The ghost cat, vanishing and reappearing as he pleased, visited Sammie often. He would snuggle into her dreams at night and into her arms to comfort her. Though he remained unseen, Sammie stroked and cuddled him, put out a finger to feel his soft paw or gently scratched his ragged ears the way she’d done when he was alive. She didn’t question that he was a ghost, she loved and needed him. But when, deep in the night, Sammie slept soundly, at peace again, Misto would return to Lee.
Often at night Misto was filled with Lee’s sickness; he could feel within his own body Lee’s struggle for breath, his fear of what lay ahead, his desperate bouts of depression. And often at night Misto puzzled mightily over the connection between Mae and Sammie. Always the future blurred, as undefined as if the dark spirit himself had stepped between the ghost cat and whatever beckoned, whatever waited for Lee.
4
LATE AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT shone in through the Blakes’ living room windows, brightening the white wicker furniture and flowered cushions, the potted red geraniums on the sill, the hooked rug Becky’s mother had made. Slanting sunlight heightened the carved details of the antique pie safe that had belonged to a great-aunt Becky had never known. All her treasures gathering the afternoon glow would normally comfort her, warm and welcoming; but now, at this moment, Becky’s beloved retreat seemed close and constricting, the colors too bright, the sunlight brassy. She sat stiffly on the edge of a chair like a stranger in her own house, holding her white purse awkwardly on her knees, her dark hair damp with perspiration. She had no idea how long she had sat there. Thinking too much and then not thinking at all, just sitting, numb and unfeeling, incapable of thought.
The trial was over. After a long and shattering three days in the hot, crowded courtroom, Morgan had been found guilty on one count of murder, three counts of assault and attempted murder, and one count of armed robbery, sentence to be pronounced after an extended noon break.
During the trial she hadn’t slept much at night, had lain awake staring into the dark, unable to deal with the concept of a death sentence. Praying, praying it would at least be a life sentence, but then wondering what that would do to Morgan. Wondering if all the rest of his life spent in prison was better than death, when he had done nothing? When he had not killed that man?
In court this afternoon waiting for the judge to pronounce sentence she had been so shaky and so terribly cold. She had attended all of the trial alone, unwilling to bring Sammie into the courtroom, make the child listen to the ugly accusations. Alone, she had listened as Morgan received sentence. Life plus twenty-five years.
She didn’t remember leaving the building. The last formalities of the trial had swirled around her without meaning. She had been allowed to embrace Morgan and kiss him awkwardly as he stood handcuffed and desolate between the two guards. He had been taken away to a cell, shackled and helpless. He would be driven to Atlanta tomorrow morning, in a U.S. marshal’s car. She and Sammie must be there by eight if they were to say good-bye. A few minutes with him at the jail before he was taken away. After that she and Sammie would see him only when they drove down to Atlanta to visit with him like a stranger inside the prison walls.
She felt uncertain about taking Sammie to the jail in the morning to say good-bye. Sammie having to part with him there behind bars, part with him maybe forever. But how could she not take her? The child had a right to be there no matter how painful the parting. To be excluded would be far more heartbreaking.
She didn’t remember coming home after the sentencing. She remembered coming in the house, sitting down in the chair. She didn’t know how long she had sat there, but evening was falling, the sun slanting low. She had not gone to her mother’s, where she and Sammie were staying. She’d needed to pull herself together before she faced Sammie, before she went to tell Sammie.
Tell her they must begin now to live the rest of their lives without him.
Unless they could get an appeal, could win an appeal. That was the only chance they had. The only chance for Morgan to come home, to ever set foot inside his own house again, for him to live his life in freedom, the only chance for them to hold each other close, to be a family again.
Was he never again to play ball with Sammie, take her to the automotive shop to hand him his tools, as she so loved to do? Tomorrow he would leave Rome for the last time, to be locked in that vast concrete prison that rose on the south side of Atlanta, its high gray walls austere and forbidding, its guard towers catching light where loaded rifles shone in the hands of grim-faced guards. The world they had built together had ended. Their family’s carefully nurtured life, their gentle protection of one another against whatever chaos existed in the world, had all been for nothing. Morgan’s war years fighting against the tyranny of Japan and Germany, his safe return, had been for nothing.
But, she thought, Morgan’s contribution to his country, to America’s successful campaigns, had not been for nothing. And yet now, after all he had given, Morgan himself had been betrayed.
The jury of their own neighbors had believed—all of them believed—that Morgan had murdered the bank guard, had beaten those women and taken the bank money. The jury’s unanimous vote was beyond her comprehension. Such unfairness didn’t happen, not under the free government which, in the war, Morgan and so many men had fought to preserve. Morgan faced the rest of his life behind prison walls for crimes he’d had nothing to do with, to be harried by armed guards, harassed and maybe beaten by other prisoners, at the mercy of men as vicious as caged beasts. He didn’t belong in there, she didn’t want him in there; she wanted to scream and never stop screaming, wanted to put her fist through the window and smash it, hurt and bloody herself. She wanted to arm herself and find Brad Falon and kill him, wanted to destroy Falon just as he had destroyed Morgan and shattered the life of their little girl. She would kill him, except for Sammie, for what that would do to Sammie.
Falon had always been hateful. When they were kids in high school Morgan hadn’t seen how twisted Falon was, he’d seen Falon’s adventurous side, his boldness, had admired Brad Falon for the brash things he did that Morgan was reluctant to do. Though Morgan hadn’t wanted Falon hanging around her. She’d never told Morgan the extent of Falon’s unwanted attention when he found her alone; she’d tried never to be alone with him. Falon was possessed of a cruelty that she guessed some young men, with all that animal energy, found exciting. They were halfway through high school before Morgan realized how twisted Falon was and backed off, leaving Falon to pull his petty thefts alone. But after Morgan left for the navy, Falon started coming around, increasingly pushy, refusing to leave her alone. He had frightened her then. Now he terrified her.
There was no doubt Falon had set Morgan up, had drugged him, left him unconscious in Morgan’s own car that afternoon. Had left him parked there in the woods overnight while Falon himself, disguised as Morgan, had walked into the bank, killed the guard, beaten the bank clerks, locked them in the vault and walked out with the money. Falon’s planted evidence, the scattered hundred-dollar bills and canvas bank bag in Morgan’s car, had incriminated Morgan well enough, coupled with Morgan’s inability to remember where he’d been all afternoon and night. Though it was Natalie Hooper’s testimony that, in the end, had sealed the conviction.
Anyone with common sense could see that the woman was lying, but the jury hadn’t seen it. Gullible and unthinking, they had bought Natalie’s story that Falon had spent the afternoon and all night with her, in her apartment. It was Natalie’s lies that the jury believed. That fact alone left Becky hating her neighbors.