Tombstone Courage (9 page)

“Em, help me. Please…please.”

I
T TURNED
out to be one of the longest days of Joanna Brady's existence. Once Harold Patterson left her office, the morning seemed to drag. At lunchtime, she drove from Warren up to Old Bisbee for a celebratory, end-of-campaign lunch with Jeff Daniels and Marianne Maculyea.

Jeff—a full-time, stay-at-home, minister's husband—had planned the event, weeks earlier—win, lose, or draw. With the election over, Jeff hoped life with his pastor-turned-campaign-manager wife would return to some semblance of normalcy. Their usually neat parsonage had deteriorated to a shambles while Marianne masterminded the whole campaign and Jeff handled the mass mailings out of the room that usually served as Marianne's study.

It was a great lunch, complete with an appropriate set of toasts. Later in the afternoon, however, the effects of the champagne kicked in, and it was all Joanna could do to keep from falling asleep at her desk. As much as she hated the prospect of going to a beauty salon, she was grateful when it was time to abandon the office in favor of Helene's Salon of Hair and Beauty.

Helene's looked exactly like what it was—an ill-disguised two-car garage that had been hammered-and-tonged into a beauty shop by virtue of some very creative do-it-yourself plumbing and electrical work provided by Helen Barco's retired handyman husband.

When Joanna sat down in the chair, Helen Barco took one look at her, shook her head, clicked her tongue sadly, and said, “Oh my, no. This will never do. Your mother tells me you're going to be on the TV news tonight. We don't want one of our girls looking like something the cat dragged in, now do we?”

We certainly don't! And an hour and a half later, Joanna didn't.

The remodel job on the building might have been amateurish, but the finished-product Joanna Brady who walked out the door of Helene's at five-thirty that afternoon was strictly professional—a classic makeover. Her red hair had been cropped off in a short but stylish cut. Her makeup had been professionally applied. Lipstick and un-accustomed nail polish matched perfectly. She'd have to remember to use the lip-liner Helen had insisted she take.

“Good luck,” Helen Barco said as Joanna headed out the door. “I hope you win. Eleanor's very proud of you, you know.”

The fact that Eleanor Lathrop might be proud of her for any reason at all was a notion Joanna found somewhat foreign. It didn't seem the least bit likely. In her whole life, she could count on one hand the other rare instances when Eleanor
had been proud of her or had come out and said so.

Joanna sat in her Eagle, leaned back against the headrest, and closed her eyes. Her neighbor Clayton Rhodes was still handling the evening chores, so there was no need for her to rush home. It was a good thing, too. Working round the clock, she had driven herself to the very edge of exhaustion.

Cochise County measured eighty-five miles by eighty-five miles. In fighting to win the election, Joanna had covered damned near every inch of it. She had worked on the campaign tirelessly and with every ounce of her being. Yet even now, this close to the end, she still didn't know if she wanted to win. That was crazy, especially now when there was nothing to do but wait. The polls would close at six—in twenty-five more minutes. After that, it was simply a matter of time, of letting the election officials count the ballots and eventually certify a winner—whoever that might be.

Sometime later, Jim Bob Brady's knuckles rapped sharply against the window beside her head, jarring Joanna awake. Embarrassed, she sat up straight, pulled her coat around her, and rolled down the window.

“I just wanted to sit here and think for a while,” she said. “I must have dozed off.”

“You could a fooled me,” her father-in-law returned, standing with both hands on the window-sill. “You were dead to the world, snoring so loud, it's a wonder the glass didn't break. And sitting out here in the chill like this, you're liable to catch your death of cold.”

Obligingly, Joanna reached over and switched on the engine, but the air that blew through the heater seemed colder than that outside the car. “What time is it?” she asked.

“Half-past six. Dinner's on the table and getting cold. That mother of yours is tearing her hair out.”

“And so they sent you out looking for me. Sorry to cause so much trouble. Let's go then,” Joanna said, but Jim Bob Brady refused to budge.

“You're still not sleeping so good, are you?” he said accusingly.

