I plan to deliver a solid second draft of the novel 3 Lives in Jury every Thursday. There will be mistakes because two drafts are not nearly enough. Experimentation has a price. I apologize in advance. Drop me a line. I’d love to hear what you think. I can be reached at terryfries.edit@gmail.com.
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Chapter 4
When Dr. Kappens phoned two weeks later to cancel her sessions with Whit and Lucy, explaining she was attending an out-of-town conference, opportunity knocked.
“It has to be tonight.” Whit waylaid Frank the next morning on their walk to school. He shouldered Frank to keep him moving down the long driveway till they got out of sight of the house. “Your mom is away.”
Frank played dumb. “What has to be tonight?”
Lucy sniffed. “Frank,” she glared at him. “Really? Do we need to start from the beginning? We’re getting into your mom’s office, like you promised.”
At the end of the driveway, they crossed the gravel road and started down the trail through the trees. Whit still liked the shortcut to school, despite knowing it was likely where he was abducted. It didn’t feel like it, though. He felt safe. He sensed no secrets lurking in the cool shade.
They stopped midway along the path, Lucy and Whit pressuring Frank, praising Frank, playing up their friendship, appealing to his sense of vengeance for Whit’s sake, until he softened. They set the office raid up for 9 p.m.
As supper that night, Whit and Lucy told Wanda and Matt they were going to Frank Kappens’ place to watch movies. Wanda reminded them it was school night and suggested next time they start the movie earlier, but it was fine.
Whit and Lucy rushed out the door, through the back orchard with Wanda and Matt smiling at them through an upstairs window as they disappeared into the apple trees. Wanda and Matt agreed; having Lucy move in was drawing Whit out of his shell.
Lucy appeared to be adapting, too. Wanda noted the growing piles in Lucy’s room and saw her carrying armloads of items into the house over a few days. She tramped in from her after-school excursions carrying an extra backpack, tarps, collapsible fishing gear, a pocket saw, an old thermos, two reflective blankets, a filleting knife, and a cooler full of ropes, tape, fire-starting cubes and a camp stove.
Lucy said she was moving stuff from her personal stashes, of which she had three around town, to her new room.
Wanda accepted it as a sign of Lucy’s growing trust, but Lucy simply saw the logic of it. It seemed reckless to leave her things outside when she had house storage available.
Wanda and Matt were struck by the differences between the Lucy they knew and the stories of Lucy’s chaotic past. They found her affable and positive, words not associated with the Lucy Koot of record.
It wasn’t perfect, but the problems were manageable. At one point, Wanda learned about salacious school rumours involving her son and Lucy from a teacher friend who devoted an unwholesome amount of attention to teen romance, and it simply reinforced to her that pre-adults needed reasonable supervision.
The romance rumours bothered Whit, though, and as the gossip spread, the stories created realities of their own; false lives out of nothing. Whit cringed.
Lucy was less bothered by it and used her new romantic status to stir up the boisterous crowds by hugging Whit at inappropriate times and air-grabbing his crotch in the busy hallway because it amused her and disturbed the adults.
“Jesus Christ, Whit. I was just kidding,” Lucy said, responding to Whit’s protests about how she winked at him when she sauntered across the front of the classroom after arriving late to math class earlier that day.
They were heading for their meet-up with Frank.
When Whit didn’t answer, Lucy shrugged. “Fine, whatever,” she said. “Beats me why it bothers you so much.”
Whit walked faster, generating more distance between them and they moved along in silence until the road changed from gravel to pavement, an indication downtown was close and the top of the hill that led to Dr. Kappens’ office was just steps away. Whit slowed and waited for Lucy.
It was a nice enough end to an April day. The breeze felt refreshing against his skin. The distant hills had changed from green to evening grey and the rocky face marking the western edge of downtown lost the mica glints that gleamed in the sunlight during the day.
A shape moved ahead and started uphill toward them.
It appeared slight, short. It must be Frank. When he got close, Lucy and Whit saw Frank was sweating profusely. His shoulders heaved and he listed heavily to the left, as though carrying a heavy jug in that hand.
Frank leaned against the stone fence surrounding his mom’s office.
“Got the key?” Whit asked.
The streets below at Blister and Main were busy with jostling silhouettes. Crowds so late in the evening were rare for Jury but not tonight because the damn bakery was sponsoring a poetry reading or something equally dull, Whit guessed.
