Chapter 5 - The Clearing of the Court
The rain had stopped by the time the county sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the circular driveway of Oakridge Preparatory Academy. The red and blue lights did not flash—I had requested that they keep the arrival quiet to protect the other children from panic—but the two deputies who walked up the stone steps of the mansion were wearing their formal gray uniforms and carrying the heavy, black leather clipboard of the criminal registry.
I stood on the veranda, my arm wrapped tightly around Elsie’s shoulders. She was wearing my dry woolen trench coat over her gray tights, her small head resting against my hip as she watched the flashing lights of the car paint the wet gravel of the driveway.
Principal Tolland stood in the double-door entrance of the mansion, his silver hair uncombed now, his linen shirt open at the collar as he spoke to the senior deputy.
Ms. Voss was led out through the side entrance of the gym ten minutes later. She was not in handcuffs—the deputies were polite enough to keep her wrists covered with a gray wool blanket—but her head was bowed, her pastel-blue dress stained along the hem where she had brushed against the wet brickwork of the kitchen lane. She did not look at the veranda where we stood. She looked at her sensible, expensive leather shoes as they disappeared into the back of the unmarked sedan.
"Mommy?" Elsie whispered, her face turning up to look at mine. The red mark on her jaw had begun to fade into a light, pink bruise, her gray eyes clear now, reflecting the silver light of the evening sky.
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"Are we going to the bakery now?" she asked. "The one with the lavender cookies?"
I reached down, my fingers catching her small, damp hand, her thumb tracing the gold wedding ring I had worn since her father died—the ring that was the only piece of metal in our house that didn't have a seal stamped on it.
"Yes, Elsie," I said, my voice warm, the cold, flat tone of the courtroom vanishing into the humid air of the Savannah evening. "We are going to the bakery. And then we are going to spend the weekend in the garden, planting the new sage bushes. There are no clocks in the garden."
We walked down the stone steps, past the photographers from the local real estate blogs who had arrived after the sheriff's radio call, past the waiting drivers of the country club families who were watching us with wide, silent eyes.
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Principal Tolland watched us from the top of the veranda. He looked very small standing between those six-foot white columns—columns that had been built to make everyone else feel like they were standing in the dust, but which now looked like nothing more than old pine painted over with cheap white plaster.
I did not look back. I led my daughter to the old Honda sitting in the lower parking lot, the engine starting with its familiar, rhythmic rattle that sounded like a song we had both known for a very long time.
