had Katherine to cater to his every whim. “If you’ll excuse me, I guess I’ll go find my chair,” she added.
“No, wait,” O’Brien said. “I’m glad the two of us have a moment to talk. I wanted to ask a favor of you.”
“A favor? What kind?”
David O’Brien reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet-covered jewelry box. “Here,” he said. “1 found this box in Brianna’s room. When the coroner’s office returned Bree’s personal effects to me, I realized where the box must have come from.”
Popping the lid open, he held out the tiny black box, cradling it in the palm of his hand, offering it to Joanna. She looked down at the box. There, nestled in a velvet bed, sat two pearl earrings. One had been found on Brianna’s body. The other had been located later outside the gate to Green Brush Ranch.
“I believe you know the young man who gave my daughter these, don’t you?” David O’Brien asked.
Joanna nodded. “His name’s Ignacio,” she said. “Ignacio Ybarra.”
“I’ve read Bree’s journal,” O’Brien continued huskily. “In it she usually referred to him as Nacio. I was wondering, would you mind seeing to it that these are returned to him? Now that I’ve had them repaired, I thought he’d probably like to have them back. I certainly have no use for them.”
Carefully, Joanna took the tiny box from David O’Brien’s hand, closed it, and then dropped it into her pocket. “I’ll be glad to,” she said.
“I understand this Nacio wants to be a doctor someday,” O’Brien went on. “He expected to go to school on a football scholarship, but that’s impossible now. The opportunity evaporated when he was injured in that football game last November.”
“Yes,” Joanna said. She knew all about that, too. She had learned it the same way David O’Brien had-from reading Brianna’s journal.
“Would you mind giving him a message from me?” David asked.
Joanna nodded. “Certainly,” she replied. “What kind of message?”
“Tell him I have some college monies set aside that I don’t want to see go to waste. Tell him my banker, Sandra Henning, will call him next week to set up an appointment. It’s a scholarship now,” O’Brien added. “Not a loan. And it’s not really from me, it’s from…” Choked with emotion he broke off without finishing.
Looking at the man’s ravaged face, it was easy for Joanna to see what was going on. Faced with his own culpability, David O’Brien was trying to make amends-to Bree and to Nacio both.
“It’s from Bree,” Joanna finished for him. “A scholarship from Bree.”
“Come on,” Agnes Pratt interrupted, tapping Joanna on the shoulder. “It’s time to take our seats.”
As soon as Joanna sat down, she was able to see Jenny and Butch sitting in the front row of the grandstand. They weren’t difficult to pick out since Jenny was standing on her feet, waving frantically. Joanna waved back at them-a tiny, discreet wave-letting them know she had seen them, too.
A few minutes later, the crowd was asked to stand for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As the organist from Bible Baptist Church struck up the first notes of the national anthem, Joanna glanced at David O’Brien’s face. He was sitting at attention with tears glistening on both haggard cheeks while his lips mouthed the familiar words:
“Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light…”
As the music swelled and washed over the crowd, Joanna felt tears in her own eyes as well-tears in her eyes and goose-flesh on her arms and legs. That always happened to her when she heard those wonderfully stirring notes of music. On this occasion, though, it was different somehow. It was more than just the music. It was David O’Brien, too.
Here was a man who had lost everything that mattered to him-lost it not once, but twice. And yet he had somehow found the courage to go on. He had figured out a way to turn his personal tragedy and culpability into something else-into something good for other people, for a townful of children who otherwise would have been disappointed by missing the magic of a Fourth of July fireworks celebration. Not only that, David O’Brien was also finding a way to break free of a life-long history of prejudice in order to reach out to someone else.
Watching him sing, Joanna had no doubt that David O’Brien’s unexpected generosity in the face of his own loss would help a brokenhearted boy from Douglas fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor.
Halfway through the song, Joanna reached into her pocket and let her fingers close tightly around the sturdy little velvet-covered box. Somehow, holding on to it helped her hold her own tears in check. For a while anyway. But by the time they reached “land of the free and the home of the brave” Joanna Brady just gave up and let herself cry.
Because she needed to. And because, for a change, crying felt good.
About the Author
J.A. Jance is the author of the J.P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, and two standalone thrillers. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington.
