Lee Martin - Late One Night

The bedroom was dark except for the dim glow of a nightlight plugged into the wall. Lois took Missy’s hand and led her to the side of the bed, where Wayne lay flat on his back, his eyes closed.

Then he opened them to look at her. “Della always thought you’d done well for yourself. Truth is, she envied you more than a little, though I shouldn’t tell you that about her. I know she asked God to forgive her for that, and surely He did.” Wayne closed his eyes, and Missy imagined he was trying to make the room stop spinning. He didn’t open them again. He said, “I’m old, Missy. I’m old and sick. Too old to be raising up those girls, as much as I love them. Della al ways said you had the nicest home, and she always thought the world of Pat. She always said it was a shame you having no kids of your own, because she could see how much love you had in you. That’s why she wanted you and Pat to be godparents to her kids. I know she wouldn’t want her girls with Ronnie and Brandi. I think you know what I’m trying to say. I think Della would want it. That is, if you’re willing. I expect I speak for Lois, too.”

“She told me to go on,” Missy said to Pat, when she was finally home and relating the story. “Lois. She told me we had their blessing.”

All of this happened after Ronnie picked up the phone from the bar at the Kozy Kiln and was surprised to find Brandi on the other end of the line.

“How’d you know I was here?” he asked her.

“I remembered you and I were there once. I figured you might have gone to Brick Chapel to see about that job, and then I just started adding things up.”

Her voice was tight and flat, not the baby-sweet-baby voice he was used to hearing from her.

“That job’s gone,” he said. “You heard about the fire marshal’s report?”

“I heard.” That same flat voice, like he was a stranger to her. “That was no call for you to forget about Emma and Sarah this afternoon. No excuse for you to be there in that bar, making me hunt you down.”

He was ashamed of that fact. He’d been so caught up in his own misery and trouble he’d forgotten how to be a father.

“Baby, I’m sorry.”

A long silence stretched out between them, as if she were on the other side of the world instead of only thirty miles away.

Then finally she said, “Ronnie, you better come home,” and it was clear to him from the way she said it that she wasn’t really sure she wanted him to.

“I’ll be there,” he said. “I love you, Brandi.”

He waited for her to say she loved him too, but there was no response, and finally he figured out that she’d already hung up the phone.

Before Brandi made that call, she talked to Angel. They sat together on the side of Brandi’s bed, and Angel wished more than anything that she could be with Missy. She kept her head bowed and listened to Brandi talk to her in low tones so Hannah and Sarah and Emma wouldn’t hear from the living room.

“You know this is very serious.” Brandi hadn’t even taken off her coat, a black pea coat with a double row of big buttons. “Angel, do you hear me? Are you telling the truth about finding your father’s knife behind the trailer?”

Angel kept thinking about that knife, his pocketknife, and she’d given him a chance to say it didn’t mean anything, and he wouldn’t say that, couldn’t say it, because the truth was he’d been behind their trailer the night it burned. Somehow he’d dropped that knife in the snow, and though he wasn’t willing to tell her what he’d been up to, he’d left enough room for her to believe that the rumors were true. He’d come to do her and her mother and her brother and her sisters harm.

“I showed him the knife.” Angel looked up at Brandi and tried to keep her voice level. “He didn’t deny anything. He was there that night.”

“That doesn’t mean he did anything.”

“Then why was he there? Mr. Rowe saw him. He was there right before the trailer caught on fire.”

Later, Brandi would wonder who she’d been trying to protect — the girls? Ronnie? Herself? She’d scold herself for not being more sympathetic. She’d try to think back to that moment when she understood what was about to happen, and she’d try to determine whether even the smallest part of her could imagine that Ronnie had started that fire. What she knew for sure, even as she spoke to Angel, was that this family that she and Ronnie were trying to keep together would never be the same. Maybe, she’d think, it had been her and the dream she’d always had of having a man to love her and a family to take care of that she’d been trying to save above anything or anyone else.

“This will change us,” she said to Angel. “No matter what turns out to be the truth.”

When Angel didn’t answer, when she just hung her head and kicked her heels against the bed frame, Brandi left her there. She walked out of the bedroom and went to the computer to look up the phone number of the bar in Brick Chapel, where she thought Ronnie might be. She’d driven around Goldengate and Phillipsport before it had hit her — Brick Chapel — and she’d hurried home to make this call, but Missy was there and she said she needed to tell her something.

Now Brandi had no idea how long it would be before everything got sorted out, and she didn’t know what would happen to her and Ronnie and the girls because of it. She laid her hand on her stomach as she settled down into the chair at the library table, and for the first time she felt her baby kick. Once, twice. Enough to thrill her for just an instant. Her first thought was, I can’t wait to tell Ronnie . Then she remembered what else she would have to tell him, and the wave of sorrow that swept over her was greater than any she’d ever felt. Already, just because Angel had said what she had, he seemed different to her. Even though it might not be true — it couldn’t , could it? — just the thought and the fact that they’d have to talk about it was enough to make everything seem strange. Brandi knew that the story would continue to spread. People were already talking, and that notion would always be there even if it got proved a lie.

And if it turned out to be true? She couldn’t bring herself to think about that. She found the number of the Kozy Kiln and she picked up the phone.

Ronnie drove out of Brick Chapel, not knowing what was waiting for him at home. He was worried. He’d told Brandi he was sorry for not picking up Sarah and Emma from school, and she’d said that fumble had better be the least of his sins. He wondered what she knew.

He picked up Route 50 to Goldengate, and though he’d had a few beers — how many exactly, he couldn’t have said — he pushed the Firebird up to seventy-five and hurried on through the dark.

Soon he crossed the river, and there on the flat bottom land, the lights of Phillipsport twinkled in the distance ahead of him.

Just outside the city limits, where the highway curved past the Wabash Sand and Gravel yard before straightening out for the last clear shot into town, he let his foot off the gas and brought the Firebird back to the speed limit. He eased into the curve, and when he came out of it and glanced up to his rearview mirror, he was surprised to see red lights flashing behind him. As much as he wanted to keep going — to be home with Brandi — he knew he had no choice but to pull off the road into the parking lot of WPLP to see why someone wanted to talk to him.

It was Biggs. He got out of his sheriff’s car and made his way to the Firebird. Ronnie didn’t give him the chance to get in the first word.

“Was I speeding?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Why’d you stop me, then?”