by AnonYMous
My first meeting with my lawyer the day of my arrest wasn’t inspiring. The evidence against me was “largely circumstantial” (his words), but since I hadn’t done a thing wrong and so the evidence couldn’t be anything but circumstantial, I would have liked a bit more confidence from him.
Or competence. During my first court appearance, he didn’t even seem certain about the legal jargon and he didn’t find my talk about the slammer funny. He didn’t even know it wasn’t a joke. The fear was very real.
The point was I had settled in for a nice long twenty years or so of coldness. It gave me time to ponder more important things.
Like how I missed my dad, even though this was all his fault, the motherfucker. When I remembered he might have killed Larry, I missed him less. I’d asked my lawyer about how the murder investigation was going, and he told me not worry about that.
Yeah, since Larry’s death was at least partially my fault and since he was, if only slightly, part of my family, not worrying wasn’t happening.
But between my shivers and my guilt, I missed Brad. The bump of bone on his wrist. The tattoo he’d tap out with his feet when he was working and happy. The way he kissed me. I wanted to see him just for a moment, but he hadn’t come to visit me.
Not that I expected him to. I’d basically broken up with him. He should run far away from me and my problems. He was under no obligation to visit a woman he’d nailed once. I shouldn’t be worrying about Larry and Brad shouldn’t be worrying about me. Concern was a waste of energy when we couldn’t change how things were.
After two days in jail, I had another visit with my lawyer scheduled, but sitting there in the visitation room was a middle-aged blond guy in a suit so nice, it could have been made out of the dreams of other suits.
This was not my lawyer. My lawyer was about twenty-five and wore Birkenstocks with socks. Plus, this guy was reading a thick stack of papers, and I hadn’t seen any evidence my lawyer was literate.
“I think the guard took me to the wrong room.”
He glanced up. “You’re Wren Masters?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m your new counsel.”
What? Out of surprise as much as anything, I sat down. Jesus, the chair was freezing—which was so not the point. “What happened my old counsel?”
My new lawyer turned back to the pages in front of him. “Were you and he forming a connection?”
“No, but he knew the evidence against me was circumstantial—”
“That’s enough for someone to represent you?”
I examined the water-stained ceiling. “Is there like an Angie’s List for lawyers? Because barring that, believing in my innocence is going to have to be enough.”
He smiled, and his teeth were perfect. The effect was not unlike the Big Bad Wolf sizing up Little Red Riding Hood, but I supposed it wasn’t a bad vibe for a lawyer to give off. “And I don’t?”
“See, I knew I liked you. But I gotta ask: who hired you?”
“Bradley White.”
He watched my reaction to that closely. Maybe lawyers cared about the guilt of the people they represented, even more so when someone else paid their bills. I would guess it didn’t make any difference to him either way, but he likely wanted to know.
He probably didn’t expect me to laugh in his face and say, “That’s fucking hilarious, but Brad can’t afford you.”
“He paid my retainer.”
“How?”
My lawyer went back to his reading. “Look, he told me you care about other people, which is why you’re in this mess, and that you tipped off the cops and you might be willing to help them some more. Also that you didn’t know about the drugs until he suggested it to you. Is all of that true?”
“Yes.”
Another page flipped over. “If you stick with the other guy, you might spend a lot of time in this place—which maybe you find charming. I don’t know. If you let me represent you, and if you offer to testify against the others, I think I can do something for you. Deal?”
Testifying against the others—he meant testifying against my family. Testifying against my father. It was sticking the knife in and twisting it.
But my family, which was to say my dad and uncle and bastard cousin and ex, had brought the drugs into Fallow and they’d killed Larry—and that was just the stuff I knew about.
I’d done things too, things I was going to have to think about in long dark nights for the rest of my life. Certainly I hadn’t been as diligent as Brad in following up on stuff that didn’t sit right, that didn’t add up. I had watched as my father’s interest in bikes had become an obsession and started to include leather jackets and a clubhouse and being actual freaking outlaws. I hadn’t worried. No, I’d laughed and I’d gone along because at some level, I’d liked it. I’d found it appealing. Some of their shit was in me.
I guessed not enough, though, because while testifying against them might not be clean, I was fairly certain it was just.
“Okay, I’ll do it. What’s next?”
My no doubt ridiculously overpriced lawyer set a voice recorder on the table and pressed a button. “We have to prep for a possible plea deal. So tell me everything.”
I did.
*
Brad
In the week since Wren’s arrest, I’d only seen her on the evening news and in the paper—because this was big-time news and everyone in Fallow wanted the tawdry details. It took up every liter of oxygen in the place. I’d never had so much foot traffic in my office, but no one wanted to talk about itemizing their taxes. They all wanted me to know they’d known about the drugs, even if I hadn’t, and to get another look at me, as if scandal might have changed my DNA.
I missed being a boring accountant for the first time in my life, but that was only in between worrying about Wren. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, out of my mind worrying for Wren. She might have ended things with me, but I wasn’t about to leave her alone to face this.
