Sliver Moon

Read an Excerpt

SLIVER MOON (Chapter One)

The Santa Rosa Hospital stands on the western edge of downtown San Antonio. The hospital has grown to become a small complex, much of it devoted to the treatment of children. One of the newest buildings, twelve white stories, holds doctors’ offices. Recently, psychiatrist Anne Greenwald had moved her office into this building, after years spent in the hospital building itself. Anne had liked being part of the action of the hospital, close enough to hear the emergency room doors opening to admit a rolling stretcher, but she finally admitted to needing larger, more modern rooms. Some of her patients hadn’t liked entering the hospital to see her. In fact, as Anne readily admitted, many of her patients didn’t like coming to see her at all.

On this Friday afternoon her waiting room stood strangely empty. Within the suite, Anne hummed as she moved around her office, deftly stepping over or around stacks of files. Anne wore a slight smile and her green eyes were lively. She couldn’t have said what made her happy, and wouldn’t want to try. A good mood shouldn’t be analyzed to death. She was getting away early on a Friday, taking Chris out of town. That was enough.

She carried her thinnest briefcase, one not big enough to carry a weekend’s worth of guilt. Anne rarely took off a whole day from work. This weekend she should be writing two reports for court, one other for the state Human Resources Agency, and several private evaluations. But she had decided only to take one little file—if she could find it.

She picked up the stack closest to her desk chair and lifted it up to the desk, began going carefully through the tabs, checking the names on the files. As she thumbed through the cases each name seemed to reach out for her. Every file evoked a memory or the thought of what she might be able to do to help the people, mostly children, whose lives lay embedded in these files.

The humming had stopped. Anne sighed. Then her determination to have a good weekend reasserted itself. “This empathy crap has got to stop,” she muttered to herself.

Just as Anne found the file she wanted, and pulled it triumphantly from the middle of a stack of similar folders, the telephone on her desk rang. Anne looked startled, though on most days the phone rang all the time, and directed a glare in the general direction of the outer office, where her receptionist had been given instructions not to send back any calls except emergencies. The phone jangled again, sounding innocent. Pick me up, it seemed to pipe. Maybe I’m just a friend calling. Maybe it was Chris, calling to confirm their travel plans.

Anne lifted the phone. “Anne Greenwald.”

The pause that followed sounded sinister. But then a child’s voice said, “Hello, Dr. Greenwald, this is Meg.”

It took Anne a minute to place the name, because Meg was a new client who had only come in twice so far. But they had gotten along well; the girl didn’t seem to resent the visits at all. Child Protective Services had recently taken Meg from a home that featured an abusive father and an alcoholic mother, with nine-year-old Meg functioning as the parent-in-fact for her two younger siblings. She had been placed temporarily in a group home with six other girls from similar home environments. In spite of her background, Meg seemed like a cheery, bright girl, always on the lookout to make a new friend. Maybe it was just an act, but it was a good one.

“Hi, Meg. How are you, honey? Is there a problem?”

“No problems,” Meg chirped. “It’s a good day. I’m just calling to tell you happy birthday.”

“Thank you, sweetie, that’s very nice. But it’s not my birthday.”

“I know,” the girl chuckled through the phone line. “It’s my birthday. I called to wish you a happy my birthday!”

Anne’s eyes grew suddenly moist. “Oh, how nice, Meg. Happy birthday! Is it a good one so far?”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said, but Anne knew better. The poor girl must be calling everyone she knew trying to elicit some recognition of her special day. If Anne, who had only met Meg twice in a professional way, had made the girl’s list, it must be a short, depressing list.

Anne had a cheerful, congratulatory conversation with the girl for five minutes, then wished her a good day again and hung up. Immediately she made two more calls, to the group home leader and to Meg’s caseworker, so they could do something to acknowledge the birthday. Was there any family member they could bring to see her, an aunt, maybe her little sister? The caseworker, overwhelmed with crises, said she’d do her best, and the group home leader promised a celebration with cake and ice cream. But still Anne hung up feeling she had to do more, picturing the girl smiling through a birthday in a group home. In Anne’s professional life, the angry kids made life difficult, the withdrawn ones took the most work, but the cheerful ones broke her heart.

The jurors sat in their box looking shy and mean. For the most part they kept their heads down, unwilling to look at the lawyers or the courtroom audience, as if they had done something shameful. But when a juror would shoot a glance around the room, it was defiant. Collectively, the jury in its box looked like a small, fierce animal that had retreated deep within its burrow, that wanted only to be left alone but would attack in another moment.

Chris Sinclair used to think of juries that way, back when he had been a young trial prosecutor. Now he always made a point of looking at jurors as individuals. Sitting at the State’s counsel table as if relaxed, he watched them. Chris shared the jury’s feelings. He wasn’t proud of this week’s work, but it had been necessary.

He listened to the last few stanzas of the defense lawyer’s closing argument. Harry Price was saying just what Chris had known he must say in behalf of his client. The defendant, a young woman with lank brown hair and deep circles under her eyes, slumped listlessly at the defense table, apparently unconcerned about her fate.

The defense lawyer stood directly in front of the jurors, his hands on the front railing of the jury box. “You have found this woman guilty. She accepts your verdict. It took some very good investigative work by the District Attorney’s Office and the medical examiner to determine that a crime had occurred, but as soon as they did she confessed. She didn’t try to hide the truth. She admitted what she had done. The worst crime we can imagine a woman committing: killing her own child.

