“Don’t inconvenience the woman, Ruth. Doesn’t she have children?”
“No. She’s studying to become a therapist.”
“Ah,” my mother said, her voice full of understanding. When I looked over at her, she was nodding, placated.
“What?”
“Well, therapists need clients, don’t they? That’s how they earn their living.”
The implication was a blazing backhand across the face. I thought about what Tina had said at the meeting—how helping other women was her true purpose in life, what fulfilled her. What a fool I was. Tina didn’t want to be my friend; she wanted to shrink me. My mother was just sensitive enough not to say the rest of it out loud, the part we were both thinking as we pulled into the driveway I’d salted before we left.
I needed her too.
PAMELA
Jacksonville, Florida
Day 6
On a map, it is an all-but-straight line east from Tallahassee to Jacksonville. In real time, the drive felt just as flat. Sometimes the pines looked like Christmas trees, sometimes they were skinny and bare, only their tops decorous, strangely reminiscent of the palm trees in the next county over. The day of Denise’s funeral, they flew by outside the window of Brian’s Bronco, densely plotted in their own segregated communities.
Neil Young was on the eight-track. “Old Man,” breaking my heart while I copied the law enforcement report, word for word, onto the proof-of-crime section of the victims’ compensation claim form. It had taken fourteen phone calls and three Just popping by! trips to the Sheriff’s Department to get my hands on a copy, and if it wasn’t postmarked by midnight, I’d miss the deadline.
My pen lurched across the page. I looked up to find Brian crossing the wide, empty lanes to catch the exit coming up.
“I gotta take a leak,” he said.
I sighed. “Can’t you hold it?” I’d promised Mrs. Andora I’d be at her door at nine a.m. sharp to help clean and set up the house for the funeral reception.
“No, actually!” Brian said with a laugh as he parked in the ranger’s lot of the Wildlife Management Area. He glanced around; there was one other car parked a few spaces away from us. “You okay by yourself a minute?”
I had to go too, but I could hold it. “Hurry,” I told him, and turned to the next page of the report. I knew I could get a lot more written when we weren’t moving.
Section nine was the referral source information. I put down Brian’s dad. Under relationship, I paused. He would be my father-in-law, someday not too soon. The plan was to get engaged right after graduation so that we could live in the newly married dorms at Shorebird Law come fall. For the time being, I wrote Family friend.
“One section left!” I told Brian when he climbed into the car.
“Cutting it close,” he commented.
“They should really give you more time with these,” I said.
“It’s sort of like cashing a check, though,” Brian said, merging back onto the highway. “If you wait too long, the person hasn’t budgeted for the amount to come out. Without a deadline, they can’t properly manage the fund.”
Fair enough.
“？‘Section ten,’？” I read out loud. “？‘Type of victim compensation requested.’？” I scanned the options. Disability. Wage loss. Property damage. Sexual battery relocation assistance. Sexual battery recompense assistance.
I drew an X through the box for property damage and paused, tapping the bulbous end of my ballpoint pen against my lips. “Do you think I can also check off the relocation assistance? It says sexual battery, but we are out of pocket for everyone who flew home and stayed at hotels.”
Brian scrunched up his face. “To be safe, I’d say no. You don’t want to give them a reason to deny you.”
My pen was tracing a phantom check mark, just above the page. “True,” I wavered.
“I mean, no one was raped, right?”
“Right,” I said quickly. “But I think it can also apply if there was, like, a sexual nature to the crime.”
“But there wasn’t really that either.”
I saw Denise’s underwear on the floor. “Right,” I said again. I left the box unchecked.
A car sped past, the driver cheerfully slapping the horn. Brian raised his hand in the rearview mirror. “Steve,” he told me. Steve was one of his fraternity brothers, presumably on the way to the funeral too. “That was his car in the ranger’s lot.”