Malice

Chapter 1 The sounds of the organ music drifted up to the Wedgwood blue sky. Birds sang in the trees, and in the distance, a child called out to a friend on a lazy summer morning. The voices inside the church rose in powerful unison, as they sang the familiar hymns that Grace had sung with her family since childhood. But this morning, she couldn't sing anything. She could barely move, as she stood, staring straight ahead at her mother's casket. Everyone knew Ellen Adams had been a good mother, a good wife, a respected citizen until she died. She had taught school before Grace was born, and she would have liked to have had more children, but it just hadn't happened. Her health had always been frail, and at thirty-eight she had gotten cancer. The cancer started in her uterus, and after a hysterectomy, she'd had both chemotherapy and radiation. But the cancer spread to her lungs anyway, and her lymph nodes, and eventually her bones. It had been a four-and-a-half-year battle. And now, at forty-two, she was gone. She had died at home, and Grace had taken care of her single-handedly until the last two months when her father had finally had to hire two nurses to help her. But Grace still sat next to her bedside for hours when she came home from school. And at night, it was Grace who went to her when she called out in pain, helped her turn, carried her to the bathroom, or gave her medication. The nurses only worked in the daytime. Her father didn't want them there at night, and everyone realized he had a hard time accepting just how sick his wife was. And now he stood in the pew next to Grace and cried like a baby. John Adams was a handsome man. He was forty-six, and one of the best attorneys in Watseka, and surely the most loved. He had studied at the University of Illinois after serving in the Second World War, and then came home to Watseka, a hundred miles south of Chicago. It was a small, immaculately kept town, filled with profoundly decent people. And he handled all their legal needs, and listened to all their problems. He went through their divorces with them, or battles over property, bringing peace to warring members of families. He was always fair, and everyone liked him for it. He handled personal injury, and claims against the State, he wrote wills, and helped with adoptions. Other than the town's most popular medical practitioner, who was a friend of his too, John Adams was one of the most loved and respected men in Watseka. John Adams had been the town's football star as a young man, and he had gone on to play in college. Even as a boy, people had been crazy about him. His parents had died in a car accident when he was sixteen, and his grandparents had all died years before that, and families literally argued over who was going to invite him to live with them until he finished high school. He was always such a nice guy and so helpful. In the end, he had stayed with two different families, and both of them loved him dearly. He knew practically everyone in town by name, and there were more than a few divorcees and young widows who had had an eye on him ever since Ellen had been so sick in the last few years. But he never gave them the time of day, except to be friendly, or ask about their kids. He had never had a roving eye, which was another nice thing people always said about him. "And Lord knows he has a right to," one of the older men who knew him well always saiSteel, Danielle is the author of 'Malice' with ISBN 9780385306041 and ISBN 0385306040.