She smiled in triumph. “Exactly!”
He frowned not convinced, even though the logic was unassailable.
She must’ve seen his hesitation, for she asked, “If you had refused to take the case when Perry’s boss approached you, what would’ve happened?”
“The shipping company would’ve gone to the second best corporate fraud investigative lawyer in the country and he or she would’ve found the same trail of evidence I did and prosecuted Winston Perry.”
“Would he have still killed himself when he got sentenced for his crime?” she followed up.
He smiled a little in spite of himself. “Ahh, ahh. That’s a trick question, Counselor. According to your logic, we don’t know what he would have done because he’s the only one who knew for sure why he chose to kill himself.”
She smiled even more broadly. “And?”
“And you make a compelling argument,” he allowed.
She said modestly, “I’ve been spending a lot of time lately with a lawyer. I’ve picked up a few things here and there about how to make a point.”
“I’m in so much trouble if you learn how to out-logic me,” he muttered.
She laughed outright at that.
He called the banker from the porch with the lake going dark and the cat threading figure eights around his ankles. He told George Hughes to give Susannah Perry his name and phone number and to tell her she’d be welcome in Cobbler Cove whenever she wanted to come.
“You’re sure?” Hughes said.
“No,” Reno answered honestly. “But do it anyway.”
She came on Saturday.
Reno had been useless all morning. He’d burned the first batch of pancakes badly enough that even Lily, the most loyal customer he had, declined the offer of a replacement and opted for cereal.
Grace took Lily over to the farm at ten to spend the afternoon with Makayla and Loretta. She’d come back to the cottage, made coffee and pulled cinnamon rolls she’d made last night out of the frig and popped them into the oven. After they cooled, she iced them, and then she changed into a clean blouse that was nearly as pale and delicate a pink as her cheeks.
At two o’clock a gray sedan with out-of-state plates turned into the drive slowly, the way people did when they were checking a number against a mailbox.
Reno watched from the front window, his feet stuck to the floor.
He had a clear picture of Susannah Perry in his head. The front row of that courtroom, every day for weeks. A navy dress that got a little looser as the trial wore on. A young mother with a baby on her lap who slept through most of the government’s case.
Whenever the infant woke up, she carried the child out. She always came back a few minutes later with the child calmed and cared for and sat back down composed. She never looked at Reno once during the entire trial.
At sentencing she hadn’t cried. He’d watched for it, braced for it, half wanted it. She’d just gone still, the kind of still that costs a person everything to hold, and stared at the back of her husband’s head.
The woman who got out of the gray sedan today was older than his mental picture by more than three years. Grief did that. He knew. She wore jeans and a cardigan and penny loafers, and she stood by her car for a moment with one hand on the roof, appearing to gather herself before she came up the walk.
Grace opened the door before she could knock and welcomed her with the sincere kindness Grace extended to everyone.
Gratitude poured through him for Grace’s thoughtfulness. The first face Susannah Perry saw in this house was not the man who’d destroyed her husband, but a petite blond woman with icing under her nails who said warmly, “You must be Susannah. I’m Grace.”
And Susannah Perry, who’d braced her shoulders like a woman walking to her own execution, smiled back at Grace as her shoulders relaxed a bit.
“Sunny,” she said. “Everybody calls me Sunny.”
“Sunny it is,” Grace said with a smile, stepping back to let her in. “Please do come in out of the wind.”
Then Sunny saw him.
They looked at each other across Grace’s living room, the lawyer and the widow, and for one terrible second he was back in that courtroom and so, he could see, was she.
