Breach of Promise by James Scott Bell

Author:James Scott Bell [Bell, James Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780310243878
Goodreads: 20183
Publisher: Zondervan Publishing Company
Published: 2004-02-15T06:00:00+00:00

THE SETUP

1 “Let’s talk about your anger for a while,” Sutton Hallard said. Great. It was Friday, and I was in for another interview with him—I felt like the proverbial dog jumping through hoops—and now we were on my weakest point. What I was busting to ask him was whether he’d talked to Paula or Maddie. I knew he had. I also knew he wouldn’t tell me boo about it.

“I know I have a problem with anger,” I said, being up front and confessional. I was going to be so even tempered that Sutton Hallard would want to put me up for a humanitarian award when we were finished. “But I feel I know about it and can manage it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just what I’ve seen in myself the last few weeks.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Sure.” I tried to think of one and ran with the first thing that

popped into my mind. “The other night I was talking to my father.” Hallard looked at the paper in front of him. “That would be Mr.

Reid?”

“Right. He came over, wanted to talk or something, so he came

up to my apartment and I made some coffee. We talked for a while,

then he said some things that I thought were out of line. We got

into sort of an argument, and I told him he needed to get his act

together.”

“In what way?”

“Just plain old growing up. He’s still acting like a kid. Not being

responsible about his job and stuff like that. Well, I told him that,

then he says to me, ‘Look who’s talking.’ And I start to get hot and

ask him what he means. He says I can’t even hold my own family together. That was below the belt, and my first thought was to take

a punch at him. But I didn’t. And that’s what I’m saying.” “Why don’t you think you took a punch at him?” Should I tell him about the voice? Or would that put me in a

whole new category in Sutton Hallard’s eyes? Nfor nutcase. “I just didn’t. I held back. I could feel myself holding back,

not wanting to do it.”

“And you have no idea why you didn’t?”

For some reason I’ll never fully understand, the next voice I

used was Peter Lorre’s. “Who knows the depths of the human

mind?”

Sutton Hallard stared at me like I was, in fact, a nutcase. “That’s my Peter Lorre imitation,” I explained. “Just to show

you my acting side.”

“Very amusing.” Hallard tapped his pencil on the fleshy part

of his palm.

“No, but seriously,” I said, using the familiar segue, “I truly

think I’m becoming a better person. I’m not just lashing out.” “People don’t simply change, out of the blue. There is some

sort of stimulus and, if you look hard enough, you can usually find

it. If we can do that now, it may play an important role in this aspect

of the case.”

Important role? I wondered what he meant. It sounded like a

verbal clue, almost like he was prompting me to give him something he could work with. Maybe like he was on my side a little bit.

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