Page 48 of Roark
—Khalil Gibran
Chapter 15
Roark watched Sandra as she talked. Her frail fingers were clasped and resting in her lap. The white gauze bandages going midway up her arms and around her neck were a stark contrast to the dark cranberry-colored robe she wore. Earlier today he’d watched as Tamika had brushed her mother’s hair back and styled it in two neat braids. Sandra’s eyes, which were almost identical to Tamika’s in shape and color, searched the room until she found the fireplace and let them rest there, even though no fire was lit.
“Tony was the oldest.” She began talking after everyone in the room had been quiet for a few minutes, giving her the time and space to decide if she wanted to say more. “He’d turned twenty-one that Wednesday, but we all had lots of studying to do for mid-terms the next week. We couldn’t risk going out on a school night.”
Roark noticed Pierce had taken out a notepad and pen and was scribbling something as Sandra spoke. Tamika sat on the arm of the couch where her mother was seated. She’d had one arm wrapped around Sandra’s shoulders when her mother had first sat down, but once Sandra was settled, she’d pulled that arm away. Cade stood closest to the fireplace, his gaze intent but compassionate as he watched Sandra carefully. Roark inhaled a deep breath and prepared to hear about a time in his parents’ life that he’d never thought he needed to know.
“Friday night, we were all ready to party.” Sandra chuckled, but the sound died in her throat as she blinked and shook her head slowly. “We were still so young, no matter how the years kept piling on our lives. We had so much growing to do.”
She crossed one ankle over the other and took a slow breath. “Lem and I had been going together for three years by then. We’d met at freshman orientation and had been inseparable from that moment. Lem was studying business because his father wanted him to get a desk job, maybe as a supervisor or something at the Social Security Administration where he worked. Maxie, that’s what we called your mother.” She looked at Roark then and blinked a few times as if waiting for him to say something.
He smiled. “I’ve never heard that nickname for her.”
“You look like her a little. Right around your eyes and when you smile.” She was nodding now. “I can definitely see Maxie in you when you smile. That’s because she was such a happy spirit. She loved to dance and sing, and she could write so well. We all thought she was going to go on to become a great novelist. But then we all knew she and Gabe were gonna get married too. They were so in love you could feel it vibrating between them whenever they were in the room. I didn’t know Gabe had died so young. Not until Maxie mentioned it in that first letter she sent to me.”
“When was that, Mrs. Rayder?” Cade asked the question, but his tone was anything but profiler-like. He was speaking in a smooth, calm tone Roark figured must work on witnesses they were trying to get to remember painful things.
“About two years ago,” Sandra replied. “I remember because it was just before me and Lem’s thirty-ninth wedding anniversary. They’d been at our wedding, Gabe and Maxie, and so she sent us an anniversary card, but it came addressed only to me. Inside the card was a letter. That’s when she told me all about Gabe’s death and her children and how she’d led the best life. By the time that letter was finished, I knew something was wrong. But I just thought maybe Maxie was sick or something.”
“Did you ever write her back, Mama?” Tamika asked.
Sandra nodded. “I did. We exchanged a letter every month from that time up until the month Lem passed.”
“Was she writing to your husband that long, as well?” This was Pierce asking, and Sandra jerked her head around to see he’d taken a seat in the chair near the window.
“I don’t think so. At least, Lem didn’t tell me about getting any letters from her until early last year. He said she’d sent it to his job instead of to the house. I guess she could’ve been doing that all along, but Lem would’ve told me.” The way Sandra inhaled deeply, her shoulders sagging a bit more when she exhaled, answered the question Roark was sure everyone in the room was thinking.
Would Lem have kept it a secret if Max had been writing to him longer? Sandra said she didn’t know for sure, but Roark suspected she knew it was a possibility.
“Lem came home one day and just said he didn’t die.” She began shaking her head again and this time started to rock her legs as well. “He kept saying he didn’t die for about ten or fifteen minutes. My husband dealt with so much death on the job I just thought he was talking about somebody who’d been caught in a fire. But he wasn’t.”
Tamika returned her hand to her mother’s shoulder.
Sandra cleared her throat and continued. “That night long ago we all went out for Tony’s birthday, we piled into his Lincoln Mark VII. That’s when cars were big and fancy lookin’. We were heading over to the next town to this club where they served liquor to minors. Tony didn’t think he should’ve been the only one getting drunk that night. Anyway, it didn’t matter that they were serving any age, ‘cause me and Max didn’t drink anyway. Ronnie did. That girl loved to drink, and she could dance too. But she danced like those women in the clubs, not like Max did. Ronnie could do things with her hips that even me and Max couldn’t understand. And she was beautiful, all that long, pretty hair hanging down her back and those light-colored eyes. Kinda like yours.” Sandra nodded toward Cade. “Men loved Ronnie, and she loved them right back. But most times though, she loved Kaymen.”
Everyone in the room perked up at the mention of his name.
“Those two had that explosive-type love. Like one minute they’d be kissin’ on each other like they were about to have sex right there in front of you, and the next minute they’d be arguing so hard and loud you’d take cover because you weren’t sure when punches or furniture might start to fly.”
“Kaymen Benedict was violent.” Pierce was probably just speaking out loud as he wrote, but Sandra immediately looked at him.
“Kaymen was a good guy. He wasn’t an angry man. He was smart and had good sense. He was going to college to make something out of himself. But he and Ronnie, they just weren’t meant to be.
“Everybody got drunk except me and Max, but we didn’t have our license. So Gabe drove, because he wasn’t as drunk as the others. It was late, and we’d just decided to pitch in and get a motel room. We had to use the money we had on us and not any of Gabe or Tony’s family money. Their parents would have a fit if they knew we were that far away from school and going to motels at that. But then it started raining, and the car was going so fast until it just seemed like we were flying.” Sandra pressed a hand to her chest.
“Do you want to stop? Do you need something to drink? I can get it for you,” Tamika said.
“Yes ma’am, if you need a break, we can definitely take one,” Cade said.
“No. I need to get this out.” Sandra lifted her chin and took a slow breath. “The car ran off the road, and we went down into a ditch. Thank the good Lord we all managed to get out after the immediate shock. We made it up that little incline and to the road and just started walking as fast as we could. If anybody found us out there, we’d have been in a world of trouble. Underage drinking for some those of us that weren’t twenty-one, drunk driving for Gabe and the crash. Gabe told Tony to just report the car stolen when we got back to school. We were gonna walk the short distance to the motel and get that room and then in the morning call a couple of cabs to take us back to school.
“Rain was just pouring. When it rained like that while the sun was out, my momma used to say it meant the devil was beatin’ his wife.” Sandra was back to clasping her fingers again. “It was pitch black the night of the accident, but I think the devil was born in that fire.”
“What happened when you got to the motel?” Pierce asked.
“That’s when we noticed Kaymen wasn’t with us,” she said slowly. “We all thought he was there. I mean, we just kept walking through all that rain, and it was so dark and cold. Nobody was talking much after Gabe told us what we were gonna do, so we just walked. But when we realized he wasn’t there; we didn’t go back.”
