Raleigh, North Carolina
She couldn't concentrate on making love. No matter how
tenderly or passionately or intimately Ken touched her,
her mind was miles away. It was a little after five on
Tuesday afternoon, the time they protected from meetings
or dinner with friends or anything else that might
interfere with their getting together, and usually Corinne
relished the lovemaking with her fiancé. Today, though,
she wanted to fast-forward to the pillow talk. She had so
much to say.
Ken rolled off her with a sigh, and she saw him smile in
the late-afternoon light as he rested his hand on her
stomach. Did that mean something? Smiling with his hand on
her belly? She hoped so but didn't dare ask him. Not yet.
Ken loved the afterglow — the slow untangling of their
limbs and the gradual return to real-ity — so she would
have to be patient. She stroked her fingers through his
thick, ash-blond hair as she waited for his breathing to
settle down. Their baby was going to beautiful, no doubt
about it.
"Mmm," Ken purred as he nuzzled her shoulder. Thin bands
of light slipped into the room through the blinds, leaving
luminous stripes on the sheet over his legs. "I love you,
Cor."
"I love you, too." She wrapped her arm around him, trying
to sense if he was alert enough to listen to her. "I did
something amazing today," she began. "Two somethings,
actually."
"What did you do?" He sounded interested, if not quite
awake.
"First, I took the 540 to work."
His head darted up from his pillow. "You did?"
"Uh-huh."
"How was it?"
"Excellent." She'd had sweaty palms the whole time, but
she'd managed. For the past few years, she'd taught fourth
grade in a school eight miles from their house, and she'd
never once had the courage to take the expressway to get
there. She'd stuck to the tiny back roads, curling her way
through residential neighborhoods, dodging cars as they
backed out of driveways."It took me about ten minutes to
get to work," she said. "It usually takes me forty."
"I'm proud of you," he said. "I know how hard that must
have been to do."
"And then I did another amazing thing," she said.
"I haven't forgotten. Two things, you said. What other
amazing thing did you do?"
"I went on the field trip to the museum with my class,
instead of staying at school like I'd planned."
"Now you're scaring me," he teased. "Are you on some new
drug or something?"
"Am I remarkable or what?" she asked.
"You are definitely the most remarkable woman I know." He
leaned over to kiss her. "You're my brave, beautiful, red-
haired girl."
She'd walked inside the museum as though she did it every
day of the week, and she bet no one knew that her heart
was pounding and her throat felt as though it was
tightening around her windpipe. She guarded her phobias
carefully. She could never let any of her students'
parents — or worse, her fellow teachers — know.
"Maybe you're trying to do too much too fast," Ken said.
She shook her head."I'm on a roll," she said."Tomorrow, I
plan to step into the elevator at the doctor's office.
Just step into it," she added hastily. "I'll take the
stairs. But stepping into it will be a first step. So to
speak. Then maybe next week, I'll take it up a floor." She
shuddered at the thought of the elevator doors closing
behind her, locking her in a cubicle not much bigger than
a coffin.
"Pretty soon you won't need me anymore."
"I'm always going to need you." She wondered how serious
he was with that statement. It was true that she needed
Ken in ways most people didn't need a partner. He was the
driver anytime they traveled more than a few miles from
home. He was her rescuer when she'd have a panic attack in
the supermarket, standing in the middle of an aisle with a
full cart of groceries. He was the one holding on to her
arm as he guided her through the mall or the Concert Hall
or wherever they happened to be when her heart started
pounding. "I would just like to not need you that way. And
I have to do this, Ken. I want that job."
She'd been offered a position that would start the
following September, training teachers in Wake County to
use a reading curriculum in which she'd become expert.
That meant driving. A lot of driving. There would be six-
lane highways to travel and bridges to cross and elevators
she would have no choice but to ride. September was nearly
a year away, and she was determined to have her fears
mastered by then.
"Kenny." She pulled closer to him, nervous about the topic
she was about to broach. "There's something else we really
need to talk about."
His muscles tightened ever so slightly beneath her
hands. "The pregnancy," he said.
She hated when he called it the pregnancy. She guessed
she'd misread his smile earlier. "About the baby," she
said. "Right."
He let out a sigh. "Cor, I've thought about it and I just
don't think it's the right time. Especially with you
starting a new job next year. How much stress do you need?"