Joanna yawned and stretched. She was stiff with cold. “Only when I'm not supposed to,” she returned with a disparaging smile. “I have a hard time closing my eyes and keeping them shut when I'm in bed at night, but I've spent a whole hour sitting out here in a freezing car, sleeping like a baby. Helen Barco's neighbors must think I've lost my mind.”

“Helen Barco's neighbors are too damn nosy,” Jim Bob Brady muttered under his breath, finally letting loose of the window and returning to his own vehicle.

Eleanor Lathrop met them at the front door of the Bradys' duplex apartment on Oliver Circle. “Where in the world have you been?” she demanded. “I tried calling Helen, but she was already closed. All I got was her answering machine.”

“I'm sorry,” Joanna said. “I fell asleep. In the car.”

“In the car!” Eleanor echoed. “In this weather? And with dinner already on the table!”

Eva Lou Brady brushed aside the controversy. “Don't worry about it, Eleanor. No harm's done. Go wash up, Joanna. And see if you can drag Jenny away from that TV set long enough to come eat. It won't take but a minute to warm all this back up in the microwave.”

The dinner was vintage Eva Lou Brady, what her husband called “old-fashioned comfort food”—meat loaf, mashed potatoes, canned-from-the-garden green beans, cherry Jell-O with bananas, and homemade pumpkin pie for dessert. Jim Bob and Eva Lou were still dealing with Andy's death—still grieving over their lost son—but helping with Joanna's survival seemed to give purpose to the elder Bradys' lives. Joanna was only too grateful for their unwavering support. Her own mother was another matter entirely.

While Eleanor sniffed disdainfully and picked at her food, Joanna ate with far more relish than she would have thought possible. Eating food Eleanor disapproved of was one way of continuing the Lathrop family mother/daughter grudge match that had been years in the making. Although hostilities between them boasted occasional periods of relative truce, none of those had ever blossomed into a lasting peace.

“I thought you were going to wear your winter gray,” Eleanor said, holding tight to her fork while a piece of Jell-O quivered delicately on the tines.

“It had a spot on it,” Joanna lied. She turned to her father-in-law. “Any word on the turnout?” she asked, daring at last to make some direct reference to the election.

“Better'n anybody figured,” he replied. “It's turned into a real horse race.”

Jennifer made a face. “Can't we talk about something else?”

“Why don't you want to talk about the election, Jenny, honey?” Eva Lou Brady asked mildly. “Don't you want your mama to win?”

“No!”

And there it was. The dining room grew quiet while Jennifer's blurted answer hung in the air like a dispirited balloon.

“That can't be true, Jenny,” Jim Bob Brady said. “Of course you want her to win. She's doing it for all of us—because we need her. She's doing it for you.”

Jennifer's eyes flashed with defiance. “She is not. She's doing it for her.”

With that, Jennifer flung her crushed paper napkin into her plate, shoved her chair into the wall behind her, and crashed from the table.

“What in the world was that all about?” Eleanor Lathrop demanded. “Whatever's gotten into her?”

Joanna carefully folded her own napkin. “I'd better go talk to her,” she said.

Jennifer had slammed the bedroom door shut behind her. Joanna knocked and waited.

“Come in,” Jenny said finally, reluctantly.

Her grandparents had furnished the extra bedroom with Jenny specifically in mind, making it a home-away-from-home; a place where she was always welcome. A serviceable secondhand day-bed sat in one corner of the room. The coverlet—a homemade quilt—was strewn with a collection
of matching pillows. Jennifer lay on the bed sobbing, her head buried beneath the body of a huge brown teddy bear.

Joanna stood in the doorway, her hand on the doorknob, unsure whether or not she should enter the room. A yawning, treacherous gulf seemed to lie between her and her daughter. Had there been a time like this for her own mother? Joanna wondered. A time when Eleanor had stood frozen in a doorway wondering helplessly how to comfort her own grieving child?

Joanna noticed a shadow on the floor of the room. It looked like a tightrope stretching between the doorway and the bed, between her and her despairing, sobbing child.

Joanna's heart caught in her throat. What would happen if she made the wrong decision? What if she somehow failed to successfully negotiate the distance between them? Would Joanna be destroying whatever relationship had once existed between herself and her daughter? Was history bound to repeat itself?

