Vickie Taylor - Keeping Caroline

The H.T. whimpered. Matt let him think.

“All…all right.”

“Good, James. Great. We’re setting up the robot now.”

Giving him the thumbs-up, Todd Thurman switched the phone to mute. “You’re one cool dawg, Burkett. You got him.”

Matt sat back, his heart kicking painfully. He wasn’t so sure he had anyone.

His skin prickled with nervous sweat. He had to up the stakes now, while he was still in the game. He cleared his throat and motioned for Thurman to open the microphone again. “Which kid are you going to send out, James?”

“I—I don’t know.”

The video monitor in the corner of the room showed the robot rolling up the front walk. About twenty feet out, the cop at the controls stopped the radio-controlled ’bot, waiting for their payoff.

“Which one do you love the most? Jasmine—Jazzie? Or James Junior? Your only son, or your little girl? Which one deserves to live? You choose.”

Thurman slapped the mute button on the phone controls. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting the kids out of there. Both of them.”

“You’re gonna lose him.”

“I’m not going to lose anyone,” Matt exploded. “Now turn the damn telephone back on.”

His blood screaming in his veins, Matt waited until the light blinked green. “James, you still there?”

“I—I can’t do it. I can’t decide.”

“One of them has to go.” Matt closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. His throat felt as though it had been scraped raw. His head felt as if it was going to explode. “You have to choose. Which one lives, which one stays, and maybe dies?”

James sobbed into the phone.

“Unless you want to send them both out,” Matt suggested softly.

“Then I won’t have nobody. I won’t have nobody, man.”

“You’ll have me. I’m not going anywhere.”

The H.T. made a sound like a trapped animal. Wounded. Dying. The phone clattered as if he’d dropped it.

“James? James!” Matt yelled, his gaze glued to the video monitor. His body braced for the blast of gunfire.

He’d pushed too hard. God, he’d pushed too hard, too fast.

But there were no gunshots. An eerie silence descended on the scene as parabolic microphones across the street from the H.T.’s house picked up the creak of hinges. Time stopped as the front door swung slowly open.

Eight-year-old Jasmine Hampton stood in the doorway, cheeks streaked with tears. Her brother nudged her from behind, and they stepped out onto the porch, blinking like owls in the bright sunlight. Their father stood behind them, a dim silhouette of a man in a shadowed foyer.

Matt didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. “Come on. Come on,” he whispered to no one.

Brother and sister took another halting step forward, then another.

Four tactical officers in full body armor darted from cover. Two trained weapons on the entrance to the house. A third officer scooped up Jasmine, tucked her against his side and kept running. The fourth slung an arm around James Junior’s shoulders, shielding him and hurrying him along. But the boy stopped, turned to look back at the house, his eyes huge and haunted.

On the porch, James Hampton fell to his knees as the robot rolled to the door.

Come on, James, Matt willed. Get the tape and get back inside. Get on the phone. Talk to me.

James stood, but he didn’t pick up the tape. He looked at the clear expanse of azure sky. Watched the breeze rattle the sugar maples. Wiped the dampness from his cheeks.

Matt shuddered. No. He knew that look. James wasn’t going back to the phone. Throwing off his headset, he ran for the door. He had to get outside. Had to get to his H.T.—

Even as he started to move, Matt knew it was too late. He stared, transfixed, at the monitor as James lifted his weapon and ran toward the police barricades on the street. The shotgun muzzle flashed and a deep-throated concussion shook the video camera.

In the side yard James Junior tried to run back toward the house, but an officer restrained him. Horror etched a deep epithet into the boy’s face as he watched his father pull the trigger again, then a third time, until the perimeter officers were left with no choice but to return fire.

A barrage of small arms fire peppered the air, and James Hampton wasn’t living in limbo any longer.

Welcome to the plains of southwest Texas, Matt thought, kicking at a withered dandelion shoot wedged in a crack in the dry earth. Where even the hardiest of weeds struggled to find foothold in the dry earth and the wind blew so strong it could peel the paint off a pickup.

Not much survived here; not much tried.

Matt never thought he’d come back here. Never expected to have reason. But James Hampton changed all that.

What had happened yesterday had touched Matt deeply. Driven him to his study to sit in the dark in the wee hours last night. Pushed him to the bus station a few hours later when he knew what he had to do, where he had to go, but didn’t trust his weary body to drive himself there.

He dropped the duffel bag he was carrying to the ground at his feet. Bending over, he pulled the zipper back enough to check that the thick yellow envelope was still inside.

The finality of what he was about to do hit him like a fist in the gut. The urge to go home, to pretend everything was all right and none of this was happening, followed like a one-two punch. But Matt couldn’t let himself be knocked down.

James Hampton was right. Living in limbo wasn’t really living at all. It was time to get on with life.

Before Matt ended up just like him.

Picking up his duffel, he started again toward the sun. When he reached the bottom of the hill atop which his destination lay, he took the long way around. On the backside of the slope, out of sight of the road, he paused to skip a stone across the pond where he’d learned to skip stones years ago. After a time, he felt the pull of the weeping willow tree behind him like a physical force. Giving in to the compulsion, he stepped into the magical circle of its fronds.

Would it still be there?

With fingers and eyes he skimmed the gnarled trunk until he found what he was looking for. An old carving:

M.B. Loves C.E.

Matt Burkett loves Caroline Everett. He remembered the night he carved that. Back then, he’d thought love lasted forever. Through any hardship.

How idealistic he’d been. How young.

And he wasn’t getting any younger. No sense putting off the inevitable any longer.

With a sigh, he hitched his duffel over his shoulder, called his K-9 partner, Alpha—Alf for short—from the bank of the pond, and set off up the hill toward the house.

Caroline’s house.

Minutes later, breathing a little harder, he stood at the top of the hill and stared up at the turn-of-the-century Victorian monstrosity. “This is it, Alf.”

The dog looked dubiously at the old house, then nudged his nose under Matt’s hand for reassurance. Matt obliged with a few easy strokes over the dog’s graying muzzle. “Let’s go see who’s home.”

In the front yard he studied the house up close. The last time he had seen the place, the facade had shone pearly white. Looking up from the bottom of the hill, it would have fit right in with the feathery summer clouds in the sky above it. Now, paint peeled from a weathered gray frame that reminded him more of thunderheads than summer cumulus.

Of all the places Caroline could have run to, he wondered why she’d come back to Sweet Gum. Happy memories? Simpler times?

Maybe she’d come home for the slower way life was lived here, where time was measured in seasons, crops planted and harvested, instead of seconds. Precious moments that never lasted.