refrigerator. “What about your friends up the mountain?” Ali asked, thinking in sudden embarrassment that only a week ago, Kip had been bunking in a snowy homeless encampment up on the Mogollon Rim.
“I’m sure they’d be most appreciative, ma’am,” Kip said. “If there was any of it you didn’t want,” he added, “any you thought you could spare.”
“Ask my dad,” she said. “Tell him I have way more food here than I’ll ever be able to eat. Maybe the two of you could come collect it tomorrow or the next day and take it up the mountain.”
“I’ll talk to him about it,” Kip said nodding. “See what he has to say. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
He exited then, scurrying away as if uncomfortable talking to her alone. Once he was gone, Ali limped out to the kitchen. The doctor had warned her that she’d feel worse in a day or two than she had in the hospital, and it was true. The many bruises on her body had gone from black to greenish purple. As they changed color they seemed to hurt more rather than less.
Ali picked through the goodies. Her mother had sent over a covered dish filled with potato soup. She dished up some of that and put it in the microwave to heat. She reached for a piece of chicken, to go along with the soup. But the chicken reminded her of Howie Bernard and the kids. She pulled the tin foil back over the chicken and settled for soup only.
Chris called while she was eating. “How are you?” he asked.
“Better,” Ali said, making the effort to sound more chipper than she felt. “I’m doing fine. Really.”
She’d had to talk like crazy to keep him from abandoning his finals and coming straight back to Sedona. Her mother had helped with that one, or it might not have worked.
“You have enough to eat?”
She surveyed the mounds of food covering her counter. “Plenty,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe how much food there is.”
Chris didn’t sound like himself, though. “What about you?” Ali asked. “Are your finals going all right?”
“They’re fine,” he said without conviction.
“What’s wrong, Chris?” she said at last. “I can tell by your voice that something’s up.”
“It’s all my fault,” he said. “I’m the one who talked you into doing the blog thing. If I had just left you alone, none of this would have happened.”
“Yes,” she said, “and then I wouldn’t be sitting here gorging myself on your grandmother’s delicious potato soup. Things happen for a reason, Chris. I was looking for a new direction, and you gave me one. Of course, neither one of us expected me to get the crap beaten out of me along the way. But what is it they say at the gym, ‘No pain; no gain.’ ”
“Mom,” Chris groaned. “Don’t even joke about it.”
“I’m not joking. Besides, what if Witherspoon had attacked someone who hadn’t had a gun. What then?”
“But…”
“But what?”
“You killed someone, Mom,” Chris objected. “My mother actually took another person’s life. It’s not a video game; not a movie. A real live person’s life.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?”
“I guess,” he said miserably. “I mean, the whole time I was growing up, I never thought you were that kind of person.”
“You know what, Chris? Neither did I. All those years I lived with Paul Grayson, I was a mealy-mouthed namby-pamby. I put up with his bullshit and got along no matter what. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that the last couple of days and wondering why I did it, and I think I’ve finally figured it out.
“I did it because I was afraid something might change. Afraid something might happen. Afraid that if Paul dumped me I wouldn’t be able to make it on my own. But I’m not afraid anymore, Chris, I’m not afraid of anything. And that includes Paul Grayson and cutlooseblog.com. Yes, you’re right. The blog brought me Ben Witherspoon. So what? Facing him down brought me something I needed, something that had been missing from my life for a very long time-self respect. When push came to shove, when it was a choice of him or me, I had guts enough to choose me. Finally. And that counts for something.”
Even as she said this, she realized it wasn’t completely true. Because she had installed a security system. And she had felt that sudden sense of dread when Kip showed up on the doorstep. But it was mostly true, when it came to the big things, anyway.
“You’re going to be all right, then?” Chris asked after a pause.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I’m going to be more than all right. You can count on it.”
She sat at the table for a long time after she got off the phone with Chris, wondering if she had said too much or too little and whether or not her outburst had made any sense-to him or to her. He had asked her what time it was, and she had ended up telling him how the clock was made. Too much information, she thought.
Bored with watching a screen full of her empty front and back doors, Ali had switched over to a Phoenix channel where the evening news featured the story of a young fresh-faced man, Hunter Jackson, a 2003 graduate of Chandler High School who had died two days earlier in a mortar attack on his convoy in Baghdad.
Hunter hadn’t seen the mortar that was destined to kill him, but suddenly Ali Reynolds had a whole new understanding of all those other young-faced kids who had gone off to do their duty and who had made the hard choices to kill or be killed; to kill or let their buddies or their allies or civilians be killed. She knew just as certainly that those young people came away from those decisions-those momentary life and death decisions-changed in the same way she was now changed as well.
“God bless them,” Ali whispered aloud. “And bring them safely home.”
Chapter 18
After dinner she fell asleep for a while again. By nine o’clock, she was wide awake and back reading mail at cutlooseblog.com.
Ms. Reynolds,
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Shame on you.
David
Not very original, Ali thought. He took that one straight off a bumper sticker. And she didn’t post it, either.
Dear Ali,
I don’t know your regular e-mail address, so I’m writing to you through this. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch with you through all your troubles with your job and everything. And when I heard about you and Paul splitting up, I just couldn’t believe it. You always seemed so happy.
Seemed, Ali thought. That’s the operant word.
And then there was that picture of you that showed up in the Times last week. Please tell me that you haven’t really been forced into waiting tables and that you’re having to live in a trailer. If Paul won’t give you enough money to live on, I could probably send you some.
So clearly whoever was writing this hadn’t bothered to read any of the rest of the blog. Ali looked to the bottom. Roseanne Maxwell. Roseanne’s husband, Jake, was one of Paul’s so-called buddies and co-workers. So that’s what this was-a thinly veiled political effort on Jake’s part to get the goods on Paul and gain some corporate advantage.
And now I’m hearing that there was some kind of break-in last week at the place where you’re staying and that you were hurt and somebody actually died. How awful! You must be falling apart. If you need a place to stay, our door is always open, and our lovely little casita has just been redone and it’s totally available. Not only that, I’m sure Jake can do something to help you with the job situation. It can’t be as hopeless as it seems. Chin up.
Love and Kisses,
Roseanne Maxwell
