THE PHONE RANG, startling me out of a sound sleep. My neck ached and my left arm was asleep. Jimmy stirred against me.
We were on the couch, illuminated by static. The television was still on, but broadcasting nothing. I glanced over my shoulder at the clock in the kitchen. Five a.m. on the dot.
The phone rang again.
“Wha—?” Jimmy asked, rubbing his face.
I squinched away from him and eased him onto the couch. “Go back to sleep,” I said. “I’ll get this.”
If the phone rang at 5 a.m., it couldn’t be good.
I made my way to my office, staggering in the early morning darkness. Sleeping on the couch made my body ache.
I didn’t remember Jimmy joining me, but he must have awoken in the middle of the night and come looking for me. He had clearly brought a blanket with him, because we had been covered up.
I reached the phone on my desk before whoever was on the line hung up.
“Yeah, hello,” I said, not quite capable of automatic civility this early in the morning.
“I’m sorry, Smokey, I know it’s early, but I waited as long as I could.”
I blinked and rubbed my face before the voice clicked. It belonged to Franklin.
“Lacey?” I almost added Is she all right? but the answer to that question would be no, even if nothing happened overnight.
“I’m only peripherally calling about her. I couldn’t sleep.” He didn’t sound tired. He sounded determined. “Listen, I wanted to let you know I’m driving the kids today.”
I reached across the desk and turned on my desk lamp. The lighting from the window was poor in the middle of a summer afternoon. On a predawn January morning, this room was as dark as a tomb.
The pool of light revealed files I’d ignored for more than a month, and my 1969 desk blotter with December’s calendar on top. The 1970 desk blotter was beneath, unopened. I truly hadn’t been in this room except to grab something fast for weeks.
“It’s my turn, isn’t it?” I asked. I had driven the kids two days before. We switched days.
“I’m talking to the principal,” Franklin said. “He needs to know about the Starlite. He needs to know how dangerous it is.”
We had come to the same conclusion overnight, but now I had to ask him the same question I’d been asking myself.
“What do you want him to do about it? Lock the kids inside the school?”
“One step at a time, Smokey,” Franklin said, sounding like the man I used to know. “The principal has to know there’s a problem before finding a solution. I figure he’s going to have to deal with the school board and the zoning committee on this one. Which reminds me—”
He broke off. I heard a voice behind him, then rustling.
“Smokey, it’s Althea.” She sounded wide awake as well. “I just need to know: Is it safe to send my babies to school this morning?”
I had no idea how to answer that. “Um—”
“We talked about something last night,” she said. “I’m worried about Keith. Do I need to be?”
“Oh.” I finally understood. “Yes, it’s okay to send him to school. He and Jimmy are in no danger today. No one will come after them for that beating yesterday.”
“You’re certain?” Althea asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“And what can I tell Lacey?” She sounded so prim. Amazing how a woman could sound so prim and so fierce at the same time.
“Tell her that man won’t harm her again.” “You can guarantee it?”
“I can.” I was awake now, even though my eyes were still gummy.
“Thank you,” Althea said, and the phone rustled as she handed it back to Franklin.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“You had something else to tell me,” I said, not willing to answer his question at all.
“Oh, yes.” His response showed how tired he was. Normally, I couldn’t have distracted him that easily. “I was wondering if you would set up a meeting with me and Laura Hathaway.”
I frowned. I hadn’t expected that. Franklin and Laura knew each other, but they weren’t close. Laura had helped Franklin and Althea move to the house they were currently in by lowering the rent and not charging a deposit, but she hadn’t really interacted with them much since then.
“What do you want to talk with Laura about?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as suspicious as I felt. Franklin had been up all night, angry and stewing. He might have come up with something that wouldn’t be good for anyone.
“I figure with her work at Sturdy Investments, she might have some sway with the zoning commission,” he said.
I let out a small laugh. “Not if her recent battles are any indication.” She had been talking all winter about going to court over a zoning problem near Pullman.
“Still,” Franklin said, “she can tell me about the personalities, who to talk to, maybe help me with the politics of all of this.”
I frowned. Franklin was pretty savvy about Chicago politics all on his own, particularly the politics of the South
Side. “Is that all you want to talk with her about?”
“No,” he said, and then he paused. “Jimmy said—a while back, he said that—you know he wants to go to Yale.”
“Yes,” I said.
I had taken him to Yale over the summer while I was on a case that had brought us both to the East Coast. I had hated the snobbish attitudes of Yale. Jimmy had seen castles where I saw exclusion. He had focused with an incredible intensity on getting into Yale. He had redoubled his efforts at school ever since then, and I hadn’t discouraged him in the least. If, six years from now, he still wanted to go to the Ivy League, I would do everything I could to pay for that education.
“He said that Laura Hathaway had offered to pay for his private school tuition. He also said you turned her down.”
I had, but that was before the Yale discussion. It was last year, when we had first moved here. When I helped Franklin start the after-school program.
I almost corrected him, and then decided it didn’t matter. I needed to hear him out.
“I’ve been thinking about Lacey. She can’t go back to that school.” And now Franklin’s voice shook. “She needs a new start where no one knows what happened.”
“No one knows now, Franklin,” I said gently. “Just the family, and we’re not going to say anything.”
“I need to tell the principal,” he said, and in his voice I could hear echoes of a conversation he’d had all night with Althea.
“Why don’t you let me talk to him?” I said. “He’ll understand—”
“No,” Franklin said. “No offense, Smokey, but I have some clout in this community. He’ll listen to me.”
I sighed. Franklin was right. Besides, he was talking about a legal battle. He wasn’t the kind of man who had stomach for the battles I fought, and I often didn’t have the patience for the battles he fought.
“Okay,” I said, not wanting to argue with him. “You want Laura to help you find the right school?”
“Yeah.” But there was something else in his tone, something he wasn’t telling me. “And maybe—do you think— she’d be willing to make a loan? Just something short term? I don’t take charity.”
“I know that,” I said. “Do you want me to talk with her?”
“I need to do this,” Franklin said. “But if you wouldn’t mind feeling her out on this…?”
“I don’t mind,” I said. I had to talk with her anyway. I didn’t want Jimmy to tell her what had happened last night before I did.
“Thank you,” Franklin said.
“You want me to pick the kids up?” I asked. “You’ll probably want to be at the hospital.”
Franklin let out a small sigh. “I don’t know what I want. Althea thinks I’m not going to help Lacey, that I’ll make things worse. But goddamn it, Smokey, she’s my little girl.”
“I know,” I said.
“And I can’t fix this,” he said.
“I know that too,” I said. “We just have to get through it.
All of us. Together.”
“Easy for you to say,” Franklin snapped. “You have a boy. I don’t want to let my girls out of the house. Althea’s making me. She says we need to have a normal day.”
“The other kids—what did you tell them?” I asked.
“That some guy hurt Lacey and Jimmy and Keith stopped him. We didn’t say anything else. Keith’s not supposed to say much more than that. I don’t know if he will. Jonathan’s pretty suspicious, and pretty mad they didn’t tell him.”
Jonathan was Lacey’s older brother.
“Yeah,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to add.
“I don’t know how we’re going to have a normal day,” Franklin was saying. “I don’t think we’ll have a normal day ever again.”
He would be surprised at how normal crept up, even after extraordinary events. But I didn’t tell him that. I couldn’t.
“You didn’t answer me,” I said gently. “Let me pick them up from school.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “You get them home safely, though.” “I will,” I said. “I promise.”