Final Justice. Marta Perry

together. Something has gone very wrong for him, and I don’t know what. If I can help him, please show me the way.

      She put the carton down on the gym floor and hesitated, longing to rip it open. “Can I see what’s in here?”

      Mason’s eyebrows lifted. “There are more in the van. Don’t you want to bring them all in first?”

      “I want to see.” She suspected she sounded like one of her four-year-olds.

      He planted his hands on his hips, smiling at her. A shaft of sunlight, piercing through one of the high windows, turned his hair to burnished gold. “You were one of those kids who ripped open the birthday present before you looked to see who it was from, weren’t you?”

      “Guilty,” she confessed. “Please?”

      He shrugged. “Knock yourself out. It’s just some basketballs, that’s all. I have new baskets in one of the boxes, too. Those old things are so bent it’s a wonder a ball can get through them.” He nodded toward the existing baskets, which drooped dispiritedly from their worn backboards.

      “They’ve probably been up there for thirty or forty years,” she commented, eagerly ripping the box open. “This is so great. The kids will be thrilled.”

      The box held half a dozen basketballs, brand-new. She took one out and tossed it to him.

      He caught it automatically, but then threw it back into the box with a quick thrust of his hands.

      “Come on,” she said invitingly, picking up the ball again. “Show me that hook shot of yours.”

      “Sorry. I don’t play anymore.” He turned and walked toward the door.

      She paused, watching his lithe figure. No, she didn’t understand what was going on with Mason. Maybe she never would.

      She went to the van after him, helping to carry in another load of boxes, which proved to contain a couple of table-tennis sets.

      “I can’t thank you enough for this.” She knew that sounded stilted, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She sat down on the floor beside the boxes. “If you have work to do, I can unpack everything myself.”

      He stood for a moment, looking down at her, and then squatted next to her. “Don’t be so polite, Miss Jennifer. Isn’t that what the children call you?”

      “It is. How did you know?” Don’t let me make a mistake and drive him away again.

      “I have my sources.” He opened a box containing a wooden hockey game and started to put it together, his hands deft. “Look—about the basketball. I’m sorry if I was rude. I just don’t like reminders of my failures, that’s all.”

      She’d tell him he was overreacting, but she’d already tried that, and it hadn’t worked. “It must be tough to avoid an entire sport, in your line of work.”

      “Yeah, well, when you inherit the family business, you don’t exactly have a lot of choices.”

      “I guess not. I just—” She looked at him, troubled.

      “You want to make it better.” He gave her a wry smile that twisted her heart. “You always want to make things better, don’t you, Jennifer? Some things about people don’t change.”

      “Some things do.” She shivered a little. “Everything that’s been coming out, about Josie, I mean, has me feeling as if the college days I thought I remembered might not have been real.”

      His face went still, and she couldn’t tell what lay behind that stillness. “Maybe all our memories are a little skewed,” he said finally. “We see what happened through our own perspective.”

      “Some things are simply true,” she protested. “Our viewpoint doesn’t change that. Josie’s pregnancy—”

      She stopped. She hadn’t intended to bring that up.

      “What about it?” His voice was even, his face bent over his work, a strand of blond hair falling onto his forehead.

      “Well, she must have been pregnant in the spring of our senior year. She must have been upset, worried, trying to figure out what to do. I saw her every day. Why didn’t I realize something was wrong?”

      “She didn’t want you to,” he said. “You can’t help everyone, Jennifer. Some people won’t let you.” It sounded very final. He lifted the hockey game and propped it against the wall. “There you are, all finished. Anything else I can do for you?”

      He rose as he spoke, holding out his hand. She grasped it, and he pulled her effortlessly to her feet. For an instant she felt dizzy. Her eyes met his—met and held. Her breath stopped. Mason didn’t move. Even the dust motes floating in the shaft of sunlight seemed still.

      “You—What did you say?” Her voice sounded unnatural to her.

      He blinked, as if trying to refocus. “I asked if I could do anything else for you.”

      You could open up to me. You could explain what just happened.

      “Nothing, unless you’d like to come in and show the children how to use all this equipment. We’re always looking for volunteers.” That was better. Her voice sounded almost normal.

      “I’m afraid you’ll have to keep looking. I’m no good with kids.” His face seemed to tense on the words.

      “You never know until you try,” she said. Open up to me, Mason. Talk to me.

      “I don’t think so. I’ll see you, Jennifer.” He walked out quickly, as if to deny that anything at all had just happened between them.

      Mason sat at his desk a couple of days later, trying to concentrate on the latest sales reports from the Macon store. Concentrating was never easy with the massive oil painting of his father mounted on the wall above, staring down at him. It seemed to be reminding him that it was Gerald Grant II who was supposed to be sitting in that chair, not Mason.

      Small wonder he preferred to work anywhere but here. He could move the portrait, of course. He toyed with that thought for a moment, even knowing it was impossible. Think how scandalized Eva Morrissey would be if he did such a thing.

      He’d inherited Eva, his father’s secretary, when he inherited the business, and their working relationship had been set at a time when he’d been too young and too insecure to take a firm line with her. As a result, she felt free to criticize everything he did, including that donation to the after-school program.

      Suspicious, that had been the only word for her attitude. Why would he want to do something like that? He never had before. His father never had.

      That was the gold standard for Eva. What would his father have done?

      Maybe that was all the more reason to make the donation. He shoved his chair back from the computer, stretching. But that wasn’t why he’d given the equipment. He knew perfectly well why. Because Jennifer had asked him to do it.

      Well, so what? It was natural enough. Friends supported each other’s interests.

      That sentiment was something that wouldn’t have occurred to him before the reunion. Then, he’d preferred not to move too deeply into friendships or romantic relationships. He’d kept his personal life on the surface. It was much safer that way.

      Getting back in touch with the gang from college had begun to change his attitude. It had forced him to remember that guy he used to be. That kid had been naive, maybe. Guilty of a lot of mistakes. But at least he’d had some humanity.

      Not entirely comfortable with the direction his thoughts were taking, he shoved his chair back and moved to one of the wide windows that looked down on Main Street. This had been his father’s office, and his father had liked overlooking what he considered his domain.

      The warm spring day had brought the college students downtown in force. They sauntered along the