The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,169

preparing herself for something difficult. “I think I’m going to retire to Florida. Be among my people—bitter old white women living on fixed incomes.”

Charlie smoothed together her lips. She couldn’t cry again. She couldn’t make Lenore feel guilty for doing what she needed to do.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Lenore wrapped her arm around Charlie’s waist. She put her mouth to Charlie’s ear. “I am never going to leave you. I’m just going to be somewhere else. And you can come visit me. I’ll make a special bedroom for you, with pictures of horses on the walls, and kittens and possums.”

Charlie laughed.

Lenore said, “It’s time for me to move on. I’ve fought the good fight long enough.”

“Dad loved you.”

“Of course he did. And I love you.” Lenore kissed the side of her head. “Speaking of love.”

Ben was making his way through the crowd. He held up his hands as he darted around an old man who looked like he had a story to tell. Ben said a few hellos to people he knew, constantly moving forward, easily detaching himself from hangers-on. People always smiled when they saw Ben. Charlie felt herself smiling, too.

“Hey.” He smoothed down his tie. “Is this a girls-only thing?”

Lenore said, “I was just about to antagonize your boss.” She kissed Charlie again before sidling over to Ken Coin.

The district attorney’s group broke away, but Lenore trapped Coin like a cheetah with a baby warthog.

Charlie told Ben, “Lenore’s going to retire to Florida.”

He did not seem surprised. “Not much left for her with your dad gone.”

“Just me.” Charlie couldn’t think about Lenore leaving. It hurt too much. She asked Ben, “Did you pick out Dad’s suit?”

“That was all Rusty.” He said, “Hold out your hand.”

Charlie held out her hand.

He reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out a red ball. He placed it in her palm. “You’re welcome.”

Charlie looked down at the red clown nose and smiled.

Ben said, “Come outside.”

“Why?”

Ben waited, patient as ever.

Charlie put down the glass of wine. She tucked the clown nose into her purse as she followed him outside. The first thing she noticed was the thick smog of cigarette smoke. The second thing she noticed was that she was surrounded by cons. Their ill-fitting suits could not hide the prison tattoos and lean muscle that came from hours of pumping iron in the yard. There were dozens of men and women, maybe as many as fifty.

These were Rusty’s real mourners—smoking outside, like the bad kids behind the gym at school.

“Charlotte.” One of the men seized her hand. “I wanna tell you how much your daddy meant to me. Helped me get my kid back.”

Charlie felt herself smile as she shook the man’s rough hand.

“Helped me find a job,” another man said. His front teeth were rotted, but the fine comb marks in his oily hair showed that he had made an effort for Rusty.

“He was all right.” A woman flicked a cigarette toward the overflowing ashtray by the door. “Made my dickhead ex-husband pay child support.”

“Come on,” another guy said, likely the dickhead ex-husband.

Ben winked at Charlie before going back inside. An assistant district attorney wasn’t popular with this crowd.

Charlie shook more hands. She tried not to cough from all of the smoke. She listened to stories about Rusty helping people when no one else seemed inclined to do so. She wanted to go back inside and get Sam, because her sister would want to hear what these people had to say about their complicated, irascible father. Or maybe Sam wouldn’t want to. Maybe she would need to. Sam had always been so starkly drawn to black and white. The gray areas, the ones that Rusty seemed to thrive in, had always mystified her.

Charlie laughed to herself. The paradox was not lost on her that after unburdening to Sam her deepest, darkest sins, Charlie felt that the most important thing Sam could take back home with her was the knowledge that their father had been a good man.

“Charlotte?” Jimmy Jack Little blended in well with the cons. He had more tattoos than most of them, including a sleeve that he’d gotten during a prison stint for bank robbery. His black fedora put him in another place and time. He seemed perpetually angry, like it was to his utter disappointment that he was not one of the good guys being corrupted by a bad doll in a 1940s noir novel.

“Thanks for coming.” Charlie hugged his neck, something she had never done before and probably would never