Kisscut

Jeffrey stretched his hands up to the ceiling, his palms flat against the warm wood. As he padded to the bathroom, he noticed that even his socks were wrinkled. The heel had slid around sometime during the night. Jeffrey was balancing on one foot, trying to twist it back, when he heard his cell phone ringing in the other room.

"Dammit," he cursed, bumping his shoulder into the wall as he turned the corner to his room. The house seemed so much smaller now than it had when he was growing up.

He picked up the phone on the fourth ring, just before the voice mail came on. "Hello?"

"Jeff?" Sara asked, a bit of concern in her voice.

He let it linger in his ear before saying, "Hey, babe."

She laughed at the name. "Less than ten hours in Alabama and you're calling me 'babe'?" She waited a beat. "Are you alone?"

He felt irritated, because he knew part of her was not joking. "Of course I'm alone," he shot back. "Jesus Christ, Sara."

"I meant your mother," she told him, though he could tell from her lack of conviction that she was covering.

He let it pass. "No, they kept her overnight in the hospital." He sat on the bed, trying to get his sock to twist back into place. "She fell down somehow. Broke her foot."

"Did she fall at home?" Sara asked, something more than curiosity in her tone. He knew what she was getting at, and it was the same reason Jeffrey had come to Alabama himself in the middle of a case instead of just making a phone call. He wanted to see if his mother's drinking was finally getting out of hand. May Tolliver had always been what was politely called a functional alcoholic. If she had crossed the line into hopeless drunk, Jeffrey would have to do something. He had no idea what this would be, but knew instinctively that it would not be easy.

Jeffrey tried to redirect her interest. "I talked with the doctor. I haven't really seen her to find out what happened." He waited for her to get the message. "I'll see her today, see what's going on."

"She'll probably be on crutches," Sara told him. He could hear a tapping noise, and assumed she was at her office. He looked at his watch, wondering why she was there so early, but then he remembered the time change. Sara was an hour ahead of him.

"Ms. Harris across the street will look in on her," Jeffrey volunteered, knowing that Jean Harris would do whatever she could to help a neighbor. She worked as a dietician at the local hospital, and had often waved Jeffrey over after school to make sure he had a hot meal. Sitting at the table with her three lovely daughters had been a bit more enticing than Ms. Harris's chicken pot pie, but Jeffrey had appreciated both at the time.

Sara said, "You need to tell her to be very careful not to mix her pain meds with alcohol. Or tell her doctor that. Okay?"

He looked at his sock, realizing it was still backward. He twisted it the other way, asking, "Is that why you called?"

"I got your message about Mark Patterson. What am I pulling a sample for?"

"Paternity," he told her, not liking the image the word brought to his mind.

Sara was silent, then asked, "Are you sure?"

"No," he told her. "Not at all. I just thought I should look at everything I could."

"How'd you get a court order so fast?"

"No order. His father's sending him in voluntarily."

She was still incredulous. "Without a lawyer?"

Jeffrey sighed. "Sara, I left all of this on your machine last night. Is something going on?"

"No," she answered in a softer tone. Then, "Yes, actually."

He waited. "Yeah?"

"I wanted to make sure you were all right."

Sarcasm came, because that was all he could muster in light of her question. "Other than waking up knowing I killed a thirteen-year-old little girl, I guess I'm just peachy."

She was quiet, and he let the silence continue, not knowing what to say to her. Sara had not called him in a long time, not even for county-related matters. In the past, she had faxed him documents on cases, or sent Carlos, her assistant, over with sensitive information. Since the divorce, personal calls were out of the question, and even when they had started back kind of dating, Jeffrey had always been the one to pick up the phone.

"Jeff?" Sara asked.

"I was just thinking," he said, then, to change the subject, he asked, "Tell me a little bit more about Lacey."

"I told you yesterday. She's a good kid," Sara said, and he could hear something off in her tone. He knew she was feeling responsible for Je

Sara continued, "She's bright, fu

"Were you close to her?"

"As close as you can be to a kid you only see a few times a year." Sara paused, then said, "Yeah. Some of them you co

"That's weird," he said.

"Not really," Sara told him. "Lots of kids get crushes on adults. It's not a sexual thing, they just want to impress them, to make them laugh."

"I'm still not following."

"They get to be a certain age and their parents can't be cool anymore. Some kids, not all of them, can transfer their feelings onto another adult. It's perfectly natural. They just want someone to look up to, and at that point in their lives it can't be their parents."

"So, she looked up to you?"

"It felt that way," Sara said, and he could hear the sadness in her voice.

"You think she would've told you if something was going on?"

"Who knows?" Sara replied. "Something happens to them when they get into middle school. They get a lot more quiet."

"That's what Grace Patterson said. That they keep secrets."

"That's true," Sara agreed. "I just chalked up the change to puberty. All those hormones, all those new feelings. They've got a lot to think about, and the only thing they're certain of is that adults have no way of understanding what they're going through."

"Still," Jeffrey countered, "don't you think she would've talked to you if something was wrong?"

"I'd like to think so, but the truth is, she'd have to have her mother drive her here. I can't kick the mother out of the room without causing some suspicion."

"You think Grace would have been reluctant to leave y'all alone?"

"I think she would've been worried. She's a good mother. She takes an interest in her kids and what they're doing."

"That's what Brad said."

"What does Brad have to do with this?" Sara asked.

"He's the youth minister at Crescent Baptist."

"Oh, that's right," Sara said, making the co

"Yeah," Jeffrey told her. "There were eight kids from the church: three boys, five girls."

"That doesn't sound like a lot of kids."

"It's a small church," Jeffrey reminded her. "Plus, skiing is expensive. Not a lot of people have that kind of money to begin with, especially around the holidays."

"That's true," she agreed. "But it was just Brad chaperoning?"

"The church secretary was supposed to help out with the girls, but she got sick at the last minute."

"Have you talked to her?"

"She had some kind of stroke. She was only fifty-eight years old," he said, thinking that when he had been a kid, fifty-eight had seemed ancient. "She moved down to Florida so her kids could take care of her."

"So, what did Brad say about Je

"Nothing specific. He said Lacey and Je

"That's not uncommon for girls that age. They tend to form tight little groups."

"Yeah," Jeffrey sighed, feeling yesterday's frustrations settling into his gut. "Brad went over to Je