“How do you feel about going back to see your mom?”

Charissa looked back up at him, and for the split second that Shad met her eyes he thought he noticed a flash in them.

“Why do you care?”

If only Eliot hadn’t run off to save that mare there wouldn’t be so much antagonism to deal with. Charissa’s father had probably done his best to fuel the fire against her mother’s attempts to regain their daughter.

“I have every reason to care.” Shad drew another deep breath as he tried to collect his thoughts. Details were no challenge to him, but trying to distill them to others was much more difficult. “Or rather, you see....” He leaned against the backrest of the bench and stretched one arm across the top, still struggling to come up with the right words. “Let’s put it this way. Your mom hired me. But I’m not working for your mom to make money. I’m not even working for her just so she can get you back. I don’t –” Shad caught himself. He was about to say “I don’t care about your mom,” and this was the wrong level to make that statement. He leaned forward again. “The only reason I decided to work for your mom was because she convinced me it was in your best interest to bring you back home. I don’t care –” Shad took a couple of seconds to reconsider his words before proceeding with them. “– So much about what your mom wants or what your dad wants. What matters more to me is what you want.” He clasped his hands together in front of his knees. “Did any of that make sense?”

She studied him for enough seconds that Shad started to wonder how he was going to manage trying to rephrase that babble into something more comprehensible.

“I want Mom and Dad back,” Charissa finally said. “Together.”

Shad looked down at his hands and blew out an exhale. “You and a million other kids.” He looked at her again, managing to bring his gaze as high as her nose. “I can’t do that. I can’t make them get back together. So I have to come up with the next best thing for you.”

Charissa lowered her gaze again. “If Mom wasn’t dying, they’d be together.”

When Monica Simms first approached Shad about getting Charissa back, he was initially interested in her situation for two reasons. First, it reminded him of the story about Pap’s great-great grandfather. When the potato famine of the 1840’s struck Ireland, Quaid Delaney’s father abandoned the family because he couldn’t bear to watch them starve to death. For the rest of his life Quaid despised his father for this penultimate act of cowardice. He was so outspoken about his opinion that to this day getting called coward by a Delaney was equivalent to be being called something rather excremental by anybody else. If Demetri Simms could walk away from his wife and take their child because he didn’t want them to watch her die, Shad initially believed he might have the same color of belly as Quaid’s father.

The other reason was simply because there could be a child’s welfare at stake, which was very much of the foundation for why Shad had accepted the ludicrous idea of becoming an attorney. At first he didn’t see much hope for Monica’s goal. The couple was still legally married and Demetri didn’t have any kind of criminal record, so Shad had little grounds to initiate a custody battle.

During his initial consultation with Monica, however, Shad began to notice “red flags” in her description of their relationship with Demetri. So he asked Monica certain questions he’d devised whenever Shad wanted to verify if abuse was an element in a case he was considering. Even though she didn’t realize it herself, Monica confirmed Shad’s suspicions. If Demetri could convince a woman in her twenties that she was “crazy,” Lord knows what harm he could do to the mind of a child.

Shad’s pet questions wouldn’t work on a child, however, and he also had to take care that he neither led Charissa nor set himself up for the accusation of contributing to alienation of her father.

“Why do you think that?” Shad simply asked.

“It’s a bad thing, dying.” Charissa looked up at him.

“Tell me what’s bad about dying.”

Shad could read a river much more effectively than he could people’s expressions, but he suspected the slight frown that furrowed Charissa’s brow indicated she thought his request was a bit odd. Then her gaze lowered to the day pack, and her voice was softer when she spoke.

“It’s bad people who die.”

Shad was so consumed by all the ramifications of that answer it took him probably thirty seconds to respond. “Only bad people die? Don’t good people die too?”

“If you’re good, you get to die when you’re old.” Charissa didn’t look up. “If you’re bad, God makes you die sooner.”

On the one hand, it was a philosophy that might offer comfort to a child. Wouldn’t the world be safer if all the bad guys were struck down before they could harm the innocent? On the other hand, it negatively judged everyone who faced an untimely death.

“Why do you believe that?” Shad asked.

This time Charissa did raise her head to look at him, and her eyes shimmered. “Dad told me so.”

This was a hollow victory for him. Shad was indeed obtaining the type of testimony he needed against Demetri, but Shad realized he had a bigger issue to tackle at the moment.

“Your mom isn’t bad.” Shad knew he was notorious for getting to the point, but this seemed like one circumstance he could indulge that tendency.

Charissa regarded him for a few seconds before responding. “Then why is she dying?”

The phrase “life isn’t fair” immediately came to mind, but Shad knew he had to come up with a better answer.

Luckily Mam and Pap had already answered the same types of questions for him. “There ... is a purpose.” Shad took a deep breath as he tried to figure out how to simplify something deeper to the level of a five-year-old. “I can’t begin to understand it, because the way of God is not the way of man. But when bad things happen, if we can make good come of it, then we have done the work of God.”

He couldn’t decipher Charissa’s slight frown, but Shad doubted he had made much headway.

“The truth is ... the truth is good people die too. It doesn’t seem fair, I know. Lord knows we need all the good people we can get.” Shad didn’t consider Monica to be anywhere near sainthood, but that wasn’t his concern right now. “Your mom will always love you. And anybody who loves you has got to be good, right?”

It bothered him that Charissa didn’t respond right away, and even then she sounded uncertain. “I suppose.”

Now seemed as good a time as any to continue building on that new concept she would need to get used to. “And your Uncle Eliot and Aunt Tess love you, too. They’re gonna help your mom take care of you.”

After a few seconds of silence, Charissa spoke with the hint of a plea in her voice. “Don’t make Mom and Dad get a divorce.”

“I have to if I can.”

“Why?”

How was he going to explain the most complex case he’d yet handled in Shad’s three years of being an attorney to a mere child? “Because the law says that everything will go to your dad when your mom passes away. Including you. Normally that’s not a problem. But....” Shad shook his head as he took another deep breath for a long exhale. “I have to take appropriate measures to insure your rights are protected.”

Charissa looked up at him with a slight frown, and Shad realized he’d just spoken above the girl’s comprehension. Shad also quickly ascertained why he had just made that slip. The child’s relatives had mentioned to him, as though it were a positive thing, that Charissa acted older than other children her age. While her pseudo-maturity was easier to handle than hyperactivity, Shad knew both could be symptoms of abuse.

That gut feeling which usually eluded him during most of his interaction with others never failed Shad when he suspected any kind of abuse. He could only figure it was the result of a well-worn survival instinct, and feeling it stir again increased his concern for Charissa.