Текст книги "Sweet Jiminy: A Novel"

Автор книги: Kristin Gore

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

Chapter 16

Of all the many things Willa could be worrying about, she found herself preoccupied with the whereabouts of Jiminy’s kitten. Cholera had slipped out the window per her normal routine, to hunt or wander, but failed to return, and had now been missing for several days. Perhaps a coyote had carried her off in the night. Perhaps she’d left of her own free will. When someone or something disappeared, did the reasons really matter all that much in the end? People yearned to sweeten absence with explanations, Willa knew. But did they provide any real, lasting solace? In her opinion, the jury was out.

Still, Willa missed Cholera. She’d never before allowed live animals in her house, because she’d been raised to keep them outside, to maintain some separation between human and beast. In a family as poor as hers had been, the distinction had been important. But she’d made an exception for Cholera, because she’d come to welcome her visits. The first one had happened the day after Willa returned from the hospital to recuperate at home. The kitten slunk into the bedroom and leapt up onto the mattress, where she stretched and used her little claws to knead the blanket like it was dough for biscuits. Willa could feel the tiny pricks on her skin below, but she hadn’t cried out or shifted. She’d just watched the kitten settle into the little space she’d kneaded for herself, and reflected that that’s what you did with a bed that you made. You lay in it.

Willa heard the front door close and wondered whether it was Lyn, Jiminy, or Jean. Jean had moved into the farmhouse to help tend to Willa’s recovery, though she spent an equal amount of time playing virtual tennis in the room down the hall.

“Yoo-hoo,” Willa called.

“It’s me, Grandma,” Jiminy answered, entering Willa’s bedroom from the hall. “We need to talk.”

 

Half an hour later, Willa longed to rest her brain and eyes, but her granddaughter was still asking questions. Intensive conversation was new terrain for them, and even had Willa been in perfect health, she wasn’t sure she’d have been up for it.

Jiminy hadn’t shared anything that Lyn had told her. Her aim was to gather information rather than dispense it, and to that end, she’d been peppering her grandmother with queries about the past, claiming curiosity about her mother’s childhood. Jiminy had calculated that Willa would be more forthcoming if she believed Jiminy was simply trying to understand just what exactly had gone wrong with her mother.

So far, the strategy was proving fruitful. In response to Jiminy’s probing, Willa had tried her best to explain how much Margaret had worshiped the first Jiminy, and how fiercely she’d mourned her and Edward’s deaths. Willa had admitted she’d lied about the circumstances of their deaths at the time, ascribing them to a tragic car accident in an attempt to shield her young daughter a bit longer from the devastating actuality of the world.

Willa remembered clearly how Margaret had cocked her little head and pronounced her a liar. Apparently she had been eavesdropping outside Willa and Henry’s door right after the bodies were found, and had heard her father sob and rage and ask desperately how anyone could do such things to another human being. She’d heard him declare he didn’t want to be on a planet that condoned this, in a life where this went on. Margaret had been haunted by his words, both at the time and years afterward, whenever she’d thought about her father’s premature death. She felt she’d witnessed the exact moment he’d decided to leave.

Jiminy listened carefully as her grandmother relayed all of this in her thin, tired voice.

“So maybe that’s why Mom decided she’d prefer an alternate world, too,” Jiminy said. “And after her car accident, after the pills took over, she finally fully went for it. She cracked and went for it.”

And had proceeded to live an irresponsible life on her own selfish terms. But who were they to question this, in the end? Maybe it was the only way to be.

“She’s not completely unaware, you know,” Willa said. “She called the other day. And she sent this.”

Willa indicated a package resting on her bedside table that Jiminy hadn’t even noticed. It was addressed to her, mailed from a Greek seaport.

Jiminy picked it up and tore open an end. A mound of bubble wrap slipped out into her lap. Buried within its many layers was the wooden doll she’d played with in her youth. The beautifully carved boy who’d once been her constant companion.

“It’s him,” she breathed.

He was accompanied by a note:

Cricket,

Remember this guy? You never lost him—he’s been with me—I take him on all my trips. He was mine first, you know. Edward made him for Jiminy, and Jiminy gave him to me. He was only on loan to you, but I figured you could use his company now.

