Mother May I(103)

But she was still Bree, and Bree, to him, was breathing. He would kill for her. He would die for any of these children. So. Here they were.

She turned back to check on Robbie. Her mother was trying to open the water bottle for him, and he was holding it away from her, saying, “I do it myseff!” That was his second-favorite thing to say, right after no. In the dappled shade of the porch, his face so set and willful, it was like they were staring at a tiny Trey.

Bree squeezed his hand, and when he turned to smile at her, he saw that the hollow sorrow had deepened.

“Sometimes I think he was a lamb,” Bree said. He knew from the tone exactly who she meant.

“A lamb?” he said. It was not how he remembered Trey.

“He did it, you know,” she said. “He raped her.”

They talked about Trey every day. There were pictures of Trey and Betsy all over the house. So yeah. They talked about him.

They didn’t talk about this. They had never talked about this. Even when he came to the hospital to sit with her while Trey was in the six-hour surgery that he would not survive. Even when she slipped him the envelope with all the other photos she’d apparently stolen from the crime scene before getting on the ambulance with her husband.

Which, damn. That was some Betsy-level boldness. Some folks might even find that cold. But Marshall? He’d admired it. She was a mother, bone deep. Her girls and her son would never stumble across the picture of their father raping Lexie Pine up on the Internet. Lexie herself had been past needing the acknowledgment. In another hour the doctor would come out and tell them Trey was past being able to give it. The whole story had not even come out. The Cabbats had a part in that, he thought, the way the news stories had all died quick and local.

“I know he raped her.” Marshall kept his tone even, nonjudgmental, as he asked, “But he’s a lamb?”

“Like an Old Testament lamb,” she explained. “I think a million men have done the same damn thing. Most of them never paid.”

He understood then. Kind of. “They should have paid, you mean.”

“But they didn’t,” she agreed. “There are so many of them out there. Boys who had mothers and sisters and sweethearts, who grew up to have wives and daughters and careers. They act as if this one thing never happened. They tell themselves the story in another way until they believe it. Or they don’t tell it at all, and they make themselves forget. But meanwhile they raped a real, live girl. She has to live with it. She sees them pop up in her Facebook feed when class reunions happen, sees their wedding and birth announcements in the paper. She has to eat it, this thing they did, and it eats at her. It’s wrong. It’s awful.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“They should make amends,” she said. “They should face her, and confess, and try to make it right. They should go to jail and do volunteer work and show their sons they must be better. They should have to live with it, too, because I think no matter what they tell themselves, it must stay in them. A canker in them. A black place.”

“Yes,” he agreed again.

“But they don’t, do they? Most of them don’t. Certainly not the rich ones. Not the ones in packs, who lie for each other. Not the ones who lie to themselves. These fine young men all go on and have their bright futures.” The way she said those words, he knew she’d thought them before. She said them like they were a bad taste in her mouth that she was trying to push out. “They don’t pay.”

He saw it now. “Trey was the lamb.”

She nodded. “It’s like the world picked one, to be shot for it, to lie there bleeding in the grass, apologizing. I wish that they would all pay their own damn bills. Him included. If only . . .”

She might have said more, but Robbie came running back then, hurling himself violently into her arms. “Time-out ober! Gramma says!”

She laughed, and Marshall had to grab her to keep them both from falling into the pool. That was the end of it. She never spoke of it again. Not in that way. Instead she kissed the corn-colored hair on top of her boy’s head, gathering his stocky, solid body in her arms.

“I think Grandma had enough time-out,” she said to Marshall, eyes sparkling. “Maybe it’s nap time.”

“No!” Robbie said instantly.

“I mean Grandma’s nap time,” Bree told him, and he smiled his sunny smile and grabbed her face in his small, fat hands, ramming his forehead hard into her nose as he went to kiss her.

“Oof! Careful, baby,” she said, laughing, touching her nose. “Ouch!”

“Gentle hands on Mommy,” Marshall told his son.

Robbie stood on Bree’s thighs, his sturdy legs braced, and patted softly at her cheeks. “Gemple hands on Mommy,” he agreed.

All three girls were back on their own floats. Peace had been restored. They lay in a leg-locked chain, Peyton in the center, now singing loud and tunelessly along. They were asking again if the world was grand, and fun, and great. And good.

Watching Robbie pat his mother’s face, so soft, Marshall thought that it was as good as the world could be. Considering the world.

“You’re sweet,” Bree told her son, kissing his sweaty cheek. “You are so sweet!”

He would be, Marshall thought. They would work to make it so. And yet under her fond tone, he heard something else. Not sorrow. That had faded again. Something reverent, as if the words were more than an endearment. As if they were a tiny prayer.