Broken Promise

Sixty-one

Agnes Pickens had just finished talking to Natalie Bondurant on her home phone in the kitchen when her cell — definitely hers, not Gill’s — rang. She snatched it off the countertop, saw who it was, and took the call.

“What?” she said. “Wait, hang on a second.”

Gill had gone upstairs, but she didn’t want to take a chance he might hear any of this conversation, so she went over to the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard deck. Once outside, she closed the door behind her.

“Okay, what is it?”

“We have a problem,” Jack Sturgess said. There was road noise in the background.

“So do I. They just arrested Marla.”

“Well,” he said.

“Yeah. So I’ve got problems, too. Huge problems. I don’t need any more from you. You just called me with one. Are you telling me you didn’t solve it?”

“The old lady’s dealt with, but yeah, there’s a new problem. I’ve found Sarita.”

“That doesn’t sound like a problem. That sounds good.”

“She’s with your nephew,” Sturgess said. When Agnes said nothing for several seconds, he said, “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you. She’s with David? Where? Where are they?”

“They’re in a car ahead of us. Just driving around. We’re following them. Sarita was ready to hop a bus out of town. David must have found her there. We saw him driving away with her in the car.”

Agnes said, “I told him... I gave him my blessing to ask around on Marla’s behalf. What else could I say? I didn’t want him to think I didn’t want to know what might have happened... I just... I just didn’t expect him to make any real progress.” Panic was rising in her voice. “How the hell did he find her?”

“How the fuck should I know?” the doctor fired back. “Maybe you should talk to him.”

“Talk to him?”

“I don’t know. Call him; tell him to back off. Leave this alone. You’re his goddamn aunt, for Christ’s sake. Talk some kind of sense into him.”

“I’m thinking,” she said.

“Well, you’d better think fast, because it looks like they’re having a real gabfest.”

Another silence from Agnes.

“If you don’t want to give me any direction,” Sturgess said, “I’m just going to have to deal with this as best I can.”

“Don’t you see the problem here?” Agnes asked. “We know it had to be Sarita who took the baby to Marla’s house. So she had to have figured out what really happened. To save ourselves we’d have to... we’d have to keep Sarita from ever talking to anyone.”

“Yeah,” Sturgess said.

“But... I need Sarita.”

“What?”

“I need Sarita to save Marla. If they’ve got enough to arrest her, they may have enough to send her away. They’re going to send my girl to jail, Jack. Sarita can clear her. When they hear what she has to say, they’ll have to drop the charges against Marla.”

“Agnes,” Sturgess said slowly. “You need to think about what you’re saying.”

“That’s all I’m doing is thinking! My daughter’s not going to prison.”

“Would you like to go there?” the doctor asked. “I know I don’t want to go there. Because that’s where this conversation is going. Think about this, Agnes. Even if Marla were convicted, you could mount a pretty convincing insanity defense. Diminished capacity, something like that. Out of her head as a result of a traumatic incident. Odds are, if she went to jail, it wouldn’t be for long. They might even just commit her for psychiatric care until such time as they deemed her cured. But—”

“You son of a bitch.”

“But if they come after us, if they find out what we did — Agnes, if they find out what I’ve done just today, with your blessing — we’ll be going away forever. Are you hearing me? If you let Marla take the blame, she’s out in a year or two and you can look after her. But if you go to jail, you’ll never be able to look after Marla. You’ll see her once a month on visiting day and that’ll be it. Is that what you want?”

“Jack, just shut up.”

“You want to be a good mother, Agnes? Let Marla go to jail. Let them treat her. And when she gets out, you’ll be there for her. Let me take care of Sarita.”

“I... I can’t... I don’t know what—”

“And, Agnes, forgive me, but Marla’s not the same kind of issue for me as she is for you. She’s your daughter, not mine. I know what I have to do to save myself.”

“God, why did I ever go along with you on—”

“You sound like Bill. We’re in this together, Agnes. You got something out of this and so did I.”

“It was all about money for you,” she said. “It was never about money for me.”

“Motivations mean fuck-all now. Just don’t try coming back at me like you had nothing to do with this.”

Agnes was quiet for another moment. Finally she asked, “Where are you?”

“David’s driving north out of town. I can see the Five Mountains Ferris wheel in the distance.”

“How much do you think she’s told him?”

“Who knows? We don’t even know how much she knows.”

In the background, the sound of an infant crying.

“What’s that?” Agnes asked. “Who’s that?”

“It’s Matthew. He’s been screaming almost the whole time.”

“You have the baby with you?” Agnes asked.

“I’m with Bill. I’ve already been through this with him. I thought it was a bad idea, too, bringing the kid, but like he says, what the hell’s he going to do? He needs a new nanny.”

“Jack, seriously, we need to think about this. What about — just give me a second — what about if there’s a way to pin it on Sarita, but... silence her at the same time?”

“Go on.”

“She... she confesses to you what she did, but then she attacks you, and you have to act in self-defense. Maybe something like that?”

“You’re grasping at straws, Agnes. And besides, what if she’s already told David everything? Have you thought about that? He may already know the whole story.”

Before Agnes could respond, the doctor said to Bill Gaynor, “It’s pretty isolated here. Flash your lights; hit the horn; get them to pull over.”

“Jack?” Agnes said.

“I have to go,” he said. “I’ll check in with you later. Think about what I said, Agnes. Think about being a good mother.”

“Don’t you hurt my nephew,” she warned. And then, “Or my grandson.”

“Oh,” said the doctor. “Now he’s your grandson.”