“Do you?” she asked. “Forgive them?”
“I try,” he said. “Every day. I try to see their viewpoint. The manufacturers are businesses with shareholders to satisfy. The legislators have voters to placate. They’re all just trying to do their jobs. My hope is that the research we’re funding will develop arguments and alternatives that might persuade them there’s a better way to do their jobs.”
“I think.” She stopped to clear her throat. “I think you’re a better person than I am.”
He shook his head. “I doubt that. I doubt that very much.”
She had to look away from his gaze. Warm and gentle as it was, it was so probing. He could see straight through to her darkest thoughts. She didn’t want him to see the worst of her. “Oh, look at the time,” she said, twisting her wrist. “It’s late. I have to go.”
Outside the night was dark and the woods were still with only a faint rustle coming from the treetops as a soft breeze stirred them. Stephen walked her to her car. “Come back again. We’ll talk some more. Would you like that? I would.”
Leigh looked back at the little jewel box of the Snuggery. “I think I would, too.”
“Saturday morning?”
“I’d hate to impose.”
“Eleven o’clock?”
“Yes. All right.”
“Wonderful,” he said and clapped his hands as if to seal the deal.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Here and now. That was Kip’s new credo. Don’t dwell on the past or worry about the future. Live for the moment. In the moment.
At this moment the here was the football field of St. Alban High School and the now was the graduation exercises for the Class of 2015. Kip was a floating island in a sea of blue caps and gowns. Floating thanks to the joint he smoked behind the bleachers before commencement commenced. Island because, even packed as they were in tight rows of folding chairs, his classmates managed to avoid all forms of contact with him. Speech, of course. Eye contact. Even shoulder brushes.
It was hard to believe that only two months ago he was the guy everybody wanted to know. Then came his arrest, and overnight he went from Mr. Popularity to Mr. Pariah. Not because of the manslaughter charge—that would have given him some outlaw panache. It was because Atwood’s party got raided by the cops, the best night of everybody’s life turned into one of the worst, and they all blamed him for it. For twenty-four hours after the party his phone blew up with slurs and threats and circulating gifs: a cartoon Kip with a rat’s face, another cartoon being broomsticked. See how you like it, Loser. Then abruptly, nothing. Radio silence.
Ah, the irony. The one thing he was actually innocent of was the one thing that got him blackballed. Not to mention blueballed. He was thisclose to nailing Ava diFlorio that night, but it looked like that was the last shot he’d ever have in this lifetime, with her or any other girl at St. Alban High.
But whatever. He couldn’t change the past or control the future. Here and now was all that mattered. Sensations. The warmth of the summer night. The smell of fresh-mown grass under his feet. The feel of fresh-smoked grass inside him. The tinny strains of music broadcast through the stadium. He leaned back in his chair and free-floated through the band’s rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance” and hummed along to the choir’s attempt at “Defying Gravity.” He gazed dreamily at the giant cloud puffs in the sky.
His mom and dad and Mia were in the audience, and if he squinted hard through the haze he could just make them out up there in the bleachers. Just the three of them. Gary was off at some dentistry boondoggle in Vegas, and his mom decided not to send invitations to Leigh and Zack and Dylan. Under the circumstances, she said. No biggie—they wouldn’t have come anyway. So it was only his own original nuclear family in attendance, but that was the way it was supposed to be. If they’d stayed together, if his mom hadn’t gone crazy and fallen in love with her dentist—her dentist! God, nobody else even liked their dentist—none of this would have happened. His dad wouldn’t have married Leigh. Kip wouldn’t have moved into their big crazy household. Chrissy wouldn’t have become his sister. She wouldn’t have died.
