rest of their time together flew by in kind. Kent’s independent work was amazing for a kid his age. At least Talia thought so. And yet, he involved her in every step of the process, as well. He knew his own mind, but he also asked for her opinion.
All in all, without studying his collage or knowing that he’d been expelled from class, she’d say that his parents had done about the best job parents could hope to do raising a child.
Or a mother would hope that someone else would do when raising her child.
“What do you think?” Her son held up the top edges of his poster.
His work with her was done.
She had to blink. Pretended to need to scratch her nose.
“I think you’ve got the makings of a talented artist.” They weren’t any of the words raging through her. They were the ones she could say.
And they were the truth.
Her son might not have her hair. Or her nose. But he had her artistic ability, and then some.
He nodded. “I like it.”
“Good.”
Oh, my God. This was it.
“How soon can I have it back?” He was looking at her. She couldn’t just sit there and stare at him. Or cry.
“Within the week,” she told him.
“Cool.”
Talia stood. There was no other choice. She collected her things just as she’d done the other four days she’d been there. Packed them into her bag.
Kent helped her cover the poster board, his smaller fingers brushing her hand, and she almost lost it. And then a look of horror crossed his face.
Because he somehow knew that he’d touched a fraud? A woman who was far too dirty to even breathe the same air he breathed?
Boys his age had to stay as far away as possible from the type of woman she’d been.
But she wasn’t that woman anymore. By choice. It had been her actions that got her away from that life.
“You aren’t going to show anyone else, are you?”
His question finally registered.
“I can’t promise that, Kent,” she told him. She gave him one thing she’d always promised herself she’d give to everyone. Her honesty. For the most part she’d kept that promise. “I can promise you that I won’t show any other students, though. And it’s not going to be hung on display.”
His features relaxed. “Okay, then. No kids.”
Why didn’t he want anyone else to see his collage?
The questions attacked her, as they’d been doing all week, and she wondered if she was up to this task. This time. Could she even hope to give Kent’s collage a fair read?
Not that it really mattered in the end. He was being cared for by professionals. Mrs. Barbour had told her that Kent saw a counselor on a regular basis. And his teachers and father were watching out for him, too.
Her little collage experiment was just a school art exercise at this point.
Her bag was on her shoulder. His poster under her arm. And Kent had his math book open. “Okay, then,” she said, turning toward the door. “See ya.”
“Yeah, see ya.”
Talia let herself out. She made it to her car.
And then she fell apart.
SHERMAN DIDN’T MAKE Kent go to bed early. He’d told his son on his tenth birthday that he could stay up until ten from then on if he wanted to. But the boy still held to his nine o’clock bedtime anytime that they were home.
He got himself up at six in the morning, too. Brooke used to wake him every day. Sherman had taken over for her right after the accident, but every morning Kent had already been on his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth and comb his hair before getting dressed for school. But he still presented himself at his son’s bedroom door every day. To say good-morning.
On Saturday at 6:05, Kent was still asleep. With his heart in his throat, Sherman stood frozen until he saw the soft rise and fall of his son’s chest. And realized that he was falling back into the debilitating habit that had practically suffocated him—and his son, too—after Brooke’s death. He’d attended a grief counseling group, but it had been Dr. Jordon, Kent’s counselor, who helped him see that he was in a state of almost-constant panic—fearing that he was going to lose Kent, too.
Kent was healthy. Robust. Perfectly fine. He wasn’t going to lose him. What he was going to do was take advantage of his boy’s sleeping in and get some work done on the computer.
Noncampaign work.
For two years he’d been surfing the internet for any mention of anyone who’d gone missing around the time of Brooke’s death. Or of anyone spotted around the neighborhood where the car her killer had been driving had been stolen. He was active on social networks. Trolled Facebook pages of anyone who said they were from that area. Same for Twitter. YouTube and Tumblr, too, in case someone posted a video or photo he might recognize from the crash scene.
The police had done what they could. They’d retrieved the surveillance cameras from a convenience store in the stolen car’s neighborhood. They’d talked to folks who lived within a half-mile radius of the crime scene. The guy had been driving the wrong way down the freeway on a very deserted stretch of California highway.
Law enforcement was convinced that the crash had been the result of drunk driving, period.
Sherman wasn’t so sure. More paranoia? Maybe. But the stretch of road Brooke had been on had been long and straight—the crash happening in the middle of the stretch where someone could have seen cars for a long distance in both directions. Even if he’d been drunk surely she’d have seen him in enough time to at least swerve. But she hadn’t done so.
The man she’d been meeting in the city that night—Alan Klasky—had said Brooke had only had one glass of wine and had ordered coffee to go for the ride home. Investigators had determined that she’d been holding the half-empty cup when she’d been hit head-on. Something about the splatter of the coffee on the air bag—her right wrist and her face had been a clear indication that the cup had been upright. She hadn’t fallen asleep. Couldn’t have or the cup would have fallen out of her grasp. Or tipped, at the very least.
He ran over the details in his mind. Arranging and rearranging had become a habit for him, too. Always looking for another angle, for anything they missed. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t let it go.
Brooke had been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver who’d stolen a car. His wife was gone. Kent’s mother was gone. The only thing left was making whoever had done this pay for what they’d done.
Important,
