“Your concern is touching, but if you’re here on some obnoxious errand for Bonnie, I’d just as soon you got it over with.”
“As you wish.” Megan edged forward, just close enough that she could touch the edge of the bed, then pulled two thrice-folded documents out of her purse. “This is a copy of the restraining order that was issued today by Judge Harris. It orders you to stay away from your wife, your son, and their home.”
“Ain’t that swell. Anything else?”
“Yes.” She tossed the other document on his bed. “This is to serve notice on you that a hearing has been set for the fifteenth day of January next year, at which time the judge will decide whether to make the order permanent. You can read the details in the notice. I must tell you, though, that if you decide not to attend the hearing, in all probability the order will be granted by default.”
“Thanks so much.” He stared down at the papers on the bed, but didn’t touch either of them.
Megan was puzzled. He seemed bitter, yes, but he was not hostile or belligerent. There was nothing threatening or evil about him. She realized that in the perhaps one minute she’d been in the room with him, her fear had melted away and been replaced by a different sentiment altogether.
She was feeling sorry for him.
“Carl, how-how did this mess get started?”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning … I don’t know. The threats. The fighting. All this unhappiness.”
Carl looked away. “Why do you want to know? Is this some trick to improve Bonnie’s case against me?”
“No. It’s nothing to do with that. I just …” Her voice faded. “I don’t know. I was just curious. And I thought you might like to talk to someone.”
“Even if I did, it wouldn’t be you. You don’t strike me as the listening type.”
“Really?” Megan couldn’t explain why, but for some reason she wanted to understand this man. Something about the whole situation was beginning to trouble her. “I used to spend most of my time listening. People seemed to think I was pretty good at it.”
“Why on earth would you want to listen to people? Were you getting paid by the hour?”
“This was before I was a lawyer. I was a priest.”
“A-” He turned his head and did a double take. “A priest? But you’re-”
“Yes?”
Carl’s voice dropped a notch. “You’re a woman.”
“Thanks!”
“I mean, I didn’t know there were female priests. ’Cept maybe in China or something.”
Megan bit back her grin. “You’ve been away from church too long, Carl. The Episcopal church has ordained female priests for a good many years now. I wasn’t even one of the first.”
“Wow. Sorry, my parents were Southern Baptists. I didn’t know.” He looked up at her again. “And does that mean-”
Megan had seen the look before; she knew where the conversation was going. “Episcopal priests are allowed to marry.”
“Really?” For the moment, at least, he seemed to have forgotten his own problems. “So when’d you give up being a priest?”
Megan’s eyes darkened. “April 19, 1995.” She smoothed a wrinkle in her skirt. “Oh, I didn’t stop that very day. But that’s when it was all over for me. That’s when I lost my faith.”
“That’s the day the Murrah building was bombed, isn’t it?”
Megan nodded grimly. “My mother was in the building, working in the Social Security office. She was trapped in the wreckage for hours, bleeding, in pain. Listening to the agonized cries of her friends. She survived, but then again, not really.” Her head dropped. “She was never the same.”
“And you stopped being a priest after that?”
“It’s hard to explain. I mean, it sounds so trite in a way. I certainly wasn’t a stranger to tragedy. I saw it every day as a priest. I saw it happen to other people, that is. But never to me.” She brushed her hair back, looked away. “Mother recovered her strength, but not her spirit.”
“Where were you when the bomb exploded?”
“At St. Paul’s. That’s where I worked. The cathedral is a block away from the Murrah building, but it was still ruined. All that beautiful stained glass-shattered. A shining testament to faith destroyed. In the blink of an eye.” She rubbed her face furiously. “And all because some poorly educated zealots-some supposed Christians with an axe to grind-decided they had the right to ruin hundreds of lives.” She bit down on her lower lip. “Well, if something like that could happen … it was very difficult for me to believe there really was a God. Or if there was a God, and he would allow that to happen… well, then I didn’t want to be one of his priests.”
Carl stared at the floor. “My mom died. Almost ten years now.” He lifted his head. “You still miss her?”
Megan’s eyes met his. “Every day.”
“That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? That’s why you lost faith. Your mother is gone, but you haven’t really let her go yet. And you haven’t forgiven God for what happened to her.” His tone changed. “So you went to law school?”
“Why not? I still wanted to help people. But for real this time, not in a mushy-squishy spiritual way. I wanted to get down in the trenches and fight. Help the wronged find justice. Stop deadbeat dads. Protect women from abusive-um, well, you know.”
Carl frowned. “Yeah, I know.”
“I made great grades in law school, and next thing I knew, I was being courted by all these big law firms- Crowe Dunlevy, McAfee Taft. They seemed very supportive of what I wanted to do. So I took my best offer and joined a big corporate firm. How could I resist?”
“Except it didn’t turn out the way you expected.”
“No, it didn’t.” She fell silent.
“Maybe you ought to quit the firm. Set up your own shop.”
Megan sighed. “That would be wonderful. But it would require tons of start-up capital, which I don’t have. And even if I did …” Her eyes drifted. “I’m not sure I could bring it off.” She looked up abruptly. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It isn’t why I came.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said. He shifted around in the bedsheets, as if he wanted to move but had nowhere to go. “Bonnie tell you what happened to me?”
“No. I mean, she said you used to be a cop. And that you …um…”
“Liked to drink? Except I bet that’s not how she put it.”
Megan almost smiled. “Well, no. It isn’t.” She inched forward. She couldn’t explain why, but suddenly she was interested in hearing more of his story, knowing more about what brought him where he was today. “Tell me what happened.”
Carl shrugged, looked away. “It was a while back, just a few months before the bombing, actually. Me and my partner got into some trouble. A shoot-out, Gang warfare. Near downtown. Bullets were flying. We were on our own for almost half an hour before reinforcements arrived.”
“That must’ve been a nightmare.”
He shrugged again. “We pulled through. But one of the gang members didn’t. He got shot dead.”
Megan’s hand covered her mouth. “I remember reading about that.”
“At first the reporters were our buddies. Talked about how heroic we were. The thin blue line holding back the mongrel hordes.”
“But that didn’t last.”
“Two days after the shooting, the word broke. The kid that got killed-he was only thirteen.” Carl swore under his breath. “Big for his age. And he was packing. But that didn’t change the public reaction. We’d killed a thirteen- year-old kid. And two days later, ballistics dropped the final straw.” His face seemed to tighten. “The bullet that killed the kid came from my gun.”
Megan’s lips parted. “That must’ve been horrible.”
“Needless to say, the press were no longer my buddies. They demanded an investigation. How could this happen? Where did procedures break down? And pretty soon you’re hearing words like
