With a sudden flash of insight, Joanna realized that same difference had always separated her parents from one another as well. That was why her father was dead. He had been physically incapable of driving past a stranded woman and her worn out tire, and changing that tire had killed him.
D. H. Lathrop had offered to help because that was the kind of man he was. It was his natural part of him he was helpless to change. And when he died as a direct result of his own kindness, people had called Big Hank Lathrop a hero. No one tried to change him or make him anything other than what he was.
To be fair, if it was all right for someone to be a doer and a hero, wasn’t it equally all right to be a bystander? Yes, Eleanor was concerned about appearances, but was that wrong? And if it was wrong, was it more or less wrong than changing a tire and being killed for it?
Slowly, Joanna closed her cupped hand around the safety pin. She looked at Eleanor, whose eyes were still scanning the nearby sidewalk in search of the missing buttons. Joanna’s heart squeezed her with a sudden quickening of understanding, like the first sensed movement of a baby within her womb.
At twenty-nine years of age, with emergency lights pulsing all around her, with video cameras rolling, and with only incomplete election results starting to trickle in, Joanna Brady had just learned something important about her mother. She had also learned something important about herself.
She was a chip off the old block. She was definitely her father’s daughter. But she was also her mother’s.
Jenny,” she said, looking down at her own daughter and holding her torn dress shut at the same time. “Would you please see if you can help Grandma find my buttons?”
“Where are you going?” Jenny asked.
“Into the women’s rest room to try to fix my dress. As soon as you find a button, bring it in there. And bring along a sewing kit as well. Ask Grandma Brady. I’m sure she has one in her purse.”
As soon as Joanna started into the building, Dick Voland came charging after her. “Just a minute. Where do you think you’re going?”
“To the rest room,” Joanna answered evenly.
“Everybody else went to the hospital. I need someone to give a preliminary statement to one of the officers here, to explain exactly what went on.”
“I can do that,” Joanna said, “but it’ll have to wait.”
Dick Voland was old school-male, stubborn, and used to having people snap to whenever he gave an order. “Wait for what?” he demanded.
“For me to fix my dress,” Joanna replied. Then she turned her back on him and walked into the rest room where no old-school male in his right mind would dare to follow.
The SCRATCHES don’t show all that much,” was Eva Lou Brady’s practical and unperturbed assessment of her daughter-in-laws appearance after viewing the videotaped version of Joanna’s victory speech. “Your eye looks real funny, though.”
It doesn’t feel very funny,” Joanna returned.
The previous night’s fall had taken its toll. Joanna had limped over to her in-laws’ house that morning and gratefully accepted Eva Lou Brady’s pampering breakfast that included eggs and bacon, mashed-potato parries, and hot homemade buttermilk biscuits. There was no hurry. Milo had ordered her to take the whole day off. With pay.
Using all the makeup tricks at her disposal, Joanna had done her best to camouflage the damage done to her face, but not even Helen Barco’s considerable skill with foundation and blush could have successfully masked the purplish bruise that blossomed garishly beneath Joanna’s right eye.
Carrying coat and schoolbooks, Jennifer stopped in front of her mother and studied her face with an unsmiling and reproachful gaze. “You promised you’d be careful,” she said. “Scout’s honor, you said.”
Those accusatory words were the first ones Jennifer had spoken to her mother that morning.
“People were in danger,” Joanna answered. “I was afraid someone might get hurt.”
“It could of been you,” Jennifer shot back.
“Could have,” Joanna corrected reflexively.
“Have,” Jennifer repeated woodenly, scowling.
“Jenny, are you ready?” her grandfather called from the front door. “I don’t want to be late.”
“Where’s he going?” Joanna asked.
“Search and Rescue called this morning,” said Eva Lou. “Harold Patterson’s turned up missing. With all the excitement last night, it took awhile for someone to figure out that his car was there in the convention-center lot, but he was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t at home, either, so they are talking about organizing a search. Jim Bob wants to go to the meeting, since he’s a whole lot better at talking these days than he is at searching.”
“Where are they going to look?”
“Out on the ranch, I guess, although since his car was in town, seems to me like that would be the first place they’d look.” Eva Lou sipped her coffee. “Those Pattersons do seem to be having their troubles, don’t they?”
“They do that,” Eva Lou’s daughter-in-law agreed.
Joanna had only seen the car as it careened toward them. Burton Kimball, standing off to the side, had insisted in his statement that the vehicle in question belonged to Rex Rogers, his cousin’s outta-town attorney, and that the driver of the Cadillac was none other than Holly herself. Joanna was more than mildly curious about what was going on, but she had no real official recourse, and she wasn’t about to call up Dick Voland to ask him.
While Joanna scarfed down her breakfast, Eva Lou Brady poured two more cups of coffee and then sat down across the table. “What’s Jenny so bent out of shape about?” she asked.
“Remember last night when Jenny said she didn’t want me to win the election?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she’s worried about me, afraid something bad will happen to me, just like it did to Andy.”
“Makes sense,” Eva Lou said. “And with your face all tore up the way it is, I can see why she might have some cause.”
“what happened last night could have happened to anyone. When there is an emergency like that, you do what you have to do because you’re a person, because you care what happens to other people. It has nothing whatever to do with whether or not you’ve been elected sheriff.”
“True enough, I suppose,” Eva Lou agreed. “I mean, if a Methodist minister can end up in the hospital with a concussion, I guess it really could happen to anybody. How is Marianne, by the way?”
“They only kept her for observation. Jeff says they’ll most likely let her out sometime today.”
After that, an awkward and unusual silence seemed to spring up between the two women. Eva Lou Brady was the one who finally broke it.
“Lord knows I don’t mean to pry, Joanna, but I have to ask. Have you made any kind of arrangements for Jenny? I mean, with this new job and all, what if something awful did happen? Jim Bob and I could take Jenny in if we had to, but we shouldn’t. It wouldn’t be good for her in the long run. She needs somebody younger, someone more your age.”
Joanna dropped her gaze and didn’t answer. That in itself was answer enough. She hadn’t made any such arrangements, although she understood all too well the ramifications of not doing so. like writing her will and appointing potential guardions to care for Jennifer were two of the nagging loose ends of her life. In the awful aftermath of Andy’s death, those were two distasteful yet essential tasks she had not yet found courage enough to face.
“Maybe,” Eva Lou continued, not unkindly, “once you do get all those details straightened out, you should talk them over with Jenny. She’s a smart little girl. I think just knowing you’ve handled things and prepared for the worst would make her feel better, less alone. After all, both of your lives had been put through a wringer. I don’t blame her for being scared.”