Deadline (Sandra Brown)

Lemuel Jackson. On the Internet, for that matter. Anybody can be found. How about Glenda? She would have found me.”
    He cracked a smile, but quickly pulled it back in. “Would you have agreed to an interview?”
    “You know the answer to that. I’d like an answer to my question, please.”
    “What didn’t I try a straightforward approach? Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to write a story about Jeremy. I was urged to come down here, sit in on the trial, check it out. By the third day, I was basically bored, ready to cash in, go home, and find another topic of more interest to me. But I changed my mind and decided to stay, at least for a while longer. Take it to the next step.” He shrugged. “You know the rest.”
    “I caught you at taking it to the next step.”
    “It wasn’t my proudest moment when I came out of the bathroom yesterday and realized I’d been caught spying, with my pants down, literally.”
    She resisted the appeal of his crooked smile. “You always have an answer ready, don’t you?”
    “Not always, no.”
    “That hasn’t been my experience. All of your answers are self-deprecating, designed that way to be disarming, I’m sure.”
    He turned completely serious again. “I haven’t ‘designed’ my answers, Amelia, and I think you’re anything but disarmed right now. In fact, you seem locked and loaded. Are you that mad at me for playing with Hunter and Grant?”
    “Why would a grown man want to waste his time that way?”
    “I don’t consider it a waste of time.”
    “Even worse. That’s an admission that you have an ulterior motive. I hazard to guess what it is.”
    “You think I’m into little boys?”
    She didn’t say anything.
    “I took just as many pictures of you.”
    Recalling one in particular sent a rush of heat through her. “That’s supposed to reassure me?”
    “It should reassure you that I’m not a deviant.”
    “Perhaps. But it doesn’t rule out that you’re a slick opportunist.”
    He tipped his chin down and stared at his sandy bare feet. Or maybe he was staring at hers, their bare toes being only inches apart. In any case, it was several moments before he raised his head.
    “You don’t know me, so I don’t blame you in the slightest for being suspicious. In fact, I admire you for being ultraprotective and careful of who you let near your children. But I would never harm those boys, or you. Please trust me on that.”
    His words were stirring and persuasive, and she resented her strong inclination to believe them. “Why should I trust you when you so blatantly lied to me?”
    “About what?”
    “The photos. What kind of game are you playing?”
    “Game?”
    “I’d call it that. All those creepy things you did to work on me, play on my mind. Returning my lost watch, the porch light, the beach ball.”
    “Beach ball?”
    “And then there’s the photographs. Why come on so sincerely apologetic about them and tell me you’d returned them, when clearly you didn’t?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Thoroughly exasperated, she said, “There was nothing under the doormat when I got home last night. As you well know.”
    He became very still and stared at her for a count of ten. Then quietly he said, “I swear to you, I clipped all the photographs together and put them under your doormat.”

 
    Diary of Flora Stimel—June 5th, 1980
     
     
It’s taken me weeks to open this diary and begin to write about this. Up till now, I haven’t been able to put words on paper. Or do much of anything except cry. I’ve cried an ocean.
When I’m not crying, I sit and stare into space, unable to make myself move. I don’t care what I look like, or if I’m clean or not, or hungry, or sleepy. I don’t care if the world comes to an end. I’ve even wished for that. I know now what it means when people say somebody has “shut down.”
I knew the day would come. I’ve had years to get ready for it, but that didn’t help. I wasn’t ready at all. As the date got closer, even Carl would turn quiet and thoughtful, like he was reconsidering. I knew he wouldn’t change his mind, though, so I didn’t even try to talk him into it.
But I couldn’t leave Jeremy as easy as he did, and when I started carrying on, pleading with him to let him stay with us, he got mad. So I stopped begging. It was only making the separation harder on all of us.
Of course, I see the sense of it. It will be best for Jeremy. If I didn’t think so, I would have fought Carl