again. “I guess so, but I’m not very good. Nobody ever chooses me for their team.”
“Then how about something you can do on your own? Cycling, maybe.” She was struck by a sudden inspiration, something she could share with this obviously lonely child. “How about in-line skating?”
Sissy looked intrigued, but she shook her head. “I don’t know how. Besides, I don’t have any skates.”
“I could show you,” Heather offered. “And I’ll bet my skates would fit you. We might have to stuff some paper in the toes, but they’d work. If you like it, we can talk to Henrietta about getting you your own skates.”
“Really?” the girl said, a spark of excitement in her eyes.
Heather seized the moment to try to do something to wipe that sad expression from Sissy’s face. “I don’t see why not. Let’s give it a try right now.”
She went inside and grabbed some tissues, which she wadded up, and the in-line skates she’d brought from New York because they were her favorite form of exercise. She’d already discovered that the sidewalk along Main Street was nice and level and mostly deserted, perfect for blading. She’d been out at dawn several times this week already, drawing stares at first, but friendly waves of greeting ever since.
Outside on the landing, she handed the skates to Sissy. “Let’s go downstairs and you can try them on.”
“What if Angel wakes up?”
“The door’s open. I’ll hear her. Angel makes a lot of racket when she’s ready to get up. She’s always afraid she might be missing something.”
Sissy nodded. “Will was like that, too, when he was little,” she said, then fell silent. Her lips quivered and she added in a low voice, “Till Daddy would get mad.”
As she spoke, a tear tracked down her cheek, followed by another and then another. Obviously Sissy had touched on something almost too painful for her to bear. Heather stared at her helplessly, then reached out to gather her close. At her touch Sissy froze for an instant, then released a shuddering sigh. She relaxed in Heather’s arms and gave way to noisy, gut-wrenching sobs. The sound brought Henrietta running.
“Oh, baby,” she murmured, taking over from Heather. “What is it?”
“She said something about her dad, and then she just started crying.” Heather had rarely seen such a heartbreaking display of anguish.
“I’ll explain later,” Henrietta mouthed, then led Sissy away.
Heather stared after them, shaken by the child’s misery. Her own childhood, in upstate New York, had been happy, if a little dull. She had considered her parents too strict from time to time and maybe they hadn’t been as supportive as she’d wanted them to be of her acting career or her decision to raise Angel on her own, but all in all, she’d had no experience with the kind of torment that Sissy was evidently going through. Even the wild mood swings of adolescence hadn’t brought anything like Sissy’s tears.
She recalled the bleakness in Sissy’s eyes when she’d mentioned her father. And those tears, they hadn’t been about sorrow, but something deeper. Suddenly it struck her. There had been anger, maybe even hatred, in that outburst. Could a ten-year-old child experience that kind of rage?
Later, after the diner had closed for the night, Henrietta poured two cups of coffee and beckoned Heather to a booth.
“After what happened earlier, you must have a lot of questions,” she began.
“It’s none of my business, but obviously I did or said something that set her off. Maybe I should know at least enough so that I won’t inadvertently do it again.”
Henrietta nodded. “Here it is in a nutshell. It’s not pretty. Sissy lost both her parents a few months back. The long and short of it is that her daddy had been abusing her mama for years. One night he started after Sissy. Her mama stepped in and shot him. Lyle survived, but at my urging Barbara Sue left him and she and the kids moved in with me. Lyle just couldn’t handle that. She was working for me here. As soon as he could get around, he came over here with a gun. Jake tried to stop him, but Lyle shot Jake in the leg, then killed Barbara Sue. The sheriff shot Lyle. That’s how I wound up with the two kids. I figured I owed it to Barbara Sue, because I was the one who all but forced her to finally take a stand.”
Heather was horrified. No wonder Sissy’s impulsive mention of her father’s anger had brought terrible memories flooding back. How many violent episodes had she witnessed? One would have been too many for a young, impressionable girl. And even at six, Will must be devastated.
As for Henrietta, she was clearly living with a burden of pain that shouldn’t be hers. Heather reached across the table and clasped her hand, giving it a squeeze.
“Don’t you dare blame yourself. It certainly wasn’t your fault,” Heather said. “The blame lies totally with that awful man. How could you possibly have known it would turn out the way it did? You told her what anyone would have, to get out and protect herself and her kids.”
“Yes, but…” Henrietta sighed. “I supposed you’re right.” Then her voice took on a trace of anger. “But there was no way to protect her, not really. It seems as if there’s not a damned thing the system can do until it’s too late!”
The door opened and the judge walked in just in time to overhear Henrietta’s last remark.
“You’re blaming the system for one fool’s misdeeds,” he said. “No one could have stopped Lyle Perkins. He was a mean kid and a rotten adult.”
“And everyone, including the sheriff, turned a blind eye to it,” Henrietta countered, scowling at him. “Oh, I don’t know why I waste my breath trying to talk to you about this,” she said, and headed for the kitchen.
The judge sighed and slid into the spot she’d vacated. “I doubt she’ll ever stop blaming herself,” he said sadly. “Or me.”
“What did you have to do with it?” Heather asked.
“Since Lyle was never brought into court, nothing. That doesn’t stop Henrietta from thinking I should have come swooping in and locked him up, anyway. Barbara Sue never filed charges, so how could I? My hands were tied. And the one time Barbara Sue did try to defend herself by shooting him, she wound up in my courtroom. I was tough on her, said she couldn’t go around shooting people just because she thought they deserved it.”
A rueful smile settled on his face. “You should have heard Henrietta. She stood up in the middle of that courtroom and blasted me from here to kingdom come. I could have held her in contempt and tossed her in jail right then and there. Probably should have, just to keep some decorum in the courtroom, but what she said had some merit. I took it into account when I let Barbara Sue off with probation. We got a restraining order against Lyle, too, so he couldn’t go near Barbara Sue when he got out of the hospital.”
“But that didn’t stop him, did it?”
He shook his head. “There’s no way to stop a man who’s determined to get even, not unless he messes it up the first time and gives us reason enough to throw him in jail. Unfortunately, Lyle didn’t mess it up. There’s not a minute that’s gone by since that I don’t ask myself what I could have done differently, but I have yet to come up with an answer.”
“Henrietta