“Could I talk to you, please?” Joanna asked.

Jenny pulled the teddy bear more tightly over her head and didn't answer.

“I need to know what's wrong,” Joanna continued softly. “I need to know why you don't want me to win.”

Jenny rolled over, flinging the teddy bear aside, allowing her mother a glimpse of her tear-stained, desolate face. “I'm afraid,” she whispered.

Joanna resisted the temptation to close the distance between them. This was a turning point. She
needed to hear Jennifer's answer, needed to listen to what the child had to say without smothering her in a word-strangling embrace.

“What are you afraid of?” Joanna asked.

Jennifer's chin quivered. “That you'll die, too,” she whispered. “That somebody will kill you, too, just like they did Daddy. If that happens, I'll be all alone.”

That was it. The answer when it came was so blindingly simple, so logical, that it took Joanna's breath away. Of course! Why hadn't she seen it coming? If she had been a better mother, a more perceptive parent, maybe she would have.

“Just because I'm elected sheriff doesn't mean someone's going to try to kill me.”

“But Sheriff McFadden got killed,” Jennifer returned with unwavering childish logic. “And Daddy. And Grampa.”

“Grandpa Lathrop died because he was changing a tire in traffic—because he was helping someone—not because he was sheriff,” Joanna pointed out.

But even as she said the words, Joanna knew they weren't the right ones. They didn't address Jennifer Brady's very real concern; didn't do justice to her heartfelt worry. D. H. Lathrop had died by legitimately accidental means—if drunk drivers can ever be considered truly accidental. But the other two hadn't.

Walter McFadden and Andrew Brady had both died violent deaths as soldiers in the ongoing warfare between good and evil, between wrong and right. And Jenny wasn't mistaken in her concern.
Winning the election would put Joanna Brady directly on the front lines of that exact same conflict.

As though negotiating a minefield, Joanna walked carefully to the side of the bed and settled on the edge of it with her hands folded in her lap. Still she made no attempt to touch her daughter. “Sometimes you have to take a stand,” she said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“Your dad saw what terrible things drugs and drug dealers were doing to the people around him. He decided he had to try to stop it and…”

“And they killed him,” Jenny finished.

The room grew quiet. From the dining room came the hushed murmur of muted conversation.

“Everyone must die sometime, Jenny,” Joanna said at last. “Grandpa and Grandma Brady. Grandma Lathrop. You. Me.”

“But Grandma and Grandpa are old,” Jennifer objected. “Daddy wasn't.”

Again the room grew still as Joanna struggled to find the right words. “Do you remember the night of Daddy's funeral?”

Jennifer nodded wordlessly.

“We made a decision that night, the two of us together, a decision for me to run in your father's place, right?”

“Yes.”

“And when we said it, people believed we meant it—people like Jeff and Marianne, Angie Kellogg, your grandparents, and lots of other people, too. They've all worked hard to see that what we said that night comes true.”

“But…”

“No. Wait a minute. Let me finish. You're not the only one who's scared, Jenny. That's the reason I was late coming to dinner. While I was sitting outside Helen Barco's shop and worrying about whether or not I wanted to win the election, I fell asleep.”

Jenny's eyes widened. “You're worried, too?”

Joanna nodded. “And for the same reasons you are. If I win, what happens then? Maybe you're right. Maybe the bad people who came after Daddy will come after me as well. But I promised to run for sheriff. Promising to run means that if you win, you're also promising to do the job. Even if you're scared to death.”

Jennifer moved slightly on the bed, cuddling closer, putting her head in her mother's lap. “I don't want to be alone,” she whispered, grasping her mother's hand, squeezing it tight.

Joanna felt hot tears well in her eyes. “I know,” she said. “I don't want you to be, either. I'll try to be careful.”

“Promise?”

Not letting go with one hand, Joanna used the other to brush a strand of damp hair off Jennifer's still tear-stained cheeks. Unable to speak, she nodded.

“Girl Scout's honor?” Jennifer pressed.

“Girl Scout's honor,” her mother whispered in return, while Helen Barco's mascara streamed unnoticed down her face.