Decency by Rex Fuller

feel separate from the anger. It comes on and subsides. And you realize this is the way anger used to feel.”
    This was too painful for her. Uncomfortable, Abe shifted his weight.
    “Then you begin to hope that the real you can remember happiness and pleasure. Then sometimes you do. Sometimes you can even take guilty pleasure in remembering.
    “Once in a while you start to think the pleasure does not have to be guilty. Then, only then, do you begin to believe you can be real. You can be you. You know it will take longer than it really should.
    “But you know that when friends ask how you are, like you did just now, and you answer, ‘I’m okay,’ it is not just a lie to avoid burdening them. It is true in some not yet understood sense and someday may mean to you what it means to them.”
    She stopped and looked at him hard. “That’s about where I am, Abe.”
    Both were silent a long moment.
    “Kelly, I just don’t know what to say.”
    “Believe me, I know the feeling. I didn’t mean to unload…”
    Abe felt like he read her diary, embarrassed to have looked so deeply.
    “You didn’t…well you did, but in a good way. I think I’ve learned a lot too from what you said.”
    Abe stood and walked silently out the door. He went to Don MacIntyre’s office, the partner next most senior after himself and Kelly, and stuck his head in. “Still about the same.”
    “Abe, you know we can’t carry her forever.”
    “Yeah, but which of us is going to need the same help next?”

     

7
     
    O NE YEAR AND TEN MONTHS AFTER THE ACT.
    Harlan and Kathy entered the office of Barkin & Bossleman in the Woodmen Tower in Omaha, Nebraska. The receptionist directed them to the secretary for Gabriel Bossleman, the now senior surviving member.
    “Come right on in, Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, please. He’s expecting you.”
    She showed them in to the cavernous corner office.
    “Harlan! Kathy! It’s great to see you.”
    Bossleman rounded his desk and administered a hearty handshake to them both, token of the political operative. Pictures of Gabe and Governor so-and-so and the five governors after that lined the mantle. Gabe had twisted the arm of the mayor in Weeping Water to send community leaders to a fund raiser in 1985. Whether he really remembered or kept perfect, voluminous notes on fund-raiser attendees was not actually known.
    “It’s good to see you too, Gabe.”
    “It was what ‘85 or ‘86? Gosh you haven’t changed.”
    “Thanks, but we have changed…and we feel it.”
    “I know. I really do. When they told me that a Lincoln lawyer referred you to us I immediately got involved and that’s when I called you. Sit…Please.” They all sat around a marble covered coffee table. “What can we get you?”
    Both Pierces declined.
    “Now, over these what, six months, we’ve had a chance to look at it in some depth…sure you wouldn’t like some coffee while we talk?”
    “Not just now.”
    “Okay. Let me give you the bottom line and then we’ll go from there. It’s this. Mike Carson was right. There is no real likelihood you would be able to bring a successful court case. There has been one change in the law since he talked to you. The Congress gave the intelligence community employees a very tiny exception to the prohibition against even going to Congress with inside agency information. Now they can go if they go through the agency Inspector General first, in this instance the Department of Defense IG. I’m sure you can imagine what good that is going to do. They legislated a whitewash. So it’s basically the same as before. Intelligence agency employees can’t even effectively complain to their Congressman.”
    Both Harlan and Kathy frowned at all of this.
    “There are two more things I want to tell you before you hit me with questions.
    “One. The statute of limitations. You have a drop dead date for any case you want to bring of three years from when she died. We could file one for you here in Nebraska,