Long Lost - James Scott Bell Page 0,27

to his fate, Steve said. “Now don’t you worry. You know I’m a lawyer, right? It’s just a business call. I may be able to help those gentlemen on a case.” Or not.

“Why did a nice young man like you become a lawyer?”

“Oh, well, I guess it’s the only profession that would have me.”

“You could have been something respectable.”

“Like a teacher maybe?”

“That’s right. Molding the young. Setting an example. Instead of trying to bend the rules.”

Steve cleared his throat. “I better get back. Are you all right?”

“Turn on the TV for me, will you?”

“Sure.” Steve looked for a remote, found the tail end of it sticking out from under one of the throw pillows. He clicked the tube on.

“Anything you want to watch?” he asked.

“See if you can find a Matlock. I haven’t seen Matlock in a long time.”

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Can you find anything close?”

He did the best he could, which was an old Law & Order. That seemed to satisfy Mrs. Stanky.

He thought about his mother just then. She’d been a TV watcher near the end. Couldn’t do much else as the cancer ate away at her. But whenever he would visit her at hospice, after school, she’d always want him to read to her.

Her favorite was Dickens. Steve read her David Copperfield. She’d smile and close her eyes and drift off to sleep. Maybe dreaming of Peggotty and Barkis, whom she loved. “Barkis is willin’” made her laugh.

The last time he’d read to her, the night she died, her eyes never opened. He was reading the part where Aunt Betsey faces down the Murdstones. A good scene to end on, he thought. He cried for three hours after he left, before Mr. Casey, his first foster father, told him to shut up or he’d do the job himself.

So a little Law & Order to comfort an old woman hooked up to a tank. Not much, but maybe not so bad when you got right down to it.

She asked if he’d like to stay and watch. He waited until Jerry Orbach started grilling a witness. Always good, that Orbach. At the commercial Steve patted Mrs. Stanky’s hand and said, “I think they can win this one without me.”

Mrs. Stanky smiled, and that was a good note on which to let himself out the door.

18

The next day Steve drove three hours to Verner to see Johnny in his new habitat. The terms of Johnny’s parole had him working a job there. All the way out Steve kept thinking of two things—Johnny’s professed conversion, and the two government types who had their eyes on him.

The religious angle was especially strange.

There was no God. Steve had figured that out when he prayed harder than anything in his life for God to bring Robert back. Prayed and promised that he would stop lying forever if God would do that for him. Prayed the way his mom had shown him when he was three. On his knees with his hands folded.

He remembered saying, Dear God Dear God please please please.

Over and over, through tears.

Please bring Robert back please please Dear God.

But God didn’t bring Robert back, so there was no God. It was simple. Simple as the alphabet and 2 + 2.

He had never found any reason to reconsider this conclusion. Not through the foster-care years, the high-school football years, the college days or at law school. God didn’t help him an ounce when his first foster father beat the living crud out of him. Didn’t catch that one, he guessed.

Most of his reasoning, though, had to do with Robert.

So what was he to do with this appearance of his brother? Maybe fate just had a sense of humor.

All Steve knew about Johnny’s parole so far was that it allowed him to live and work within a sixty-mile radius of Verner. He had to report to his parole officer once a week and, of course, was subject to both random drug testing and warrantless searches.

None of this seemed to bother Johnny as he met Steve outside the rustic home in the foothills. Verner was one of the oldest towns in California, off Highway 65. Steve had stopped there once before, on his way to Fresno. It was named for Samuel Verner, a cattleman from Colorado who came to the state in the gold-rush days. He established a ranch and started selling beef to miners and business owners. Made a bundle.

Now the place was a mix of old, new, and touristy.