Paper Castles Read online

  “With reasonable doubt.” Phil cocked his head. “It’s my job to throw so much reasonable doubt onto the courtroom floor the jurors have to step over it to get to their seats.”

  “Got it.”

  “That’s why I’m still looking for anything I can use to distract the jurors from you. Still looking for the woman Price was having an affair with. She’s definitely some muddy water to throw out there. If we could find out who the hell she was...”

  His voice trailed off as he thumbed through the stack of papers in front of him. Savannah sighed, thinking if only she’d thought of having Price tailed by a private-eye, she wouldn’t be sitting here preparing for a murder trial.

  Her life was filled with if only.

  Loud voices were coming from the kitchen. Claudia and Neenie were in there, but this wasn’t their usual bickering. This was angry, top-of-the-lungs shouting.

  Savannah and Phil both got up to investigate. In the kitchen, they found Neenie with a death grip on a broom and Savannah thought she might sweep Claudia out with the day’s dirt.

  “I said I was sorry,” Claudia shouted, not sounding a bit sorry.

  “I don’t care if you’re sorry. It’s no excuse.”

  “I told you there was a march today.”

  “You’re gonna be marching in the streets all right. Carrying a sign. A sign saying you’re looking for work.”

  “What’s going on?” Savannah said.

  “I’m a little late for work, Miss Palmerton. I—”

  “She thought it was more important to march in the streets than show up to work on time.” Neenie moved one hand to her hip, the other still brandishing the broom.

  Claudia puffed up. “This is more important.”

  “More important than your job? That’s the problem with you young people— always in a hurry. Everything has to be done right now. “

  “Yes, it does. Because you older people are too happy to let things just roll on as usual. I’m not willing to sit here waiting for God to answer my prayers.”

  “Now don’t you go blaspheming the Lord.”

  Savannah stepped between them, before the Lord struck anybody. “Everyone simmer down.”

  “I had to navigate my way through the throng on my way over here today,” Phil said. “It was quite a crowd. And it looked a little intense.”

  “It was,” Claudia said. “Some fights broke out when a group of white men started shouting obscenities. Then the police moved in and started arresting people. There was plenty of pushing and shoving.”

  “And you could’ve been hauled off to jail,” Neenie said.

  Claudia rolled her eyes. “But I wasn’t.”

  “I’m sure it will be all over the news,” Savannah said. “That’s one thing this city is used to. As usual, Savannah is ahead of her time.”

  Phil caught her eye and grinned. “Yes she is.”

  NEENIE WAS packing a beach picnic: cold fried chicken and hard boiled eggs went into a large wicker basket, with all kinds of goodies piled on top. Savannah and Phil would never be able to eat it all.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come, Neenie?” Savannah glanced at Phil and winked, already knowing the answer.

  “You may have salt water in your veins,” Neenie said. “But count me out. Your daddy always said you were a tadpole. Always had to have one foot in the water. Why anyone wants to walk around with grit in their shoes and salt blowing in their face is beyond me. Besides, I’d spend the entire day sweeping that sand back out where it came from.”

  “All right, calm down,” Savannah said. “No one is making you go to the beach. You stay here and relax. Read a book. Visit a friend. Sleep in. Live a little.”

  “Right.”

  “Neenie.”

  “What?”

  “Absolutely no fighting with Claudia.”

  Neenie put her nose up in the air. “With who? I don’t know anybody by that name.”

  “Come here, you.” Savannah locked her arms around Neenie’s neck and gave her a loud smooch on the cheek. “Love you.”

  “Love you more than biscuits and gravy.” Neenie kissed her back, then swatted her behind.

  Phil drove to Tybee Island with the top down on his new rental car. Savannah laid her head back, her face soaking up the sun. The closer she got to the ocean, the easier it was to breathe.

  She rolled her head towards Phil, studying his hands on the steering wheel. She loved a man’s hands in general, and liked watching Phil’s in particular. The veins like pulsing currents just under his skin. Fingers twirling a pencil when he was thinking, or running through his hair when he was frustrated.

  She turned away, looking out her own window. Lately, she’d spent too much time watching Phil. Obviously it was why she dreamt about him last night.

  And his hands.

  On her.

  She woke up out of breath and flushed. She sat there in bed, the straps of her nightgown loose on her arms, and warm arousal on her thighs.

  She tried to be reasonable. It was only natural that she dreamt of him. They spent hours together. She trusted him. Her fate was in his hands.

  Oh God, those hands. Maybe coming to the island together wasn’t such a great idea after all.

  A tropical storm was forecasted for the general vicinity and Savannah, eager to get a break from the city, decided to go shutter the house. When Phil asked if she’d need any help, and mentioned he’d love a couple of days at the beach, what could she say?

  She was happy to have him along. He could sleep in the little guest house and be perfectly comfortable.

  But that was before her dream last night.

  Reel it in, Savannah.

  As soon as they pulled up to the house, Savannah had her car door open. Daisy jumped out from the back seat and raced Savannah to the shore.

  Phil joined them on the beach minutes later.

  “Enjoying your welcome home, golden girl?”

  Savannah squinted up at him. “Golden girl?”