“She admitted it because she couldn’t help herself. Just as she couldn’t help the killing. It hadn’t been a decision to commit murder; it had been an irresistible impulse. When Marilyn did what she did, she was in such a deep hole of depression that she didn’t see a chance of ever climbing out. She thought the whole world was buried in that blackness. She’s tried to explain to you what she felt, that she was doing a kindness for her baby: taking her out of this world so that she would never have to feel the despair that her mother felt constantly.”

The defense lawyer turned and looked at his client, who didn’t seem to be listening. She appeared more sunken and listless than ever. Price turned back to the jurors and concluded, “I’ve never been in that pit of depression and I hope none of you has either. But you know it was real for Marilyn. Don’t take vengeance on a woman who couldn’t help herself. That won’t help anyone. Sentence her to probation and let her get the treatment she needs. Thank you.”

He sat next to his client, putting a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. The defendant didn’t respond.

Chris Sinclair watched the young woman too. He wanted to go to her, lean down close to her face, and say, Pay attention. Instead he stood briskly and approached the jurors in his turn. They watched him covertly but attentively. Chris Sinclair, the district attorney of Bexar County, looked younger than his thirty-five years and moved gracefully. As he walked, he buttoned the jacket of his brown suit, which made him look thinner. In fact, as usual during a trial like this, he had dropped a couple of pounds. The stress diet. Chris made sure he had the jurors’ attention and began seriously.

“Mr. Price has been eloquent in his client’s defense. But what he has just argued to you is essentially what he presented in the first phase of trial, an insanity defense. You jurors, though, have already rejected that defense by finding the defendant guilty of murder.”

Which accounted for the jury’s hangdog but glaring attitude. Many of them obviously believed that the young woman had been suffering from mental strain when she held a pillow over her baby’s face for ten minutes. But they also believed the act had been murder. Murder required punishment, which was what Chris Sinclair and the defense lawyer were arguing over this morning.

Chris assumed a conversational air in jury argument. He felt the jury’s dilemma. He shared it.

“So what punishment fits this crime? As Mr. Price said, the worst crime we can imagine. A mother killing not just her child, but a helpless, blameless, completely innocent three-month-old infant, one who needed her for nurture and comfort and protection and instead ended her life screaming and choking as her mother’s weight bore down on her.

“But Marilyn Lewis suffered under her own weight, of clinical depression. You’ve heard from the experts for both sides about whether she knew the difference between right and wrong at that moment, but certainly she suffered from depression. We can see it now. We want to pity her as much as condemn her.”

Chris walked close to the slumped defendant, which made her defense lawyer look up warily. Chris stared down at the young woman. “She looks helpless, doesn’t she? Pathetic. But how much more helpless was her baby?” He held his hands cupped upward, only a few inches apart. “A tiny, tiny baby who was not responsible for Marilyn Lewis’s depression. No—Marilyn was responsible for that baby. She had made the decision to get pregnant, the decision to bring that child into the world, the decision to stay home and care for her.

“And at some point illness began to descend on that young mother. But where was that point? Think about it. No one wakes up suddenly clinically depressed. She must have had glimmers that something was wrong, back at a time when she remained rational. What did she do? Did she seek help? Did she realize, I’m losing it, I need to do something to protect this child from me. No. She did nothing. Even after she was prescribed an antidepressant, she stopped taking it.”

Chris stood in front of the jury, still with his hands cupped, sounding as if he had earnestly tried to understand the case himself. “We can compare Marilyn Lewis to a drunk driver who runs into a pedestrian. No, he didn’t mean to kill that pedestrian. He didn’t have control of himself or his car because he was drunk. But at some point he wasn’t drunk. He made the decision to keep drinking, knowing he would soon be driving. That’s the person we punish, the one who made the fatal decision while still in his right mind, before drink or depression had deprived him or her of judgment.

“It’s my job in this proceeding to ask for the maximum punishment, life imprisonment. Mr. Price has done his job and asked for the minimum, and I’m supposed to urge the opposite extreme. But I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to ask you to do what you think is best. Because no matter what you decide, it won’t be enough. She’ll serve her probation or her prison term and someday she’ll emerge again. But her baby will be dead forever.”

He turned quickly on his heel and resumed his seat. Moments later the jurors filed out. They didn’t look at Chris Sinclair and he didn’t look at them, as if they were conspirators who couldn’t acknowledge each other in public.

Anne Greenwald found Chris Sinclair in the courtyard of his condominium building, a pleasant space of bushes, flowering plants, and a narrow pond where mosquitoes bred. The late afternoon in early May had uncharacteristically been only warm, not oppressively hot. Chris looked comfortable sitting on a green metal chair with a suitcase next to him. He rocked back in the springy chair, staring up past the roof of the two-story condo building toward the sky. Anne smiled at the sight of him, and her tread grew softer. Five-and-a-half feet tall, Anne could give an impression of smallness. She seemed to crouch down within herself as she crossed the courtyard and knelt right behind Chris, who didn’t seem to have heard her. But he didn’t startle when she spoke.

“You must have good eyes,” she said, “because I can’t see a damned thing you’re looking at.”

“The blameless sky.”

Anne put her arms around him from behind. “Let’s go to the country. You can tell me all your worries in the car.”

“Yeah, but then I’d have to listen to yours, right?”

Anne laughed. “Me? Worries? I don’t have any worries.”

