Sara swallowed past the lump in her throat. "What happened?"

"What's that?"

Sara slipped a sock on. It was like pulling teeth getting the story from her mother. She prompted, "To change your mind? What made you want to stay with Daddy?"

"Oh, about a million things," Cathy answered, a sly smile at her lips. "I think I just got a little distracted by this other man and I didn't realize how important your father was to me." She sighed heavily. "I remember waking up one morning in my old room at Mama's and all I could think was that Eddie should've been there with me. I wanted him so badly." Cathy frowned at Sara's reaction to this. "Don't go getting your color up, there are other ways to want someone."

Sara cringed at the scolding, slipping on her other sock. "So you called him up?"

"I went over to the house and I sat on the front porch and practically begged him to take me back. No, on second thought, I did beg. I told him that if we were both going to be miserable without each other, we might as well be miserable together and that I was so sorry and I'd never take him for granted again as long as I lived."

"Take him for granted?"

Cathy put her hand on Sara's arm. "That's the part that hurts, isn't it? The part where you feel like you don't matter to him as much as you used to."

Sara nodded, trying to remember to breathe. Her mother had hit the nail on the head. She prompted, "What did Daddy do when you said this?"

"Told me to get up off the porch and come in for some breakfast." Cathy put her hand to her chest, patting it. "I don't know how Eddie found it in his heart to forgive me, he's such a proud man, but I'm thankful he did. It made me love him even more to know that he could forgive me for something so horrible like that; that I could hurt him to the core and he could still love me. I think starting out like that made the marriage stronger." The smile intensified. "Of course, then, I did have a secret weapon."

"What's that?"

"You."

"Me?"

Cathy stroked Sara's cheek. "I was seeing your father again, but it was so strained. Nothing was like it was before. Then I got pregnant with you, and life just took over. I think having you between us made your father see the big picture. Next thing Tessie was here, then you were both in school, then you were both grown and off to college." She smiled. "It just takes time. Love and time. And having a little redheaded hellion to chase after is a good distraction."

"Well, I'm not going to get pregnant," Sara countered, conscious of the edge to her tone.

Cathy seemed to think out her answer. "Sometimes it takes thinking you've lost something to realize the real value of it," she said. "Don't tell Tessie."

Sara nodded her agreement. She stood, tucking her T-shirt into her pants. "I told him, Mama," she said. "I left the transcript for him."

Cathy asked, "The trial transcript?"

"Yeah," Sara said, leaning against the chest of drawers. "I know he's read it. I left it in the bathroom for him."

"And?"

"And," Sara said, "he hasn't even called. He hasn't said anything to me all day."

"Well," Cathy said, her mind obviously made up. "Fuck him, then. He's trash."

Chapter Twenty-two

JEFFREY found 633 Ashton Street easily enough. The house was dilapidated, no more than a square made of cinder blocks. The windows seemed to be an afterthought, none of them the same size. A ceramic fireplace was on the front porch, stacks of papers and magazines piled to the side of it, probably to use for kindling.

He took a look around the house, trying to act casually. Wearing a suit and tie, driving the white Town Car, it wasn't like Jeffrey fit in with the surroundings. Ashton Street, at least the part Jack Wright lived on, was run-down and seedy. Most of the houses in the vicinity were boarded up, yellow posters warning they were condemned. Kids played in the packed dirt yards of these houses, their parents nowhere to be seen. There was a smell to the place, not exactly sewage but something in that same family. Jeffrey was reminded of driving past the city dump on the outskirts of Madison. On a good day, even when you were downwind, the smell of decomposing trash still reached your nose. Even with the windows up and the air on.

Jeffrey took a few breaths, trying to get used to the smell as he approached the house. The door had a heavy mesh screen over it with a padlock securing it to the frame. The actual door had three dead bolts and one lock that looked like it required a puzzle piece to open it rather than a key. Jack Wright had been in prison a great deal of his life. This was obviously a man who wanted his privacy. Jeffrey took a look around before walking over to one of the windows. It, too, had a wire mesh and a heavy lock, but the casing was old and easily broken. A couple of firm pushes dislodged the entire frame. Jeffrey glanced around before removing the window, casing and all, and slipping into the house.

The living room was dark and dingy, with trash and papers stacked around the room. There was an orange couch on the floor with dark stains dripping down. Jeffrey could not tell if it was from tobacco juice or some kind of body fluid. What he did know was an overpowering odor of sweat mixed with Lysol permeated the room.

Edging the top of the living room walls like a decorative border were all lands of crucifixes. They varied in size from something you would get out of a candy vending machine to some that were at least ten inches long. They were nailed into the wall, edge to edge, tight up against one another in one continuous band. Continuing the Jesus theme, posters on the wall that looked like they had been taken from a Sunday school room showed Jesus and the disciples. In one, He was holding a lamb. In another, He was holding out his hands, showing the wounds in His palms.

Jeffrey felt his heart rate quicken at the sight of this. He reached to his gun, taking the strap off his holster as he walked toward the front of the house to make sure no one was coming up the drive.

In the kitchen, plates were stacked in the sink, crusted and foul-looking. The floor was sticky, and the whole room felt wet from something other than water. The bedroom was the same way, a musky odor clinging like a wet washrag against Jeffrey's face. On the wall over the stained mattress was a large poster of Jesus Christ, a halo behind His head. Like the poster in the living room, Jesus held His palms out to show the wounds on His hands. The crucifixion motif continued around the periphery of the bedroom, but these were larger crosses. Standing on the bed, Jeffrey could see that someone, probably Wright, had used red paint to exaggerate Jesus' wounds, dripping the blood down the torso, enhancing the crown of thorns resting on his head. Black Xs were across the eyes on every Jesus Jeffrey could see. It was as if Wright had wanted to stop His eyes from watching him. What Wright was doing that he felt needed to be hidden was the question Jeffrey needed to answer.

Jeffrey stepped off the bed. He looked through some of the magazines, taking the time to put on a pair of latex gloves from his pockets before touching anything. The magazines were mostly older editions of People and Life. The bedroom closet was stacked floor to ceiling with pornography. Busty Babes sat beside Righteous Redheads. Jeffrey thought of Sara and a lump came to his throat.

Using his foot, Jeffrey kicked the mattress up. A Sig Sauer nine millimeter was resting on the boxspring. The weapon looked new and well cared for. In a neighborhood like this one, only an idiot would go to sleep without a gun handy. Jeffrey smiled as he pushed the mattress back. This could help him out later on.

Opening the dresser, Jeffrey did not know what he expected to find. More porn, maybe. Another gun, or some kind of makeshift weapon. Instead, the top two drawers were filled with women's underwear. Not just underwear, the silky, sexy kind that Jeffrey liked to see Sara in. There were teddies and thongs, French-cut panties with bows at the hips. And they were all extremely large; large enough to fit a man.