and baling twine, and if she doesn't kill herself before this is over it'll be a miracle. She nearly killed Nat and Norris, to say nothing of the buildings she's bumped into and the sidewalks she's scaled. Why, a person's rosebushes aren't even safe on the front lawn anymore! She's scared to death of that thing, but she grips the wheel and drives, mind you! Clear up to Calhoun, sometimes twice a day, only to come home believing that you don't love her anymore. Well, shame on you, Mr. Parker!" Miss Beasley shook her finger at Will as if he were six years old. "Now I want you to consider how you've hurt her instead of sitting in here thinking only of yourself. And the next time she comes to visit you, you make amends!"