"It would work out," she said. "The baby's due in late
May. I'd take the end of the year off and have the summer
to get used to being a mom and find day care and
everything." She smoothed her hand over her stomach. Was
it her imagination or was there already a slight slope to
her belly? "We've been together so long," she
continued. "It just doesn't make sense for me to have an
abortion when I'm almost twenty-seven and you're thirty-
eight and we can afford to have a child." She didn't say
what else she was thinking: Of course,we'd have to get
married. Finally. They'd been engaged and living together
for four years, and if her pregnancy forced them to set a
date, that was fine with her.
He gave her shoulders a squeeze, then sat up."Let's talk
about it later, okay?" he said.
"When?" she asked. "We can't keep putting this off."
"Later tonight," he promised.
She followed his gaze to the phone on the night table. The
message light was blinking. He picked up the receiver and
punched in their voice-mail code, then listened."Three
messages," he said, hitting another button on the phone.
The light in the room had grown dim, but she was still
able to see him roll his eyes as he listened to the first
message.
"Your mother," he said. "She says it's urgent."
"I'm sure." Corinne managed a laugh. Now that Dru had
spilled the news of her pregnancy to their parents, she'd
probably be getting urgent calls every day. Her mother had
already e-mailed her to tell her that redheads were more
prone to hemorrhaging after delivery. Thanks a heap, Mom.
She hadn't bothered to reply. She hadn't spoken with her
mother more than a few times in the past three
years. "There's one from Dru, too," Ken said."She says to
call her the minute you get the message."
That was more worrisome. An urgent message from her mother
was easy to ignore. From her sister, less so."I hope
there's not anything wrong," she said, sitting up.
"They would have called you on your cell if it was so
important," he said, still holding the phone to his ear.
"True." She got out of bed and pulled on her short green
robe, then picked up her phone from the dresser and turned
it on.
"Except, I didn't have my cell on today because of the
field trip, so —"
"What the —" Ken frowned as he listened to another message.
"What the hell are you talking about?" He shouted into the
phone. Glancing at his watch, he walked across the room to
turn on the television.
"What's going on?" Corinne watched him click through the
channels until he reached WIGH, the Raleigh station for
which he was a reporter.
"That was a message from Darren," he said, as he punched
another phone number into the receiver. "He's kicking me
off the Gleason story."
"What?" She was incredulous. "Why?"
"He said it was for obvious reasons, like I should know
what the hell he's talking about." He looked at his watch
again and she knew he was waiting for the six-o'clock
news. "Come on, come on," he said to the television or the
phone — or maybe both."Give me Darren!" he yelled into the
receiver. "Well, where is he?" He hung up and started
dialing again.
"They can't pull you off that story," she said. "That
would be so unfair after all the work you've done on it."
The Gleason story was his baby. He'd even attracted
national attention for it. People were talking about him
being a candidate for the Rosedale Award.
"Darren said,'Did you know about this?" like I've been
keeping something from him." Ken ran his fingers through
his hair. "Oh, don't give me your damn voice mail," he
said into the phone. "Dammit." She felt his impatience as
he waited to leave a message."What the hell do you mean,
I'm off the Gleason story?" he shouted. "Call me!"
He tossed the receiver onto the bed, then pounded the top
of the television with his fist as though he could make
the news come on sooner through force. "I don't believe
this," he said. "When I left the courthouse today, the
jury hadn't sentenced him yet and they were supposed to
reconvene tomorrow. Maybe I heard it wrong. Maybe I missed
the sentencing. Damn!"
Corinne looked down at the cell phone in her hand as she
cycled through the list of callers. "I have five messages,
all from my parents' house," she said. Something was
wrong. "I'd better call —"
"Shh," Ken said, turning up the volume as the brassy theme
music introduced the news, and anchorman Paul Provost
appeared on the screen.
"Good evening, Triangle," Paul said, referring to the
Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. "Just hours before
Timothy Gleason was to be sentenced for the 1977 murder of
Genevieve Russell and her unborn child, a shocking
revelation shed doubt on his guilt."
"What?" Ken stared at the TV.
Footage of a small arts-and-crafts-style bungalow filled
the screen. The roof looked wet from a recent rain, and
the trees were lush, the leaves just starting to turn.
"Is that...?" Corinne pressed her hand to her mouth. She
knew exactly how the air smelled in the small front yard
of the house. It would be thick and sweet with the damp
arrival of autumn.
"Oh, my God."
Through the front door, a middle-aged woman limped onto
the porch. She looked small and tired. And she looked
scared.
"What the hell is going on?" Ken said.
Corinne stood next to him, clutching his arm, as her
mother cleared her throat.
"Timothy Gleason is not guilty of murdering Genevieve
Russell," she said. "And I can prove it because I was
there."