“Red velvet,” Tessa countered.
“Deal,” Sara returned, feeling an inordinate sense of relief. It was bad enough having her mother mad at her.
“Speaking of calls,” Tessa began, and Sara knew where she was going even before she asked the question. “Hear from Jeffrey?”
Sara raised up, tucking her hand into her front pocket. She pulled out two five-dollar bills. “He called before I left the clinic.”
Tessa barked a laugh that filled the restaurant. “What did he say?”
“I cut him off before he could say anything,” Sara answered, handing her sister the money.
Tessa tucked the fives into the back pocket of her blue jeans. “So, Mama called? She was pretty pissed at you.”
“I’m pretty pissed at me, too,” Sara said. After being divorced for two years, she still could not let go of her ex-husband. Sara vacillated between hating Jeffrey Tolliver and hating herself because of this. She wanted just one day to go by without thinking about him, without having him in her life. Yesterday, much like today, had not been that day.
Easter Sunday was important to her mother. While Sara was not particularly religious, putting on panty hose one Sunday out of the year was a small price to pay for Cathy Linton’s happiness. Sara had not planned on Jeffrey being at church. She had caught him out of the corner of her eye just after the first hymn. He was sitting three rows behind and to the right of her, and they seemed to notice each other at the same time. Sara had forced herself to look away first.
Sitting there in church, staring at the preacher without hearing a word the man was saying, Sara had felt Jeffrey’s gaze on the back of her neck. There was a heat from the intensity of his stare that caused a warm flush to come over her. Despite the fact that she was sitting in church with her mother on one side of her and Tessa and her father on the other, Sara had felt her body responding to the look Jeffrey had given her. There was something about this time of year that turned her into a completely different person.
She was actually fidgeting in her seat, thinking about Jeffrey touching her, the way his hands felt on her skin, when Cathy Linton jabbed her elbow into Sara’s ribs. Her mother’s expression said she knew exactly what was going through Sara’s mind at that moment and did not like it one bit. Cathy had crossed her arms angrily, her posture indicating she was resigning herself to the fact that Sara would go to hell for thinking about sex at the Primitive Baptist on Easter Sunday.
There was a prayer, then another hymn. After what seemed like an appropriate amount of time, Sara glanced over her shoulder to find Jeffrey again, only to see him with his head bent down to his chest as he slept. This was the problem with Jeffrey Tolliver, the idea of him was much better than the reality.
Tessa tapped her fingers on the table for Sara’s attention. “Sara?”
Sara put her hand to her chest, conscious that her heart was pounding the same way it had yesterday morning in church. “What?”
Tessa gave her a knowing look, but thankfully did not pursue it. “What did Jeb say?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you talking to him after the service,” Tessa said. “What did he say?”
Sara debated whether or not to lie. Finally, she answered, “He asked me out for lunch today, but I told him I was seeing you.”
“You could’ve cancelled.”
Sara shrugged. “We’re going out Wednesday night.”
Tessa did everything but clap her hands together.
“God,” Sara groaned. “What was I thinking?”
“Not about Jeffrey for a change,” Tessa answered. “Right?”
Sara took the menu from behind the napkin holder, though she hardly needed to look at it. She or some member of her family had eaten at the Grant Filling Station at least once a week since Sara was three years old, and the only change to the menu in all that time had been when Pete Wayne, the owner, had added peanut brittle to the dessert menu in honor of then president Jimmy Carter.
Tessa reached across the table, gently pushing down the menu. “You okay?”
“It’s that time of year again,” Sara said, rummaging around in her briefcase. She found the postcard and held it up.
Tessa did not take the card, so Sara read aloud from the back, “ ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’ ” She put the card down on the table between them, waiting for Tessa’s response.
“From the Bible?” Tessa asked, though surely she knew.
Sara looked out the window, trying to compose herself. Suddenly, she stood up from the table, saying, “I need to go wash my hands.”
“Sara?”
She waved off Tessa’s concern, walking to the back of the diner, trying to hold herself together until she reached the bathroom. The door to the women’s room had stuck in the frame since the beginning of time, so Sara gave the handle a hard yank. Inside, the small black-and-white-tiled bathroom was cool and almost comforting. She leaned back against the wall, hands to her face, trying to wipe out the last few hours of her day. Jimmy Powell’s lab results still haunted her. Twelve years ago, while working her medical internship at Atlanta’s Grady Hospital, Sara had grown familiar with, if not accustomed to, death. Grady had the best ER in the Southeast, and Sara had seen her share of difficult traumas, from a kid who had swallowed a pack of razor blades to a teenage girl who had been given a clothes hanger abortion. These were horrible cases, but not altogether unexpected in such a large city.
Cases like Jimmy Powell’s coming through the children’s clinic hit Sara with the force of a wrecking ball. This would be one of the rare cases when Sara’s two jobs would converge. Jimmy Powell, who liked to watch college basketball and held one of the largest collections of Hot Wheels Sara had personally ever seen, would more than likely be dead within the next year.
Sara clipped her hair back into a loose ponytail as she waited for the sink to fill with cold water. She leaned over the sink, pausing at the sickly sweet smell coming from the basin. Pete had probably dumped vinegar down the drain to keep it from smelling sour. It was an old plumber’s trick, but Sara hated the smell of vinegar.
She held her breath as she leaned back over, splashing her face with water, trying to wake up. A glance back at the mirror showed nothing had improved, but a wet spot from the water was just below the neckline of her shirt.
“Great,” Sara mumbled.
She dried her hands on her pants as she walked toward the stalls. After seeing the contents of the toilet, she moved to the next stall, the handicap stall, and opened the door.
“Oh,” Sara breathed, stepping back quickly, only stopping when the sink basin pressed against the back of her legs. She put her hands behind her, bracing herself on the counter. A metallic taste came to her mouth, and Sara forced herself to take in gulps of air so that she wouldn’t pass out. She dropped her head down, closing her eyes, counting out a full five seconds before she looked up again.
Sibyl Adams, a professor at the college, sat on the toilet. Her head was tilted back against the tiled wall, her eyes closed. Her pants were pulled down around her ankles, legs splayed wide open. She had been stabbed in the abdomen. Blood filled the toilet between her legs, dripping onto the tiled floor.
Sara forced herself to move into the stall, crouching in front of the young woman. Sibyl’s shirt was pulled up, and Sara could see a large vertical cut down her abdomen, bisecting her navel and stopping at the pubic bone. Another cut, much deeper, slashed horizontally under her breasts. This was the source of most of the blood, and it still dripped in a steady stream down the body. Sara put her hand to the wound, trying to halt the bleeding, but blood seeped between her fingers as if she were squeezing a sponge.