Falling Grace

by Melissa Shirley

  “You okay?”

  She flicked her eyes at her husband, then back down. “Yes.”

  Nathan rose to his feet and stalked to the exit. I patted Gabby on the back and raced to follow him out. He had a stride I couldn’t match, and I jogged to catch up.

  “Nathan, wait.”

  He whirled and almost knocked me down with a waving arm. I ducked out of the way, then straightened to my full height. Good Lord. All the men in this town towered over me. Maybe everything was bigger in Texas after all.

  “What?”

  “I need to ask you what happened the night Emily died.” I kept my voice measured, calm, hid the tremors of my hands by clasping them together in front of me. Something about this guy gave me the creeps and I shivered.

  His eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms. “Why me? I don’t know what happened. You should be asking her.” He nodded his head in his wife’s direction.

  I tilted my chin, heard the meaning behind what he hadn’t said. “You think she did it?”

  “Well, I sure as hell didn’t do it.”

  “What happened that night?” Maybe hearing it from his perspective would enlighten me to some of the things Gabby hadn’t said, bring out a discrepancy I’d been unable to nail down so far. Or, more unlikely, maybe it would reinforce her story.

  He glared at me, a sneer turning his somewhat handsome face angry. “My daughter died, and I have suffered in ways no one understands. I lost my baby girl, my wife, my job, my house. I have nothing left.” The muscle in his jaw ticked as he shook his head. “I have a son I need to try and explain this to. His whole life’s been torn apart by a…a…mistake he doesn’t understand. Excuse me.”

  I stood there for a full minute watching the door he’d stomped through. He suffered? No. His daughter suffered, and now his wife was suffering. This tantrum seemed a bit over the top, since he wasn’t the one sitting in jail. What had he said? A mistake he didn’t understand? I’d heard murder described as a mistake before, usually by the client I defended, but the way he’d said it, softened his voice, that meant something. I just had to figure out what.

  With my mental notes piling up, I turned away from the door and made my way back to the table. Rory had an arm around Gabby’s shoulders as she spoke quietly to the woman.

  I plopped down across from them, chewing the corner of my lip. While Nathan’s words bit, something behind them gnawed at me, something he hadn’t said. The venom in his tone, the poor-me-I-lost-I-suffered attitude while his wife sat behind bars… But the contempt etched into every line on his face, it said more than any syllable he’d uttered. A mistake he doesn’t understand? Unfortunately, I was a little rusty on my guilt speak, having convinced myself of every single one of my clients’ innocence.

  “Gabrielle, what was your marriage like before Emily’s death?” I didn’t know where the question came from, but I wanted the answer.

  She looked up. The tears on her face dried before she answered. “It was fine. We were happy. Nathan got a promotion at work, and we had more money coming in. Emily was starting preschool in the fall, and Adam was doing so well. He had tee-ball games and piano lessons. We were happy.”

  I shook my head and drilled my fingers on the table. “I don’t think so. No. How was Nathan’s relationship with the kids?”

  She closed her eyes. “He’s a busy man. The kids were my responsibility.”

  “Yours alone? That must have taken a toll. You had a sickly daughter and a seven-year-old boy to manage by yourself while Nathan was busy. Did he get angry a lot? Maybe when Emily cried?” I knew the chance I was taking in trying to get her to implicate her husband, but I believed in her innocence. “Did Nathan get angry with Emily? With you?”

  Rory’s eyebrows shot up her forehead as though controlled by strings in the ceiling.

  “No.” Strength, coupled with anger, burst out in Gabby’s voice. “Never. He didn’t even raise his voice.”

  “He did, didn’t he? And he took it out on you, and you took it out on her.”

  “No!” A guard stepped forward, and Rory waved him back. “He’s a good husband and a wonderful father. This is not our fault.”

  “Really? Because even if neither of you did it, someone walked into your house and killed your daughter on your watch. How is that not your fault?”

