“If I were you, I would probably throw this letter out. I would be thinking, he got away with murder and now he wants to say he’s sorry? I can’t change the past. I have no right to think of the future. But I have to find a way to go on, for the sake of my wife and child. My son is innocent. I have to consider his future and the future of Rowena and Rosalind Wild. I had a great life, great job, great wife, great parents. I threw it all away. I liked to drink. I loved to drink. A little relaxation but then hours of being a buffoon, staggering all over. I always thought I was fine to drive. A lot of drunks think this and they are never fine to drive. But I was such a fool that I kept it up. It took ninety seconds. It took ninety seconds to wipe out a family’s dream. I got ninety seconds in court to apologize. I got six years to repent. Okay. Wise people say that forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past. I can’t repair the damage I did. I was drunk when I hit Maggie Slaney and Jessamyn Slaney Wild with my car. I took away Maggie Slaney’s only child and I took away Rowena and Rosalind Wild’s mother. This is my remorse, expressed in writing. Here is my renewal. I pledge to contribute to the education of Rowena and Rosalind from every paycheck I earn until they are eighteen years old, because this is what their mother would have done for them. I can’t bring her back, but at least I can offer this. It is up to you if you want to accept it.”
Afterward we shook hands with Roman, then with Trina and Joey and said our goodbyes. Wondering where all this emotion was coming from, I turned back and gave Roman a hard hug—from Stefan. He stood and watched as we drove away.
“Those are some serious dogs,” Julie said in the car.
“People who have dogs are happier,” I reminded her.
“Then they must be very happy.”
My phone abruptly pinged, a few times in sequence.
How did it go? Stefan wanted to know. Tell me how Roman is. Did you see the dogs? And five seconds later, before I could answer, Are you done yet? Is it going to work out?
But just after Stefan’s were two other text messages from a number I didn’t recognize.
Will you still talk to me?
And then.
I don’t blame you if you never answer this.
I answered her before I answered my son. Why? She was the shell around something I sensed I needed to know.
I texted her, I will still talk to you. I promise. Just not right now. Give me a couple of days.
Stefan was literally standing in the doorway when I got home. I told him everything, even about exchanging glances with Roman’s silent mother. Then I called Maggie Slaney, who had been alerted previously about the mission of The Healing Project and about Roman’s offer, and, thanking the universe for answering machines, left a message proposing a time for our visit, asking her to call back if it was inconvenient.
I hoped she would change her mind. I hoped she would say, just leave a letter in the mailbox. But no call came.
The next morning, Julie brought me coffee.
“I hope this goes as well as it can go,” Julie said.
We both knew this would be harder. How much harder, neither of us had any idea.
* * *
The big farmhouse where Maggie Slaney was raising her two granddaughters on her own was just a few miles outside Madison. Spontaneous raw “neighborhoods” sprouting crops of one-acre mansions shared the countryside with traditional family farms. I had all but ordered Julie to go with me. I knew this encounter would not be the same kind of lovefest that transpired for Rebecca. Still, we had high hopes.
When we knocked, a woman opened the door unnervingly quickly, but then made no move to admit us. “I am Thea Demetriou and this is Julie Bishop.” I held out my driver’s license and a page of The Healing Project letterhead. “I called yesterday. We’re from The...”
“I know who you are,” Maggie Slaney said. She was probably sixty, maybe a little younger, nobly tall, her pretty face framed by messy whorls of thick, dove-colored hair.
“So you know why we’ve come,” Julie said.
“Yes.”
“May we come inside, please?”
“I’m not sure.”
Julie had the ability to stand in one place and maintain a quiet dignity. I shuffled around as if my silk shirt was lined with red pepper. Finally, Julie said, “This is a beautiful place.” The apron of lawn around the house rolled down to a quilt of neat, hedged fields.
“My family has lived on this land for six generations,” Maggie Slaney said. “We thought that Jessamyn and Connor, that was her husband, would raise their family here. He was literally the boy next door. But they chose the city instead. Then Connor died, he died in a Jeep crash a few days into his first tour in Afghanistan. Another car wreck? Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice? Jess was thinking about moving home here, with the girls. Rowena was only a newborn then. Maybe one of the girls will raise her family here.” She raised her hand in a wave to the girls, who were playing badminton on the lawn. “They’re only nine and eleven now. They spent all their summers here with me before, so it wasn’t like my girl died and they landed on another planet. I’m thankful for that one thing. But that’s a long time into the future from now. A lot could change. It’s more likely they’ll want to move back into the city than out here in dullsville.”
Julie said, “They’d be lucky to have this.”
“I wouldn’t call anything about our situation lucky,” Maggie said. She nodded downhill toward one of the fields. She still owned eighty acres. One had been planted in saffron by a hardworking hippie: It looked like an expanse of pale purple butterflies at roost.
Julie was undaunted. “But it is beautiful. And we want to try to change a tiny part of the luck.”
Maggie Slaney looked at me then.
“You must be proud of your son,” she said.
For a moment, I almost agreed. But there was something avid in her glance that warned me off.
“I’m sure you think he’s a fine young man who made a terrible mistake and now he’s trying to make amends.” She smiled at me, but her eyes glittered.
“He’s trying to do the best he can,” I finally said.
“My Jessamyn is dead, and Belinda McCormack is dead, and the scum who killed them can just go on like nothing happened. Maybe they served some years as guests of the state. But then they get to go cut down a Christmas tree and have a future. And they have all these special programs to help them make a nice smooth transition back into society.”
Julie said, “Maggie, I can understand how you hate hearing about anything good that would help people like this. But do you really think it’s better for them to make a bad transition back into society? Wouldn’t you rather that they at least tried? That they used their remorse to do something good?”
Maggie Slaney cocked an eyebrow. Then she opened the door all the way. We walked in and sat down in the tidy breakfast nook she pointed to. A few moments later, she brought a cake stand crowned with a brown sugar and pecan coffee cake and coffee so strong that my fingertips tingled after a single swallow. She smiled slightly as if reading my mind. “I figure why bother if you don’t want to fill your tank? Coffee doesn’t taste good enough to drink it decaffeinated. I generally have about ten cups a day. My husband used to say I could put my finger in a socket and light up the whole house.” She shook her head. “He left me after the accident, when Jessamyn died. He couldn’t handle the loss.”
“I am so sorry,” I said.
How would it have been if we had split up? From what little reading I had done about the families of criminals, I knew that the sundering of the family was a common consequence. I had been spared that. Unbidden, I thought of Jill, locked in her solitary cocoon of grace.
After offering us thick slices of cake—I stuffed mine down in about forty seconds and accepted a second, with coffee chasers—Maggie leaned back with her own mug, and she wasn’t lying, it was the size of a beer stein. She said, “Just so you don’t get the wrong idea. I have a rule that I don’t let anyone into my house without offering them something. Don’t think that because I have manners means I care about you or your son’s project or Roman Villera. He’s a waste of oxygen. I wish he was paralyzed. Every night, I wish on the first star that his wife and child die. Does that shock you?”
Neither of us could say a word.
“The only reason I let you come here is the money. I’m not sure I am going to accept it, but I owe it to Rosalind and Rowena to consider it. So what’s the catch?”
“There is no catch,” Julie said. “The Healing Project will set up a bank account into which Roman Villera pays a portion of his earnings into a savings account for Rosalind and Rowena. It can be used for their college education, or whatever else they decide. Our organization administers the account. Roman Villera will have no contact with you or your family.”