He wished Leigh were there, wished it with a sudden piercing ache that made his eyes burn. Of the whole Gang of Four, Leigh was the only one who got him. She’d understand why he had to get high to get through tonight. She’d bust his balls but she’d get it. She got his friends, too, and she’d march right up to Brad and Ryan and Ava and the rest of them and say something that sounded pleasant but was full of hidden barbs that would make them stammer and shuffle their feet with embarrassment at how they’d ostracized him. Don’t you think you owe him an apology? He could hear her voice saying it. He’d heard it a hundred times.
Or maybe he was only longing for Leigh as a proxy for Chrissy. If she were here, she’d be up there woo-hooing in the bleachers. Trying to make everyone do the wave. He could hear her voice, too, and the tears pricked like hot needles behind his eyelids.
No—he swiped his fists over his eyes. He couldn’t think about Chrissy now. Don’t dwell on the past. Live in the moment, and at this moment Norman Chu was speaking. He was their valedictorian, and his speech was all about the future, or at least the next four years of the future. He had lots of ideas about how to get the most out of college, and most of them came down to design your own independent study, which made Kip wonder why they all killed themselves trying to get into the top colleges. They could have stayed home and dreamed up their own curricula.
Kip finished second to Norman in the GPA race. Any other year that would have made him salutatorian, but this year the administration decided to streamline the proceedings by dispensing with the second student speaker. It was just as well. If he gave a speech, all he’d want to say is Here and now, people. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Dr. Dairy Queen was up next, droning on about hopes and dreams and hard work and discipline. Kip leaned back and closed his eyes and turned the volume down on the principal’s voice until it faded to a low hum. He wasn’t the only one tuning out the principal’s speech. Conversations were buzzing all around him. Kids to his right talking about whose parties to hit that night, who was going to have kegs and who was always good for some weed. Some dude to his left still angsting about his place on the waiting list of his number one pick. A gaggle of girls behind him obsessing over how their asses looked in their bikinis; they were all headed to senior week at the beach tomorrow.
As for Kip, tomorrow he was headed for his new job of cleaning out the clutter at the Millers. It would be dirty, sweaty, and mind-numbingly tedious, but at the beginning and end of each day, he’d get to ride in a car with Yana Koslov, the hottest girl in the world. A fantasy girl, he knew that, but with his real-girl action cut off, fantasies were all he had. And at least now he was able to indulge them. The staircases were finished in Hollow House, and he finally got to sleep upstairs in his own room with a door that actually closed.
He flipped idly through the commencement program until he came to the page listing the academic prize winners. The English medal to Sondra Brill, math to Sanjay Patel, physics to Norman Chu, and what do you know, history to Christopher Conley. His Crusades paper was what did it, which was funny, considering he almost didn’t bother turning it in. What was the point? The DA wasn’t going to drop the charges when he saw all his AP credits. The governor wasn’t going to give him back his internship. The once-bright ribbon of his career potential wasn’t going to unspool before him, ever again. He’d been busting a gut his whole life, it seemed, to build up credits for the future, when all that really mattered was life in the present.
But in the end he turned it in. What the hell, it was done and he knew it was a winner, so why not throw his parents a bone? Give them one small flicker of pride in their otherwise reprobate son.
He half-dozed through a couple more speeches until at last it was time to march across the stage and do the handshake and tassel-flip. Hold your applause to the end, Dr. Fulton said, but the parents ignor
ed him as happily as the kids did. Every name called out elicited a burst of clapping and fingers-in-the-mouth whistles. The laughter came even louder than Kip’s when Damian Callahan’s dad hollered “Get a job!” as Damian crossed the stage.
Christopher Conley came next, and abruptly the laughter died and so did the applause. The arena was silent except for a buzz of whispers—Is that the kid who . . . ?—and six hands clapping too hard in an audience of two thousand. Dr. Fulton’s face was impassive as Kip walked across the stage toward him. Kip gave him a lopsided grin and took his diploma and marched on.
