The Sacrifice by Robert Whitlow Read Free Book Online Page B

window cut a sharp path across his face if he lay too close to the edge of his cot.
    He tossed and turned on the narrow bed. The bare gray walls of his room seemed to close in on him if he stared at them, and with his eyes open, the passage of minutes seemed like hours. He had slept several hours earlier in the day to escape the boredom of confinement but now couldn’t will himself to unconsciousness.
    So he stayed awake in the silence and released his imagination. Some of the images that flashed through his mind were much more serious than the charges against him in the thin manila folder in the district attorney’s office.

5
    Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
    A NNA K ARENINA
    S cott was out of bed at 7:30 A.M. After opening the door of Nicky’s cage, he fixed a cup of strong coffee and poured it into a plastic travel mug. He’d taken a couple of sips by the time Nicky hopped through the dog door after a quick trip to the backyard. Scott put his cup on the kitchen counter and opened the drawer where he kept a retractable leash. At the sight of the green leash, Nicky jumped up and down with excitement until Scott attached the strap to his collar. He enjoyed walking as much as Nicky. For his eagle scout project when he was a teenager, Scott had designed and built a nature path adjacent to a local park.
    Coffee in one hand and Nicky pulling on the other, Scott turned left down the sidewalk that ran along the quiet street. It was cool enough to feel like early fall, but the warning of a hot afternoon lurked in the bright sun that shone through the lower branches of the trees on the east side of the street. They passed several rows of modest houses that had also been built in the 1940s and 1950s.
    Scott and Nicky were an odd combination. A muscular young man dressed in black sweatpants and Wake Forest T-shirt, and a little white dog who looked like he should be wearing a rhinestone collar and trotting beside a socialite in Central Park. But Scott’s manhood wasn’t threatened by his association with the animal he’d taken in when an elderly neighbor moved to Florida and couldn’t take her new puppy with her to a retirement center. Scott came to the rescue, and the little dog was never at risk of homelessness. Besides, Nicky’s presence could be a con- versation starter. Scott had recently dated a woman whom he met when she stopped to pat Nicky’s head.
    Nicky loved to pretend that he was a fearsome beast. Sometimes when he saw a large dog, he would let a deep growl rumble in his throat and scratch the grass backward with his hind legs like a bull preparing to charge. It was all bluster and show, and Scott kept careful watch until they passed the house where a brown boxer lived. Nicky looked toward the house and growled, but the boxer didn’t appear. Scott stood ready to snatch his furry friend up in his arms and keep him from harm. Nicky’s grand illusions were safe so long as he stayed close to his master’s side. Scott was the great protector.
    As they drew closer to Lipscomb Avenue, the houses became older and larger. A few had been in the same family for generations. One of the finest structures, a two-story Victorian with a wraparound porch, had been turned into an accountant’s office, and another with dark brown cedar siding had been taken over by a local insurance agency. Mr. Humphrey’s home, a brick house in a Federal style, occupied a prominent corner lot.
    They stopped when they reached the parking lot for the First Methodist Church, a long white building with narrow stained-glass windows and a sharp steeple. Most local attorneys, including Mr. Humphrey and his wife, were members of the Methodist church. The rest of the lawyers in town were evenly split between the large Baptist church that dominated a whole block beside the courthouse and a small Presbyterian church at the other end of Lipscomb