Sacred Sins

dead?”
    “Yeah.” He took the keys from her, and in a gesture she found sweet, unlocked the car himself. Tess looked at his face and saw, as clearly as if he'd spoken, who had fired the shot. Her values, the code she lived by, warred briefly with a new awareness. Putting a hand on his collar, she drew him down and kissed him. “Thanks for keeping him alive.” She got in the car, smiling up at him before she shut the door. “See you at dinner.”
    Half in love with her himself, Ed walked back to his partner. “You don't go to Thanksgiving dinner, you're one dumb sonofabitch.”
    Ben shook off grogginess as Ed slammed the car door. “What?”
    “And you shouldn't need her Uncle Joe to punch you in the ribs.” Ed started the engine with a roar.
    “Ed, did you get a bad piece of granola?”
    “You better start looking at what's in front of your face, partner, before you end up tripping over the saw.”
    “Saw? What saw?”

    “Farmer's sawing wood,” Ed began as he drove off the lot. “City slicker's watching him. Dinner bell rings and the farmer starts moving but he trips over the saw. He just picks himself up and starts cutting wood again. Slicker asks him why he doesn't go in to dinner and the farmer says, since he tripped over the saw, it's no use going in. There won't be anything left.”
    Ben sat in silence for a full ten seconds. “That explains it. Why don't you turn back around, we'll go into the hospital and have them take a look at you?”
    “The point is, if you fuck around when opportunity is staring you in the face, you miss it. You got a hell of a woman, Ben.”
    “I think I know that.”
    “Then you better be damn careful you don't trip over the saw.”

Chapter 16

    I T WAS JUST beginning to snow when Joey walked out of the back door. Knowing the storm door rattled, he pulled it carefully closed until it latched. He'd remembered to take his gloves, and had even pulled his blue ski cap over his head. Rather than changing to boots, he kept on his high tops. They were his favorite.
    No one saw him leave.
    His mother was in the den with his stepfather. He knew they'd been arguing about him, because their voices had been pitched low and had carried that thin, nervous tone their voices carried whenever they argued about him.
    They didn't think he knew.
    His mother had roasted a turkey with all the trimmings. Throughout the meal she had chatted brightly, too brightly, about it being nice to have Thanksgiving with just the family. Donald had joked about leftovers and bragged about the pumpkin pie he'd baked himself. There'd been cranberry sauce and real butter and the little crescent rolls that popped up fluffy in the oven.
    It had been the most miserable meal of Joey's life.
    His mother didn't want him to have any problems.

    She wanted him to be happy, do well in school, and go out for basketball. Normal. That was the word Joey had heard her use in an urgent undertone to his stepfather. I just want him to be normal.
    But he wasn't. Joey guessed his stepfather sort of understood that, and that's why they argued. He wasn't normal. He was an alcoholic, just like his father.
    His mother said his father was NO GOOD.
    Joey understood that alcoholism was a disease. He understood addiction and that there was no cure, only a continuing period of recovery. He also understood that there were millions of alcoholics, and that it was possible to be one and live the normal life his mother wanted so badly for him. It took acceptance and effort and change. Sometimes he got tired of making the effort. If he told his mother he was tired, she would get upset.
    He knew, too, that alcoholism could often be inherited. He'd inherited his from his father, the same way he'd inherited the NO GOOD.
    The streets were quiet as he headed out of the nice, tidy neighborhood. Snowflakes fluttered in the beam of streetlights like the fairy dancers in storybooks he remembered his mother reading him years before. He could see the illumination in windows where people were eating their Thanksgiving meal or resting after the effort in front of the TV.
    His father hadn't come for him.
    He hadn't called.
    Joey thought he understood why his father didn't love him anymore. He didn't like to be reminded about the drinking and the fighting and the bad times.
    Dr. Court said his father's disease hadn't been Joey's fault. But Joey figured if he'd gotten the sickness from his father, then maybe, somehow, his father had gotten the