His family joined him on the field afterward. His mom gave him a big hug, and his dad clapped him on the back. Gifts were being bestowed all around them. Flowers thrust into the girls’ arms. Watches unwrapped. For a few lucky ones, car keys dangled. Once that might have been Kip. Last year his dad gave him a We’ll see when he asked for a car for graduation. But that was before his first DUI, and definitely before the second one turned into a manslaughter charge that was costing him a fortune. But he shouldn’t complain. He’d already gotten his graduation present, a sweet customized computer with a souped-up processor and enhanced graphics and the Intellocity browser and all the rest of his dream specifications. Thank your father, his mother said, then his dad said, Thank your mom, which meant for once they’d been able to agree on something. Collaborate even. So there was something to celebrate.
He watched the other parents and kids as they said their good-byes, the parents heading home and the kids heading off to their parties. He wasn’t going to any of the parties. He was going to a restaurant instead, with his little original nuclear family.
Just as well, though. He had a serious case of the munchies.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Grief doesn’t have a timetable,” Stephen said during the first of their Saturday sessions in the Snuggery. “It takes its own sweet time, and it’s no use trying to rush past it. It’ll jerk you back in a heartbeat.”
“But don’t I have to move on at some point?” Leigh said, wondering Do I?
“Don’t put your grief on a countdown clock. It won’t end simply because you tell it to.”
She swallowed a hard lump in her throat. “Does it ever end at all?”
He shocked her with the bluntness of his answer. “No. Never.” But then he laid his hand over hers and spoke more softly. “It does change. It changes into something more bearable. Give yourself time to let that happen.”
But time was in short supply at the start of that summer. All the matters she’d farmed out to her colleagues during her bereavement came home to roost within days of her return to the office. And not all of them had been well tended in her absence. She had delinquencies to cure, pleadings to amend, apologies to tender. She worked through lunch most days and ordered dinner in and seldom made it home before nine.
The boys were home from school but already at work at their cater-waiter jobs and out every evening past midnight. Leigh was asleep by the time they got home, and they were asleep when she left in the morning, and she saw little more of them now than when they were away at school. And heard even less. They no longer indulged her with live-voice telephone calls. It was back to texts again. Outta milk U c my ipad? She couldn’t even count on the old standby of home-cooked meals to lure them in. They were getting all they could eat at work.
On Saturday they were booked for an afternoon wedding reception, so she was surprised to find their old Honda in the driveway when she returned home from her session with Stephen. Surprised and so delighted she didn’t even mind that they’d blocked the garage door. She parked on the street and was halfway to the house when she realized the old Honda wasn’t theirs. A woman was behind the wheel, on the phone. She had a file open on her lap and looked like she was sweltering in the afternoon heat even with all the windows open. Leigh could hear her exasperated voice. “No. I told you, not until you clean your room. I don’t care what Courtney’s doing. You’re not going anywhere until you clean that room.”
Leigh smiled to herself. The harangue sounded like a replay of a hundred of her own. I’m not going to tell you again, but she always did anyway, three or four times more.
She came up to the driver’s door. “Oh! Sorry,” the woman yelped, then muttered into the phone, “I’ll see you when I get home.”
She heaved herself out of the car, a thickset woman of about forty in a wrinkled pantsuit. “Ms. Huyett?” She held out her hand. “I’m Andrea Briggs.”
Leigh usually had no time for unannounced sales calls, but this harried working mother rang a sympathetic chord in her. She shook her hand. “What can I do for you?” It couldn’t be Mary Kay, not with that heat-blotched complexion. She hoped it wasn’t Amway.
“I’m from the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office. I’m prosecuting Christopher Conley.”
Leigh’s smile faded.
“We’d like to bring you up to date on the case.”
“Oh. Of course.”
She should have been eager to hear her out—this would be the conversation Shelby refused to have—but she felt a rising dread as she unlocked the door and ushered the woman to the living room. “Iced tea?”
“Oh, thank you.” Briggs accepted a glass with a deep sigh of gratitude and sank onto the sofa. “You have a beautiful home.”
