Before She Dies by Mary Burton Page B

and her sister Mariah ten. Her mother, reeling from her latest breakup, had met Grady when the carnival had come to Knoxville, Tennessee. Before it broke camp three weeks later, her mother had moved them into his RV. By the age of eight, Charlotte had been in five different schools and lived in nine different motels in nine different towns. This move in her young mind was as temporary as the others. But for reasons she’d never understood, Charlotte’s mother and Grady had forged some kind of bond, and before Christmas of that same year, they married. Her mother, Doris, had started working in the carnival’s Madame Divine tent as the resident psychic, while Grace and Mariah did odd jobs around the carnival.
    It had gone fairly well for a time. Her mother was happy. Mariah had begun sleeping again. And she’d been able to finally keep the books she’d accumulated at yard sales. But within seven or eight months, Grady rediscovered the bottle and proved to be a nasty drunk. Her mother and Grady shared five years of explosive bliss, and when Doris died, her daughters remained with Grady. The time would have been miserable if not for Mariah.
    Laughter from Charlotte’s coworkers drifted from the back conference room, prompting her to lower her voice a notch. “You never do anything without a reason. What do you want? Money?”
    He glanced toward the laughter and then grinned, still taking pleasure in her unease. “I don’t need your money. Though it sure does look like you’re doing real fine for yourself.”
    Nothing she could say would drive him faster to the point he’d come to make. Grady would take his sweet time.
    “You were always a prickly one. The worrier of my two girls.”
    “You were good at giving me enough to worry about.” Bitterness dripped from the words.
    “Maybe. Maybe.” He walked to the receptionist desk and picked up a crystal paperweight. For several seconds he studied it. “I’ve been sober for eighteen years.”
    “Good for you.”
    He tossed the paper weight like a worn baseball. “I need your legal help.”
    The paper weight had been a gift to Iris last year. It had been hand made by a glassmaker at Alexandria’s Torpedo Factory, an artist enclave on Union Street. It had cost six hundred dollars.
    She took the paper weight from him. “I saw the article in the paper and know the carnival is in town. Did one of your boys get arrested?”
    He curled his empty fingers and lowered them to his side. “I could see where you’d think that. The boys do tend to mix it up from time to time.”
    “Drunk in public. Theft. Fighting. Your employees have a talent for getting into trouble. And I have no intention of helping any one of them.”
    He arched a brow. “You got some attitude in you, girl.”
    “And your point is?”
    “Maybe I could bring you down a peg, and let the folks in the back know that you didn’t come from such refined stock. Maybe I should tell them you was born a low-life carnie just like me.”
    Threats were par for the course for a defense attorney. Most either rolled off her back or amused her. This one struck at the core.
    But she also knew Grady well enough. If she showed weakness or caved in to his demands, he’d own her. She’d buy his silence for a time, but there would be more and more favors. He’d worm into her life like a cancer, and in the end still tell everyone about the past she wanted to forget.
    “Go ahead. Tell them. And when you’re finished, get the hell out of my life.”
    Gray eyes narrowed and glared as if he were dealing with a disobedient child.
    When she’d been a kid, that look had scared her— it still did a little—but she’d gotten much better at bluffing. “Now or never.”
    He hesitated. Waited.
    She waited, barely blinking.
    Finally, he nodded, grinned, and bowed his head slightly. “Now, baby girl, I did not mean for this to turn into a pissing match. I’ve come with hat in hand to see if you can help me. For old times’