court more clearly understand what happened that morning?”
Hinkle, who had been staring at the floor when the judge addressed him, looked up and the first pair of eyes he locked onto belonged to CJ. He didn’t say anything right away, but when he did he prefaced it with a furtive glance at the prosecutor sitting next to him.
“Your Honor,” Hinkle said, “I think this was just a big misunderstanding. I don’t think Ms. Dotson meant to hurt anyone.”
CJ didn’t know who looked more surprised—Butterfield or the two opposing attorneys.
“From what I understand, you and your fellow officers had to use quite a few ice packs as a result of this misunderstanding,” the judge said.
“Hazards of the job,” Hinkle said.
Less than ten minutes later, after Dorothy’s charges had been reduced to the original firearms violation, and after Artie, much to CJ’s surprise, had offered to pay the fine, CJ and Julie walked his mother to Julie’s car.
Speaking to CJ’s unasked question, Julie explained, “Artie and Judge Butterfield hunt together. They have for years.”
CJ was in the Honda, following Julie and his mother back to her house. He’d offered to drive his mother home, but Julie had said she wanted to, that she rarely got a chance to speak with Dorothy now that she didn’t attend all the family functions.
When they arrived at Dorothy’s house it was clear the morning was not to continue in the accommodating fashion in which it had begun.
“What’s that?” Julie asked CJ as they both exited their cars.
It seemed obvious to CJ. It was a trash bag. A large, black trash bag that had been ripped open and its contents scattered over the lawn. It looked like clothes, men’s clothes.
“Oh no,” he said, right before he heard his mother scream from inside the car.
Dorothy opened the car door mid-yell, which made the sound seem to double in volume.
Julie, who had no idea that the single ruptured clothes-filled trash bag undoubtedly signaled something much worse inside, looked first at Dorothy, whose scream had settled to something like a sob, and CJ, who was looking at the house as if it was some horrible accident.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he thought to say as he started for the house.
The front door swung open when he pushed on it, and the splintered wood proved it had been forced. After taking a step inside, CJ stopped and looked around but nothing seemed out of place. He entered the living room, his mother and Julie a few steps behind him, and a quick inspection showed this room looked fine too. That didn’t surprise him; he expected the damage to have been done in the attic.
Without looking through the other rooms, he entered the hallway and found the attic ladder was down. He released a sigh.
“Stay here,” he said to Dorothy, but he needn’t have worried. His mother looked like a shell of her former self. Her face had lost its color.
“I’ll stay with her,” Julie said.
The attic was cleaned out. To CJ’s untrained eye, it appeared that his father had even taken things that clearly belonged to Dorothy. What was worse was that what he hadn’t taken, he’d ransacked. His mother’s sewing machine—the same one she’d had when CJ was young—lay on its side. The boxes holding her old clothes had been opened and emptied. CJ saw broken glass in a few spots, but couldn’t immediately tell from where it had come.
As he turned toward the part of the attic that held his own belongings, he heard footsteps on the stairs behind him. It appeared George had done some work there too, although it wasn’t as bad as what he’d done to Dorothy. CJ didn’t even know if George had made that distinction when he was up here.
The sound his mother made when she reached the top of the stairs was something that CJ never wanted to hear again. When he spun around, Julie was at Dorothy’s side and CJ’s mother looked as if she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. Then, as if in slow motion, Dorothy took a few steps and bent down, coming up with a picture, the same picture CJ had asked her about the other day. It had been ripped in half.
“It’ll be okay, Mom,” he said for the second time in a matter of minutes, knowing how pitiful it sounded.
“What happened?” Julie asked him.
“George got even,” CJ said.
By the time CJ got back to the store, after staying long enough to make sure Dorothy was going to be