Blindside

“Glad I had some clothes for you, Miles. Katie’s dad was tall like you, so at least your ankles aren’t showing. Sweetie, those jeans are nearly white they’ve been washed so many times, but you look just fine. Now, I’m going to take these goodies to the kids. They’re having a hard time, you know.”

“Can we have some first, Mom?”

“Sure. Take as many slices as you want. You two just go into the living room and I’ll take care of the kids.”

Mi

And now, Katie thought, just a touch of the spurs. Katie gri

“We’re not looking forward to it,” he said and sighed. He leaned his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes.

Mi

Katie said, “Oh yeah, Mayor Tommy will probably want a dozen meetings to thrash everything out.”

Mi

“No,” Katie said. “You’re right, it’s been a long dry spell for Tommy.”

Miles called his sister-in-law, Cracker, told her it was finally over. He’d considered asking Cracker if she’d ever known Sam to be ill while Miles had been away, but decided against it. He knew to his soul that if Alicia hadn’t told him about taping Sam with blood on his palms, she wouldn’t have told anyone else. But she had given it to someone. Who? Perhaps her ancient priest, an old man who’d been kind and was failing physically and mentally. If she gave it to him then he must have passed it on to someone else, someone who’d given it to Reverend McCamy. They would never know now, and, truth be told, it didn’t matter. The video was now ashes buried beneath more ashes and shards of burned wood.

When he’d hung up the phone, Katie had nodded. The last thing Sam needed was to have the media proclaiming him the newest candidate for sainthood, or a freak, or a helpless pawn. She could just see a TV guy asking Sam to please try to make his hands bleed again for the cameras. And here was Dr. X, psychologist, to give a historical perspective on the visible stigmata. Or those proclaiming he was a fraud or a victim of abuse, and exploited for it. Thomas Boone could say whatever he wanted, but everyone knew what he’d done, so she doubted anyone would believe him if he talked crazy.

And he’d said more to himself than to Katie, “What else did she keep from me?”

Katie hadn’t said anything, merely taken his hand.

They would come up with exactly what to tell everyone, including the mayor and the aldermen, including her mother, but just not now, not when they were both so tired, like they’d been hung out to dry.

She looked over at Miles, a paper plate on his lap, a half-eaten slice of ci

She smiled and nodded off herself.

35

A lthough two days had passed, Katie still felt unanchored, her brain adrift. She’d dealt with the TBI, attended a special town meeting called by Mayor Tommy Bledsoe, of the long-lived Sherman Bledsoes, to explain exactly what had happened. She’d swear that nearly every citizen in Jessborough was present, along with her mother, of course, and all the mill employees who’d been given the day off to hear the details. There was some media-not national media, thank God. She had told all concerned that Reverend McCamy had been mentally ill, that he had evidently seen Sam when he’d visited Washington, D.C., that something about the boy had attracted him and so he’d arranged to take him. She assumed he wanted to raise him, mold him into what he saw himself as being, make him his successor, and that was surely the truth. He had just gone over the edge. It sounded idiotic to Katie, but not as idiotic as the just plain crazy truth. She and Miles had repeated their story so often that Katie imagined she’d be believing it herself soon.

Neither she nor Miles could explain what they’d seen on the video. She wondered if they ever would. She wondered how and why it had happened to a three-year-old boy. Some sort of bloody rash? Had his fingernails pierced his palms? Or was it a reaction to a medicine? More than likely, because Sam had sure looked sick. And Alicia hadn’t said anything of it to Miles. Miles was fretting over that, but Alicia was long dead, and Katie knew he’d have to let it go.

She’d even called together the congregation of the Sinful Children of God and told them how very sorry she was that Reverend and Mrs. McCamy had died in the fire at their home. She wove the same tale, telling them that Reverend McCamy had been consumed with getting Sam, no one really knew why, and then told them the scene of his final disintegration, his complete mental breakdown, and his suicide. There was a lot of grief, a lot of questions, but most of them seemed willing to let life move on, fast.

She sighed, thinking about her home. Gone, nothing left at all. She had no idea what she was going to do yet and was still just too tired to think about it coherently.

“I think it’s a good idea, Katie, what we talked about.”

She jerked up. Miles was talking about marriage, she knew that even though neither of them had said another thing about it since early Thursday morning. She said, “It’s a huge thing, Miles, a really huge thing.”

“You lost your house.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking about that.”

“I’ve got a house, a really big house, and there’s lots of room, for all of us. It’s colonial. Do you like colonial?”

“Yes,” she said, nothing more, and continued not to look at him.

Miles looked over at Sam and Keely, who were sitting on the living room floor, their jeaned legs spread wide, rolling three red balls back and forth between them. They were evidently trying to keep the balls inside their legs.

“You hit it too hard, Sam!”

Sam said, as he batted a ball back to her, “Pay attention, Keely.”

“My God, he said that just like I do,” Miles said. “This parent thing, it’s scary when your kid mimics you. Say yes, Katie.”

“Say yes to what, Mama?”

Suddenly both small faces were concentrated on them. Miles shrugged at Katie who sighed and nodded. “Okay, what do you guys think of Katie and me getting married? Not that she’s said yes yet. That way you’d be brother and sister and you could stay together.” And that, Katie thought, was the primary reason for getting married, and not a bad reason, really. At least both of them would be motivated to make a happy home for their children. Sam would be hers. And that kiss, she’d felt it all the way to her size nines. The man was potent. That made her smile, but it fell off her face pretty fast. Married, after knowing a man a week.

No, not married. Remarried.

Katie had sworn she’d never get married again as long as there was enough breath in her lungs to say no. It was simple, really, she couldn’t trust herself to choose wisely. Just look at what she’d brought home the first time-Carlo Silvestri, a weak, spoiled jerk whose father had paid her a million and a half bucks to get out of his life. Hmm. At least that was a pretty good trade-off. Carlo’s father had saved the pulp mill and a lot of people’s jobs. And of course, Carlo had given her Keely-she’d put up with a dozen jerks for Keely.