Ten minutes later they were driving through the northern outskirts of San Antonio, Anne at the wheel of her dark green Volvo. Anne glanced at Chris as he stretched out his legs as much as the seat would permit and did seem to relax. Already he had abandoned his trial mode. His blond hair fell down across his forehead, and his hands lay still on his legs. He had changed out of his suit before Anne’s arrival, into soft light brown jeans and a green sports shirt that Anne had once complimented him on.

“Where’s Clarissa?” she asked lightly. Clarissa was Chris’s sixteen-year-old daughter from, as the enlightened say, a previous relationship, and Anne always kept her voice light when speaking of her. The girl lived with Chris now, an arrangement that had taken a good deal of adjusting to on everyone’s part.

“Her grandparents came to visit for the weekend.”

“Well, that worked out nicely.”

“I don’t think coincidence had any part in it,” Chris said, looking out the window. “Almost as soon as I mentioned this weekend to Clarissa, she got a phone call from the grandparents. I don’t think she wanted to come along, so if I check the phone bill next month I’m sure I’ll find that she made the first call. But I won’t.”

Clarissa had her mother’s gift for manipulating events. In a sixteen-year-old, it was cute.

Anne was dressed in colors similar to Chris’s outfit, quite by coincidence, in soft-soled brown suede shoes and a green dress. One of the seven deadly sins of love, dressing color-coordinated. She hoped her father wouldn’t notice and think they’d done it deliberately. Then she remembered how profoundly color-blind her father was and relaxed on that score.

But Chris seemed to have picked up the subject of her thought. “Going to see your father, huh?”

Anne nodded.

“The same father I met before?”

Anne nodded again. “I decided to renew his contract for one more season.”

Chris sat back in the seat and folded his arms. “Well, that’s good. We got along so famously, I wouldn’t want to have to start over again charming someone new.”

Though Chris and Anne had been seeing each other for more than a year, and Anne’s father didn’t live far away, Chris and Morris Greenwald had met each other only twice, on rather formal occasions that hadn’t given them a chance to get to know each other. But then, Anne had only seen her father one other time in the last two years.

“Why am I doing this, exactly?” Chris asked.

Anne shrugged. Somehow she felt excited about this weekend’s prospects. Taking her beau to see her father at the family home seemed so old-fashioned and silly that Anne enjoyed the idea. Even the possibility of drama and tension exhilarated her. The mere change of pace from her usual life alone made the idea pleasing. She answered Chris’s question: “He invited me. Which, believe me, is rare enough to make it a special occasion.”

“I understand why you’re going to see him,” Chris said. “My question is why am I?”

But he wouldn’t have missed it. Chris, too, felt secretly happy—that Anne had invited him along, that she felt him that much a part of her life, and like Anne, just at the idea of getting away for a weekend. Their daily lives were stressful enough that any change seemed like a relief.

Chris could have asked Anne about her father. He knew a little—that they’d had some estrangement in the past, but not the reason. Maybe this invitation represented Morris’s reaching out. Maybe he’d resent having Chris along on the trip. But Anne had wanted him to come. Chris knew she’d get around to telling him what she wanted to say in her own time.

Anne, on the other hand, knew that Chris had to be prompted ever to say what was on his mind. “So what did she get?”

She meant the young mother who’d killed her baby. Chris said slowly, “First they sent out a note asking if they could give alternative sentences. None of us knew what that meant, and the judge just sent back an answer saying no, they had to reach one verdict on punishment. A few minutes later they came back and gave her twenty-five years.”

Anne’s eyes widened as she watched the highway. “More than I would have guessed.”

“Me too,” Chris said. “But I think it was a very carefully calculated sentence. She’s twenty-four years old. After she’s served half her sentence, as she’ll have to do before she becomes eligible for parole, her child-bearing years will pretty much be over.”

“Not quite,” Anne said. At thirty-four, she had made some personal calculations along those lines.

“No, but given her having to work her way back into society, form a new relationship—at least she couldn’t have a lot more babies. I think that’s what the jury was thinking.”

“Did you find out what they meant by alternative sentencing?”

“Yes. They told the defense lawyer and me afterwards that if she would have agreed to have her tubes tied they would have given her probation.”

They rode in silence for a mile or two. The twenty miles of highway between San Antonio and the town of their destination, New Braunfels, never really turned rural. Subdivisions, the Retama race track, stores, restaurants, and a cement plant occupied the frontage road all the way. In the near distance, though, grazing cows populated the rolling fields. Anne and Chris breathed more deeply.

Just before they reached the city limits of New Braunfels, Anne exited the highway and turned west on a looping road that widened and narrowed seemingly at whim. Here, too, occasional neighborhoods bloomed out of the rustic environment, but for the most part trees filled the view. Most of them were evergreens, or oaks that hadn’t lost their leaves during the winter, but here and there newly blossomed trees shone bright green.

Chris looked over at Anne to find her glancing at him. “Your father didn’t strike me as the rural type,” he said.

Anne started to answer, changed her mind, and smiled. She put her hand over Chris’s on the seat and drove on. Two miles farther on she turned off the road onto a smaller, narrower one for which the trees barely gave way. Not far down that lane she turned right into a gravel trail. Almost immediately a gate stopped her. Anne rolled down her window and punched numbers into the code box standing beside the drive. The metal gate jerked and rolled out of the way.

“You still remember the code?” Chris asked.

“He gave it to me with the invitation.”

