James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

“I see you’ve still got honey on your tongue, Ben,” she said, with a hint of a blush. And then a wink, to show her sense of humor was intact.

“I’m just speaking the truth,” I said, smiling. It really was good to see her.

“Ben, I would love to stand here and visit with you and get more compliments, but Emma is going to be late for her dance class,” she said. “I do want to talk to you. Where is Mrs. Corbett? Did you abandon her at the station?”

“She stayed home,” I said. “The children are involved in their lessons.”

“I see,” Elizabeth said, with an inflection that suggested she didn’t quite comprehend that version of events. “It’s been too long, Ben,” she went on. “I hope we’ll see each other again?”

“Of course we will. Eudora is a small town.”

“And that’s why we love it.”

She took her daughter’s hand and headed off toward the shade of the oak trees surrounding the town square. I turned around and stood watching Elizabeth and Emma as they walked away.

HERE’S SOMETHING I truly believe: a man should be able to walk through the front door of his childhood home without knocking. I was thinking this as I clutched the ring of the brass knocker on my father’s front door. I may have spent the first eighteen years of my life here, but it was never my house. It was always his house. And he never let me forget it.

It was six years ago, at my mother’s funeral, that I had last laid eyes on my father.

It hadn’t gone well. I had just buried the most understanding parent a man could possibly have. When the service was over, I was left with a stern, distant, conservative father who had no use for a lawyer son who leaned the other way. After the funeral luncheon, after all the deviled eggs and potato salad and baked ham had been consumed, after the Baccarat punchbowl had been washed, dried, and put away, my father had an extra glass of whiskey and began to pontificate on the subject of my “Washington shenanigans.”

“And if you don’t mind, what might those terrible shenanigans be?” I asked. “How have I disappointed you?”

“Believe it or not, son, y’all don’t have a lock on every form of human knowledge in that Yankee town you now call home,” he said. “The news does travel down to Mississippi eventually. And everybody I know says you’re the most progressive young lawyer in Washington.” I had never heard that word pronounced with a more audible sneer.

I didn’t answer. All the way down on the train, I had vowed to myself not to react to his temperamental outbursts.

“Your mother enjoyed that about you,” he went on. “Your Yankee free-thinking ways. But she’s gone now, God rest her soul. And I can tell you this, Benjamin. You’re a fool! You’re up to your knees in the sand, and the tide’s approaching. You can keep trying to shovel as hard as you can, but that will not stop the tide from coming in.”

“Thank you for the colorful metaphor,” I said. Then I went upstairs, packed my valise, and went back to Washington.

After that I heard from him only once a year, around Christmas, when a plain white envelope would arrive containing a twenty-dollar bill and the same handwritten note every year:

“Happy Christmas to yourself, Meg, and my granddaughters. Cordially, Judge E. Corbett.”

Cordially.

NOW HERE I WAS, STANDING at his door again. And as much as it galled me to knock on that door, I could not come home to Eudora without seeing my father. I was sure he already knew that I was back.

Dabney answered the door. He had been my father’s house-man since before I was born.

“Good Lord! Mister Ben! Shoot, I never expected to open this door and find you on the other side of it. The judge is gonna be absolutely de- light -ed to see you.”

“Dabney, it’s good to know you’re still the smoothest liar in Pike County.”

He smiled brightly and gave me a wink. Then I followed him to the dining room, breathing in the old familiar smell of floor wax and accumulated loneliness.

My father sat alone at the long mahogany table, eating a bowl of soup from a fine china bowl. He glanced up, but his face did not change when he saw me – eyes icy blue, his lips thin and unsmiling.

“Why, Benjamin. How nice of you to grace us with your presence. Did somebody die?”

My father’s gift for sarcasm had not diminished. Immediately I found myself wishing I hadn’t come running over to his house my first day in town.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Sound body, sound mind. As far as I can tell. Why? Have you heard otherwise?”

“Not at all. I’m glad to hear you’re well.”

“What wonderful Yankee manners. I trust you are healthy yourself?”

I nodded. The silence between us was almost painful.

“So, Ben, you still busy up there freeing the slaves?”

“I believe it was President Lincoln who did that.”

“Ah, that’s right,” he said, a wisp of a smile coming to his face. “Sometimes I forget my history. Care for some turtle soup?”

Soup? On a ninety-degree night in Mississippi?

“No, thank you.”

“No turtle soup? Yet another in a succession of foolish choices on your part, Benjamin.”

My father did not ask me to take a seat at his table.

He did not ask what brought me to Eudora after six years, and I wondered if it was possible that he knew.

He did not inquire after Meg, or ask why my wife had permitted me to travel all this way by myself. He did not ask about Alice or Amelia.

I thought of Mama, how much she would have loved having two little granddaughters in this house. It was always too quiet in here. I remembered one of her favorite expressions: “The silence in here is so loud, I can hear my own heart rattling around in my ribs.”

Judge Corbett looked me up and down. “Where is your baggage?” he asked.

“I’m not staying here,” I said. “I’ve taken a room down at Maybelle Wilson’s. Actually, I’m here on business for the government. I have to check out some candidates for the federal courts.”

I could have sworn this news made him wince, but he recovered quickly enough.

“Fine,” he said. “Be about your business. Maybelle’s should suit you perfectly. Is there something else?”

I saw no reason to prolong this agony. “Oh, no. Nothing. It was pleasant to see you again.”

He waved for Dabney to ladle more soup into his bowl. He dabbed at his lips with a starched linen napkin. Then he deigned to speak.

“We should arrange another visit sometime,” my father said. “Perhaps in another six years.”

“YOU NEED SOMETHING for your belly, Mr. Corbett?” Maybelle called in a loud voice from the front parlor of her rooming house.

I had found the Slide Inn Café all closed up for the night, but still I declined Maybelle’s invitation. “No, thank you, ma’am. I’m all taken care of.”

“Just as well. Ain’t nothin’ in there but some old pone.”

Maybelle’s had never been known for luxury. In fact, the only thing the place was ever known for was a string of slightly disreputable boarders through the years. Now, I supposed, I was one of them.

The original Maybelle had died years ago, about the time the house was last given a fresh coat of paint. But Eudora tradition dictated that any woman who ran the place was referred to as “Maybelle.”

Occasionally a shoe salesman or cotton broker spent a night or two at Maybelle’s. Once or twice a year my father commandeered the place to sequester jurors during a trial. And there were, inevitably, rumors about women of uncertain morality using the rooms for “business.”