the rearview mirror. “Let’s sit tight for a minute. I want to see what they do.”
The moment stretched. No one moved.
“Sir?”
“All right.” Faircloth pushed his door open. “Let’s see what this is all about.” He got a single foot on the ground before the sedan’s engine caught.
“Careful,” the driver said, but his voice was nearly lost as an engine revved and the sedan surged onto the blacktop.
Faircloth choked on dust as it sped away, the metal of it glinting beneath a falling sun. “That was interesting.” The lawyer settled back into the car.
“I got the plate number if you want it.”
“Good man. Hold on to it for now.”
“Down the drive?”
“Indeed.”
The limousine moved slowly over cattle guards and washed-out gravel. It crossed a creek and passed beneath an oak tree larger than any other Faircloth had ever seen. The ruined house was desolate in the gloom. Faircloth saw a hint of fire, and then Adrian, very still in the place a wall had once stood. There was no welcome in his face.
“I’ll tell you what.” Faircloth handed the driver $50. “Go get yourself some dinner. I’ll call when I’m ready to leave.”
“Thank you, sir.” The man accepted the money. “You have my card?”
The old lawyer patted his coat pocket. “I’ll call you.”
“Sir?”
Faircloth hesitated, one hand on the door.
“Are you sure about this?” The driver meant the gloom and the ruins, the car they’d chased away, and Adrian’s murky form. “It’ll be full dark soon, and he doesn’t seem the most trustworthy sort. No offense if I’m wrong, but this doesn’t feel like the right place for a man like you.”
Faircloth looked at Adrian, scarred and thin in ill-fitting clothes. “It’s the perfect place. You go have a nice dinner.”
“Yes, sir.” The driver nodded with great hesitation. “If you say so.”
“Go ahead, now. I’ll be fine.”
Faircloth climbed from the vehicle and watched it leave. When the dust settled, he hunched above the cane and watched Adrian approach. “Hello, my boy. I thought I’d find you here.”
“Where else would I go?”
“It’s a large world, is it not?” Adrian moved out from beneath the trees, and Faircloth met him on the edge of the drive. “I should think you, of all people, might dislike how history lingers in places such as this.”
“Maybe I have unfinished business.”
“Do you?” Faircloth lifted an eyebrow in what he knew from long years at trial to be his most penetrating gaze. “Perhaps we should speak of that, as I just saw the same, gray car stationed at the end of your drive.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“You honestly think I should tell you?”
“You’re upset.” The old lawyer was genuinely surprised. Adrian carried tension in his shoulders and in the line of his jaw. The normally warm eyes were anything but. “We’re friends, are we not?”
Adrian’s head turned, and Faircloth watched him stare across the choked-out fields. The hardness was all in him, as if he’d somehow frozen solid. But, there was sadness, too, the bitter reflections of a deeply wounded soul. “You never visited.”
“I tried.…”
“Not the first month, Crybaby. Those were dark days, my choice. I mean the thirteen years, after. You were my lawyer, my friend.” No forgiveness was in his voice. What he said was fact, indisputable.
“I was too old for that level of appellate work. We discussed as much.”
“Were you too old to be my friend?”
“Listen, Adrian.” The old man sighed and faced him straight on. “Life changed for a lot of us when you went away. Liz threw herself into life and the living of it. For me, it was the opposite. I didn’t care to see colleagues or be with friends. I didn’t care to care. Maybe, it was depression. I don’t know. I felt as if the sun had cooled or the blood in my veins had somehow thickened. I’ve become adept at analogies and could offer a hundred. Yet, it was my wife, I think, who said it best. She stuck it out for two years, then told me that, even at seventy-two, she was too young to live with a dead man. After she moved out, I barely left the grounds. I had my food delivered, laundry taken out. I drank, slept. Until this week, I’d barely left the house in ten years.”
“Why?”
“Why, indeed?” A ghost of smile touched Faircloth’s lips. “I think maybe I was heartbroken.”
“Not over me.”
“Over the law, perhaps, or the irretrievable failings of a system I could not improve. Maybe I lost faith. Maybe