Nora Roberts - High Noon

"We'll check out the woman, see if the alibi holds."

"Yeah. I'm going home. I'll start going through the files. He'll be in there. He's in there somewhere."

As Phoebe stepped out of observation, Liz slipped out of the interview room. "I was just coming back to talk to you. Got a minute?"

"Sure."

"Let's, ah…" Liz glanced over, gestured toward the women's room. "Take it in here."

When they were inside, Liz leaned back on a sink. "Hard for you, watching that. Watching him. The glass isn't much of a barrier."

"Yeah, it was, and no, it's not. But it had to be done."

"He's not the guy, Phoebe."

"No, he's not the guy. You and Bull did good in there. His alibi's going to check out, and we'll be able to eliminate that avenue."

"How are you holding up?"

"Truth? I have no idea." Phoebe ran her hands over her face, back into her hair. "I've got my family holed up inside the house like a group of hostages. No choice. Whoever did this to Roy has made us all hostages, and I don't know the terms. I don't know what he wants or why. I can't negotiate their safety if I don't know the terms."

"You want to go grab some coffee?" As she asked, Liz tipped back her watch to check the time. "I can take thirty while Bull wraps up."

"I look that bad?"

"You look like you could use a cup of coffee and a friend."

"I could, but I need to get home. Pull out the linchpin, the wheel slips off. Right now, for my family, I'd be the linchpin. Could you let me know if and when his alibi's confirmed?"

"No problem."

Phoebe opened the door, shut it again. "I wish it was him. Wish it was that son of a bitch. Roy's dead, can't change that. Part of me wishes it was Meeks so it would be over and done, and I'd know my family's safe. But there's another part, Liz, just as active, just as sharp, that wishes it was him so he'd go down. All the way down. And not for Roy, not in the guts, you know? So he'd go down for every minute inside that stairwell. I thought I'd come to terms with the way all that shook out, with the payment made. But standing in there, looking at him? I haven't come to terms with it."

"Understandable."

"Is it?"

"Scales are only balanced when your gut tells you they are. You may have to accept the payment. You don't have to like it."

"I don't." Something loosened in her chest because she'd been able to say it, to spew it out to someone who understood. "I don't like it one damn bit. He should do a little time helpless and terrified, then maybe…" Phoebe shook her head. "Problem for another day. I think I have enough others to fill the plate for now."

"You should give some thought to talking to the counselor."

"I will. Really. I need to get through this first." She managed a smile. "That was better than coffee. Thanks for the ear, Liz."

"I got two when you need another."

She put it away, locked up the turmoil that seeing, hearing, watching Arnie Meeks had made swirl inside her. No time, no place for it now. It would come back, she knew, spurting up to twist her belly into knots. When it did, she'd just have to find a way to uncoil them until there was time, until there was a place.

She had a whole checklist of priorities ahead of that one.

On Jones, she parked, got out of the car. Why, she wondered, did the house seem to loom sometimes? She could go weeks, even months, without thinking of it as anything but home-a beautiful, graceful place to raise her child, to house her mother, her friend. A place to eat, sleep, live, even entertain occasionally.

What did it matter that she hadn't chosen to live there, to be there? In the end, it was only a house. Only brick and glass. Cousin Bess's ghost had long since moved on.

Lack of choice, she thought. It was all about choice, and not having options.

Despite the fact she was needed inside, Phoebe walked around to the courtyard gate. Away from the police car, away from that looming face of brick and glass.

Here, at least, there'd been choices, even if she'd left them almost entirely up to Ava. Gardens and paths and shady nooks, graceful tables, whimsical statuary.

She sat on the steps of the veranda, looked out, and imagined that lovely courtyard somewhere else. New Orleans maybe, or just another street in Savannah. Could be Atlanta or Charlotte.

And what difference, really, at the base of things?

All the difference, she admitted. All the difference in the world. She heard the door open but didn't turn. So much, she thought, for solo brooding time.

Carter sat beside her, put a glass of wine in her hand. And said nothing at all.

She took the first sip in silence, with only the elegant music of the fountain trickling through. "I'm having a sulk."

"Hence the wine. Want me to go back in?"

"No. I decided to pick at an old scab. Cousin Bess, this house and the locks she put on the door I can't open. Nothing to do about it, so it's a good one to sulk about as I don't have to find the solution."

"Which in every other instance you do." She looked at him. "It's what I do, isn't it?"

"It's what you've taken on, almost as long as I can remember.

Reuben was the big demarcation, but there was stuff before that. In the blurry before time."

She leaned her head against his shoulder a moment. "Everything changed when Daddy died. For me, before that's the blurry time. She could've helped us then, you know. Cousin Bitch. There might not've been a Reuben if she'd done the right thing by Mama then. But she didn't, and there's no point speculating on what might've been."

She sat silent awhile, drinking wine, studying the fountain. "Mama came through for us, every day."

"I know it."

"It must've been so hard. When I think about it, I can't fully imagine what it was like for her. The worry, the work, the grief. The fear. But she always came through for us. Then, she takes a chance on someone who makes her think she's special, and who starts off treating her so well. And it nearly kills her and her children. Hardly a wonder she started closing doors."

"I never blamed her for that."

"No, no, you never have, and sometimes I do. God, it shames me that sometimes I do. It doesn't matter what I know, sometimes it just pisses me off she won't walk outside, go down to the market, go to the damn movies. Anything. It doesn't matter I know she can't. Sometimes…"

She shook her head, took another sip of wine. "I think about now, this situation, and how I can't send her and Carly away somewhere. I wouldn't have to worry so much if I could put them on a plane to anywhere else until this is over."

"We need to talk to her about therapy again. Not now," he said before Phoebe could answer. "Not when she's already tied up. But later, when… like you said, this is over. Josie and I could move in. Not just temporarily."

"You wouldn't be happy."

"Phoebe-"

"You wouldn't. And I am happy here, most of the time. I'm just having a champion pissy spell. I got all these wires crossed in me right now. Arnold Meeks is clear on Roy. I knew that before I went down there to observe. But observing got me twisted up and mad and scared all over again. I'd rather be pissed than scared, so I'm out here concentrating on that part."

"Doing a good job."

"That's the important thing."

Across the courtyard a hummingbird, bright as a jewel, flirted with the riot of morning glories climbing the iron trellis against the wall.

Free to choose any blossom, Phoebe thought, free to fly on. People weren't birds.

"How's Mama?"

"Crocheting. Before he left, Duncan had her working on ideas for stock and cost analysis. God knows. Just the right thing to keep her mind off all this. He's good at that. Working people."

She lifted her eyebrows. "Compliment or complaint?"