Love, Mom

Jiminy let the note fall to her lap. Gazing at her long-lost little cohort triggered strange sensations of forgotten times when her brain had still been maturing and she’d thought wooden objects could spring to life. The sensations seemed pleasant at first, but they were unsettling, too. As she ran her fingers over the little wooden boy’s limbs, she felt as though she were regressing.

“He came back,” she said softly.

After all this time, now that she had a fully formed brain no longer comforted by magical thinking.

Gunshots interrupted her reunion. Jiminy jumped, but her grandmother stayed remarkably serene.

“It’s just Jean,” Willa said calmly. “She must’ve lost another game.”

Jiminy went to the window, where she saw Jean aiming her rifle at something she’d perched on the fence post. Jiminy squinted. Sure enough, it looked like one of the videogame consoles Jean had brought with her and hooked up to the television when she’d moved into Willa’s. She’d been playing tennis against the machine every day for exercise, but apparently the latest match hadn’t gone well.

“She really hates losing,” Willa explained.

Didn’t they all.

Carlos wasn’t at the courthouse like he’d said he’d be, so Jiminy decided to try his room at the Comfort Inn. She was eager to pursue the leads she’d uncovered, armed with the insight she’d acquired. As she rapped on Carlos’s door, she tried to calm her jiggling leg. She wondered if she wasn’t also a little excited to see Carlos himself.

From inside, she heard muffled murmurs and hurried rustling.

“One second,” Carlos called.

Perhaps she’d caught him napping. They’d been battling a sense of impatient frustration lately, haunted by the worry that they were running out of time. The car discovery had provided fresh momentum for their case, but unless they could come up with positive DNA matches, it wasn’t going to help them prosecute anyone.

Adding to their angst was the fact that Carlos had begun receiving a significant amount of pressure from people associated with Bobby Brayer’s gubernatorial campaign to back off the case altogether, and though he was impervious to such influence, he worried that the law enforcement agencies he relied on might not be. He had emphasized to Jiminy that they needed to crack something soon.

Jiminy knew that Carlos meditated to work through thorny problems, and that this practice often led to unplanned naps. She hadn’t meant to interrupt or embarrass him.

Sure enough, he was barefoot and rumpled when he cracked open his door a moment later. Jiminy had an unsettling urge to crawl into bed with him.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Everything’s great—I’m sorry to bother you,” Jiminy began.

“I gotta go anyway,” a woman’s voice said from behind Carlos.

She was tan with frosted blond hair. She looked familiar, but Jiminy couldn’t place where she’d previously seen her.

“I was just interviewing Gloria,” Carlos explained.

The woman laughed a smoker’s husky cackle.

“Yeah, I hope you got what you needed,” she said, swatting Carlos’s butt as she breezed out the door. She didn’t look at Jiminy as she passed. She just straightened the straps of her dress, donned her sunglasses, and strode toward the parking lot. Jiminy watched her go, still too surprised to speak.

Carlos cleared his throat.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Jiminy refocused her attention on him. He was leaning against the door frame, observing her. In his gray T-shirt, with his limbs akimbo, he reminded her of a spider. Jiminy thought of all the times she’d used a glass and a sheet of paper to trap in lieu of squashing.

“We need to get to Travis Brayer,” she said brusquely. “You seem busy, so I’ll give it a shot myself.”

Her voice sounded different to her—more solid and sure. She wondered if this new confidence also showed in her stance and posture, and in the look she was giving Carlos now. Appraising, rather than seeking or questioning. She was hardening into her actual self all on her own, she could feel it.

“That’ll be delicate,” Carlos said slowly. “I should be there. I’ve just got one more interview here and then I’m free. Wait for me.”

Jiminy heard a car easing into the Comfort Inn parking lot and turned to see the librarian parking, looking toward Carlos expectantly. Her hair was curled, and she was wearing bright red lipstick.

Jiminy took her Polaroid camera from her bag and snapped a photo of Carlos.

“I’ll let you know how it goes,” she said, before turning and walking away.

In her car as she was driving off, the picture of Carlos slowly came into focus. Jiminy contemplated it, and the road ahead, without looking back.

Chapter 17

From his perch at Grady’s Grill, Walton saw Willa’s car glide by, driven by Jiminy, who seemed in a hurry. Walton wondered what lives she was racing to upend next. He certainly recognized the role she’d played in rattling his. Without her, he never would have committed his darkest secrets to paper.

