Delia Parr - Day By Day

Girls. Barbara nodded, too numb to even imagine two teenage girls as murderers.

“You’ll tell your husband?”

She nodded again.

“Is there anything more I can do for you?”

“No. Thank you.” She looked inside the car, wanting to shield the girls from the media. “I—I need to take the twins home,” she whispered, turned and closed the car door. Given the notoriety of the case, there was no way she could take the girls out for the pizza party tonight for fear of having reporters approach them. She did not have the heart to disappoint the girls, but right now, she had to call John on the private cell phone he carried for her emergency calls and tell him to come home.

Barbara heard John’s sports car pull into the driveway and looked out of the third-floor window to make sure. He was home. She popped the Finding Nemo DVD into the player, adjusted the volume, and leaned down to give each of the twins a kiss. “I’ll be right back.”

Jessie pouted and tried to pull out of reach. “I don’t wanna watch Nemo again. I wanna go to the pizza party and the puppet show.”

Barbara kissed the tip of her nose anyway and wished she had remembered a lesson she had learned the hard way with her own children: Never mention an outing until you’re ready to leave. “I’m sorry, baby. Not tonight. There’s ice cream in the freezer, though.” She tweaked Jessie’s nose and planted a kiss on Melanie’s cheek. “If you two eat all of your supper, maybe we can make ice-cream sundaes for dessert.”

Ever the one to please, Melanie smiled. “I like sundaes. Can we smash up some cookies to put on our ice cream like Pappy did last time?”

Jessie crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t like cookies on my ice cream. I like caramel sauce, but I like pizza—”

“We have cookies and caramel sauce, but we’ll have to have our pizza another night,” Barbara insisted. “Now watch Nemo while I go downstairs and see what I can make for supper.” She left without giving Jessie a chance to continue to be difficult and met John on the second-floor landing. Her hold on her emotions was so tenuous, she avoided his gaze. “The girls are upstairs watching a movie,” she managed.

He took her hand and led her back down the stairs. When they got into the parlor, he let go of her hand and she stepped into his embrace. With her arms wrapped around him, she could feel the tension in his body. She burrowed closer and laid her head on his heart before she let her tears fall.

He pressed his cheek to the top of her head, and they rocked back and forth. No words of comfort were spoken or necessary. Only the heavy silence of sorrow and loss reigned. And the mutual fear that now that the journey toward justice for Steve had begun, each step—the trial, the verdict, the sentencing—would only deepen their grief and accentuate their sense of loss and devastation.

No trial, no verdict, no sentence could bring the sound of Steve’s laughter or the glimpse of his smile back into their lives. He would not be there to watch his girls grow into young women, and he would not be there on the their wedding days to walk them down the aisle.

John stilled, took a deep breath and handed her a handkerchief to dry her eyes. Sadness shadowed his gaze, and he cleared his throat. “I called Detective Sanger on my way here,” he said quietly. “She couldn’t add much to what Fred told you, except a little more background on the girls.”

She twisted the handkerchief in her hands. “I can only imagine the kind of background that would give two teenage girls access to a loaded gun and prompt them to use that gun to solve a problem or end an argument. It’s reckless and outrageous and it’s beyond my ability to comprehend, let alone forgive,” she snapped. “But I can tell you what they’ll probably discover.”

She counted out her assumptions on the fingers of her right hand. “One, a broken home. Two, maybe even a series of foster homes. Three, drugs. Alcohol for sure, probably worse. Four, poor academic and discipline records at school. Five, they haven’t been to church for years, if ever. And their defense attorney will use their deprived, miserable backgrounds to defend and make excuses for them so the jury will feel sorry for them. No one will care about Steve and the price he paid for someone else’s sins.”

Alarmed by the depth and scope of her anger, she stopped, closed her eyes for a moment and forced herself to take a few long, slow breaths to slow her racing heartbeat. When she did, the echo of her words sounded against the very foundation of her faith—a faith built on the belief that the Son of God had sacrificed His own innocent life to atone for the sins of others.

“They’re still investigating,” John murmured and stroked the side of her arm. “Let’s take this one step at a time, one day at a time.”

She met his gaze and saw the turmoil in her soul reflected in the depths of his eyes before he dropped his gaze. “I’m really glad you came home,” she whispered.

He looked toward the staircase. “I’d better head upstairs. I need to make a few calls and tie up some loose ends.”

“Okay. I had made some plans for us to go out for pizza with some of the girls’ friends before the puppet show, but I told the girls we’d make it another night.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

“I just have to make a call or two to cancel.”

“Use your cell phone.”

She cocked her head.

He shrugged. “I unplugged the phones on the first floor. I’ll do that upstairs, too. I’m just surprised none of the reporters have tried to call yet,” he explained.

Memories of the media barrage in July that began with Steve’s death and continued for days past his funeral were still vivid enough to make her shudder. While he went upstairs, she got her cell phone from her purse and called Madge first and quickly explained why she had to cancel tonight’s outing.

“If you can’t come to the pizza party, then the pizza party will come to you,” Madge insisted. “Good friends, junk food and a few little chatterboxes are just what you need to take your mind off what you learned this afternoon. I’ll take care of everything, and I’ll call Judy to tell her about the change in plans, too. Just set the table and change into something comfortable, like jeans and a T-shirt,” she offered and hung up before Barbara had a chance to decline.

A s the party was winding down, Barbara sat back in her chair and sighed with satisfaction.

Indeed, Madge had been right.

A lot of chatter, a little chaos and a good dose of friendship had been just the prescription to help rescue a troublesome and challenging day and a sure way to ease the ache of what might have been. She glanced down the length of the dining room table. Instead of the maps and brochures John had been collecting, now safely stored away in the attic, along with dreams of sailing away into retirement and a life of leisure, empty pizza boxes and antipasto tins littered the middle of the table.

Behind paper plates and beverage cups, all five adults and four children crammed together around the table. Russell and John sat at opposite ends. Madge and Judy anchored one side with Barbara between them, across from the four children on the side closest to the wall, a line of chatterboxes, their little faces smeared with tomato sauce and more than one milk mustache.

Ever the organizer, Madge checked her watch and clapped to get the children’s attention. “Who wants to go to the puppet show now?”

“Me!”

“Me!”

“Me!”

A chorus of little voices rose louder and louder until Madge quieted them with another clap of her hands. “Then we need clean faces and hands.”