The Silver Star(53)

“You don’t have to,” I said. I passed her the cup of tea and explained my plan for the two of us to go see Billy Corbin’s dad.

“Whatever you think,” Liz said. She sounded like she was in a daze.

Before leaving the house, I tried calling Mom again. I was certain she would want us to press charges, since she was always going on about women standing up for their rights. With Mom, however, you never knew how she’d react. I let the phone ring a long time, but there was still no answer. That made me wonder where the heck Mom was, because she wasn’t exactly an early riser.

Instead of taking the bus to school, Liz and I walked into town. The sun was out, and it was melting the frost, though the grass was still white and stiff in places the sun hadn’t reached. We passed the emus, who were on the far side of the field pecking at the grass, but we didn’t stop to watch them.

When we got to Holladay Avenue, I found a phone booth and asked the operator to put in a collect call to Mom. There was no answer. I thought of going over to the hill and talking to Aunt Al, but she didn’t like to give advice. Also, if she advised us to press charges and Mr. Maddox found out about it, he could make life real hard for her. Anyway, it seemed that the most important thing to do was talk to a lawyer.

I looked up Mr. Corbin’s address in the phone book dangling from a chain. His office was over a shoe store, up a rickety flight of stairs, and his door had a frosted glass pane etched with WILLIAM T. CORBIN, ESQ., ATTORNEY AT LAW. When we knocked, there was no answer, and the door was locked.

“We’ll just wait,” I said. We sat down at the top of the stairs. After a while a man came climbing up, carrying two big briefcases. He looked tired, with circles under his eyes, and his suit was rumpled.

“Mr. Corbin?” I asked.

“The one and only. Who wants to know?”

“I’m Bean Holladay. This is my sister, Liz. We need to talk to you. About a legal matter.”

He smiled. “Let me guess. Your mother grounded you, and you want me to appeal the ruling.”

“It’s serious,” I said.

He took out a key and unlocked the door. “I suspect it is.” He looked at Liz. “What happened to you?”

“That’s what we’re here to talk about,” I said.

Mr. Corbin’s office was a mess, with law books propped open and legal papers stacked everywhere. I took that as a good sign. Any lawyer who couldn’t afford a secretary to keep his office neat must be honest.

Mr. Corbin had us sit in cracked leather chairs facing his desk while he shuffled some of the papers covering the surface. “Now, tell me what happened,” he said.

I cleared my throat. “It’s kind of complicated,” I said.

“It usually is,” he said.

“And awful,” Liz added. It was the first thing she’d said since we’d got to town.

“You probably can’t tell me anything I haven’t heard before,” he said. “And if a lawyer can’t keep his mouth shut about things his clients tell him, he shouldn’t be a lawyer.”

“What do you charge?” I asked.

He smiled and shook his head. “Let’s not worry about that at this point. Let’s just hear what the problem is.”

“It involves Jerry Maddox,” I said.

Mr. Corbin raised his eyebrows. “Then I imagine it is complicated.”

After that, the whole story came spilling out. Mr. Corbin listened quietly, his clasped hands propping up his chin.

“Wayne told us he’ll testify,” I said.

“What a mess,” Mr. Corbin said, almost to himself. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, you didn’t go to the hospital or to the police?”

“I wanted to talk to a lawyer first.”

“Why isn’t your uncle here with you?”

“He wants us to forget the whole thing ever happened.”

“And you don’t want to forget it? You want to file charges?”

“What I want is for my uncle to blow Mr. Maddox’s brains out with his shotgun,” I said.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“That isn’t going to happen, so we came to find out what we’re supposed to do, legal-wise.”

“It’s not really a question of what you’re supposed to do. It’s more a question of what you want to do.” Mr. Corbin picked up a paper clip and pried it apart. We had two options, he went on. One, we could press charges, which would create a big stink and a nasty trial with a lot of god-awful publicity but might result in Mr. Maddox being punished for what he allegedly did. On the other hand, there was no guarantee of that. Two, we could decide it was an incident that involved bad judgment on the part of both parties—since Liz did voluntarily get into the back of the car with Mr. Maddox—and didn’t need to be rehashed in a public courtroom with the entire town following every sordid detail.