He stubbed out his cigarette, pleased at the symmetry of ending it along with his latest, most essential project, and gathered his manuscript as he pondered what to do. He’d written a definitive history of the Waters murders, complete with a confession. He’d determined to be painfully, importantly honest, and now he was done.

He might share this loaded document with the rest of the world, or he might burn it. He hadn’t made up his mind.

Outside, storm clouds were gathering to the north and the air felt charged. Walton glanced to his right and saw Carlos standing on the upper balcony of the Comfort Inn, staring off down the road. Nearby, Tortillas looked as though it had been shut down, and Walton felt his reawakened impulse to investigate. “Curiosity killed the cat,” ran through his head in the warning voice of his late father. “Satisfaction brought her back,” chimed the answer at its heels.

 

A short time later, Walton was yelling Carlos’s name as he limped hurriedly across the Comfort Inn parking lot. Carlos took the stairs down two at a time to meet him, concerned by the agitation in the old man’s voice.

When they got to Tortillas, the door was still ajar, the way Walton had left it. Inside, the place was a mix of orderliness and chaos. The chairs had been put up on the tables in preparation for the floor to be mopped, but there was nothing clean about what lay beneath them. For a moment, Carlos thought it was blood, but he was relieved to see a can of red spray paint discarded in a corner of the room. Whoever had done this must have used more than one can, though. The floor was covered with spray paint outlines of bodies, the kind that are normally drawn in chalk at crime scenes. There were dozens of them, covering every inch of Tortillas floor space. They even climbed up the walls with a splayed limb here or there, in a way that would have struck Carlos as artistic if the whole thing hadn’t been so grotesque.

Inside each of the bodies was a name. Carlos read some of them, unaware that he was pronouncing them aloud.

“Juan Gonzalez. Rosa Gonzalez. Penelope Gonzalez. Maria Gonzalez. Paco Hernandez. Teresa Hernandez. Guillermo Lopez. Isabella Lopez.”

“These are real people,” Walton said behind him. “Juan and Rosa own this restaurant. Or they did.”

The place looked like it had been left in a hurry. Above the doorway to the kitchen, “Care of K.S.O.” had been spray-painted in large, red letters.

“Who are the others?” Carlos asked, waving his hand over the outlines of dozens of labeled bodies.

Walton shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

Carlos nodded. His stomach felt hollow.

“But they’re why I’m giving this to you,” Walton said, handing over the stack of papers he’d been carrying. “I have to. This can’t go on.”

Carlos was still staring around him at all the hypothetical bodies, unaware of the significance of Walton’s decision—oblivious that the horror around them had inspired a momentous atonement.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said sharply.

There was nothing Walton wanted to do more.

Chapter 18

In the hospital parking lot, Rosa balanced her baby on one hip while closing the car door with her other. She didn’t have much time, and she needed to be certain that Pen was healthy enough to undertake a long journey. Juan’s cousin who worked at the hospital had promised to help.

Rosa was surprised by Jiminy at the emergency room door—they nearly collided before engaging in the kind of pass-attempt shuffle dance that occasionally delays people for longer than seems reasonable. They kept choosing the same direction, only to simultaneously readjust to the same alternate one. Back and forth they went, in a box step of starts and stops.

“I’m sorry, you pass,” Jiminy said, stopping the shuffling before it reached a point of total ridiculousness.

Jiminy had come to the hospital to seek access to Travis Brayer, only to be informed that he’d been checked out by his family an hour before. Which meant he was back at Brayer Plantation, surrounded by guards and minders. Jiminy couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d missed an important window of opportunity, and this frustrated her. She could sense the clock running out, and for the first time, she wondered about the hubris of expecting a happy ending. She’d hoped at the very least that an investigation would bring some kind of clarity and redemption, but what if it didn’t? What if it did nothing? Or made everything worse?

As she stood back for Rosa to pass, her mind flashed to the empanada and beer night when Carlos had nearly kissed her, and she felt a yearning for Bo. She sighed without realizing it, causing Rosa to look at her.

“How’s the restaurant?” Jiminy asked, to cover up her foolishness.

Rosa glanced downward.

“We’re closed,” she replied.

Pen began howling, as if on cue. Rosa jiggled her up and down as she avoided Jiminy’s gaze.

“We’re leaving,” Rosa continued. “We have to leave.”