  “That’s enough, Grace.” Rory put an arm around Gabby and shot me a fierce, squint-eyed glare.

  I didn’t know if we were playing good cop/bad cop or if she was honestly trying to stop me from uncovering the truth, but I didn’t care. Until an hour ago, this case was all mine and no damn way could I let her stop me from doing my job.

  “No, it isn’t, Rory. Someone killed a little girl, and I want to know who. In the absence of an obvious truth, hard questions are all we have, and you’d better start thinking up the answers to go with them.” I spouted the platitude as though it was a personal belief rather than something I made up on the fly, then whipped my head back toward Gabrielle. “Answer me. Who killed Emily?”

  “Are you my lawyer or some cop they sent in here?” Gabrielle stood, her fists clenched but still bound by handcuffs to a ring attached to the center of the table. Fire flamed behind her eyes.

  Suddenly, she had strength enough to start a stare-down.

  “I’m your lawyer, and until you tell me exactly what happened in your house that night and every night before it, my only choice is to defend you in the best way I know how. If that means you have to answer hard questions, then you better buck up, sister, and answer them. If it means I have to accuse your husband, neighbor, or your parish priest, you better sit back and let me. If you don’t, Emily’s blood is as much on your hands as the person who killed her.”

  “Gabby”--Rory’s soft voice broke through the tension, preventing my badgering from continuing--“tell us about your marriage. Let’s start there. Just talk to us so we can help you, okay?”

  For the smallest fraction of a second, Rory’s eyes narrowed and her lips compressed into a fine line of perfect pink gloss. She swallowed hard and turned to face Gabrielle who returned to her seat as a guard shot her a pointed look. “A few years ago, I was a good lawyer. I had an amazing career, a beautiful son, and a husband I adored. My little family meant more to me than anything in the world. One day I was at work thinking how absolutely perfect I’d planned my life. Then, the call came in. Something happened to our boy. I raced home. I don’t even remember getting in my car or driving there. I was just so desperate to make sure he was okay.”

  She closed her eyes. “My husband was a drug addict and he admitted it, got treatment, then came home. He’d lost his job, so he was staying home with our boy while I worked. I trusted him to stay clean, but he didn’t, and I came home to find my son broken and dead. Michael was a mess, a big mess. He said he owed a lot of money to someone bad and because he so readily admitted to his addiction, the one I’d never seen, I believed he was completely honest about what happened to our son. He told me he’d had to watch them torture our boy, and he’d been powerless to stop it.” She covered Gabby’s hand with her own. “He told me the drug dealer had someone murder our boy to show him that he’d better pay up.”

  I’d heard bits and pieces of this story, but never straight from Rory and never with such emotion.

  A tear slipped down her cheek. “When I walked into court I was certain what little evidence they had against my husband was wrong, because he hadn’t told me the truth yet. I went in believing his innocence. I argued for him, fought with everything I had, because I loved him and we’d already lost so much. We hadn’t even had time to grieve. He was arrested right away.” She nodded twice, then looked down at the chipped paint on the concrete floor.

  All other noise in the visitors’ room faded to the background of my mind. I no longer heard the child playing at the next table as her mother, handcuffed and shackled, cooed next to her, or the smacking of lips at another table as a woman made out with
her boyfriend. It all dulled as Gabby and I hung on Rory’s words.

  She lifted her head and faced Gabby. “My husband killed our boy and I set him free. My son never got justice, and that’s my fault. I want you to get justice for Emily. I want her killer behind bars, and I want you to go home to your son.”

  I blew out a breath as Gabby dissolved into tears.

  “I can’t do it.” The sounds in the room resumed in my mind and all but drowned out Gabby’s whisper.

  Rory nodded. “Think about it Gabrielle. You don’t have to spend your life in prison for something you didn’t do. There’s no reason to protect anyone.”

  She stood and patted Gabrielle’s shoulder before she turned and walked to the door. I stared from her to Gabby and back until she cocked her head to the side. “Let’s go.”

