Magda sighted the kid but didn’t introduce him. Instead she said, “Ned, go in the kitchen and make more coffee.” The boy walked through the circle of women without moving his shoulders, staring at a spot on the wall no one else could see.
Magda pulled me into the room, me pretending to cough so I could free my hand. She set me down in the middle of the sofa, one woman on each side of me. I don’t like sitting in the middle, where arms brush lightly against mine and knees graze my pant leg. I balanced on one buttock and then the other, trying not to sink into the cushion, but I’m so small I still ended up looking like a cartoon kid in an overstuffed chair.
“Libby, I’m Katryn. I’m so sorry for your loss,” said one of the rich ladies next to me, looking down into my face, her perfume widening my nostrils.
“Hi, Katherine.” I wondered when the time limit lapsed on expressing sadness for a stranger’s dead. I guess never.
“It’s Kate-ryn,” she said with sugar, her gold flower brooch bobbling on its clasp. There’s another way to pick rich women: They immediately correct how their names are said. A-lee-see-a, not Al-eesh-a, Deb-or-ah, not Debra. I said nothing in response. Lyle was talking tightly with an older woman across the room, giving her his profile. I pictured her hot breath tunneling into his tiny snail ear. Everyone kept talking and looking at me, whispering and looking at me.
“Well, wanna get the show going?” I said and clapped once. It was rude, but I didn’t need the suspense.
“Well, Libby … Ned, will you get that coffee out here?” Magda started. “We’re here to talk with you about your father, as the prime suspect in the murders your brother has been wrongfully convicted of.”
“Right. The murders of my family.”
Magda pulled in an impatient breath, annoyed I would assert my rights to my family.
“But before we work on that,” Magda continued, “we want to share with you some of our stories about your brother, who we all love.”
A slender fifty-something woman with administrative hair stood up. “My name is Gladys, I met Ben three years ago, through my charity work,” she said. “He changed my life. I write to a lot of prisoners”—here I physically scoffed, and the woman noted it—“I write to prisoners because to me it’s the ultimate Christian act, loving the usually unlovable. I’m sure everyone here’s seen Dead Man Walking. But I began writing Ben, and the purity of him just shined through his letters. He is true grace under fire, and I love that he’s able to make me laugh—make me laugh, when I’m supposed to be helping him—about the horrible conditions he endures each day.”
Everyone added a note then: he’s so funny … that’s so true … he’s amazing that way. Ned appeared with a coffeepot and started refilling a dozen outstretched plastic mugs, the ladies hand-signaling to stop pouring without even looking at him.
A younger woman stood up, about Lyle’s age, trembling. “I’m Alison. I met Ben through my mom, who couldn’t be here today …”
“Chemo, ovarian cancer,” whispered Katryn.
“… but we both feel the same, which is her work on this earth is not done until Ben is a free man.” There were scattered claps at this. “And it’s just, it’s just,” here the girl’s trembles turned to tears, “he’s so good! And it’s all so wrong. And I just can’t believe we live in a world where someone as good as Ben is … is in a cage, for no good reason!”
I set my jaw then. I could feel this going south.
“I just think you need to set this all right,” spat the crucifixed snow-woman who looked the least friendly. She didn’t bother to stand up, just leaned around a few people. “You need to right your wrongs, just like anybody else. And I’m real sorry for the loss of your family, and I’m real sorry for what you’ve gone through, but now you need to be a grown-up and fix it.”
I couldn’t spot anyone nodding at that little speech, but the room was full of an agreement so strong it seemed to have a sound, an mmm-hmm sound I couldn’t trace. Like the hum of a railroad track when the train is still miles away but churning toward you. I glanced at Lyle, and he rolled his eyes discreetly.
Magda moved to the center of the entryway, swelling like a red-nosed orator on the hustings. “Libby, we have forgiven you for your part in this fiasco. We believe your father committed this horrible crime. We have motive, we have opportunity, we have … many important facts,” she said, unable to pull up more legal jargon. “Motive: Two weeks before the murders your mother, Patricia Day, filed a complaint against your father concerning child support. For the first time, Ronald “Runner” Day was going to be legally on the hook to his family. He also was in hock several thousand dollars for gambling debts. Removing your family from this situation would help his finances tremendously—he was assuming he was still in your mother’s will when he went there that night. As it turned out, Ben was not at home when he arrived, and you escaped. He killed the others.”