They rolled down the trail, which very quickly opened out into a wide parking area. On the other side a long, wide lawn sloped up to an imposing two-story house, wide and defiantly white, with no effort to blend into the landscape. The house had dark brown trim, tall arched windows on the ground floor, and wide, high double front doors. Three chimneys rose from the roof.

Chris whistled. “You never told me you were Anne of Green Gables.”

They got out of the car and stood close, looking over the grounds, which were extensive. Off to the left and behind the house Chris saw a gazebo, and he would have bet on finding a pool in the back. Anne stared at the house almost disdainfully, as if its lavishness embarrassed her. “I didn’t grow up here. This isn’t the old family homestead. Dad bought this place about ten years ago. Probably in a fire sale of some kind.”

“That’s too bad,” Chris said, bumping her shoulder with his. “I was hoping to see the room where you spent your girlish years.”

“Oh, they re-created that.”

He couldn’t tell whether she was joking.

They crossed the parking area and the lawn, and as they approached the front door Anne shamelessly took Chris’s hand, which surprised him, here at her father’s house. Anne didn’t often act this way publicly. But she kept hold of his hand as she rang the doorbell.

A pause passed, long enough for Chris to make up stories in his mind: an empty house, a burglar, scurrying conspirators, or a man who’d never extended an invitation at all. Then one of the heavy double doors opened and a man blinked out from the dark interior. Morris Greenwald’s head rose barely half as high as the tall doors. He had white crinkled hair, almost gone on top. His face showed deep creases in the cheeks and fine lines around his eyes, but his temples and a spot just above his forehead were surprisingly smooth and shiny. Mr. Greenwald looked compact and careful in his movements, but then his face and posture changed.

“Annie!” he cried, holding out his arms.

“Hello, Daddy.” Anne stepped close to him and her father put one arm around her shoulders. They stood in a very tentative embrace like acquaintances posing for a picture. Anne, slightly taller than her father, bent to put her cheek against the side of his head.

Chris smiled at them. Anne quickly stepped away from her father and said, “You remember Chris.”

“Of course.” They shook hands, the older man gripping Chris’s tightly.

Morris waved them into the house. The entryway was less impressive than Chris would have guessed from the outside, just a small foyer with a hallway leading straight back. Morris Greenwald put his arm around his daughter’s waist. Anne turned on an overhead light and reached back for Chris. Morris led them toward a staircase. On the left Chris glimpsed a formal dining room. On the right side of the hall a dark door stood closed. From the other side they could hear voices, too indistinct to pick up words.

“Someone here?” Anne asked.

“Oh, you know, some people,” Morris answered dismissively. Chris thought he was hurrying them up the stairs.

“I’ve made some changes. You’ll like it.”

Upstairs another short hallway to the left led to another set of double doors. Morris quickly opened them and waved, presenting a large sitting room, an elegant but less than formal living area with scattered chairs, love seats, windows on two sides, and a small fireplace with marble mantel.

“Oh, this is nice, Dad.”

“Thank you. I designed it.” Morris smiled at Chris, as if to say he hadn’t forgotten his guest, and waved him in too.

“Very nice,” Chris said, feeling inane.

“Somehow I like being up high when I relax,” Morris explained. “Like I think a flood is coming, or an angry mob.” He laughed at himself.

“You could be right about the mob,” Anne said over her shoulder.

Morris shrugged self-deprecatingly, as if she had complimented him. “I’m not nearly as involved as I used to be.”

Chris strolled around the room, trying to give the father and daughter room to speak privately. He discovered that one of the floor-length windows was actually a French door that gave onto a balcony. Chris stepped out onto it and found himself at the front of the house, standing above and to the right of the front doors, from his perspective looking out. Chris had missed seeing this balcony as he and Anne had walked up, thinking it was just ornamental filigree on the face of the house. The balcony was no more than five feet deep and ten feet wide. Bushes that decorated the front of the house reached high enough that their leaves brushed the underside of the balcony, like the outstretched fingers of that mob Morris Greenwald had fantasized about. The sides of the balcony were dark wrought iron in the shapes of twining leaves. They blended into those bushes from below, another reason Chris hadn’t spotted the balcony.

Across the lawn Chris saw two more cars in the parking area than there had been when he and Anne arrived, making a total of half a dozen. People seemed to be arriving, though he didn’t see anyone. Had Mr. Greenwald invited Anne for a special occasion?

He left the balcony and stepped back into the sitting room to see Anne and her father across the room looking out another window. Mr. Greenwald smiled shyly in a way that made him look much younger. Anne smiled back at him, but Chris knew her well enough to see the effort.

“Want to see your room?” Morris asked cheerfully.

Anne nodded. Chris cleared his throat and said, “I think I’ll look around a little, if that’s okay.”

Morris gave him a curious glance, more than just perfunctory, as if Chris had announced an odd intention. Then the host said, “Sure.” He took his daughter’s arm and led her away, Anne trailing a long look at Chris. “Thought you wanted to see the room,” she said in a voice with undertones.

Chris walked out after them. Hearing their voices down another hall, he went back downstairs, away from what he assumed to be the house’s private rooms. He and Anne had brought overnight bags, prepared to spend the night here or in New Braunfels, but they were less than half an hour from their own beds. Morris’s invitation hadn’t been very specific.