  When we’d stepped out of the jail into the sunlight, she breathed out a long sigh. “If that doesn’t bring her around, nothing will.” She left me standing in the street, staring after her as she climbed in her car and drove off.

  * * * *

  I walked home, cell phone in hand, waiting for a call, a text, or something that said Blane hadn’t forgotten about our date that evening. He’d made big promises. My stomach churned and my skin heated in all the best places as I imagined how he would keep them. As a bonus, maybe I could wheedle a bit more information about the case out of him.

  As soon as I walked in the door, I distracted myself with digesting all I’d learned that day. I tried to concentrate on raising a defense for my client. After glaring at the file in front of me until the words blurred, I spoke aloud, trying to piece together the undisputed facts of the case. My eyes were drawn repeatedly to the dormant android cell phone sitting next to me on the sofa.

  By mid afternoon, I’d all but given up and changed into a sensible ensemble of pajama pants and a T-shirt. A dying doorbell’s tinkle did nothing to wipe away my bad mood, and I flung the door open.

  The scent of roses hit me full in the face. A second delivery boy huffed and puffed a…ninth vase up the steps.

  “Grace Wade?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I eyed the flowers with moderate interest and scanned each of the bouquets for a card.

  “These are for you.” The second delivery boy shoved a card and a clipboard at me before he leaped off the porch to retrieve yet another armful of roses. I signed the delivery receipt and waited while the first kid crumpled the copy, trying to tear it apart. Instead of watching his struggle, I shoved the card into my pocket, then bent down to pick up a vase and inhaled deeply before counting its identical friends on my stoop. Twenty vases. Two dozen flowers in each.

  I broke a sweat as we worked together to cover every single surface in my apartment, including the yet unpacked boxes we rearranged to accommodate the extravagant gift. As soon as the delivery boys had been tipped and sent on their way, I shut the door, leaned against it, and stared into my apartment.

  At a knock behind me, I turned, so as not to disturb the vase on the small table next to the door, and tugged gently on the knob. This time, on the ground at my feet, sat a small gift box wrapped in delicate silver paper with a glitter-sparkled deep blue bow. Still not having read the card for the flowers, I snatched the one off the gift box as though the secrets to happiness and success would be found in the printed words inside. I don’t know what I expected, but it weighed heavy in my hand and almost toppled to the ground before I quick snatched it out of the air.

  Stepping around my earlier gifts, I made my way to the couch and tore open the card. “So that you can see the beauty I see in you.” No signature.

  I carefully untied the bow, set it aside and removed the lid. “Oh.” Made of some sort of silver and designed with elegant swirls along the back, an antique hand mirror sat nestled inside the gauzy tissue paper.

  Deliveries came every half hour for the rest of the afternoon. A first edition book of poetry “because only the great ones have the right words to express the emotions” I inspired. Next came a dress of spun silk and Italian lace, because “only the finest fabrics should touch skin so pure.” Then a diamond necklace and earrings that “pale in comparison to the vibrance of my beauty” arrived. Finally, a bottle of expensive champagne along with wildflower scented lotion and bubble bath so that I could “prepare for a night that would make all his dreams come true” came wrapped in a silver, metal basket.

  I got tired of answering the door and left it open. Hope strolled in and stopped barely inside the entrance. “Did you die?”

  “I think I’m being romanced.” It hadn’t happened in such grand fashion before, so I couldn’t be sure.

  “Well, it looks like a funeral parlor in here.” She maneuvered her way around to the sofa and plopped next to me. It took one full minute of breathing before the sneezing started. Her eyes, a normal electric blue, disappeared behind puffed up eyelids, which left barely a slit for her to see through.

  Apparently, we’d both forgotten she was allergic to flowers. Honestly, in the excitement of my package receiving day, I’d forgotten she’d even come to town to live with me. I shoved her into the bathroom, turned on the hot water, and told her to stay there and breathe until I could get the flowers outside. Moving with the speed of the Flash and the strength of the Hulk, I hauled and carted, pushed and shoved until my front steps looked like a garden had sprouted through the concrete.

