Lee Martin - Late One Night

In Goldengate, Hannah was dressing for P.E. class. They were square dancing with the boys today, so all she had to do was put on gym shoes and then hope that she didn’t get stuck with someone like Kyle Dehner, who always put his hand too low on his partner’s back, sneaking a feel of a hip. He’d been kept back twice and was almost old enough to drive a car. His brown hair hung over his eyes in bangs, and his breath smelled like bread and sour milk. All things considered, Hannah should have thought him disgusting but she couldn’t quite manage it. He was her secret crush, though she couldn’t figure out why she felt the way she did. She was afraid to dance with him. She didn’t want to say something stupid. She didn’t want him to feel her hip and find her too skinny for his taste. She didn’t want to think of him making fun of her later with his friends.

At the grade school, Sarah was passing notes back and forth with Amy Cessna, whose desk was across the aisle from hers. Amy had played one of the Billy Goats Gruff in the class play, and she and Sarah were reviewing the highlights of the performance and giggling behind their hands when their teacher, Mrs. Stout, leaned over to search through a drawer in her desk. “Where is my stapler?” she asked. “Has anyone seen my stapler?” For some reason, Sarah and Amy thought this was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, and they covered their mouths and snorted.

Down the hall, in the first-grade classroom, Emma was doing a reading lesson on the computer. She was learning the sound a short “a” made by reading a story about Zac the Rat. Zac is a rat. Zac sat on a can. The ants ran to the jam . The cartoon that went with the story was funny. She had on a purple sweater with fuzzy sleeves, and she liked the way the sweater felt when she folded her arms on the desk and put her chin on one of those sleeves. The fuzz tickled. It made her l-a-u-g-h.

Sarah and Emma weren’t thinking much at all about what it meant that they’d had to pack their things and go back to Missy’s. They understood that it had something to do with the fire and with their daddy, but they didn’t know what that something was. Since the fire they’d gotten used to going where people told them to go. So they went to Missy’s and they understood that for the time being they didn’t live with their daddy and Brandi. They lived with Missy and Pat, who were kind to them, and the girls imagined, with the trusting natures that disaster had forced onto them, that everything would eventually work out. They knew it was their job to keep their attention on what they were responsible for: a class play, a friend named Amy, fuzzy sweater sleeves, Zac the Rat.

Hannah, though, was old enough to worry, and worry she did. She missed Brandi. She knew that her father might be in trouble. She wanted things to quiet down. She wanted all the talk to stop. The talk about her father and what he’d maybe done. She wanted to sit somewhere by herself for a very long time and not have to give any thought to what was happening and what might happen and what it all meant for her and her family. But the square dancing music was starting, and boys were choosing partners, and here came Kyle Dehner.

Angel thought she was right where she wanted to be: back with Missy, who bought her nice things and cooked her favorite foods and loved on her with hugs and kisses. She’d let Missy be her mother. She wouldn’t argue with that at all. Given the choice between Brandi and Missy, she’d choose Missy anytime, which she had, and now everything was working out the way she’d always dreamed. Mrs. F. was waiting for an answer from Tommy Stout. Exactly what had tickled his funny bone? “You’re in trouble now, buddy,” Angel whispered to Tommy. “You should’ve kept your mouth shut.”

The girls were quiet after school as Missy drove to Phillipsport, even Sarah and Emma who were usually such chatterboxes. Now, away from school, they somehow understood — though Missy had certainly never said as much to them — that they might not see their father for quite some time.

Finally, Hannah said to Sarah, “Where’s your hair scrunchie? Did you lose it?”

Missy glanced up at the rearview mirror and saw Sarah pat her head and run her fingers through her hair. She finally shrugged her shoulders. “Yeppers,” she said.

At the high school, Missy parked along the street right behind the bus that was waiting for the final bell and the students who would tromp up its steps and flop down onto its seats. What a lucky stroke, she thought, to find this place from which she could watch for Angel and honk the horn at her before she could get onto the bus. Missy took it as a sign that everything was going to work out just fine.

“We picking up Angel?” Emma asked, and Missy couldn’t resist the lighthearted feeling that had suddenly filled her.

“Yeppers,” she said, and Emma and Sarah began to giggle.

“She said, ‘Yeppers,’” Emma said. “Didn’t she?”

“Yeppers,” said Sarah, and that started them giggling again.

Then Angel was coming down the school steps, her book bag slung over her shoulder, the wind blowing her hair across her face.

Missy honked the horn, and Angel saw her. The other girls were in the second row of seats, so the front was empty. Missy leaned over and opened the door, and Angel started to get in.

Then someone called her name. Missy turned around to look for who it was, and that’s when she saw Brandi coming up the sidewalk.

“Angel,” Brandi called. “Angel, wait.”

Missy didn’t know why Brandi had come or what it might mean, but she saw how worn down she was. How washed out her face looked with only the slightest tint of pale pink lipstick to adorn it, how burdened and overwhelmed she was, how unlike the sassy woman who had stolen Ronnie from Della. She hadn’t taken time to fix her hair — it had tangles in it — and she was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, an old quilted coat thrown on. It was her voice that caught Missy by surprise. So tender it was, so sad.

“Angel,” Brandi said again, taking her by the arm, and though part of Missy resented the intimate tone — one earned from the days Brandi had tried to do the right thing by the girls after the fire — she also felt herself drawn to it, wishing that could be the way she’d speak to Angel all the rest of her days. “Sugar,” Brandi said. “Oh, sugar,” she said again. “There’s something you need to know.”

So there were stories. After weeks of speculation and gossip, people who claimed they knew things — the real, true things — were starting to talk.

Shooter Rowe came into the sheriff’s office and told the deputy at the desk that he had something to say, and he was sure Sheriff Biggs would be very interested to hear it.

Captain was in shop class at the high school. He was staining a gun cabinet he’d built, but his mind was somewhere else. With each stroke of his brush he whispered the chain of words that had become a chant inside his head: gas can, pocket, match .

Brandi was still talking to Angel by Missy’s van at the high school, talking in a whisper. “Sugar, you know the sheriff’s got your daddy.”

“Is he going to go to prison?” Angel’s own voice was calm.

“Oh, sugar, he might.”

Missy couldn’t stop herself. “Maybe that’s just where he needs to be,” she said, and she could barely stand the look that Angel gave her, a hard, hurt look, as if suddenly she’d realized how serious everything was and how awful it was for Missy to have said what she did.

Biggs had questions for Ronnie.

“Ask ’em,” Ronnie said. He’d waived his right to have an attorney present. He folded his hands on top of the table. Biggs sat across from him, and the questions began.