  “Yeah. Everything about you is golden. Even your dog.”

  Savannah laughed, but shook her head. “Gold doesn’t tarnish.”

  Phil brought the basket down and they had an early dinner on the beach. They feasted on Neenie’s fried chicken, with fresh cucumbers, onions and cherry tomatoes bathed in a vinaigrette dressing. Savannah watched Phil lick his fingers, roll his eyes and grin with pure satisfaction. She smiled too, but not about the food.

  Phil refilled her glass from the bottle of wine they’d wedged in the sand.

  “Neenie is something else,” he said.

  “What brought that up?”

  “Just thinking about this fabulous chicken,” Phil said, eyeing her over his drumstick. “She’s pretty special to you, isn’t she?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “What’s the story between you two?”

  “Why does there have to be a story?”

  Phil wiped his hands on his napkin, then leaned back on his elbows. “I’ve been watching the two of you.”

  “You’re always watching.”

  “I observe.”

  “Excuse me.” Savannah nodded. “You’re right. Observe sounds so much more professional. Watching makes you a peeping Tom.”

  “Now you’re completely off track,” he said, laughing. “It’s my job to watch and observe people, especially in the courtroom. Not just the judge and the D.A., but he jury, as well.”

  “What do you mean?

  “I watch them constantly. Gauging their reaction to testimony. See if they fidget, lean in, take notes, raise their eyebrows, look bored, look away. It’s a science.”

  “And you’re a professor.”

  “Of sorts.”

  A comfortable moment passed between them. The sun hung low in the sky, the breeze, blew and the wine knocked on the door where secrets were kept.

  Savannah looked at Phil stretched out on the blanket, beach shorts showing long, lean legs. A casual knit shirt hanging loose. He looked
like he belonged at the beach.

  Like he belonged in this moment.

  Trust him.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  Phil looked up. “About what?”

  She took a deep breath. “I have a story.”

  “Want to tell me?”

  “I do.” She was surprised she did and the words came slowly at first. They’d been locked up for so long; they didn’t know how to behave in the open air. Like moles coming out of their dark holes, blinking and blinded by the sunlight.

  “My mother was sick when I was born. Well, actually, she’d been sick before, but it got bad when I was born.”

  “What kind of illness?”

  “The kind you don’t talk about.”

  Phil’s eyes were steady. Unwavering. He gave her space and time to find the words. Words she’d hidden in dark corners. Words she’d been told never to speak. It’s Nobody’s Business, came out to put a stop to the telling, but it was too late. The door was open, words had already escaped.

  “Beverly was locked in her own private darkness, from the time she was a young woman. Private, except for when it spilled out onto everyone else. It spilled out when I was born. It was more than any of the local doctors could handle. She had to go to a sanitarium for more than a year.”

  She saw Phil’s lips roll in as he studied her face.

  “And that’s when Neenie came to save us.” Savannah felt her voice soften around Neenie’s name. “Thank God. We bonded like mother and child from the start. I followed her around like a baby duck. And I’m sure it must have been difficult for my mother when she finally came home and I wanted nothing to do with her. They said I cried if she picked me up. Only Neenie could soothe me. To this day, I feel bad about it.” The last line floated out on a sigh.

  “You were a baby.”

  “I know. But as a mother, I know what it feels like.”

  “Then as a mother, you must know she forgives you.”

  “I suppose.” Savannah fidgeted with the fringe on the end of the blanket. Pulling and straightening the threads into perfect alignment.

  “Anyway, my mother and I never really connected. We both tried. We still try. But it’s so... strained.” She lifted her shoulders, then let them drop. “Her illness came and went without warning. Circus highs, then lows like a swimming hole with no bottom in sight. Suicide attempts. More hospitalizations.”

  “Mental illness tears a lot of families apart.”

  “The manic times could be just as frightening. I came home one day and Momma was riding high. Had the house torn apart, saying she was going to repaint every room. Kip and I knew something was wrong. You could feel the forced frivolity. She’d be on a high for days. It was exhausting to watch her. Then she’d collapse.

  Kip and I learned to lean on one another. We’d stay as far away from the house as we could, only coming home for dinner. When I think back on it now, I feel sorry for my sister. Rebecca was so much younger than us, she was left on her own. At least Kip and I had each other.”

  She sat for a moment, gathering the scattered fragments of her past. Sorting them into neat little piles. After being held down for a lifetime, images flooded to the surface. Some were faded and brittle, threatening to crumble if she picked them up. Other images, though yellowed around the edges, were still crisp.

  “We were never allowed to talk about it,” she said. “Even among ourselves. That’s what I couldn’t understand. It made it so much more frightening. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Sure.”

  “Everything had to be kept, quiet. Hush-hush. Not to jeopardize my father’s career, I guess.”

  “I can certainly understand how they wouldn’t want that kind of private news to get out. It was back when mental illness was grossly misunderstood. In many ways it still is.”

  “You’re right, and people can be cruel. It took years for her to be properly diagnosed and receive treatment and medication. All those years in between, my father was her protector. He’d never broach a word against her. I admire him for that. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him, watching the woman he loved descend into the pit, time and time again, with no way to save her.