There was no reason to elaborate about why they were leaving, Rosa decided. No reason to describe how this place had become so ugly for them. Even after traveling all this way and laying down a foundation and starting a business and having a baby and carving out a better life than the one they’d left . . . in the end, it wasn’t enough. Once you’d been beaten in a town, you’d been beaten by a town. They had to go elsewhere. Juan had some relatives in North Carolina who were encouraging them to come east, so they were packing up and shipping out. Rosa still lived in fear of deportation, and she knew the risks involved in starting over in a new state, but she hoped luck would be on their side. She felt luck owed them.

She didn’t go into any of this with Jiminy, though she couldn’t help the catch in her voice.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Jiminy said earnestly. “You’ll be missed.”

Rosa bit her tongue. Hardly. But Jiminy was an exception. Rosa was aware that Jiminy was trying to take some of Fayeville’s ugliness to task, and she admired her for it.

“Gracias, amiga,” Rosa replied, as she adjusted Pen on her hip. “I’m hoping for something better for her,” she continued, smoothing her baby’s hair back with one hand. “I’m afraid this world isn’t good enough. It’s just not good enough.”

Jiminy felt stricken by these words. It was only as Rosa was about to disappear through the hospital door that she found her voice again.

“Wait!” she exclaimed.

Rosa turned back, her hand still on her baby’s forehead.

“I want to give you something,” Jiminy declared. “It’s for your daughter, really.”

Rosa watched Jiminy rummage through her gigantic purse and wondered again why Americans felt the need for such large things. Big possessions, big promises, big illusions.

“Here,” Jiminy said.

She was holding out a little wooden doll. Rosa could tell it was old, and exquisitely crafted. She took it gently from Jiminy’s small hands and stared at it, charmed.

“It was carved to keep little girls company, when the world isn’t enough,” Jiminy said. “I hope your daughter will like it.”

Penelope was already gripping one of the wooden arms in her little fist.

“Muchas gracias,” Rosa began. “Thank you. But—”

Jiminy cut her off.

“Just take care of it, please,” she said. “And yourself. And your family. I’ll be rooting for you.”

Rosa stared a moment, then smiled for the first time in weeks.

“Bueno,” she said, and Jiminy felt the benediction wash over her like water.

 

Buoyed by a newfound sense of purpose, Jiminy resolved to forge ahead however possible. If she couldn’t get to Travis Brayer, she’d track down Roy Tomlins. It was only as she pulled up to the small house at the end of a deserted road that she questioned the wisdom of coming alone. But she shook off her fear and approached the door with determination.

A slight, sharp-featured woman answered her knock. The right side of the woman’s face was lashed with a mottled purple bruise, and there was a deep gash the length of her forehead. Jiminy couldn’t help but gasp.

“What do you want?” the woman barked fiercely.

It took some effort for Jiminy to stand her ground and not step back.

“I’m looking for Roy Tomlins,” she managed to respond. “Are you all right?”

“He ain’t here,” the woman spat. “And if I was you, I wouldn’t look too hard for him. I’d run the other direction, if I was you.”

Jiminy stared at her. The woman had a vein that bisected her bruise like a mountain range emerging from magma. It looked both fresh and ancient.

She slammed the door. Jiminy stood a moment, then turned and lifted her gaze to the sky. To the south, toward the river, she spotted buzzards flying high in their trademark loops. She wondered what dead or dying animal they were circling, and tried not to feel too perturbed that they seemed to be directly over Willa’s farm. She straightened her shoulders and hurried toward the car.

 

From his seat beneath the hickory tree in the courthouse square, Bo watched the cars rumble past. He’d spent the morning searching for Jiminy’s kitten, because he’d heard from Lyn how upset she was that it was missing. The search had been a masochistic impulse, and a fruitless one, though he was determined to resume it, despite Cole’s strong objections. He wondered about his reasons as he watched the cars go by. Had the potholes on Main Street been filled on schedule, their rides would have been smoother, but they hadn’t been fixed, so the slow-moving cars resembled lumbering animals migrating across Bo’s field of vision. None of them was as tiny as the creature he was looking for.

He watched Carlos and Walton climb out of Walton’s car and ascend the courthouse steps, deep in conversation. Before they reached the front door, something made them stop and turn. Bo followed their gaze and saw Rosa from Tortillas standing on the sidewalk below. Apparently she’d called to them, and now she was walking quickly toward them. Bo watched her hand over an opaque plastic bag with the Fayeville Hospital logo on it. She said something to Carlos, who listened intently before offering her his hand, which she shook before returning to her still-running car. She seemed to be in a hurry.