Leigh said nothing as she perched on the chair opposite.
“It’s such an honor to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you over the years. Your reputation at the bar—it’s first rate.”
Leigh recognized the bald-faced flattery. She didn’t practice criminal law and only occasionally appeared in Hampshire County courtrooms. There was no reason why this woman would know anything about her.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been out to see you sooner. I usually try to visit with the victim’s family right after the arraignment, but with this case on such a fast track—”
“Why?” she interrupted. “Why is it on a fast track?”
“The defense requested it.” Briggs tilted her head. “Didn’t you know?”
“No.” Apparently Peter couldn’t squeeze the information into a text.
“We have a trial date already. August tenth.”
So soon. Chrissy wouldn’t even be four months in the ground.
“That’s the first thing I wanted to alert you to. So you can clear your calendar.”
Leigh’s hand went to her throat. “I don’t have to be there, do I?”
“Oh, yes. It’s vital. Not only your presence, but your testimony.”
“My—what could I possibly testify to? I wasn’t there. I didn’t see anything.”
“Not about the accident. You’ll be the face of the victim. It’s important that the jury get to know Christine, what she was like, her hopes and dreams. What a truly special girl she was.”
There was no way she could talk about that, to anyone, let alone a courtroom full of strangers. “I don’t understand. Why are you taking this to trial?”
“Oh, we might still reach a deal. My boss has my plea proposal on his desk. But meanwhile we have to prepare for trial. You know how it is.” She said the last with a little wink to remind her they were sisters-in-arms.
“Your boss. That would be Boyd Harrison?”
“The Commonwealth’s Attorney. Yes.”
Leigh cleared her throat. “Is it true—you recommended no charges be brought?”
The splotches on the woman’s face went redder. “I’m afraid that’s confidential.”
“I’m your client, you said.”
“Yes, but it’s different. This was the exercise of our prosecutorial discretion—”
“You wrote up a nolle pros recommendation and Harrison vetoed it when he saw my name in the file. Is that right?”
Briggs bit her lip. “I may have spoken out of turn to Ms. Randolph.”
Leigh stood abruptly and went to the window. It was true, then. Kip’s arrest, the trial—this whole ordeal was because of her.
“I
shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s really none of my business if Mr. Harrison’s charging decisions happen to benefit a friend.”
“A friend?” Leigh wheeled on her. “You think he’s doing this as a favor to me?”
Briggs squinted up. “Maybe I’m not privy to the whole story—”
“Obviously!”
“I don’t understand.” Briggs looked flustered and genuinely confused. “What side are you on?”
Leigh stared at her until Briggs put down her glass and gathered up her file. “I apologize for upsetting you. Perhaps this was too soon after all.” She heaved to her feet. “But please, do consider testifying, won’t you? It could make all the difference.”
She was only doing her job, Leigh reminded herself, and she was taking time away from her children on a Saturday to do it. She didn’t deserve to be treated like the enemy. “I’ll think about it,” she said as she showed her to the door.
But afterward all she could focus on was what Peter must be thinking. That this was all her fault. No wonder he moved out. No wonder he stopped coming by after only a single visit.
Her car was still out on the street. She went out and moved it into the garage, and sat there with the engine idling a long moment. She could barely remember the details of the Harrison divorce. Had she been too aggressive? Had she crossed any lines? Obviously Harrison must think so, to be pursuing this vendetta, and Peter must think so, too. That she’d brought this down on all of them.
She backed out of the garage and headed out to Hollow Road.
The landscape had changed since she was last here. Now it was the height of summer and the trees were in full leaf and the roadsides choked with ditch weeds and tiger lilies. Everything looked so different that she thought she might not even recognize the accident scene, but no, she did. There it was, the tree, the creek, the little driveway bridge. A shiver rolled up her spine, and she clutched the wheel and reminded herself: it was an accident, it wasn’t his fault, it could have happened to anyone.
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