A Time for Mercy (Jake Brigance #3) - John Grisham Page 0,134

big verdicts. The money would come by the truckload, one day, he was certain of it.

And look at them now. Her husband beaten to a pulp. His law practice drying up, their debts mounting by the week.

At the beach last month, her father had once again, quietly and when Jake wasn’t around, mentioned that he could find a place for Jake in money management. He had several friends who were investors, most of them semiretired, but they were contemplating putting together a fund to invest in hospitals and medical device startups. She wasn’t sure what that meant and she had not said a word to Jake about it. But it meant a move to the Wilmington area and a complete change of his career. Her father even mentioned a loan to make things easier. If he only knew how deep their debts were.

Things would certainly be safer at the beach.

At times they had talked about the drudgery of small-town living. The same routines, same friends, the lack of a meaningful social life. For arts and athletics they had to drive an hour to either Tupelo or Oxford. She enjoyed her friends but there was the constant game of who had the bigger house, the nicer cars, the sexier vacations. In a small town everyone was eager to help, but then everyone also knew your business. Two years ago they had paid too much for the Hocutt House, and she had noticed a definite coolness from a couple of her girlfriends. It was as if the Brigances were moving up too quickly and leaving the others behind. If they only knew.

The nurses came and went, making sleep impossible. The monitors glowed and blinked. The opioids seemed to be working fine.

Could this be the pivotal moment in their lives? The final straw that freed Jake from the grind of a ham-and-eggs lawyer struggling to pay the bills each month? They were not yet forty. There was plenty of time and it was the perfect moment to change course and move on to something better, to get out of Mississippi and find an easier place. She could always get a job as a schoolteacher.

She put down the magazines and closed her eyes. Why not get through the Gamble mess in August, adopt Kiera’s baby in September, and leave Clanton? Drew’s future, as uncertain as it was, would be dumped on another lawyer, but there were always plenty of them. Wouldn’t it be safer and wiser to move a thousand miles away? They would be near her parents, who would be eager to help with the babysitting. Jake could start a new career, one that included a guaranteed paycheck each month, and they would live at the beach year-round.

She was wide-eyed when a nurse eased in at 1:30 and gave her a sleeping pill.

* * *

—

FOR BREAKFAST, JAKE sipped apple juice from a carton through a straw. His entire body ached and he complained of pain everywhere. A nurse cranked up the morphine and he slipped away.

At seven, Dr. McKee appeared and told Carla that he wanted to do a brain scan and more X-rays. He suggested that she leave for a few hours, check on the house and Hanna, and take care of herself.

At home, she called Jake’s parents with an update and asked them to bring Hanna home. She called Harry Rex and told him what little she knew. No, she had not asked Jake if he knew who beat him. She called Portia, Lucien, Stan Atcavage, and Judge Noose, all of whom had questions but she kept the conversations brief. She would call again later. She fed the dog, cleaned the kitchen, washed a load of clothes, and sat on the patio with a cup of coffee and tried to collect herself. One concern was what to tell Hanna. They couldn’t hide Jake from his daughter and he would look awful for days to come. The child would be horrified when she saw her father and there was no way she could begin to understand. She would be terrified to learn that there were bad people out there who wanted to hurt her dad.

The coffee didn’t help her nerves and she finally called her mother and told her what was going on.

At eleven, Mr. and Mrs. Brigance arrived with Hanna, who ran to her mother in tears and asked her how Daddy was doing. Carla hugged her, said he was at the hospital but doing fine, and that she would