That one dark door downstairs was still closed. Chris couldn’t hear voices from behind it anymore. He went through the dining room, a beautiful, coldly elegant room that had obviously been furnished as a unit, rather than piece by piece over the years. Cream-colored, gilt-edged plates stood at attention behind the glass panels of the china cabinet.

Chris pushed through a swinging door and found himself in a kitchen standing almost nose to nose with a stone-faced man in a dark suit. It could have been a statue Chris had almost bumped into for all the man’s expression changed. Chris brushed past him and they stood looking at each other. The older man had iron-gray hair, a somewhat fleshy yet hard face, and bright gray eyes. His wide shoulders carried his suit like a uniform and he stood with one hand behind his back in a stance that made Chris feel threatened. Under the dark suit the man wore a black dress shirt and dark tie as well. On his lapel a small dark-blue circle with a golden eagle gleamed, appearing like a piece of great ornamentation on the man’s deliberately drab outfit.

The man said, “And you would be?”

Such a question always inspired in Chris the urge to give a ridiculous response—You mean if I could be anyone I wanted?—but he resisted that. “My name is Chris Sinclair. I’m here with Anne Greenwald?”

The man didn’t look as if either name meant anything to him, but after a moment he thawed and said, “Sorry, sir. You weren’t on my list.”

“You’re not on mine, either,” Chris said, and walked out of the kitchen, deliberately giving the man a view of his back.

Strange little incident. It seemed characteristic of Morris Greenwald’s compartmentalized house. The man’s mention of a list made him sound like a servant, but he didn’t look like one. Chris forgot about him as he explored the grounds. Morris might not be a rancher or a huge landowner, but he certainly didn’t have to see his neighbors. This was on the edge of what Texans called the hill country, though Appalachians would have laughed at the slightness of the folds of the earth. But the land had a pleasant, rolling aspect, both isolating and liberating from Chris’s vantage point. The land was wooded, too, with oaks and mesquites, hardy trees that couldn’t be driven out by flood or drought.

That was the view. Closer at hand lay the pool Chris had predicted, a few steps beyond the back door of the house. A deck surrounded the water; the space looked as if it had been designed for parties rather than exercise. Chris walked around it and to the right, looking up at the house. From behind, the house looked smaller than he’d first thought, though still impressive, like grand dreams built to a practical scale.

Chris returned to the front of the house. Another car had added itself to the small herd. Apparently people kept slipping in without his seeing them. That made him want to remain outside. He was also trying to give Anne time alone with her father, perhaps even more than she wanted. That front of the house still looked elegant and large. Anne said she hadn’t grown up here, but she had grown up in similar circumstances with Morris and her family. Chris studied the house as if studying Anne herself. She had sneered at its lavishness; she lived in a very different way from this now.

The sun declined toward the western hills. It must be six o’clock, but May and Daylight Saving Time held dusk at bay. Hands in his pockets, Chris walked up the lawn and around the house again to see that gazebo he’d spotted earlier. It was a classic affair, thin white columns supporting a decorative roof. It could have been a Victorian contemporary of the house or been ordered from Home Depot last month. As Chris approached it, he saw someone waiting for him. Morris Greenwald was standing in the gazebo, leaning on its rail, smoking a cigarette. So he hadn’t spent much time with his daughter after all.

Chris would have turned back to the house, but Morris had obviously already seen him, so Chris walked on and joined him.

“Like the house?” Morris asked impersonally, as if they were both guests.

“It’s beautiful.”

Morris shrugged. “I lose my perspective after a while. Can’t really tell what it looks like until other people are here.”

“Looks as if you’re having several guests tonight.”

“Yeah, some people are dropping by. You and Anne can meet them. Well, she knows most of them, I think.”

Morris Greenwald opened what looked like a decorative plant holder on the inside wall of the gazebo. Inside was a metal ashtray with a lid, where he carefully put out the cigarette. Then he looked at Chris more directly. “So I hear you have a daughter.”

“That’s right. She lives with me.”

“So you know what it’s like. Being responsible, worrying about her.”

“I certainly do.”

“How long have you and Anne been together?”

They were standing a few feet apart, the older man leaning out of the gazebo, Chris below him with one foot on the step. Chris felt bemused. He had never been in a conversation exactly like this. Morris Greenwald didn’t sound hostile or prying, but in fact rather detached. “You’re very direct, aren’t you?” Chris said to him.

“I used to be a lot more circumloquacious, believe me. Thought I could talk my way around anything. Always thought I was the smartest person in the room, too, so I knew I’d get what I wanted eventually. Nobody could read me but I could look at somebody and know what he was thinking.”

Chris laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“I didn’t know attitude could be hereditary.”

“So you think Anne’s like that?” Morris asked with an unmistakable hint of pride. “How can you put up with her then?”

“It’s easy, believe me.” Chris fell into a momentary reverie, but the old man recalled him to business.

“So are you telling me you’re in love with her?”

“No. I’m trying to avoid telling you anything. Am I being interviewed?”

“Excuse me for being interested. I think it’s okay for a father in these circumstances to ask some questions.”

“What circum—”

Chris heard a footstep close at hand and turned to see Anne stepping through the lush grass. She had obviously been there long enough to hear part of the exchange. Her arms were folded and she smiled. To Chris she said, “He’s afraid of having blond, blue-eyed grandchildren and disappearing from the face of the earth.”

Morris answered seriously, “I’d like to have some kind of grandchildren.”

“You would?” Anne sounded genuinely surprised.

