Nevada Barr - 13 1/2

“I have to see the warden.”

“Warden’s gone home. Having his supper about now, I expect.”

“I don’t care if he’s having his goddamn hair done, I need to see him. Now.”

The guard looked uncertain, deciding whether Richard’s rage or tearing the warden away from his dinner would go hardest on him.

“The warden will want to hear what I have to tell him,” Richard said. “Trust me on that. And trust me, if you’re the one makes him hear it later rather than sooner, you’re going to be out of a job.”

The guard blinked then. “Okay, kid. You win. Come with me.”

Richard left without saying good-bye to his brother.

James Ruppert. Kills eleven family members at Easter dinner. 1975. This guy was nuts. I guess we’re all nuts though, so I’ll do him. I don’t see myself killing family the way Ruppert did and, before you ask, no, I didn’t crave this sort of action back when I was at home. But you’ve got to admit his family was shitty to him. And here he is, forty-one and still living at Mommy’s house. That had to say “failure” in a big way, proving what his dad was always saying he was. Big brother’s over to dinner with his eight kids-Eight! You’d think the brother would have shot his own self-and his wife who used to be James’s girlfriend, and while she’s cooking up the Easter ham, he knows Mom’s thinking about throwing him out on his ear; and he hasn’t got a job, so he’s broke. Then you factor in that he stands to get a lot of dough from insurance. Shooting the family starts to look pretty good. Sane even. Until you get to the kids. Maybe he figures they aren’t quite people; with eight of them, they wouldn’t seem like an endangered species exactly, just a housecleaning issue. What I don’t get is why go to all that trouble then wait for the cops? Did he think he would get off on a thing like that? If he did, then he really was nuts. Hey, maybe he should have gotten off on the insanity plea. Catch 22. We’re all nuts, but if we tell you that, then we’re not. I feel sorry for James; he was fucked from the start.

Marshall was scared. Polly could see it behind the sparkle in his eyes, behind the sparkle of the two-and-a-half-carat diamond ring on the table between them. Whether he was scared she would say yes or refuse, she didn’t know.

Despite the cynicism she cultivated in her dealings with the opposite sex, Polly was a romantic. Ivanhoe was a favorite of hers, Sense and Sensibility, Sleepless in Seattle. As a girl, she’d read Costain’s The Black Rose so many times the cover began to look like third base at the Little League park. She had taught True Love, as seen by poets, playwrights, and novelists most of her adult life. As she would point out to her students, not only did true love not necessarily run smooth, it was often fatal.

They were in the courtyard of the Court of Two Sisters in the Quarter. A canopy of ancient oaks sequestered the garden, each tree strung with a thousand tiny lights, and each light refracting in the facets of the diamond engagement ring. It surprised her that she wasn’t surprised. It also surprised her that she wanted to pick it up, slip it on her finger, and scamper down the aisle in a cloud of white taffeta. Perhaps love was like the mumps. If a woman came down with it after forty, it could kill her.

Staring at the black velvet box with its glittering promise so lusciously displayed, she heard herself saying, “We’ve only been together for a month.”

“But what a month,” Marshall replied and, with the long-fingered hand she loved to hold and watch when he drew pictures for Emma and Gracie, nudged the box a few inches closer.

She wondered if she eyed it as the mouse eyes the bit of cheese in the trap, not knowing it will soon make literal the notion that it was dying for a nibble.

“Cliché or not, I feel like I’ve known you my whole life,” Marshall said softly.

Polly felt that way as well. They had re-created a timeline she had skipped over: They played as children with her daughters, they giggled on the phone for hours like teenagers, they sat up late over wine arguing politics and saving the world like college sweethearts, they went to openings and museums like upwardly mobile thirty-somethings, they sat on his balcony in rocking chairs the way old folks were said to do. A lifetime together.

“The girls… ” Polly said lamely.

“I aced the interview,” he reminded her with his wonderful smile, slightly crooked, as if a part of him mocked the hope of his own happiness.

Polly worked hard at treading the thin line between being completely open and honest with her daughters and burdening them with adult concerns. She had kept her so-called love life-the sporadic dates she’d enjoyed over the years-separate from her home life and her children. That hadn’t been true with Marshall. Knowing Gracie and Emma noticed the interplay between them, she told them they might be getting serious.

The next afternoon, as she walked across campus to her car, her cell phone rang. Fishing it from her purse, she checked the screen. Gracie. Cold spiked in Polly’s chest. Their cell was only to be used for emergencies.

“Are you okay? Is Emma okay?” Polly demanded. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“Momma, take a breath,” Gracie returned. The annoyance in her tone reassured Polly. “We are at school. It’s recess. Momma… ” The quality of the sound dwindled. From the use of “we,” Polly guessed Gracie was conferring with her sister. In a couple of seconds she was back. “Momma, remember last night you said you and Marshall were like serious boyfriend-girlfriend? Do you think he wants to marry us?”

The fear that had gripped her when the cell phone rang returned. If the girls rejected Marshall, then he was out of their lives. It was as simple as that. Except this time it wasn’t. Polly was in love. Being in love, though as grand as the poets had promised, brought with it a terrifying helplessness.

“I remember, sugar,” she said carefully. She beeped the Volvo open and slid behind the wheel, her briefcase and purse on her lap. She put the key in the ignition and started the car so the air would run, but made no move to go.

“Well… ” There was another brief conference at the other end of the ether.

Realizing she was clutching her phone so tightly she was in danger of breaking it, Polly forced herself to relax.

“Momma?”

“I’m here. Tell me.”

“Me and Emma want to interview him.”

“Emma and I,” Polly corrected automatically.

When Gracie hung up, Polly called Marshall and invited him for dinner. “Come early, around five,” she told him. “The girls want to talk to you.”

After school, Emma and Gracie went into their room and closed the door. Polly could hear them murmuring and laughing; sounds that usually filled her with joy grated on her nerves.

They didn’t come out until Marshall rang the doorbell at four-forty-five. Gracie emerged as Polly let him in. “You’re early. We’re not ready yet,” she said and disappeared back into the bedroom.

Polly laughed nervously. “I have no idea what they’re planning, Marshall, only that it’s important to them. Can I offer you a strong drink?”

“Later, maybe,” he replied. “Later, definitely,” he amended. “I’m afraid it might not make a good impression on my inquisitors.”

He was not joking.

Sitting in the living room, he on the couch and she in the chair, they tried to make small talk. When that failed, they stared at one another and waited.

At five o’clock the bedroom door again opened and the girls came out. Both had on their best dresses. Both wore shoes. It should have been endearing, comical, even, but Polly saw the alarm she felt reflected in Marshall ’s eyes.