The drive to the county courthouse in Malta for her hearing was dry and frosty. The fields were all gold and white and, once I’d parked, my shoes crunched on the sidewalk. I felt dumb showing up when she might not want me. I knew there was a deal, and if everything went according to plan, she should be getting out today, but I also couldn’t handle the thought of no one being there for her.
My concern was misplaced. Plenty of people were there, from reporters to gossips, but that might have been even worse. They were there to see the spectacle, not out of concern. Not truly for her.
When she walked in wearing the conservative suit the lawyer had found, she resembled the looking-glass version of herself: Wren how she might have been if she’d grown up entirely differently or had had her memory erased. But even now, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I ate up all the details of her. The glow of her skin. The slope of her nose. The exact color of her hair.
She didn’t look out into the sea of people. Her eyes stayed on her feet, or on the table, or on the judge. It was like her world had shrunk and no longer took up the entire room.
As she answered the judge’s questions, her voice was small but strong. She didn’t curse or affect the country accent like I knew she did to get a rise out of me.
Yes, she told them, she was innocent of all the charges against her. Yes, she was agreeing to help the prosecution in exchange for those charges being dropped. Yes, she would stay in the state until the trial was over.
Then the judge said the words I’d been waiting to hear: “Ms. Masters, I’m releasing you on your own recognizance.”
Her shoulders dropped, and I imagined we exhaled in relief at the same moment. She was free. She was going to be okay. I’d done something to help her.
After she and the lawyer said a few things to each other, she turned and for the first time, I knew she saw me. Her brow shot up and her jaw dropped. I offered the smallest smile, and she went absolutely still.
There was a blur then as the lawyer hurried
her out of the courtroom. I slipped through the crowd and followed them. Hands were shaken and words of gratitude spoken, and it would have felt wonderful except Wren still seemed wooden. What the shit had happened to her?
I’d been expecting more joy, more warmth. At this point, I’d be happier if she slugged me. Her silence was terrifying.
I finally leaned toward her and said in her ear, “I have my car, and I rented a hotel room here if you want to clean up or change.”
She didn’t step away from me. She craned her head up and regarded me through her green, green eyes.
Say yes, honey. Let’s start over. But I didn’t ask. She had to come to me because she wanted to, or not at all. I wasn’t even certain if I wanted to tell her about what I’d done, not if she didn’t ask, not if she didn’t decide how she felt about me first.
“Change?” She rolled the word around in her mouth, trying to make it fit.
“I had one Deb’s daughters pack a bag for you with your own clothes, your normal clothes. I can also drive you back to Fallow. I wasn’t sure how late it would be.”
She swallowed, considered this, and then said, “I want a shower and a decent meal.”
“Of course.”
Once we were in the car, things didn’t get better. With each second that ticked by, my tongue grew heavier until it felt like lead. I love you and I missed you and I was so scared. The words wouldn’t come out. Not when she was cold and withdrawn and shadowy.
Finally she cleared her throat. “Selling my dad’s house and Masters is going to be complicated for a while.”
The good news was she was talking to me again; the bad news was I didn’t understand her. “What?”
“I don’t know how much money you shelled out for that lawyer, but I would guess it was a lot. I want to pay you back, but I’m not going to be able to for a little while.”
Shit. She already knew. The lawyer had probably told her.
“Wren, I—that’s not why I did it. You don’t have to sell everything. This isn’t like—”
She held up her hand. “I want to. I need to pay you back, and there isn’t another way. Besides, I think I might be done in Fallow.”
I pulled up to the hotel. Thank God this drive was over, because I couldn’t follow the thread of the conversation and operate a vehicle safely.
“You could never be done in Fallow.” The entire idea was absurd. She was the town. She loved that town; she would never leave.
She climbed out of my car and took in the hotel, one of those little places with the individual cinderblock cabins that looked as if it had escaped from Route 66.
“It’s like the Bates Motel,” she muttered.
“That’s perfect for us then.”
She laughed. A little. Maybe.
I unlocked the door to our room, but she stood on the decaying mat, tapping it with the tip of her shoe, a sensible brown penny loafer I wanted to tear off her. There had never been a less Wren-appropriate shoe in history.
“I have a feeling Fallow is done with me,” she said.
I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know what she meant, but I was also surprised that the prospect spooked her. “There’s going to be some gossip, but you’d let that stop you? You want to let them run you out of town?”
“Let’s not debate my bravery stats at the moment.”
“Noted.”
There was a pause, during which I seriously considered the possibility that she might walk home by herself. But at last, she nodded and came into the room. She peeled off her suit jacket, and dropped it on the bed.
“After I take a shower, will you tell me everything that you’ve done?”
“Yeah.”
“You can start with why you did it.”
We were bound to work around to that eventually. “I’ll go get some food. Then we can talk.”
Chapter 11
Wren
I took the longest, hottest shower of my life. I probably scalded most of my skin off, but it was totally worth it. Then I put on my own jeans, and for the first time since my arrest, I felt normal, or at least normalish. It was like getting my body back, and with it came all the emotions and feelings I’d been pushing away.
