He ran out the bank door, pretending to be clutching something in his hands. “Quick, lets make our getaway. Hide me. Hide me.” He squeezed Marlene and laughed and felt good. “God, Billy,” she said. “As changeable as ever.”

They tried to fill him in on all the things that had happened in Lancaster in the past two years, but he didn’t really give a damn. All he was looking forward to was spending some time with Marlene. After all those times in the visitors’ room at the prison, he longed to be alone with her.

When they reached Lancaster, Marlene told Kathy, “Drop me off at the Plaza Shopping Center. I’ve got to go to work.” Tommy stared at her. “Work?”

“Yeah. I took the morning off, but I’ve got to go back.” Tommy was dazed and hurt. He had thought she would want to be with him on his first day out of prison. He said nothing, blinking back the tears, but the hollowness inside was so painful that he left the spot …

When he was back in his room, Allen said aloud, “I always knew she was no good for him anyway. If she really gave a damn about Tommy, she’d have taken the rest of the day off. I say we don’t have anything more to do with her.”

“That,” Arthur said, “has been my position from the beginning.”

Chapter Eighteen

(1)

A few weeks before Billy’s parole, Kathy had moved back home to Lancaster, returning to her old job at Anchor Hocking. The only thing that made the job tolerable was her new friend, Bev Thomas. They worked together in the select-and-pack department, examining glassware as it moved along the Belt, talking above the roar of glass-firing burners and air blowers. When Kathy quit Anchor Hocking to begin college at Ohio University in Athens, the two girls kept up their friendship.

Bev was an attractive young divorcee about Billy’s age, with brownish-blond hair and green eyes. Kathy found Bev independent, tolerant and blunt. Bev was interested in psychology; she said she tried to understand the meanness in people and what in their backgrounds caused them to act the way they did.

Kathy told her how her own family—especially Billy—had suffered from Chalmers violence. She invited Bev to her mothers house, showed her Billy’s paintings and told her about the crimes that had sent him to prison. Bev said she’d like to meet him.

Kathy arranged for Billy to go for a drive with them soon after his return home. In the late afternoon, Bev pulled up in front of the Spring Street house in her white Mercury Montego, and Kathy called to Billy, who was working on his VW. She introduced them, but Billy just nodded and turned back to what he was doing.

“C’mon, Billy,” Kathy said. “You promised we’d go for a drive.”

He looked at Bev, then at the VW and shook his head. “Oh, I say, I don’t really feel confident enough to get behind the wheel. Not quite yet.”