  Once back inside, I settled her into my bed with a cold compress for her eyes and a couple allergy tablets.

  “I’m sorry, Hope. I forgot.”

  She shook her head. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not.” I checked the clock. Seven-thirty. With a sad heart and slow fingers, I picked up my phone to send a break-the-date text.

  ME: Can’t make it tonight. My sister had an allergy attack, and I don’t want to leave her alone.

  I hit send, then pulled the covers up to her chin. “Do you need anything?”

  Her breathing had returned to almost normal, with only the occasional wheeze to indicate she’d suffered any sort of reaction after returning home to find the apartment covered in pollen and fragrance.

  “No.”

  The beep of a text shrilled in my hand. Ignoring it, I fussed with her pillows, recovered her as she kicked the blanket away, poured her water, anything to not have to read his disappointment.

  “Grace?” Her whisper stilled my tucking her in fingers.

  “Do you need something?”

  “Yes. I need you to go away.”

  “Okay.” I stood at the doorway watching her. Guilt slouched my stance as I leaned my head against the wall. “I’m sorry, Hope.”

  She sat up, flung her pillow at me. “Get out, Grace.” Flopping back against the mattress, she sighed. “I’m the one who came to sit next to you in a room doing a bad impression of a flower shop. Don’t you have a date or something?”

  “I can’t leave you here like this. What if you relapse?”

  “Then I’ll die in your bed, and you’ll have to buy a new one.” She flung her forearm over her eyes.

  “That’s not funny, Hope.”

  She peeked out and said, “You’re making me miss Dad. Now, go on your date and don’t you dare call me.”

  She flopped onto her side, tucked her hands under her cheek, and within a few minutes happily snored her way through whatever dreams had her smiling into my pillow.

  Chapter 13

  An hour later, I’d showered, perfumed myself in the lotion Blane sent, and dressed in the silver satin gown.

  He stopped a foot inside the open door, and a slow smile spread across his lips. “You look beautiful.”

  Oh, he was one to talk. From the gelled hair to the tailored suit with a pair of silver studded cuff links, I could only manage a single, “Wow.” He took my hand in his, brought it to his lips to press a gentle kiss against the pulse point in my wrist.

  His heart hammered underneath my palm when he placed my hand on his che
st. “See what you do to me?”

  Oh my.

  He lowered his head, smiled softly. “If I don’t kiss you right now, I’m not going to be able to breathe.”

  I took a step closer.

  “But if I do, I won’t be able to stop with one.” He leaned in and brushed his lips against my cheek.

  Magic. He’d wrapped me in a perfect moment with beautiful words, a touch of his skin against mine, the smell of his cologne. A haze surrounded my consciousness, fading everything but Blane to a blackness that didn’t matter.

  Before I could catch my breath, he’d propelled me into his car and whisked us off. He pulled up in front of the country club and a valet took my hand to help me out of my seat.

  Once inside, I gulped my first glass of wine, hoping it would calm my nerves. Along with the gifts, seeing him was powerful and my body trembled.

  I looked up to meet a steamy gaze. “What? I was thirsty.”

  He ordered for both of us, then reached across the table, his thumb swirling little circles in my palm. “How do you not belong to someone?”

  “I have a few too many short skirts to be a good candidate for wife. I’m more a Friday night fling than a meet the parents’ kind of girl.” He tilted his head to the side and I sighed. “The same personality that makes me seem like I’m fun is the one that scares men away. I don’t suffer from a big lack of self-esteem and sometimes it’s intimidating.”

  “That’s one of the things I love about you. Your confidence. Your walk. Your smile. You have a walk that makes men stop to stare and a smile that should have its own patent. You’re beautiful and smart. I will keep you for as long as you let me.”