The Reckless Oath We Made(105)

“It is one of the risks with this type of concession,” Ms. Howell said. I don’t think she had quite recovered from Gentry’s outburst, because she couldn’t look at him. “It requires him to show progress in his treatment. If he doesn’t, they would be able to incarcerate him for as long as they deemed necessary. For public safety.”

“Of course, he’ll make progress,” I said. I waited for Bill to say something, but he’d picked up Gentry’s article and was flipping through it. “And if he goes to trial and gets convicted, what then? He’ll never get another aeronautics job. Not with a felony. What will he do?”

“I got him the Bombardier job. He can get another job. No, he’ll never get security clearance for military work with a felony, but there are civilian jobs. Besides, maybe he’ll be acquitted,” Bill said, and then the thing he kept saying to all his friends: “Hell, he ought to get a medal for what he did.”

At one point, I almost agreed with him, but in that moment, it made me angry. Unreasonably, irrationally angry at Bill. At Gentry. At myself.

“Gentry, I want you to sign this. I think it’s the best option you have,” I said.

“I will not.” I wanted to believe he was talking to Gawen or the Witch, but he was looking at my hands where I had them laced together on the table.

“Do you understand what it would mean for you to go to prison? It’s not safe. It’s—”

“My mother, I know it well, but I will not go to a mental hospital. Let those who suffer an illness of the mind do so and prosper of it, but I do not and I will not.”

Gentry went to the door, and I knew from the set of his shoulders there was no way to convince him.

That morning, as Bill and I had been driving the nearly eight hours from Wichita for the umpteenth time, I’d held on to the hope that we would go home with things decided. Instead I went home in tears, knowing we would come back for another meeting. As many meetings as it took to convince Gentry to take the plea deal, or to prepare him for trial. I was so upset when I left that I forgot to tell him I loved him.

For the longest time, I’d worried that I was overprotective of Gentry. I’d sheltered him too much and kept him from finding his own way. Now I felt like I hadn’t sheltered him enough. I should have kept him on a shorter leash. I should have kept him under my wing, like the mother hen Bill always accused me of being.

Instead, I’d let Bill teach him about guns like they were harmless toys. I’d let Gentry take boxing lessons. I’d let him go to all those tournaments, and learn to joust, and hang all those swords in his room, like it was a hobby. Like it was model trains instead of learning how to kill people.

When we got home, Bill went to pick up Trang and Elana from Bernice’s, and I went around the house, doing a few chores and trying to calm myself before they got home. Trang had left his baseball cleats in the laundry room, so I carried them back to his room to put them away. There, I looked at the swords in a way I never had before.

In the beginning, when Gentry was a teenager, it was all wooden swords and rubber axes, pretend weapons. The claymore hanging over his bed was the first real sword he’d bought with his summer lawn-mowing money. Hardened steel, double-edged blade. The handle was wrapped in leather and almost a foot long. It was a sword meant to be wielded with two hands, and it took me both hands to lift it down from the wall.

Gentry had left his bed neatly made as always, and I stood in the middle of it in my shoes, trying to steady myself enough to get down while holding that ridiculous sword.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but it wasn’t staying in my house.





CHAPTER 51





Gentry



The Witch spake not to me tho I cried out for a word. Let her curse me as readily as Hildegard, or mock me as Gawen did, if only she would speak. She left me to be torn between them like a bone twixt two dogs. In her silence, ’twas the black knight who counseled me.

“Speak not what might harm Lady Zhorzha,” he said. “If thou art in truth her champion, hold thy tongue.”

Tho my mind was confused, I heeded him, and spake only those things that had been wrought by mine own hand, and what I knew of Sir Edrard’s courage. For he could no more suffer the consequences, and I would have it known that he was true and valiant to the last. Of Lady Zhorzha, Master Dirk, and Sir Alva, I was silent. Many a time, I told the ilk tale of my journey to Arkansas, first to the sheriff’s men, then to Mansur, then to the lady Howell, my father, and my mother. I was heartsore to distress her and recalled my father’s words when I was a boy. If I would be noble, he said, I must strive to do her honor.

Certs, to give her grief was dishonor, and I knew she grieved when I would not do as she asked. She bade me say I knew not what I did, that I was ill, for then the court would send me to some safe place. I might have done it, ere I read how I could be kept there and physicked beyond my wish. As ever, she desired to protect me, but I accorded not with her desire. My mother went from me in tears, and I could offer her no comfort.

In truth, I was glad when they had gone, and I was returned to my cell, where there was what silence I could have. I made my prayers to appease Hildegard, and I told tales to soothe Gawen. Sleep would not come in that room where the window was no more than an archer’s loophole, but there weren hours enough to exercise myself. I passed many weeks thus, and each week the lady Howell came with my father, or my mother, for they could not often come together, and leave Elana and Trang with my aunt. It shamed me that I was such a burden unto them, and I bade them not surrender so much for me. ’Twas also that I wished to speak alone with the lady Howell, for she was mine advocate and not my mother’s. It liked her not, but she came as I asked, and soon I made her know my intent.