“What do you think I want out of life, just this stuff?”

“Yes.”

The Greenwalds looked at each other exploringly. Chris could see Anne’s determination in her father’s face, a similarity in the curve of their shoulders, and perhaps more family resemblance than either of them had ever noticed. Chris coughed and said, “I’d slip away and let you two have some privacy, but I keep doing that and you keep following me.”

Morris’s face softened toward his daughter. “I’m curious, baby. It’s been a long time since you’ve brought one of your boyfriends to meet me. I figured—”

“It’s still been a long time, Daddy. I didn’t bring him to meet you; I just brought him.” She glanced at Chris. “Sorry, did that sound like an insult?”

“No,” Chris laughed.

“I like having him along.” Anne sounded embarrassed, so she shifted back to her father. “This grandbaby thing, have you talked to Bruce about it?”

Morris made a dismissive sound. “Bruce. All your brother cares about is making money, not babies.”

“I wonder where he gets that?”

Morris turned to Chris and sounded philosophical. “Your children, it seems like each one just takes on one aspect of your personality. None of them’s willing to embrace the whole, you know?” To Anne he answered her last remark. “I did both at the same time, you know.”

Morris came down from the gazebo so they were all on the same level. Chris looked back and forth between them. “She’s biting her lip, Mr. Greenwald. I think she’s refraining from saying something.”

Morris looked at his daughter contemplatively. “Probably a good thing.”

“I guarantee it.”

Morris took Anne’s arm, she slid her other hand into Chris’s, and the three of them began walking back toward the house.

“So what’s the occasion, Daddy? Who’s coming?”

“Just some old friends dropping by.”

Anne squeezed Chris’s hand.

Half an hour later Anne entered her father’s upstairs sitting room to find company. The guests who had arrived by twos and threes had come out from behind closed doors and assembled. They weren’t a large crowd, but the room felt full because the twenty or so people had spread throughout it in small groups and pairs. At first no one looked familiar to Anne. The men wore suits, so did most of the women, except one who wore a long dress. It looked like a formal cocktail party; that was probably what kept Anne from recognizing anyone. But then one face, that of a solemn-looking man talking to her father, grew familiar. Before Anne could place him, a voice spoke her name.

An elegant-looking lady in her sixties smiled broadly at Anne. “Why, little Anne, I haven’t seen you in years. How are you?”

The lady claimed to have watched Anne grow up, but Anne barely remembered her. Across the room she spotted Chris, listening politely to a large man in a gray suit. Chris didn’t glance over at Anne, but she felt his awareness.

She excused herself and crossed the room, nodding and smiling, until she came to her father, who beamed at her as if delighted and then said, “You remember Ben.”

Anne had noticed the person in conversation with Morris mainly because of his sports coat, which was a striking cream color, almost yellow. In the room of dark suits it made him stand out, but it also stole attention from his face. Anne had taken him to be an earnest young man in his twenties, but in fact he was about Anne’s age, as she knew well. Ben Sewell had a long, expressive face, with eyes that went soft as he looked at her and a mouth with a great number of white teeth. “Hello, Anne,” he said, quietly as if giving a punch line. He continued watching her, smiling, waiting for her exclamation.

The two men obviously expected Anne to be startled, and she was. “Ben,” she said rather loudly. She held out her hand to him and then changed her mind and clasped his arm instead. “Why, Ben, it’s been ages. Do you live here?”

“In Austin,” said the tall young man.

Anne looked back and forth from her father to Ben Sewell. “And are you two still—?”

Morris and Ben glanced at each other and Morris smiled. “Now and again,” he said.

After a minute of chat, Morris excused himself, claiming hostly duties. He walked across his sitting room, smiling and nodding, stopping for a sentence or a laugh here and there but not letting anyone detain him until he reached Chris. “Ah, there you are,” Morris said, with a joviality that sounded false. Chris thought it could be that Morris’s expansive mood was real but that he had lost the sincerity necessary for expressing such a mood. Morris took his arm and said, “Let me introduce you to someone. Nick, do you know Chris Sinclair? Nick Winston. I thought you two might know each other, both being elected officials. Nick is on the Railroad Commission.”

A thin man with alert brown eyes and a mouth that seemed to be suppressing amusement turned around to be introduced. Nick Winston stood almost at attention, an impressive presence of tall calm in the chatter of the sitting room. For a long moment Winston devoted all his attention to Chris, undistracted. Under scrutiny like this Chris tended to go all innocent-looking. Winston looked at him deeply enough to give the impression of seeing through this pretense. He shifted his drink to shake Chris’s hand. “And you?”

“I’m the district attorney of Bexar County.”

Winston dipped his head as if impressed. “Of course. You put Malachi Reese on death row.”

Chris went a little stiff. “Friend of yours?”

Nick Winston shook his head, still appearing on the verge of laughing. “I thought it was a good career move for Malachi. Made him famous.” Winston put a friendly hand on Morris’s shoulder. “And what brings you to this old sinner’s house? Is he trying to suppress a prosecution?”

Morris said congenially, “Chris is Anne’s friend.”

“Oh.” Winston looked across the room to where Anne and Ben Sewell remained in conversation. “And there she is talking to her old friend. I guess it’s been a while, hasn’t it, Morris?”

After a slight pause Morris Greenwald said to Chris, “Anne and Ben over there used to date. Years ago.”