They could see people seated at tiny tables in front of Big Heart Bakery sipping from cups, some turning their noses upward to sniff the wind and the smells: moss, old wood, roasted beans.
Well, it doesn’t change the plan, Whit thought. We’re too far away for anyone to notice.
Lucy, Whit and Frank watched the lights wink out one by one. The Burnaby Sticks Law office, the Hair Bud Salon, the Gambler’s Cafe and Moe’s Asian restaurant all fell dark. The two massage offices, the insurance agent and the mortician had closed hours ago.
On Main Street, the bakery would stay open for another hour. Next door, Benjamin Rabbit’s drug store usually stayed open until 11 and Tidy Joe’s stayed open all night, since it was coin-operated. Next to that, Daniel Brewer had closed already and pulled the steel grate down over the window of his Thrift and Swap. History suggested he was probably still inside polishing off a bottle of Jameson before heading home to his wife.
The three moved off the sidewalk onto the office porch to stay out of sight.
Petra had moved to Jury full-time three years ago and renovated what had been her part-time, once-a-week branch office into something to suit every day. She moved her life, her practice in Gold Rush, about a 15-minute highway trip away, along with Frank and her two step-sons Jorge and Marco.
Frank was the howling prat of Petra’s first marriage to a bottled water salesperson, who drowned in a hot tub surrounded by college hotties while attending a sales conference at an upscale ski resort. Through fate or genius, someone had booked the sales conference to coincide with Suicide Week, the university February break.
Hank, her second husband, brought Jorge and Marco into the family. Frank took Hank Kappens’ last name because Petra believed it would help family togetherness and Frank was too young to have a choice.
Frank started life sick from the first day, arriving in a bed of his own mucus. He was a small boy, who needed constant nurturing, which his mother happily provided. She studied the latest treatments for cystic fibrosis and knew about the latest research before many doctors. She tapped the little boy’s chest, rubbed the little back and used a syringe to clear the small airways.
She learned how to administer his drugs, care for his diet, plan his exercise, how to set up the masks and the vests to unblock his chest and diligently taught Frank every step of the way as he became old enough.
She turned Frank’s room into a treatment centre, full of cold metal equipment, hoses and wires. She ordered new inventions on a prayer and was disappointed by many that failed, but the few decent ones made up for it.
Frank gradually grew stronger and spent fewer days in hospital or confined to bed at home. At seven, doctors deemed him right enough to attend real school with real classrooms and real students.
Life hummed along for Frank after that. He still needed professional therapy three times a day, and probably would need it for life, but otherwise, he was mostly self-sustaining. He carried a backpack of salty nuts, nutritional supplement drinks and protein bars and knew how to look after most issues as they arose. At school, he’d dismiss himself and head down to the nurse’s station, usually unstaffed, where he would strap on his breathing mask, feeling like a carnival freak hiding from the normies.
Hank’s death changed everything for the family. He crashed through the railing along the highway one night, careened over a cliff and landed upside down in Lake Charity.
Petra concluded it was a sign from God, or the Eye of Providence. Two dead husbands attributed to one woman in one lifetime was as far as she was willing to push her luck. The only way to break the pattern, she decided, was to make a new life.
She knew Jury because she was accustomed to spending one day a week working there. It was perfect because it was different from Gold Rush, but not too different. It was away from Gold Rush, but not too far away.
Hank’s death widened the gulf between Frank and his step-brothers. His father had lashed them together like logs on the same raft and Petra was unable to keep them together in the same way. She was one of the logs. Frank stuck close to his mother, but Jorge and Marco drifted.
As an incentive to convince her two step-sons to move with her to Jury, Petra bought a used Dodge Ram pickup and an economically prudent Geo the boys could drive to visit friends in Gold Rush or travel to their jobs or attend community college.
It worked and they all moved three summers ago.
Today, at age 17, Frank was rail thin with skin like cracked icing. He carried a backpack of food, breathing supplies and meds wherever he went. Besides his constant eating and drinking, Frank took enzyme pills at every meal and every snack because his pancreas was too full of mucus to properly deliver the enzymes his intestines needed to absorb nutrients. Doctors recommended he consume 4,000 calories a day, twice the usual amount.