Shirley Murphy - Cat Cross Their Graves

"Who knows, he may get a short sentence and parole. Meantime, Cora Lee French is there for her. Cora Lee spoke to me this afternoon. Cora Lee loves that child."

"We haven't had dessert," Ryan said, swiping at a tear as she rose and moved toward the kitchen. But Max pulled Charlie up from the couch and headed out the front door.

"Hey," Charlie said. "I want dessert."

"Don't worry, you won't miss dessert."

She let herself be guided outside and down the steps, to the drive. Behind them, everyone crowded out onto the porch, but Clyde moved quickly past them, to flip the canvas cover off the hidden vehicle.

Charlie looked at Clyde, puzzled. She stared at the shiny new red Blazer. "This doesn't need restoring. This is your new project?"

Clyde smiled. Max stood watching her. A card was stuck under the windshield wiper. She removed it and opened it, then looked up at Max. " 'Happy early birthday'? What-"

"It arrived early." He handed her the key.

Clyde, watching them, was almost as pleased as Max. He and Max had considered a four-year-old Jaguar convertible trade-in, a vehicle that both men had greatly admired. Maybe during a light moment, Max had imagined himself tooling around the village in Charlie's flashy Jaguar. But both admitted that Charlie couldn't haul her paintings or half a dozen bales of hay or two big dogs or extra housecleaning equipment in a Jag convertible. Then Clyde had found the two-year-old Chevy Blazer that, while not quite politically correct, got good gas mileage and gave Charlie ample hauling space.

Charlie spent the next half hour hugging Max, examining the car inside and out, and ended up bawling on his shoulder. The three cats, crouched on the porch, had to shut their mouths tight to keep from laughing. Their loud purrs did attract several glances. It was only later, alone in the kitchen, that Charlie tweaked Joe's ear and stroked Kit and Dulcie. "You knew!" she whispered. "All three of you. You little stool pigeons knew, but you never once let on! How can you be such snitches, but you never say a word to me!"

Joe looked up at Charlie, his yellow eyes innocent and round. Kit lashed her tail and smiled. Dulcie said softly, "But it wasn't really a secret at all, everyone knew. Ryan and Dallas. Wilma. Lucinda and Pedric. Davis, the entire department. Everyone knew but you, Charlie."

Lori had never been in a jail or even a police station, only in the reception lobby of Greenville juvenile, and that was as ugly as a hospital and stank of disinfectant. This police station, though, smelled like fresh coffee. Cora Lee took her inside and left her there and said she'd come back to get her.

She'd washed her hair before she came to see Pa, and Cora Lee had loaned her a brand-new red sweatshirt and even bought her a pair of new sneakers. The little lobby had counters on two sides with a green plant on each of them. There was a barred door at one side, the door of a little cell; she could see the cot inside. She looked in thinking Pa would be there, but the cop who let her in said that was just a holding cell.

She didn't want to go back into the real jail. But it turned out she didn't have to. He told her to wait, and two officers brought Pa up to the front. Pa looked thinner, and whiter. Like maybe he hadn't eaten or slept very much. He didn't have on special prison clothes like in the movies. Not yet, she thought, getting scared. Just his own jeans and plaid shirt and work shoes. She stood looking at him and didn't know what to say. But Pa knelt right down and put out his arms, so she had to hug him, and she felt all funny inside.

The officer took them into the holding cell and shut them in. She didn't know if the door locked when he closed it. He stood outside the bars, and another cop came to stand with him. There was a woman officer behind the counter. What did they think, that Pa would make a break for it? Lori wondered how Pa liked being locked up the way he'd locked her up. Then she was ashamed of herself, ashamed of thinking that. Pa sat down on the bunk on the stained mattress, and put out his hand to her. "Lori?"

She sat down where he could take her hand but couldn't put his arm around her. She looked at him and didn't know what to say. He said, "I'm sorry, Lori. Sorry I locked you in." He tilted up her chin so he could look at her. "I was scared for you. Scared that man would find you, the man who killed other children. I didn't know what else to do. Didn't know how else to keep you safe. Then when you ran away, I was more scared. I looked for you, and looked for Fenner. I had no one to go to. Or thought I didn't," he said sadly.

"I know. I'm sorry, Pa. That I ran away. Maybe if you'd told me…" She looked at him then, and felt all teary. "I thought…"

"You thought I didn't love you."

She couldn't talk.

He pulled her over almost roughly and held her, and she started to cry and couldn't stop. He handed her the big red handkerchief he carried in his pocket to wipe his hands on the job. She blew her nose, then sat hiccupping. Pa pulled her close again, held her safe, like when she was little.

"I think the judge will give me home confinement, Lori. After arraignment, until the trial. If I can come home until the trial, will you help me take the plywood off? And wash the windows?"

"Yes, Pa! And clean the house. We can do that together."

"We can. I've been gone a long time, haven't I?"

"Yes, Pa."

"And now, I don't know how long I'll be home. You know I'll have to go to prison."

She nodded. She knew it but she didn't want to know it. "For how long, Pa?"

"No one will know until after the trial. Until I'm sentenced. I have to stop thinking of you as a little girl. We're going to have to make some decisions."

"What decisions, Pa?" She looked hard at him. "I'm not going back to juvenile. I'm not."

"What, then?"

"Cora Lee French wants me to live with her. Until… until you come home again."

"Cora Lee French. The Little Theater singer."

She nodded. "Cora Lee, and Mavity Flowers and two other ladies. In-"

"In that house," Pa said, his light brown eyes wide with surprised. "Would you be all right with that?"

"I… I think so. I don't have to think about… those children." She shivered, but she wanted to make him understand. "They're not there, Pa. They're somewhere else, those children. Somewhere new and bright. They don't care about that place. Even if they did care," she said, "even if they came back sometimes, it would be all right."

"I see," he said, as if he didn't see at all.

"And Cora Lee and Mavity, I would be happy in that big house with them. They even have two dogs, Pa. Two nice big dogs."

Pa smiled for the first time, and hugged her and rumpled her hair like when she was little. And she thought maybe it would be all right. She meant for it to be all right. Maybe Pa wouldn't be in prison very long. Cora Lee said that when you were twelve, life was a tangle of choices. That sometimes you had to make really hard choices, that that's what growing up was all about. Lori guessed that Pa was right, she couldn't be a little child anymore. At least not all the time.

Pots of cyclamens lined the tearoom windows, red and pink brighter than Christmas candy, their colors shutting out the stormy sky. A blustery wind rattled the glass but within the cozy, paneled room firelight blazed. Before the licking flames on the brick hearth, a table had been set with high tea. The aroma of hot, savory party fare, of broiled crab sandwiches and little broiled sausages on toast, and of rum cake and other rich sweets mingled with the scent of brewing tea. The guest of honor sat at the head of the table. She had come directly from the hospital. She wore a red cashmere dress, warm and soft and becoming. Her white hair was freshly washed. She was tucked into a wheelchair, a red blanket over her knees, her oxygen tank hooked rakishly to the side of the chair in the manner of a ranger's rifle carelessly slung from the saddle.