Most of them were about the man who was outside this shabby bathroom, the man who had saved me. Whatever he’d done, it wasn’t only a good deed or what you did for a friend or a one-night stand or a woman who’d broken up with you an hour before she’d been arrested—which didn’t surprise me because I wasn’t an idiot, but knowing how he felt and seeing it were different things. He loved me. He truly did.
I wanted to punch him. I wanted to kiss him until I couldn’t breathe. And I had no idea if I could ever pay him back.
But I couldn’t keep avoiding him in here, so I went out into the room. Brad was pulling Styrofoam containers out of a white paper bag and arranging them on the small table.
“I wasn’t sure what you wanted,” he apologized. “I got some burgers and fries and a salad and Cokes.”
I picked up the salad container and a plastic fork and began shoveling it into my mouth. “Oh my God, this is so good,” I managed between bites.
“I haven’t put dressing on that yet.”
“Doesn’t matter. There’s no fresh vegetables in jail.”
Brad sat down with a thump and ran his hands over his face. “I was so fucking scared for you.”
I rammed some more lettuce in my mouth before setting the salad down and leaning against the table. “I can imagine,” I lied.
“I saw them put cuffs on you, put you in a squad car, take you to jail.” He ticked these off on his fingers.
“Right. And those things happened to me.”
“I’m not comparing what we went through, I’m just saying I was terrified.”
I looked at the distance between his hand and my hip on the edge of the table. I couldn’t bridge the gap, not yet, but I did tell him the truth. “I was too.”
There was a long silence then. Not uncomfortable like it had been before in the car, but heavy, unresolved. I took the chance to sit and unwrap one of the burgers and begin devouring it. It was the most delicious thing I’d ever had, and at some point, I was going to tell Brad that. Not yet, though, because my mouth was full and we had other, more important things to say to each other.
He picked up a fry, but he didn’t eat it. He just looked it. I stared too because, I dunno, maybe it was interesting and it kept me from having to look directly at him.
When I’d finished eating the burger, I asked, “How much did that lawyer cost?”
The corners of Brad’s mouth tipped up. “Five figures.”
“High five figures or low five figures?”
“Low.”
“Number please?”
“$20,000.”
“Fucking buckets of snot.”
Dad and I hadn’t lived paycheck to paycheck, but I didn’t have that much money in the bank. I didn’t have half that much money in the bank. I knew logically it wasn’t a million dollars, but there was a point at which it might as well have been.
Brad laughed at whatever was on my face and ate his fry. When he smiled at me, it was fond and familiar. “He’s the best criminal defense attorney in the state. I would have paid him twice that. He got you out, fast, and he’s going to represent us when we testify, too.”
I seized the last part. “You have to testify?”
“Yeah. They don’t think I know anything, but I’m too close to it not to have to answer some questions.”
“Like how you came up with $20,000?”
“They won’t ask me that.”
He could be so dense sometimes. “I’m asking you.”
Now he evaded eye contact. Then he sighed deeply. Finally he said, “I took out a second mortgage on my house.”
He’d done what? My tone was shrill when I asked, “How are you going to afford that?”
“I’m going to give up my office. I can work from home.”
“No, you�
�re not. I’m going to sell my dad’s property and I’m going to give you the money. That way you can keep everything.”
“Like I said, you don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine.”
“But I want to make it square.”
He grabbed the hand I’d been waving at him. “This isn’t a ledger. Love isn’t a series of accounts. And Wren, I love you. I will never find anyone else who fits me like you do. I didn’t do it so you would owe me or anything like that. Getting to do it, to try to take care of you, is an honor.”
Knowing it, seeing it, and hearing it were all different things, it turned out, and my palms immediately went damp, and my heart kicked my ribs and I gasped.
I knew my feelings for Brad were real. Serious. Actual, adult fucking feelings. But I was more aware of the limits of feelings now than I had ever been.
I was sorry Larry was dead, but that regret didn’t bring him back.
I didn’t want to watch my daddy go to jail, but that was justice.
I loved Brad, but that didn’t mean I could be with him. Not how he probably wanted. Not how he deserved.
In the past week, I had killed my cousin. I had lost my family. I had destroyed a business and lost my job. I had fucked Brad to distract myself. I had pissed off everyone in Fallow.
There was an ache not only in my chest, but in every cell in my body. I turned so he couldn’t see my face and I breathed deeply. Then I squeezed his hand, once, hard.
“You know how I feel,” is what I said, which was a completely shit response and somewhere in the stuff flying around inside me, I felt terrible about it. But right now, it was what I had.
I couldn’t look at Brad, not when he was going to be warm and loving and open to weathering all of that shit with me, because there was too much chance I’d let him. Instead I looked out the window into the hotel parking lot, which was covered with gravel and barren and ugly. That was what I needed just now, at least until the trial was over.
“Please don’t say anything else,” Brad said. “Let me take you home.”