Lady Afraid Read Online Free Page A

them both neurotic,” Sarah interrupted. “That’s wrong. They are nothing alike.”
    “No? Old man Lineyack is a self-aggrandized, bullheaded, cold-blooded bigot. That right?”
    “Yes, that would fit—”
    “And Alice Mildred, his wife, is withdrawn and inward, a person who absolutely can’t be reached by friendliness or anything else. An old woman so unapproachable and vague that you look at her and you begin to think of a bleeding angel. Right again?”
    “I’m not so sure about Alice Mildred—”
    “They’re neurotic for my money,” Brill said. “Those two people aren’t alike, but I’m telling you they wouldn’t stand for anyone coming into their warped, shadowy world who was a normal person—but particularly they did not like you. Because you’re human as hell, Mrs. Lineyack. You’re lively, and you’ve got as many normal human emotions as Planters has peanuts. Those two old people would hate you. And specially they would hate you because you took their perpetual Christmas tree, their godlet, their only son, away from them. You married him. They would have hated the Virgin Mary herself for that, but they hated you specially for another reason: you weren’t like them. They didn’t even understand how to love you, but they did understand how to hurt you. So when your husband was killed in a car wreck and you got smashed up yourself, they got you stuck away in a hospital in the state of Massachusetts. Then, in the state of Maine, serving you by publication, they alleged you were a drunk and got the boy away from you. Being in Massachusetts, you never saw the published notice in the Maine paper. That’s a common gag, that notice by publication. You want to do something to somebody in court, so you make a statement their whereabouts is unknown, prove it by a letter you mailed to some address and got back marked addressee unknown, then you slap a two-inch legal notice in some jerk paper nobody ever reads. They do that. Then they make you think they got the boy legally—why not; they’ve got the legal paper now, big as anything—and they’ve never let you see him since, and you still thought it was legal until you met me—and I discovered what they did to you. And I know we can get that adoption hauled up for examination, and they’re going to have their hands full proving you were a drunk when you were in a hospital getting hospital care, and not for alcoholism, either…. That’s the story, Mrs. Lineyack, the facts as you’ve given them to me.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “No buts about it, Mrs. Lineyack,” Brill said. “Either that’s the facts or you’d better tell me otherwise.”
    Sarah stared at the lawyer and the flames of her anger grew blue-tipped with heat. “You’ve investigated the records of the inquest over the automobile crash that caused my husband’s death! You should know the facts.”
    His thin grin came, left. “The point is this: You take a baby from its nursery. You disappear. I’m your lawyer—moreover, I’m the one who advised you it was the thing to do, the quick way. Take the kid—let Mr. and Mrs. Ivan Spellman Lineyack do the yelling. You’ve put the monkey on their back. As your lawyer, I told you to grab the boy. I’m right. But I’m right only as far as you told me the truth, and if you didn’t tell me the truth, where do you think that puts me? Up the creek, that’s where. And I’d hate to tell you how far up that creek too.”
    Despair in Sarah was a thin, high thing, like a harp string wailing. “I haven’t lied,” she gasped. “They have Jonnie, and he’s my son, my soul, the only thing I want—”
    Coldly, emotionlessly, the lawyer put in, “Sure, I know it’s tough for you.”
    He struck back his left coat cuff; there was a yellow gold watch held to his wrist by a gold-link band; he consulted it for the time.
    “All right, I believe you,” he added. “You put it in the note that I’m your attorney. Put in my name, office address.