Let Me Call You Sweetheart

60

Geoff did not stay long after Kerry had called Kinellen. “Bob agrees with me,” she told him as she sipped the coffee.

“No other suggestions?”

“No, of course not. Sort of his usual, ‘You handle it, Kerry.

Anything you decide is fine.’”

She put down the cup. “I’m not being fair. Bob honestly did seem concerned, and I don’t know what else he could suggest.”

They were sitting in the kitchen. She had turned off the overhead light, thinking they would carry their coffee into the living room. Now the only illumination in the room came from the dim light in a wall fixture.

Geoff studied the grave face across the table from him, aware of the hint of sadness in Kerry’s hazel eyes, the determination in the set of her generous mouth and finely sculpted chin, the vulnerability in her overall posture. He wanted to put his arms around her, to tell her to lean on him.

But he knew she didn’t want that. Kerry McGrath did not expect or want to lean on anyone. He tried again to apologize for his dismissive remark to her the other night, suggesting that she was being self-serving, and for Deidre Reardon’s intrusive visit to her office. “I had a hell of a nerve,” he said. “I know that if you believed in your heart that Skip Reardon was innocent, you of all people would not hesitate in trying to help him. You’re a stand-up guy, McGrath.”

Am I? Kerry wondered. It was not the moment to share with Geoff the information she had found in the prosecutor’s file about Jimmy Weeks. She would tell him, but first she wanted to see Dr. Smith again. He had angrily denied that he had touched Suzanne surgically, but he had never said that he hadn’t sent her to someone else. That meant that technically he wasn’t a liar.

As Geoff left a few minutes later, they stood for a moment in the foyer. “I like being with you,” he told her, “and that has nothing to do with the Reardon case. How about our going out to dinner on Saturday night and bringing Robin with us?”

“She’d like that.”

As Geoff opened the door he leaned down and brushed her cheek with his lips. “I know it’s unnecessary to tell you to double lock the door and to turn on the alarm, but I will suggest you don’t do any heavy thinking about that picture after you go to bed.”

When he was gone, Kerry went upstairs to check on Robin. She was working on her science report and did not hear her mother come in. From the doorway Kerry studied her child. Robin’s back was to her, her long dark brown hair spilling over her shoulders, her head bent in concentration, her legs wrapped around the rungs of the chair.

She is the innocent victim of whoever took that picture, Kerry thought. Robin is like me. Independent. She’s going to hate having to be driven to and picked up from school, hate not being able to walk over to Cassie’s by herself.

And then in her mind she heard again Deidre Reardon’s pleading voice begging her to ask herself how she would like to see her child caged for ten years for a crime she didn’t commit.