As she pulled back out onto the road, she narrowly missed colliding with Roy Tomlins’s truck. Roy honked and swerved, and then sped off down the uneven asphalt. Watching this, Bo felt a tingling on his arm. When he glanced down to check whether he’d been stung, he could see that he’d broken into a sweat.

 

Roy had started drinking half an hour after he’d received word that he and Travis Brayer were persons of interest in the investigation of the murders of Edward and Jiminy Waters. Jean’s husband, Floyd Butrell, had also been mentioned, but Floyd had been dead nearly as long as Edward and Jiminy, so he didn’t have to weather the same indignities as those that were still around. Upon learning of the investigation, the postal service had placed Roy on leave, which freed him up for some serious drinking. At first, he’d done it to calm himself down, in the manner of strong men needing some strong stuff to fortify themselves in the face of life’s setbacks. Then it had become a tribute to Travis, a string of one-man toasts to a co-conspirator and dear friend. After that, it turned into a self-pitying reflex—something to do as he cursed the existence of Carlos Castaverde and Jiminy Davis. Finally, it had become routine—Roy couldn’t seem to remember a time when he hadn’t been drinking, or at least he didn’t want to. He preferred to define his life in whiskey terms from this point forward. Which is how he came to be ridiculously drunk outside the gate of Brayer Plantation, armed with a bottle of Jim Beam and a side of pork he planned to fry up for him and his old friend Travis.

The large wrought iron gates that framed the start of the plantation driveway hadn’t been closed in decades. But they were shut now, most likely in response to the crowd of journalists camped out beyond them. Roy rolled by slowly in his truck, with his window down, marveling at the sight. One sharp-eyed local newscaster with bouffant hair caught sight of him.

“That’s Roy Tomlins!” he shouted, pointing at Roy’s truck.

Cameras swung in the direction of the point and microphone-wielding people began running Roy’s way. Startled, Roy tried to slam his foot on the accelerator but hit the brake instead. Before he knew it, he was swarmed.

“Mr. Tomlins, did you and Travis Brayer murder Edward and Jiminy Waters?”

“Are you here to see Travis Brayer? Are you coordinating your defense?”

“Is it true you abused your job as a postal worker to spy on private citizens’ correspondence?”

“What is your reaction to these murder charges?”

“Are you still active in the K.S.O.?”

Roy found the gas pedal, but his path was now completely blocked.

“Outta my way!” he yelled.

The local newscaster leaning his head inside Roy’s truck winced at the whiskey smell.

“Are you intoxicated, Mr. Tomlins?” he asked.

Roy smashed the bottle of Jim Beam into the newscaster’s face. The man stumbled back, blood pouring from his nose. As the surrounding crowd reacted with gasps and shouts, Roy slammed his foot on the accelerator, clipping several cameramen who didn’t get out of the way fast enough, and roared down the road.

Roy felt his own blood pounding in his ears as he sped away, jerking and swerving with rage. How had this all happened? Why was everything suddenly going so wrong? It didn’t make any sense to him; it wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was not the way the twilight of his life was meant to unfold.

It was time to take charge. He still had some fight in him, and he wasn’t going to let some uppity spic and little cunt of a girl ruin him. He’d take care of this right now.

 

Willa always left her door unlocked, and no one was able to move fast enough to rectify that situation before Roy was on the front porch, bellowing curses. Jean nearly collided with Lyn in the hall as she rushed to check on the commotion.

“What’s happening?”

“Trouble,” Lyn answered.

By that point, Roy was leaning into the door, determined to push it down if it didn’t yield.

“Don’t let him in, you hear!” Jean commanded, before hurrying into Willa’s room.

Lyn didn’t have a choice. She wasn’t disobeying, but the door was already opening. She forced her face into a calm expression.

“Well hello, what can we do for you today, Mr. Tomplins?” Lyn tried in a friendly voice. “Mr. Tom-lins,” she corrected herself, willing her speech impediment away. She had no time for it now.

Instead of answering, Roy shoved her roughly to the ground. She felt her back crack as she went, and wondered if she’d ever be able to convince it to work again.

“Don’t you talk to me!” Roy was bellowing in her face, spewing whiskey fumes. “Don’t you even look at me, you goddamn bitch!”