Chris nodded as if uninterested, aware of the other two watching him for reaction. He glanced over at the man talking to Anne. “Not everyone can wear yellow,” he said of the young man’s sports coat. Nick Winston laughed.

Morris continued explaining as if Chris had asked. “Then Ben and I went into business together. I don’t know if that’s what drove Anne away from him, but…”

Chris again looked across the room at Anne and Ben Sewell, almost involuntarily, because he still felt the the sidelong scrutiny of other two men. Anne stood looking up at the taller Sewell, laughing, what looked like her genuine laugh, not the obligatory one. Ben Sewell looked very gratified at having amused her. Chris knew the feeling.

Making conversation, he said, “What’s the occasion, Mr. Greenwald? Just an ordinary weekend at your house?”

“Pretty much,” Morris said, looking around with a self-satisfied air. “Few old friends dropping by.”

They were both being disingenuous. Chris recognized one state senator and had been introduced to a man whose name he recognized as a well-known political consultant in Austin. Here and there a conversation looked more serious than cocktail party chitchat.

Nick Winston, by contrast, stood very much at ease, not appearing to have any hidden agenda. He still wore that amused expression, especially since Morris’s answer to Chris’s question. Morris excused himself to be hostly and Chris found himself standing with his newly met acquaintance. It seemed remarkable to him, now that he thought about it, that Nick Winston didn’t have anyone accompanying him. Railroad commissioner was an important, though archaically titled position in Texas; among other things, the Railroad Commission regulated the oil industry. But Winston seemed at ease on his own and showed no inclination to move on to someone more important than Chris. He glanced again across the room to where Anne and her old boyfriend remained in conversation.

“So how long have you and Anne been whatever the word is?” Winston asked.

“People keep asking me that tonight. I don’t think duration is as important as depth, do you?”

Winston laughed, then answered seriously. “Old friends exert a certain pull on us.”

“Is that what you are, an old friend of the family?”

“Morris and I’ve known each other a long time. Since the old days when he was important.”

Looking around the room, Chris would have thought Morris Greenwald was still important. He could certainly draw a nice crowd to his house.

But before he could follow up with a question, something happened. Chris didn’t know what, but it took Nick Winston away from him. Winston had a politician’s trick of giving his full attention to the person with whom he was speaking, creating an instant feeling of intimacy. But now he looked over Chris’s shoulder for the first time and something captured his attention. He lost his secretly amused expression, his eyes moved swiftly around the room, and he set down his drink on an end table.

“It’s been nice meeting you,” he said abruptly, taking Chris’s hand again. Winston’s was long-fingered and soft, and he didn’t make a gripping contest out of the brief contact. “I hope we’ll see each other again.”

He gave Chris a swift but deep glance—the politician’s habit again, possibly—and then strode away.

Chris couldn’t see what had caught his attention. The room didn’t appear to have changed, except that one of the double doors now stood open slightly. Someone might have signaled to Winston from there and then disappeared. No one else in the room seemed to have noticed anything; they went on with their drinking and talking.

Chris stood slightly at a loss, not wishing to intrude on Anne and her old friend and not seeing anyone else he wanted to meet.

“Bored?” Anne said.

Chris turned and looked at her. “Not now.”

He had a way of making her feel beautiful, or charming. Anne still sometimes felt the beginning of a blush when he looked at her, especially in the midst of people like this. She took his arm and they strolled around the room, nodding and smiling.

“Do you know everyone?”

“About half,” Anne said. “Though I keep running into people who claim to know me a lot better than I remember them.”

“Maybe you’ve blanked out a large, unpleasant portion of your life.”

“Maybe it just doesn’t seem important anymore.”

They stepped out onto the balcony to see the night, which was fine, cool and clear with a sky full of stars, undimmed by city lights. Across the lawn more than a dozen cars filled the parking area, among them only a couple of sport utility vehicles standing tall. These guests seemed to be a traditional crowd, favoring Mercedeses and Cadillacs. A man in a dark suit was moving among the cars. He didn’t look like a parking lot attendant. Chris frowned.

Anne leaned close against him and he forgot about the parking lot. “Is there a plan? Are we spending the night here?”

“Do you want to?” Anne’s voice had that husky undertone again.

“That depends,” Chris said carefully. She laughed.

“I think this is breaking up soon. Some of them are leaving, some are going into town for dinner. Daddy invited us along.”

They went back inside. There did seem to be fewer people in the room. Even the host had left.

“Your old friend seems to have left, too,” Chris observed.

Anne didn’t sound guilty. “Someone told you about Ben?” She sighed. “It made me feel very odd seeing him. Like I owe him something. Not an apology, but attention…or more interest than I gave him before. Poor old Ben.”

Chris liked the sound of that. “Do you want to go to dinner with them?”

Anne turned to him with a smile. “Not really. What else do you have in mind?”

Anne had to search through the house to find Morris, finally having to knock on one of those closed doors. Morris emerged looking grim and harried, and didn’t appear upset by the news when Anne told him that she and Chris wouldn’t be joining him for dinner. “Come back after,” he said, patting her hand. “We’ll have a drink and a chat.”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, sure.” Morris rolled his eyes. “These people—you can’t get rid of them. And everything has to turn into politics. I’ll see you later, sweetheart.”

Chris, getting the car from the largely depopulated parking area, didn’t see the dark-suited man anymore. He started the car with a slight wince, thinking of gangsters and bombs, then drove around to the front of the house to pick up Anne. She emerged looking thoughtful, but soon put it aside.