  Whether she was away at the san or locked up in her room, we kids had to carry on with a smile. It seemed we were always trying to make up for the chaos by over-achieving in everything else. We were always so perfect on the outside while mania raged behind our front door.”

  Phil nodded along as she spoke. When she took a break, he let her sit quietly, gathering her strength to start again.

  “I don’t want to make it sound like there was never anything good. In between her episodes, I caught a glimpse of the woman my father fell in love with.”

  She leaned her head back, eyes closed as she ran her fingers over one of the more elusive memories. Beverly sitting at her dressing table, a silken hand reaching for a powder puff, generously dredged into soft talc, then lifted to alabaster shoulders. Savannah watched as it glided in slow motion down to her mother’s décolletage, leaving a misty cloud of fine particles dancing in the air. It was like witnessing a sweet-smelling version of the Milky Way.

  “Beverly tried to be the perfect wife and mother. During her good days, she threw fabulous dinner parties and was always the best-dressed woman at any event. She sparkled. I think it was important for her to prove, that she was... I don’t know.”

  “Worthy?” Phil said.

  “Perhaps,” Savannah nodded. “But I also remember thinking she was made of glass. And I was so afraid I’d be the one to break her, again.”

  She looked over at Phil to see if he was still with her. He was. There was no sound, just the steady rise and fall of his chest like the waves rolling up on the shore and the steadiness of his eyes on her. He was taking it all in.

  She remembered back to their first meeting, sitting at the dining room table surrounded with her case files and a tape recorder, and how she’d felt uncomfortable under his intense gaze. Now it felt neither invasive nor disconcerting, but rather, liberating. Never in her life had she been so attended. He seemed to catalogue every blink of an eye, every time she licked her lips and turned away. He was listening to her gestures, listening for the unspoken story.

  “The problem was, Phil, you just had no idea when she’d lose her grip on perfect. I came home from school one day and found her in the bathtub. She’d tried to slit her wrists. I was alone with her. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Savannah’s voice was little-girl thin, the memory fresh as yesterday. Her mother’s graceful hand, pale and lifeless, draped over the side of the tub. Savannah remembered being plunged into another realm of existence, her senses seemed heightened beyond normal capacity. The loud thumping in her ears was the drip, drip of blood running from her mother’s wrist, down her fingers. Hitting the cold tiles with a tiny splash, little starbursts of blood. Redder than red. And the smell of it: until that moment, she never knew blood had a smell.

  Wake up, Momma, Momma wake up.

  I don’t know what to do.

  “I called the operator and told them my mother was hurt. Blood was everywhere.” Savannah swallowed the memory of utter helplessness. “She was gone for a long time, after that.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Ten.”

  Phil leaned in toward her. His hand reached for hers, fingers gently caressing, his hand holding hers. Had she dreamt this? Was she dreaming now? Was this her, sitting on a blanket on the beach, calmly exposing family secrets to a man she’d only met a few months ago?

  Was she dreaming?

  Or was she remembering?

  Something familiar was in his touch, in his hand cradling hers... As if she’d been here in this moment before. As if she’d known Phil in another lifetime. And it was all right to tell him everything, because he already knew.

  “It must have been an incredible burden for a ten-year-old,” he said.

  She took a deep breath. “I know it makes no sens
e...but in little Savannah’s mind, Beverly didn’t get sick when she had me. She got sick because she had me.”

  Phil’s shoulders slumped, as if her words born of pain, nurtured in the darkness of a young girl’s fears, were a physical weight. His eyes met hers, and a thousand understandings flowed between them.

  “It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s what your heart believed before your head knew better.”

  Savannah looked at him, eyes wide. “The stories we tell ourselves as children are like ribbons that wrap around us. We twirl and spin and they keep winding tighter and tighter. By the time we’re adults, it’s almost impossible to untie the knots.”

  She looked down at their hands, fingers responding to a pull of the heart.

  “I’m sorry.” Phil untangled his fingers and pulled back, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have done that. I just got caught up in the story. And felt…”

  “Sorry for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s okay. Don’t be sorry.”

  She tried to tell herself his hand reaching for hers was nothing more than any friend would do. He had empathy for a sad story. It was pure instinct on his part.

  Her hand refused to believe it.

  “When the police told me about Price being shot, the first thing I thought of was the blood. After finding my mother in the tub, I have an irrational fear of blood.”

  “Not irrational at all.”

  “You know, I’ve never seen the pictures of the crime scene. I never want to. I see it every night.”

  She told him about the nightmares. How in dreams, she killed Price over and over until she was soaked in his blood. Phil never took his gaze off her face. His eyes willed her to give him every last scrap. He was the safe place she’d been looking for, the floor where she could lay it all down. Maybe, once it was all at his feet, she could walk away from it.

  They sat there, each digesting stories from their vantage point. Savannah looked up at the skies, surprised a meteor hadn’t crashed at her feet, wiping out humanity.

  She remembered a science class field trip when she was twelve and seeing a real meteor up close. She was so excited to see this bit of the universe that had traveled billions of miles, tearing through space to get here. She pressed her nose up to the glass enclosure with keen disappointment.