Buried In Buttercream

got up from the chair and walked over to the sofa. She sat on the edge of it and began to stroke Savannah’s hair, as she had so many times when Savannah was a child. “Darlin’,” she said. “You don’t have to lie and say that he didn’t mean to do what he did. It was a deliberate, evil act. There’s no getting around that. You should never lie to yourself about that.”
    “Then how can I forgive him? How can I love him and feel all warm and fuzzy when I think about him?”
    “That’s not what forgiveness is, child. It’s not some warm, fuzzy emotion. You can get a good feeling like that just eating a nice piece of chocolate or a perfect biscuit with peach preserves. Emotions come and go with the tides. They ain’t worth spit.”
    Savannah reached for her grandmother’s hand. “Then what is forgiveness?”
    “Well ... different people have different takes on it. And I don’t claim to know what it is for sure. But I know a few things it ain’t. It ain’t pretending nothing happened to you when it did. It ain’t saying that what happened wasn’t no big deal and didn’t matter. It ain’t saying the person didn’t know what they were up to, if they did. And it ain’t deciding that the rattlesnake that bit you is now gonna be your best friend forever. That’s just foolishness that’ll get you bit again.”
    “Good. ’Cause if it was any of those things, I’d be up the creek without a paddle.”
    “I think forgiveness is a sacred thing, and it’s so hard to get the job done proper.”
    She continued to stroke Savannah’s hair, and the comfort of the simple gesture went deep into those areas of Savannah’s soul that she was afraid would never find peace again.
    “I think,” Granny continued, “that it’s more like just letting it all go. Letting go of the anger and the pain. Letting go of the daydreaming about how you’d like to get even with ’em, or at least make them understand what damage they’ve done to you. Letting go of the wish that you could change what happened, ’cause you can’t.”
    “I do feel all those things. I wish I could go back and do things differently so that it wouldn’t happen. I wish he was here so I could tell him how much he hurt me, what he took from me.”
    “Of course you want to. But you can’t. And the anger and the pain are just going to hurt you. In the long run, maybe even more than he hurt you. You can’t get even or change the past. And chances are, even if you could make him understand what he put you through, he wouldn’t give a hoot. If he was the kind of person who felt compassion for others and remorse for his bad deeds, he never could’ve done such a wicked thing to you in the first place.”
    Savannah thought it over, long and hard.
    Finally, she reached for her grandmother’s hand and kissed it, thinking that for all its wrinkles, it was the dearest hand on earth.
    “Just put it away?”
    “Let ’er go.”
    “Easy to say, and hard to do.”
    “You’re probably going to have to do it over and over again, a thousand times or ten thousand, till it’s a habit.”
    Savannah smiled. “Like brushing your teeth and making your bed and feeding the hound dog.”
    “Yep. Only a whole heap harder.”

Chapter 12
    S avannah and Dirk got an early start the next morning, even foregoing the usual full Reid breakfast by opting for coffee and donuts.
    But even though they were on the road by eight o’clock, it was after noon before they finally laid eyes on Francie Di Napoli.
    And when they did, they got an eyeful.
    When Francie was on the job, she was quite something to behold—a stripper better known professionally as “Candie Kisses” in a dive just outside San Carmelita’s city limits.
    Willy’s Rendezvous was open twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, catering to all sorts of guys—from run-of-the-mill blue-collar workers to motorcycle gang members to oil-field laborers to doctors and lawyers who decided to go slumming on their lunch hours away from their posh, seaside offices.
    “You don’t have to go in here,” Dirk had told her when they arrived at Willy’s with its flashing neon sign that said, “Girls, Girls, Girls!!!”
    “I’ll go in with you,” Savannah told him. “But I’m not going to sit on any bar stool or touch the doorknob if I can help it. I swear, the last time we had to take a perp out of here, I caught something creepy and had to use a prescription cream to get rid of