Free A Silence of Mockingbirds by Karen Spears Zacharias

company’s ads, joined Heuer North America president
Ulrich Wohn, Glamour editor in chief Cindi Leive and Glamour vice president
and publisher Bill Wackerman and others at Condé Nast Publications Inc.’s
New York headquarters at 4 Times Square to laud three women who have positively
impacted their communities.
    Sarah Sheehan received an honor for starting Karly’s Angels,
a not-for-profit network of resources for single parents…Thurman presented
each winner with an engraved diamond-studded Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph
watch.
    — Sophia Chabbott
    David was angry and unnerved by the manner in which Sarah
exploited their dead child for financial gain. “If Sarah had undertaken
five percent of her maternal responsibility, then Karly would still be
alive,” David said. “She has gotten away with so much. I can’t let her
rewrite history and make this artificial life for herself.”
    Sarah was not a single mother, abandoned, left to raise a child
without support from Karly’s father. Nothing could be further from
the truth. Sarah was never a single mother. From the outset, David
was Karly’s primary caregiver. Even the chart notes made by nurses
following Karly’s birth document that fact:
    “Husband is supportive. Father of baby very concerned and primary
caregiver. Baby has been rooming in and father doing most of baby care while
mom rests. Offered newborn class. Mom feeling too sore and wants father to
go. Father took baby to class. Husband helps with baby. Patient anxious, needs
lots of support and detailed explanation of procedures.”
    Within a couple of months of Karly’s birth, Sarah returned to her
freewheeling ways and resumed her social nightlife as a regular fixture
at various clubs around town.
    Chapter Thirteen
    T he city’s nine-hole course
and club, called Par 3, located north of town on Highway 20, is a favorite
among locals. Parents bring their children out to play the putt-putt course.
Couples sit in the booths, sharing fries off each other’s plates and ordering
another local brew. Women and men weathered by too much golf and too many
cigarettes totter on bar stools in a trance, pushing the chiming buttons of
the video poker machines.
    Eric DeWeese was manager at Par 3 the afternoon I stopped by
following that phone call from a very distraught David. David said
he’d heard Sarah had posted a flyer at Par 3 announcing a benefit
golf tournament in Karly’s honor, but it was all part of Sarah’s newest
moneymaking venture.
    It was one of those rare dry winter days in the valley with a hand-drawn sun stuck to a felt-board sky, looking all make-believe. I sat in
the parking lot at Par 3, gathering notebook and pen, and praying to
learn what became of the Sarah I once knew.
    A cursory scan as I passed through the door didn’t reveal the flyer
mentioning Karly’s Angels. Overstuffed booths on my right, bar on my
left. One man sat hunched over his bourbon, another over his second
beer, the first bottle still on the bar.
    A television blared from behind the bar. Leaning between the two
men, I asked the girl wiping a glass if the manager was around, and if I
could please speak to him. I could smell a burger sizzling on the grill,
and beer sloshed on the floor for the last how many years.
    Eric slid into the booth across from me. He was darkly handsome,
all khaki and yellow polo, clean-shaven as a deacon. He sat sideways,
back to the window, face to the bar, ready to hop up at a moment’s
notice.  The barmaid turned the TV down a notch.
    “What can you tell me about Sarah?” I asked.
    “She’s very attractive, very pretty, very flirty,” Eric said. “A fairly big
gambler, though. If she had $500, she’d spend it. If she had $1,000, she’d
spend it. She was a party girl, always liked to have a good time.”
    He paused, and in his best manger voice asked, “Can I get you
something to drink?”
    “I’m good,” I said. “Did