John Lescroart: The Oath

"Well, you had a lot of us fooled then."

At the shouted requests, Glitsky held the framed page up for the amusement of the crowd and everyone broke into applause.

Hardy, Frannie, and Treya sat around the far end of the table. "The wheelchair is a bit much, don't you think?" Hardy asked. "He was walking fine yesterday at your place."

"He's not supposed to exert himself for another few weeks," Frannie said.

"Doctor's orders," Treya added, then whispered, leaning over, "The fool was trying sit-ups last week and ripped open one of the scabs. Sit-ups!"

"How many'd he do?" Hardy asked.

"Dismas!" Frannie, on his case.

"Eight, the fool!"

Hardy shook his head in disgust. "Only eight and he busts his gut." He looked down the table, glad as hell to see his best friend sitting there in whatever condition he might be. "What a wimp."

The trip took Luz thirteen days. It amazed her that after so much time, she could still find the house she'd grown up in. That was because things made sense here, not like in San Francisco. She had turned from the highway and come up through the town. One of the first things she saw gave her some hope. They had rebuilt the building where the newspaper had been, from which they had dragged her father. The last time she'd seen it, it had been a burnt-out shell, but no one seeing it now would ever suspect that.

Then her brother's clinic, Alberto's old clinic. It was still there, in the same place, looking well cared for with the bright flowers planted all around. She didn't remember those, if they had been there when she'd gone. There were a few cars in the lot out in front, people going in to see a doctor they knew. One they could trust.

She felt a sharp stab of regret, but she didn't want to let herself start thinking this way again. She had struggled for months to see that the bitterness was for the most part behind her now, purged in the tears and finally in the taking of that pig's life who had cost her son his. Now, although the loss of Ramiro would never cease to ache in her chest, she could imagine someday coming to a kind of peace with it all.

It all might have been to teach her something she might not have seen on her own. There was only this life and she had squandered a decade of it trying to fit into that foreign place, ignoring her own happiness and trying to make something that would be better for her boy. But what had come of that? Demeaning work, a life she did not enjoy for one day and never would, a boy who never knew the joy of a family, of the love of his father. A pain with no sides.

She was thirty-two years old and a graduate of the university. There was, she knew, work to do here in El Salvador -not only family work, starting over with Jose

´ perhaps-but work with the people, to make this land theirs. This was where she would make her stand.

Her mother's house had grown young. The banana trees now grew nearly wild over the porch, hiding it in blessed shade. The paint was fresh, the screens fixed tightly to the doors and windows.

She had not called here since she'd left. They would be worried sick. She had just been driving, surviving to get here, through California, Mexico, Guatemala. The borders and guardia and men. But she had made it to here now and she stopped the car. After all the breakdowns in San Francisco whenever she really needed it, the car had finally been fuerte when it mattered. She pulled to the side of the road. Getting out, stretching, she was aware that she stunk.

She did not care. It didn't matter. She wasn't in the U.S. anymore.

There was a motor going somewhere in the back and she walked around the house to the sound of it. Jose´-strong, silent, ugly Jose´-had his shirt off working over the generator they still used most of the time for their electricity. After all these years, she still knew his body.

Standing ten feet from him now in the saw grass, she waited in a kind of hysterical suspense. How badly did the scars show on her? Had she changed beyond his recognition, and if he did know who she was, would he still love her? Would she love him?

Suddenly the noise stopped. He straightened up, wiped his forehead with a bandanna, then saw her.

For a long moment, nothing in the world moved. Then his face broke into the smile of his youth. He held out his arms, took a step toward her, and she ran to his embrace.

JOHN LESCROART, the New York Times best-selling author of such novels as The Mercy Rule , The 13th Juror, Nothing but the Truth , and The Hearing, lives with his family in northern California.