"Damn us, Bets," he murmured to himself as he picked up her note and reread it. "You've really gone and done it this time, haven't you girl?"
Now he would have to go over to Stacey's and start the search, a search he knew might end in great sadness. If Bets were found dead, there would be no one to blame but herself. But the pain would be shared by many, not the least of whom would be Bets' two little girls. And Jeremy... how the hell would he feel?
Judge Carl put the note in his shirt pocket, along with the floppy disk that Bets' had wrapped in it before pushing it under his front door. She knew he did not have a computer at home, that he would have to go to Stacey's to read the disk's contents on hers. It was Bets' way of making him the messenger.
The drive over to Stacey's gave Judge Carl time to reflect on Elizabeth Cole, the woman almost everyone called Bets. He thought about the time his wife Emily, God rest her, had introduced them. Bets had been a college student in one of Emily's courses at the time. Even at that age, the girl was not only cunningly smart, she was people-wise. Got it from her daddy, she said. She could read people like a book, see right into their depths and speak to the core of them. She had an intuitive nature too, which she ascribed to being one-quarter indian and in touch with ancestral spirits. If she had lived her life with her head instead of her heart, she would have made a good lawyer or psychologist instead of the troubled woman she had become.
Judge Carl thought of the last time he had seen her, at her house just three nights before. Dark circles ringed her soulful brown eyes, caused as much by lack of sleep as by crying. She had never slept well, always troubled by nightmares. But on this particular evening she had really been distraught. She explained how problems with Jeremy had triggered her anxiety, but she knew he was by no means the sole cause of it. She was fed full of pain and bad memories. Life was killing her, and she was tired of trying to hold it all together. These were feelings she would tell him and no one else, because no man understood her as well as he did. He loved her like a daughter, like a woman and a friend.
It certainly was not the first time Judge Carl had seen her in a bad way, though. The poor girl had almost died four years before in childbirth. She'd been in and out of hospitals most of her adult life. But Bets was a survivor. In spite of her vulnerable heart, or maybe because of it, she could be brick-headed stubborn and steel-wheeled tough. She had always found a way to bounce back from the licks life had given her. Until now.
Bets had eventually calmed down that evening, after pouring her heart out to Judge Carl, but their talk had obviously not given her the release she sought. Now, the note confirmed it. She was gone, and the wording made it clear that he should not expect to see her again. But wasn't she also expressing here a desire to be found and rescued? She could have slit her wrists, stuck her head in the oven, or overdosed on pills at home. Why would she run away and deliver the note and the floppy disk to his door, if she really wanted to die?
"Damn us, Bets," he murmured again, pulling into Stacey's drive way. "Damn me for being so human, and damn you for being so easy to love."
Judge Carl's days of courtroom drama were behind him. He had not sat on the bench in nearly a year. At the age of 56, he wanted nothing more to do with criminals, family feuds, corporate lawsuits, and the dark intrigues of the human soul. He had earned a life of pleasant retirement, lazy afternoons on the porch with Stacey and quiet suppers with his daughter and all the children. Bets' disappearance was the last complication he needed at this time in his life.