Charlie and Rusty were the two targets she hit the hardest.
After rehab, the six months that Sam had lived at the farmhouse had been hell for everyone. Sam was never satisfied. She was always complaining. She had tortured Charlie, made her feel as if nothing she did was right. When anyone suggested therapy for her moods, Sam had screamed like a banshee, insisting that she was fine, that she was recovering, that she was not fucking angry—she was just tired, she was just annoyed, she just needed space, time, a chance to be alone, to get away, to recover her sense of self.
Finally, Rusty had allowed Sam to take the GED so that she could gain early acceptance to Stanford. It wasn’t until Sam was at school, 2,500 miles away, that she had realized that her anger was not a creature solely confined to the farmhouse.
You could only ever see a thing when you were standing outside of it.
Sam was angry at Rusty for bringing the Culpeppers into their lives. She was angry at Charlie for opening the kitchen door. She was angry at Gamma for grabbing the shotgun. She was angry at herself for not listening to her gut when she stood in the bathroom, gripping the ball-peen hammer in her hand, and walked toward the kitchen instead of running out the back door.
She was angry. She was angry. She was so God damn, fucking angry.
Yet, Sam was thirty-one years old before she gave herself permission to say the words aloud. The blow-up with Charlie had opened the scab, and Anton, in his very deliberate way, had been the only reason that the wound had finally begun to heal.
Sam was at his apartment. New Year’s Eve. On television, they watched the ball drop in Times Square. They were drinking champagne, or at least Sam was pretending to.
Anton had said, “It’s bad luck if you don’t take a sip.”
Sam had laughed it off, because by that point, bad luck had followed her for more than half her life. Then she had admitted to him something that she had never before confessed to anyone else. “I worry all the time that I’ll drink something, or take something, or move the wrong way, and it will cause a seizure, or a stroke, and break what’s left of my mind.”
Anton had not offered platitudes about the mysteries of life or advice on how to fix the problem. Instead, he had said, “Many people must have told you that you are lucky to be alive. I think you would have been lucky had you not been shot in the first place.”
Sam had cried for almost a full hour.
Everyone constantly, incessantly, told her that she had been lucky to survive the shooting. No one had ever acknowledged that she had a right to be angry about how she must survive.
“Ma’am?” The taxi driver flipped up the turn signal. He pointed to the white sign up ahead.
The Dickerson County Hospital. Rusty would be in his room watching the news, likely trying to catch a glimpse of himself. He would know about Sam’s courtroom performance. She felt her butterflies return, then chastised herself for caring about anything to do with Rusty.
Sam was only here to turn over her notes. She would say goodbye to her father, probably the last time she would ever say goodbye in person, then head back to Atlanta where, tomorrow morning, she would wake up with her real life restored like Dorothy back in Kansas.
The driver stopped underneath the concrete canopy. He pulled Sam’s suitcase from the trunk. He lifted up the handle. Sam was rolling the case toward the entrance when she smelled cigarette smoke.
“‘Oh, I am fortune’s fool,’” Rusty bellowed. He was in a wheelchair, right elbow on the armrest, cigarette in his hand. Two IV bags were attached to a pole on the back of the chair. His catheter bag hung down like a chatelaine. He had stationed himself beneath a sign warning smokers to maintain a perimeter of one hundred feet from the door. He was twenty feet away, if that.
Sam said, “Those things are going to kill you.”
Rusty smiled. “It’s a balmy night. I’m talking to one of my beautiful daughters. I’ve got a fresh pack of smokes. All I need is a glass of bourbon and I’d die a happy man.”
Sam waved away the smoke. “It’s not so balmy with that smell.”
He laughed, then started coughing.
Sam rolled her suitcase to the concrete bench by his chair. The reporters were gone, probably on to the next mass shooting. She sat on the far end of the bench, upwind from the smoke.
Rusty said, “I heard there was some rain-making at the arraignment.”
Sam shrugged one shoulder. She had picked up the bad habit from Charlie.
“‘Was the baby killed?’” He made his voice quiver with drama. “‘Was the baby killed?’”
“Dad, a child was murdered.”
“I know, darling. Believe me, I know.” He took one last hit off his cigarette before stubbing it out on the bottom of his slipper. He dropped the butt into the pocket of his robe. “A trial is nothing but a competition to tell the best story. Whoever sways the jury wins the trial. And Ken’s come right out the gate with a damn good story.”
Sam quelled the urge to be her father’s cheerleader, to tell him he could come up with the better story and save the day.
Rusty asked, “What’d you think of her?”
“Kelly?” Sam considered her answer. “I’m not sure. She could be smarter than we think. She could be lower functioning than any of us wants to believe. You can lead her anywhere, Dad. Anywhere.”
“I’ve always preferred crazy to stupid. Stupid can break your heart.” Rusty looked over his shoulder, checking to make sure they were alone. “I heard about the abortion.”
Sam pictured her sister back in her office, calling Rusty to tattle. “You spoke to Charlie.”
“Nope.” Rusty leaned on his elbow, hand up, fingers spread, as if the cigarette were still there. “Jimmy Jack, that’s my investigator, came up with it yesterday afternoon. We found some evidence from Kelly’s middle-school days that pointed to something bad going on. Just rumors, you know. Kelly shows up plump one week, then she takes a vacation and comes back skinny. I confirmed the abortion with her mother last night. She was still real torn up about it. The baby daddy was a kid on the football team, long since left town. He paid for the abortion, or his family did. The mama took her down to Atlanta. Almost lost her job from taking the time off.”
Sam said, “Kelly could be pregnant again.”
Rusty’s eyebrows went up.
“She’s been throwing up the same time of day, every day. She’s missed school. She’s got a bump in her belly.”
“She’s started wearing dark clothes lately. The mama said she has no idea why.”
Sam realized an obvious point she hadn’t yet mentioned to Rusty. “Mason Huckabee has a connection to Kelly.”
“He does.”
Sam waited for more, but Rusty just gazed out into the parking lot.
She told him, “Lenore already has your investigator on this, but there’s a boy named Adam Humphrey that Kelly has a crush on. You could also look at Frank Alexander, Lucy’s father.” She tried again, “Or Mason Huckabee.”