3

Aggie Sherman angrily shook her head. “You shouldn’t of come here.”

Charlene stood in the doorway of what could only be described as a shack. A bare yellow lightbulb on the porch gave a strange circular glow in the night. Facing Aggie Sherman through the screen door, Charlene looked past the huge mosquitoes hovering around the mesh and said, “Please. I need to say something.”

“Say nothin’. You lost us a load of money and we don’t need to hear you say any more! Now get off my porch afore somebody sees you.”

“I need you to forgive me,” Charlene said.

In the long silence that ensued, Charlene felt as much as heard the din of the cicadas in the night. What would be her fate? Thumbs-up or thumbs-down? Then Aggie Sherman wordlessly unlatched the screen door and opened it.

“Thank you,” Charlene whispered as she stepped inside.

“Just so you know,” Aggie said, “Sarah Mae’s been crying ever since we got back here.”

Charlene’s heart cracked. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sit down then.”

Charlene sat down on the sagging brown sofa. Aggie lit a cigarette and sat opposite Charlene in a faded recliner. “You like my place?” Aggie asked with bitter sarcasm.

“It reminds me a little of the place I grew up in,” Charlene said.

A look of curiosity came to Aggie’s face. “That right?”

“We didn’t have much,” Charlene said. “We had each other. Same way you have Sarah Mae.”

“That’s all I got. That girl. I wanted better for her than this. Her daddy run out on us when she’s ten year old. You think that don’t hit a child?”

“I know it does,” Charlene said, remembering her own father. The warmth she felt in his arms, the security. That Sarah Mae was denied this hit Charlene personally. This whole matter was hitting her personally. That was why she was sitting here.

“That’s why I wanted that settlement money,” Aggie Sherman said. “Look at this place, will you?”

Charlene took a deep breath. “I talked you into going forward with the case. I told you God wanted us to do it. I made you believe you would get more money if we kept going. I did that because I wanted to win this case. I hate what happened to Sarah Mae. I wanted to win for her. But I also wanted to win for me.”

Aggie Sherman sat silently behind thin wisps of smoke.

“I got to thinking I was God’s special woman,” Charlene continued. “I guess I found out I’m not so special. I could have had help on this case, there were groups that offered, but I wanted to do it alone. I wanted to be the one who did it, who won it all, and then maybe the people who told me I’d never make a good lawyer would see me. But I failed to be a good lawyer. A good lawyer looks out for her clients first and always, and that’s why I came here tonight.”

Aggie took a puff on her cigarette and brushed some ashes off her lap. “You tried,” she said. “No one’s takin’ that away from you.”

“I’ve been on my knees asking God what to do, and all I keep hearing is that I need to be broken. I need to get myself out of the way. But I don’t need to quit, either.”

“What’s that mean?” Aggie said.

“An appeal.”

Aggie Sherman shook her head. “Can’t afford it.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to pay anything.”

“You’d do that for us?”

“Yes,” Charlene said.

Aggie Sherman looked at Charlene, long and hard. Outside, the moan of a cat sounded like a creaking door.

“I hated you,” Aggie said. “I hated that you made me want more money. And I hated you cause you’re black and we needed your help. Guess I need forgiveness, too.”

Charlene Moore had heard the word grace countless times in church. But she knew at that moment that she had never fully understood it. And the feeling that she had let God down, let Aggie and Sarah Mae down, gave way to a sense that, at last, God’s will might truly be done in her life. She did not know how, could not see it yet, but she trusted it would be. And she was ready for it. For maybe the first time in her life, she was really ready for God’s will to be done.

4

Anne Deveraux could tell Senator Levering was in a foul mood. Really on edge. His drinking was not doing him any good, either, but Anne was not a nursemaid. She was a highly paid aide, and as long as he was well enough to authorize her checks, she’d let him do what he wanted with his personal life.

“This Unborn Victims Act they’re trying to get to the floor,” Levering said the instant Anne sat down. “It could be dangerous. They think they get that language in, unborn child, then they have ammo to go back to the Supreme Court and overturn Roe.”

“That bill won’t pass,” Anne said. “Let’s be realistic.”

“I’m just tired of dealing with it. I’ve got some crazy minister back home on his radio show calling me a Nazi. After all I’ve done for the state! You know how that grates? I work my whole life for the rights of women and children and the poor. And this is what I get for my troubles. So, please, have some good news for me.”

A vein stood out in Levering’s forehead. Anne looked at it with fascination. It did not look healthy.

“Sorry my news isn’t better,” Anne said.

Levering rubbed his head, reached into a drawer, and pulled out the largest bottle of Bayer aspirin she had ever seen. “All right, let’s have it. Is it a report on Hollander?”

“Not exactly,” Anne said.

“What does that mean?”

“It has to do with your little tryst.”

Levering stared at her, then popped a couple of Bayer in his mouth and downed them with a glass of water.

Anne waited until his eyes returned to hers. “The cops have a witness,” she said.

Levering’s face screwed into disbelief. “Of what?”

“You and Justice Hollander doing a dance number by the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Who is this witness?”

“That’s the only good part of this. He’s a street person. But…”

“But what?”

“I had a little run-in with this guy.”

“Run in?”

“I sprayed mace in his face.”

Levering’s disbelief morphed into something like shock. “Let me get this straight. You sprayed a police witness, someone who says he saw me with Justice Hollander?”

“It was a total coincidence. I can’t explain it. The odds have to be astronomical. But it happened, and there’s a detective who’s got starch in his underwear over it. He questioned me; he’s probably going to want to question you next.”

The senator stood up, his face looking beefier than usual. Part of it was the stark light of the office. The other part was his obvious pique. Anne readied herself for a diatribe.

Levering paced to the window, looked out at the dull Washington day, and then turned back to Anne. “How bad is this?”

A wave of relief washed over Anne. He was in damage control mode, and she was his machinery. Things were getting back to normal.

“Worst case the press picks it up, gets this guy to talk to them,” Anne said. “They play it up from some sort of sympathetic angle. Here’s a lowly street person and one of the most powerful men in the country. Then they press you to affirm or deny, you deny, and they get to your driver, or this Helen Forbes Kensington, and one of them cracks. Then you’ve got a situation where everybody knows you’re lying to the cops and the country.”

“Great,” Levering said. “For a moment I thought it was bad.”

Anne waited for instructions. She had a few ideas of her own, but wanted to get the word from the senator first. Give him a feeling of being in control.

Silence stretched on. Levering became motionless at the window, his back to Anne. He kept his hands clasped behind him, his fingers wiggling as if to indicate brain function. Then, without turning around, he said, “We’re sure he’s homeless?”

“Yeah.”

“If we went further with this, what would be the downside?”

Anne knew what he meant. Early on in their association, when they were dancing around each other, testing limits, they had come to a meeting of minds. Levering’s goal was the presidency, and no effort would be spared in his getting there. Any obstacle would be removed. The only limitation would be the downside risk.