Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) by Lisa Dale Read Free Book Online Page B

you at least get a look at him?”
    “No.”
    “Let me know when you do. We’ll take him apart—figure out a plan. We’ll win him over yet!”
    Lauren opened a cabinet and grabbed a clean dishcloth to dry the wet plates. “What would
you
do if the person who put you in jail showed up at your house and asked you to forgive her?”
    “It’s different with me.”
    “But what would you do? If you were Arlen?”
    “Let’s review. What do we know about him?”
    “What I remember most is how quiet he was,” Lauren said. “Soft-spoken. People would have called him a man of few words. But I don’t think the quietness was because he lacked things to say.”
    “Right. He’s quiet not because he doesn’t have opinions, but he feels like he doesn’t need to express them. His opinions belong to him and him alone. So keeping quiet becomes a kind of power, in a way.”
    “Maybe his only power, given the situation.”
    “He had a crappy defense attorney,” Jonah said. “That woman thought he was guilty.”
    “Maybe,” Lauren said. Since they were children, Jonah had always been the better people-reader of the two of them. Lauren’s teachers and parents had assumed she was a natural—that she had an inherent talent for seeing beneath the surface of things. But while she did have
some
talent, she was no match for her brother. He saw everything. Every secret was a broadcast. Every minor emotion that crossed someone’s face was magnified tenfold. People thought that her gift had made her a prodigy.
His
gift had once driven him insane.
    He said, “Arlen might not want you to know whether or not he forgives you.”
    She stopped drying dishes. The towel sagged in her hand. “It would be nice if I knew. But even if I never know, fine—maybe I don’t deserve to. I still have to tell him that I’m sorry for my part in what happened. It’s the right thing to do.”
    Jonah sighed. “I wish I could have watched the trial. I probably could have told you he wasn’t guilty right off the bat.”
    “Probably,” she admitted. Her mind flashed to an image of herself as a young woman scrutinizing the jury, looking for reactions—the flash of a frown, the twitch of an eyebrow—so she could better lead them, guide them,
force
them to reach the conclusion she had already reached: that Arlen was guilty. Unfortunately, she’d never thought to look at Arlen.
    She heard Dakota singing in the background. “I should let you go.”
    “Laure?”
    “Still here.”
    “Don’t you dare come home early because you’re worried about me. You stay down there till it’s done.”
    She smiled. She thought she’d called her brother because he needed her to. Now she knew that was wrong. “I don’t think I’ll be too long.”
    “
Be
too long,” Jonah said. “Be very long. What’s up here for you except a bunch of old, egoistic curmudgeons who get off on arguing with each other?”
    “Those egoistic curmudgeons are considering me for a promotion.”
    “Great,” he said flatly. “So you’ll be head curmudgeon.”
    “I’ll call you later.”
    “I’m here if you need me.”
    She dried her damp hands, then shut her cell phone. It rang, almost instantly, again.
    The granite along the shore of Belle Isle was knotty and muscular, stone stretched like taffy, then left in the hot sun to bake. The air smelled of sweet green leaves and the coppery tang of river. Lauren stood among sunbathers, splashing infants, children hopping boulders and squealing. A family had made a picnic on a large flat rock surrounded by white water. Lauren couldn’t help herself: she pried off her sandals and slipped her toes in the cool, swift river. When her legs tired, she sat on the heated stone so her feet could dangle in the current. Will Farris was late; she didn’t care why. She’d lost track of time.
    Finally, a cool shadow came over her—not a cloud or a bird—and when she craned her neck to look, he was there. He wore a ragged white shirt and