Despite my earlier protests, I found that preparing for the conference and delivering my talk, coupled with my excitement for Kurt’s U-turn, energized my attempts at writing, as well. I’d chipped away, page by page, on some ideas most nights after Caroline was asleep, and finally after four weeks I had enough to show others for some advice. I knew my friends wouldn’t spare me if they thought I was headed down the wrong path.
“Alisa, this is perfect. Absolutely perfect!” Marsha waved the pages in the air as if she were holding up a winning lottery ticket. Thankfully, the sandwich shop we’d decided to meet in after church was noisy and crowded, and no one seemed to notice. “I can’t believe it. I’m actually going to be the friend of a famous writer.”
“I think you’re overshooting just a bit.” I really wanted to roll my eyes, but I couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm.
“No, I am not.” She looked offended by the suggestion. “This is exactly what you’ve been called to do with your life. You’ve found your place, the place God has been leading you toward all along. Your promised land, you might say.”
I looked toward the others. “Okay, now that we’ve gotten Marsha’s optimistic delusions out of the way, what do I need to work on?”
Tasha slid her stack of papers toward me. I could already see red-inked notes in the margin. “This is powerful, and I agree with Marsha that you were born for this. I would have to disagree about the perfect part, however. You know how I feel about proper grammar and your lack of it.” She smiled and said, “Of course, that’s the reason God led me to you, so you wouldn’t be left in the wilderness of dangling participles.”
“And … God led me to you because a few of your chapter titles are a little lacking,” Carleigh said. “Some of them are fine, but I think we need to reach for greatness. Don’t you? I noted some suggestions.” She slid her copy of my manuscript back to me.
“Thanks so much. I don’t know how I’d do this without all of you.”
“You couldn’t.” Carleigh laughed, then lifted her glass of iced tea. “To our future writing project.”
Glasses clinked all around the table.
Lacey peered at me over the top of her Wedgwood teacup. She took a sip, returned the cup to its saucer, and continued to watch me. Waiting.
There was no reason for me to pretend that nothing was wrong. We’d met too many times over these Tuesday morning breakfasts. “The detective that came to our house, he’s showing up other places now.”
She looked at me with eyes the palest shade of blue I’d ever seen. “What kind of places?”
“He stopped by Rick’s jobsite.”
Lacey laughed twice, before it turned into the usual dry cough. She hacked for a few beats, then took a sip of water and a deep breath. She was still grinning when she spoke. “Stopped by his jobsite? I can imagine how well that went over.”
Rick had worked his way from carpenter to top construction superintendent in record time, partly due to his impeccable work ethic. He maintained strict rules about what constituted an appropriate time to call or stop by while he was at work. There were very few situations deemed serious enough to be appropriate. “Yeah, I’m sure all the guys wondered what a cop wanted with Rick.” I rubbed my index finger along the graceful curve of the teapot’s handle. “Come to think of it, I guess they really didn’t. They all just assumed it was something about Kurt.”
“And they were right enough about that, I suppose. You said ‘places,’ plural, so where else has he showed up?”
“He came to the seminar last weekend.”
“He showed up at your grief seminar?” The wrinkles in her forehead deepened as she pondered this. “Did he make a scene?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t even know he was there until the very end of my talk. He sat in the back row, and when I was taking questions he asked me about Nick.”
“What’d he ask?”
“If it helped ease my grief knowing the guilty party was in jail, if I thought that all parents whose children were victims of violent offenders wanted to see justice for their child’s murderer, or something to that effect.”
Lacey stared out her window and nodded slowly. “He’s trying to crank up the pressure on you, there’s no doubt about that.”
“He must think I know something that I’m not telling him.” I took a sip of my tea. “I wish I did. I’d give anything to know exactly where Kurt is this very minute, how he’s doing.” And how I prayed the answer to that question was that my son was truly in rehab. Those were not the kinds of doubts I cared to voice, so I did what I always do, put on an upbeat front. “Besides, if I knew the exact date he checked in and could prove that, it would get Kurt’s name taken right off the list. An alibi that would leave no doubt, that’s what I want.”
“You’re right about that. We just have to hope the kid went to rehab before the murder. I still have some friends from my law days, and from what I’ve heard, the police are grasping at anything they can right now. It sounds like there was no hard evidence left behind. All they have is the list of people who owed the dead guy money. I’m sure they’re hoping if they put enough pressure on the usual suspects, eventually someone’s going to slip.”
“I don’t see why he’s so intent on talking to Kurt. He said himself he’d met Kurt a few times and thought he was a good kid just messed up in the wrong thing.”
“Baby, have you been reading the paper lately? Two gang fights, a stabbing on the east side, and several tourists robbed at gunpoint. Those are the kinds of stories that send the Chamber of Commerce into full-blown panic mode. The businesses are demanding action, the mayor’s running scared. This whole city is worked up over the whole violent crime issue right now. There’s a lot of pressure on them to find somebody and get him charged. Makes everyone look bad if a killer goes uncaught, even if the city is a better place with the murdered guy dead and gone.”
I nodded my head. There was another fear eating away at me, one I’d voiced to no one. Lacey was the safest person to share with, I knew that, and I needed to talk. “I’m starting to wonder if he still is in rehab at all. Wouldn’t he be calling home more? Wouldn’t they even want us to come down there for some family therapy? What if after a few days he decided it was too hard and has gone back to his old life?”
“He said he’d already made it through the detox process, right? That has to be the hardest part of it all, at least I’d think so. If he were back in Santa Barbara and back in his old habits, the police would have found him by now and your detective friend wouldn’t be following you around. No, he’s still in treatment.”
“Why haven’t I heard from him?”
“I’m sure every center has their own protocol about calls home and family therapy. My guess is, you won’t hear from him again until he is ready to come home. He’ll want to be sure that everything is just perfect before he comes to see you.”
“I hope you’re right.” And I did hope. I was finding it harder by the day to actually believe.