“Tell me all about this great love affair you had with Yellow-jacket.”

“Can’t I keep any of my secrets?” Anne said lightly.

“Sure. Let’s talk about you and your father instead.”

Anne settled back in her seat. “I met Ben in college. We were both at Baylor in different majors. And he kind of followed me around like a puppy, until one day I took him home and my father made me keep him…”

Later, when Anne and Chris were coming back from pizza in New Braunfels, the house seemed more isolated than it had before. Chris almost missed the turnoff from the road. Inside Morris Greenwald’s gate the road was composed of caliche, a white rock that made the road shine in the darkness, a broad pale path. This road took perhaps a quarter of a mile to reach the house. As Chris drove, Anne leaned against him and laughed, but above her amusement he heard or sensed something outside. He slowed down and steered the car to the edge of the path. Seconds later a black sedan, looking cloaked in the dimness, hurtled toward them. Chris moved the car even farther aside, edging off the road. The heavy, dark car didn’t slow down. If anything it went even faster as it passed them, throwing up shards of caliche in its wake. Chris turned to look at it as the car passed a mere foot from him, but the moment went too quickly; he couldn’t see anyone inside the car. There had been several such cars at Morris’s earlier.

Because the car had seemed to be fleeing, he half-expected trouble at the house, but it stood unalarmed as they came within sight. Chris drove up to the front door of the house. “Shouldn’t you—?” Anne started to suggest.

“Oh, are we staying? That’s fine, that’s fine. Why don’t you go on in and sound out your father and I’ll park.”

Anne realized that Chris kept trying to throw her together with her father, but she didn’t object. She stepped out of the car and Chris drove it around the circular drive and up toward the parking area. Anne stopped for a long moment in the cool night air and breathed in the country scents, blends of new grass and decay. The stars were bright but the moon didn’t give much light. Anne looked for it and found it more than three-fourths of the way up to the peak of the sky, a bright but narrow slice of white. The moon hovered in its last phase before going dark altogether, a sliver of a moon that looked like a scimitar cutting through the night sky. An atmospheric decoration, but ineffective as lighting.

Her hand on the doorknob, Anne suddenly became aware of voices. It must be a loud argument going on, if she could hear it through the closed door. Then Anne realized the voices were carrying too distinctly. She looked up and saw two men on the balcony. Light spilled onto one end of the balcony from inside the room, but the men were standing in the shadowed part, smudges against the pale wall of the house.

As Anne peered upward she recognized Ben Sewell, partly by his distinctive jacket. She started to call to him, but he was engaged in a confrontation that she didn’t want to interrupt. The other man on the balcony yelled at Ben that he was an idiot. Ben protested, and the argument became physical. The other man pushed Ben back against the wall. Ben, tall and rather soft-looking but strong for all that, stepped forward and shoved the other man back, almost to the railing of the balcony.

The scene changed character abruptly, and Anne felt unable to move. The other man’s teeth gleamed in the moonlight, a fierce snarl. He sprang forward and grabbed Ben’s collar. Ben, looking frightened, slapped at him, which further infuriated his attacker. The man’s hand disappeared, then emerged again—Anne could see the hands because they were white against the dark background of the man’s suit. He pushed something hard against Ben Sewell’s head. Just as Anne realized the object was a gun and drew in her breath to scream, a sharp crack broke the night. Ben slumped and collapsed on the railing of the balcony.

Anne did scream. The killer stepped back, into the light from the sitting room. Nick Winston stared down at her from the balcony. Though obviously startled to find himself observed, his eyes quickly narrowed and focused on Anne. Then he moved swiftly, coming toward her.

He was thirty feet above her, a safe interval, but Anne still recoiled. Winston looked so fierce it seemed he could leap the distance between them. Anne turned, flung open the door of the house, and ran toward the stairs.

After Chris parked the car he thought he saw someone in the gazebo, wondered if it could be Morris Greenwald, and began walking that way, then thought he might be interrupting a private conversation, so he turned back in the direction of the house. So he approached it from the opposite side of the balcony. He couldn’t see the front door; the bushes blocked his view.

Chris walked along slowly, hands in his pockets, looking at the ground. Then a sound drew his attention, a sound so sudden and startling he couldn’t immediately place it. He looked up quickly, toward the front door of the house. He saw nothing unusual, and began walking toward the house. Again he scanned the front of the building. This time his attention was drawn to the balcony. Half of it was dark, and in that dark portion someone moved. Chris focused and recognized Ben Sewell standing there alone, very recognizable in his height and his yellow jacket. He seemed to be looking out toward Chris, or the parking area. Then he lifted a hand to his head, his hand in an unusual position. He held something. In the next moment Chris heard a loud retort, the sound startling and echoing in the night. Chris realized a gun had been fired, and that that was the object in Ben Sewell’s hand. He had just shot himself in the head as Chris watched.

The man fell forward over the railing of the balcony, which hit him at the waist. His legs lifted high, then turned as the body continued to fall forward. Sideways, the legs came forward over the balcony railing, like those of a high jumper barely missing a jump. The body dropped into the tall bushes just below the balcony.

Chris stood stock-still for a long moment, unable to believe what he’d seen, waiting for the night to fill with sounds of response. But he heard nothing else. Chris began running. He couldn’t see Anne or anyone else alive, and felt very alone in the night.

SLIVER MOON Copyright © 2003 by Jay Brandon