High Noon

“I wish it was him. Wish it was that son of a bitch. Roy’s dead, can’t change that. Part of me wishes it was Meeks so it would be over and done, and I’d know my family’s safe. But there’s another part, Liz, just as active, just as sharp, that wishes it was him so he’d go down. All the way down. And not for Roy, not in the guts, you know? So he’d go down for every minute inside that stairwell. I thought I’d come to terms with the way all that shook out, with the payment made. But standing in there, looking at him? I haven’t come to terms with it.”
    “Understandable.”
    “Is it?”
    “Scales are only balanced when your gut tells you they are. You may have to accept the payment. You don’t have to like it.”
    “I don’t.” Something loosened in her chest because she’d been able to say it, to spew it out to someone who understood. “I don’t like it one damn bit. He should do a little time helpless and terrified, then maybe…” Phoebe shook her head. “Problem for another day. I think I have enough others to fill the plate for now.”
    “You should give some thought to talking to the counselor.”
    “I will. Really. I need to get through this first.” She managed a smile. “That was better than coffee. Thanks for the ear, Liz.”
    “I got two when you need another.”

24
    She put it away, locked up the turmoil that seeing, hearing, watching Arnie Meeks had made swirl inside her. No time, no place for it now. It would come back, she knew, spurting up to twist her belly into knots. When it did, she’d just have to find a way to uncoil them until there was time, until there was a place.
    She had a whole checklist of priorities ahead of that one.
    On Jones, she parked, got out of the car. Why, she wondered, did the house seem to loom sometimes? She could go weeks, even months, without thinking of it as anything but home—a beautiful, graceful place to raise her child, to house her mother, her friend. A place to eat, sleep, live, even entertain occasionally.
    What did it matter that she hadn’t chosen to live there, to be there? In the end, it was only a house. Only brick and glass. Cousin Bess’s ghost had long since moved on.
    Lack of choice, she thought. It was all about choice, and not having options.
    Despite the fact she was needed inside, Phoebe walked around to the courtyard gate. Away from the police car, away from that looming face of brick and glass.
    Here, at least, there’d been choices, even if she’d left them almost entirely up to Ava. Gardens and paths and shady nooks, graceful tables, whimsical statuary.
    She sat on the steps of the veranda, looked out, and imagined that lovely courtyard somewhere else. New Orleans maybe, or just another street in Savannah. Could be Atlanta or Charlotte.
    And what difference, really, at the base of things?
    All the difference, she admitted. All the difference in the world.
    She heard the door open but didn’t turn. So much, she thought, for solo brooding time.
    Carter sat beside her, put a glass of wine in her hand. And said nothing at all.
    She took the first sip in silence, with only the elegant music of the fountain trickling through. “I’m having a sulk.”
    “Hence the wine. Want me to go back in?”
    “No. I decided to pick at an old scab. Cousin Bess, this house and the locks she put on the door I can’t open. Nothing to do about it, so it’s a good one to sulk about as I don’t have to find the solution.”
    “Which in every other instance you do.”
    She looked at him. “It’s what I do, isn’t it?”
    “It’s what you’ve taken on, almost as long as I can remember. Reuben was the big demarcation, but there was stuff before that. In the blurry before time.”
    She leaned her head against his shoulder a moment. “Everything changed when Daddy died. For me, before that’s the blurry time. She could’ve helped us then, you know. Cousin Bitch. There might not’ve been a Reuben if she’d done the right thing by Mama then. But she didn’t, and there’s no point speculating on what might’ve been.”
    She sat silent awhile, drinking wine, studying the fountain. “Mama came through for us, every day.”
    “I know it.”
    “It must’ve been so hard. When I think about it, I can’t fully imagine what it was like for her. The worry, the work, the grief. The fear. But she always came through for us. Then, she takes a chance on someone who makes her think she’s special, and who starts off treating