Brazen Virtue

you Kathy and I weren’t close. What it really comes down to is she was never the person I wanted her to be. I pretended, and I covered for her when I could. The truth is she resented me, even hated me from time to time. She didn’t want to, she couldn’t help it.”
    “Grace, don’t drag all this up.”
    “I have to. If I don’t I’ll never be able to bury it, or her. I detested Jonathan. It hurt so much less to blame everything on him. I don’t like problems, you know.” In a gesture she used only when she was very tired or very tense, she began to knead her brow. “I avoid them or ignore them. I decided I’d make it his fault that Kathleen didn’t bother to answer my letters, or that she was never warm whenever I convinced her to let me visit. I told myself he’d turned her into a snob, that if she was busy climbing the social ladder, it was for him. When they divorced I blamed that on him, totally. I’m not good with middle ground.”

    She stopped here because the rest was harder. After folding her hands in her lap, she continued. “I blamed her drug problem on him, even her death. Ed, I can’t tell you how much I wanted to believe he’d killed her.” When she looked at him again her eyes were dry, but vulnerable, so achingly vulnerable. “At the funeral, he let me have it. He told me things I already knew in my heart but had never been able to accept about Kathleen. I hated him for it. I hated him for stripping away the illusion I’d allowed myself. In the past few weeks I’ve had to accept who Kathleen was, what she was, and even why.”
    He touched her cheek. “You couldn’t have been another person, Grace.”
    So he understood, so easily. If it already hadn’t happened, she’d have fallen in love with him then. “No, I couldn’t. I can’t. The guilt’s eased considerably. But you see, she was still my sister. I can still love her. And I know if I can do this one last thing, I can let go. If I took the easy road now, I don’t think I could live with it.”
    “Grace, there are other ways.”
    “Not for me. Not this time.” She took his hand and cupped it between the two of hers. “You don’t know me as well as you think. For years I’ve turned over all the dirty work to someone else, for ten percent. If there was something unpleasant to be dealt with, I’d toss it to my agent, or my business manager, or my lawyer. That way I could just go along without too many distractions and write. If it was something I had to handle myself, I’d pick the easiest route or ignore it completely. Don’t ask me, please don’t ask me to turn this over to you and do nothing. Because I might.”
    He pushed a hand through his hair. “What the hell do you want me to do?”
    “Understand,” she murmured. “It’s important to me for you to understand. I’ll have to do it even if you don’t, but I’d be happier if you could. I’m sorry.”

    “It’s not that I don’t understand, it’s that I think it’s a mistake. Call it instinct.”
    “If it’s a mistake, it’s one I have to make. I can’t pick up my life, not really pick it up again, until I do this.”
    There were a dozen valid, sensible arguments he could make. But there was only one that mattered. “I couldn’t take it if anything happened to you.”
    She managed to smile. “Me either. Look, I’m not really stupid. I can swear to you I won’t do something idiotic like the heroine in a B movie. You know, the kind who knows there’s a homicidal maniac on the loose and hears a noise?”
    “Instead of locking the doors, she goes outside to see what it is.”
    “Yeah.” Now she grinned at him. “It drives me crazy. I hate a contrived plot device.”
    “You can’t forget this isn’t a plot. You don’t have a screenplay, Grace.”
    “I intend to be very careful. And I’m counting on the department’s finest.”
    “If we agree, you’ll do exactly as you’re told?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Even if you don’t like it.”
    “I hate blanket promises, but okay.”
    He lifted her down from the car. “We’ll talk about it.”

Chapter 13
    C HARLTON P. HAYDEN HAD had a very successful trip north. In Detroit he’d drummed up solid support from the unions. Blue-collar workers were lined up behind him, drawn in by his America for Americans campaign. Fords and Chevys were decorated with HAYDEN’S AMERICA—SOLID, SECURE, SUCCESSFUL bumper stickers. He spoke in simple terms, everyman’s terms, in orations two speech