bargain, but he guessed she had put them on because they, made a link with a more comforting childhood, a childhood where daddies did not have to go to court and stand trial (no matter how cut-and-dried that trial might be, with your old golf buddy and that drunken grabber of your wife's tit, Cary Rossington, driving the gavel), a childhood where kids did not rush up to you on the soccer field during period four while you were eating your lunch to ask you how many points your dad had gotten for bagging the old lady.
You understand it was an accident, don't you, Linda?
She nods, not looking at him. Yes, Daddy.
She came out between two cars without looking either way. There was no time for me to stop. Absolutely no time.
Daddy, I don't want to hear about it.
I know you don't. And I don't want to talk about it. But you are hearing about it. At school.
She looks at him fearfully. Daddy! You didn't
Go to your school? Yeah. I did. But not until three-thirty yesterday afternoon. There were no kids there at all, at least that I could see. No one's going to know.
She relaxes. A little.
I heard you've been getting some pretty rough handling from the other kids. I'm sorry about that.
It hasn't been so bad, she says, taking his hand. Her face - the fresh scatter of angry-looking pimples on her forehead - tells a different story. The pimples say the handling has been rough indeed. Having a parent arrested is not a situation even Judy Blume covers (although someday she probably will).
I also hear you've been handling it pretty well, Billy Halleck says. Not making a big thing out of it. Because if they ever see they're getting under your skin ...
Yeah, I know, she says glumly.
Miss Nearing said she was especially proud of you, he says. It's a small lie. Miss Nearing hadn't said precisely that, but she had certainly spoken well of Linda, and that meant almost as much to Halleck as it did to his daughter. And it does the job. Her eyes brighten and she looks at Halleck for the first time.
She did?
She did, Halleck confirms. The lie comes easily and convincingly. Why not? He has told a lot of lies just lately.
She squeezes his hand and smiles at him gratefully.
They'll let it go pretty soon, Lin. They'll find some other bone to chew. Some girl will get pregnant or a teacher will have a nervous breakdown or some boy will get busted for selling pot or cocaine. And you'll be off the hook. Get it?
She throws her arms around him suddenly and hugs him tight. He decides she isn't growing up so fast after all, and that not all lies are bad. I love YOU, Daddy, she says.
I love you too, Lin.
He hugs her back and suddenly someone turns on a big stereo amplifier in the front of his brain and he hears the double-thud again.. the first as the Ninety-Eight's front bumper strikes the old Gypsy woman with the bright red cloth kerchief over her scraggly hair, the second as the big front wheels pass over her body.
Heidi screams.
And her hand leaves Halleck's lap.
Halleck hugs his daughter tighter, feeling goose flesh break all over his body.
'More eggs?' Heidi asked, breaking into his reverie.
'No. No, thanks.' He looked at his clean plate with some guilt: no matter how bad things got, they had never gotten bad enough to cause him to lose either sleep or his appetite.
'Are you sure you're ... ?'
'Okay?' He smiled. 'I'm okay, you're okay, Linda's okay. As they say on the soap operas, the nightmare is over - can we please get back to our lives?'
'That's a lovely idea.' This time she returned his smile with a real one of her own - she was suddenly under thirty again, and radiant. 'Want the rest of the bacon? There's two slices left.'
'No,' he said, thinking of the way his pants nipped at his soft waist (what waist, ha-ha? a small and unfunny Don Rickles spoke up in his mind - the last time you had a waist was around 1978, you hockey puck), the way he had to suck in his gut to hook the catch. Then he thought of the scale and said, 'I'll have one of them. I've lost three pounds.'
She had gone to the stove in spite of his original no sometimes she knows me so well it gets to be depressing, he thought. Now