“And my father.”
“Yeah, I remember the pictures you had of him.” Her fingers worked along the stitching in the leather strap of her handbag. “How old is… is Graham?”
“Fourteen.”
The two women stared at each other across the room, across the years of bitterness. Donna Dee broke the strained silence. “You’re going to make me ask, aren’t you?”
“Ask what?”
“Was he conceived that night?”
“You mean the night I was raped?” Jade suddenly stood up. “That should give you and Hutch something titillating to discuss over dinner tonight.”
Donna Dee stood also. “Hutch and I won’t be having dinner together. We won’t even be talking to each other tonight. Hutch is in intensive care in a hospital in Savannah, Jade. He’s dying!”
Her words echoed off the walls. For a moment the two women glared at each other, then Donna Dee collapsed into her chair again and held her forehead in her hand. “He’s dying.”
Just as Fritz had been, Hutch was a figurehead behind a badge. He was the Patchetts’ hand puppet. Before Jade’s return, it had been nothing except a theory. Her first day in Palmetto, she had tested it. She deliberately broke the speed limit and was stopped by a patrolman.
When he tried to give her a ticket, she demurred. “Mr. Patchett won’t like it when he hears about this. I’m a friend of his. He told me that if I ever got a speeding ticket, not to worry about it. All he has to do is call the sheriff and he’ll fix it, he said. Why put everybody to so much trouble? It would be pointless, wouldn’t it?” Assuming a role she detested, she removed her sunglasses and dazzled the deputy with a smile.
“Well, I’m glad you told me, little lady.” He slipped the citation book back into his pocket. “Sheriff Jolly would have chewed my ass good if I had offended a friend of Mr. Patchett’s. Are we talking Neal or the old man?”
“Take your pick,” she said, starting her car.
“I don’t reco’nize you. What’d you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” she said, and drove away, feeling smug for proving her guess right.
Now she felt numb. She wouldn’t have the pleasure of exposing Hutch as a corrupt coward who didn’t fear damnation as much as he feared Ivan and Neal Patchett’s ridicule.
“I didn’t know, Donna Dee,” she said. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
Donna Dee snorted scornfully. “Yeah, I’ll bet. If Hutch dies, that’ll be two down and one to go, won’t it?”
“Careful. That’s as good as conceding that what the three of them have in common is raping me.”
“They’re the three you accused.” She regarded Jade curiously. “Ivan is as good as dead too, you know. He’ll never fully recover from that accident. Neal was in bad shape for a while. At first everybody thought he’d been emasculated. Wouldn’t it have been a hoot if the superstud of Palmetto couldn’t get it up anymore? Turns out, that was a na
sty rumor. Plenty of women swear he’s as hard and horny as ever.”
“I’m really not interested.”
Donna Dee continued as though Jade hadn’t spoken. “Fritz and Lamar are dead. Ivan’s crippled. Hutch is dying. God has almost evened up the score for you, Jade. You must be living right.”
“I’m not responsible for any of their misfortunes. And no matter what you think, Donna Dee, I don’t wish Hutch were dead.”
“You’re not going to cry at his funeral, though, are you?”
“No. I cried all my tears at Gary’s funeral.”
Donna Dee took a swift breath and said defensively, “Hutch didn’t have anything to do with that. Neal told Gary, not Hutch.”
“Told Gary what?”
“That you were pregnant and went to Georgie for help.”
The bit of information, so offhandedly revealed, paralyzed Jade. Though she remained motionless, her mind spun crazily. Her blood rushed through her veins at an alarming rate.