It had been over forty years since Roy had murdered another human being, but he remembered how it felt. He remembered the energizing thrill of surrendering to impulses. He’d also been drunk then, though not alone. He and Travis and Floyd had been together. Walton and Grady and the rest had been in other cars, too far behind to catch up in time.

Roy remembered the specific excitement of forcing Edward’s car off the road, and the adrenaline rush that came with dragging a grown man somewhere he didn’t want to go. He remembered the sport of letting him try to run, and how Edward had looked stumbling frantically back toward his daughter’s shrieks. Roy remembered the feel of the gun against his shoulder as he’d aimed. He remembered that it had only taken one shot.

He remembered how Floyd had been spooked by the shot and let go of the girl, and that she hadn’t even tried to run. She’d just knelt there on the ground, sobbing beside her father’s body. Roy remembered how he had handed the gun to Travis, who’d walked over and calmly pressed its muzzle to the girl’s head. Roy remembered how she’d quieted, and closed her eyes. And he remembered the hush of the night as Travis pulled the trigger.

 

From where she lay crumpled on the floor, Lyn stayed perfectly still. She could hear Willa and Jean shrieking from the bedroom, and Roy crashing around.

Then there was the sound of tires screeching to a halt in the gravel, of running footsteps.

“NO!” Willa’s granddaughter screamed from the entryway. “NO, YOU WILL NOT!”

“There you are!” Roy roared.

He’d come for the girl, Lyn realized. He’d come for the second Jiminy. Lyn couldn’t let him have her. She struggled to rise.

“Don’t you fucking move!” Roy snarled, as he brought his fist down hard onto Lyn’s neck.

She felt something else crack, and caught a glimpse of Jiminy’s horrified, terrified face as she ran toward the kitchen. Roy went after her, and though Lyn was desperate to stop him, she couldn’t seem to move. Jean’s gun was leaning against the wall just inside the kitchen door, but Jiminy had already run past it. Ignoring her pain, Lyn gritted her teeth and tried again to stand. But her limbs wouldn’t cooperate—she was too battered and bruised. Gasping for air, with sweat pouring from her face, Lyn started to crawl.

She heard more crashes, and Jiminy screaming. With an epic effort, Lyn dragged herself through the kitchen doorway. She could see Jiminy, backed against the far counter, holding something out in front of her. But there was Roy, unstoppable, loping toward his prey. Lyn’s heart began beating too fast, and there was a rushing in her ears that wasn’t the sound of Roy’s yelling but rather some other thing, filling her head. It was overpowering. Lyn gave herself over to it and let it move her.

Just as Roy was lunging for Jiminy, the shot rang out.

Roy lurched forward and down. Everything was silent for a long moment, and then a woman shrieked.

“Is he still alive?”

“No,” Lyn heard herself reply.

And she knew it was true. Roy was dead. The rushing in Lyn’s ears abruptly stopped, and she could suddenly hear the slightest noise, including the drum of a fly’s wings against the kitchen window. She felt completely tapped into everything. She felt alive.

She was on her knees, with the gun still in her hands. It had only taken one shot.

“What do we do now?”

Lyn recognized this voice as Jiminy’s. Roy was dead, Lyn repeated to herself. He was gone.

“I go to jail,” she said matter-of-factly.

“No!” Jiminy cried.

Lyn could now see that Jiminy had been clutching the butcher knife.

“It was self-defense,” Jiminy said.

“God, he’s dead,” Jean wailed from the doorway. “Everyone’s dead. I’m so sorry, Lyn. I’m so sorry they’re dead. I’m so sorry about Edward and Jiminy. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. Floyd never said.”

Jean collapsed into sobs.

“Hush now, it’s over. It’s all over,” Lyn said soothingly, wondering at her impulse to comfort.

“But you can’t go to jail for this, that’s not how this ends,” Jiminy protested.

Lyn stayed quiet. For several long moments, Jean’s shuddering sobs were the only sound in the room. And then they stopped abruptly. Jean had mastered herself, and when she raised her head, it was evident that she’d been baptized into something new.

“Hand me the gun,” she commanded.

Lyn stared at her.

“It’s my gun,” Jean said. “Hand it to me.”

Jiminy held her breath, mesmerized.

“Are you sure?” Lyn asked Jean.

Jean nodded. She’d never been so sure of anything in her life.