“Tell your husband to do the right thing.” She spits the words and then she’s gone. I wait another minute because I’ll crumple if I see her again in the hallway. And I need to try to collect myself anyway.
My wobbly legs barely get me back to the Murphys, to their tight semicircle. Brice is talking, animated, rocking back and forth, heel to toe, explaining this and that to everyone and no one.
“If it gets to it, I like our chances at trial. I like them. That video. That kid is clearly pulling something out of his pocket. The jury only needs to find him a reasonable threat. Everyone wants to believe they wouldn’t shoot,” Brice says. “But no one really knows what they would do in that situation. No juror truly knows.”
Cookie glances at me. “Are you okay? You’re trembling.”
I grab one hand in the other to hold it still. “I’m fine.” She doesn’t look convinced, but we’re all distracted by something else: Sabrina Cowell striding toward us from down the long hall, the enemy approaching, a hyena circling the hippos.
Cookie pinches her lips together so tightly I worry she might swallow her tongue.
“Can I speak to you, Brice?” Sabrina asks. He nods eagerly, like the coach just called him off the bench in the last ten minutes of the game.
As she and Brice walk away, Matt announces he’s going for a smoke. Cookie wants to go to the ladies’ room, and Frank needs to find a place to sit. Kevin and I are alone.
The stone silence is killing me, so I start whistling the first few bars of “Patience.” “？‘You and I got what it takes to make it,’？” I sing softly into Kevin’s ear.
When Brice returns some ten minutes later, we hear his heavy footsteps echoing on the marble floors before we see him. Kevin rushes over to close the distance between them. I waddle behind him as fast as I can. “Well?”
“Finally. She wants to offer you a deal.”
“So what is it?” Kevin asks.
Brice pauses for dramatic effect. “Reckless homicide. Ten years’ probation. And it’s a felony conviction. But no prison time. It’s a good deal overall. It’s an unbelievable deal.”
No prison time. Hearing this is such a relief my entire body goes slack, my bones turned to jelly. I won’t have to take my baby to see his father behind a grimy plate-glass window. This is way better than we could have hoped for. Kevin doesn’t seem happy or relieved though. I can see him turning it over in his mind.
“Well, the catch is you have to testify against Cameron, of course.” Brice adds this like it’s a tiny hiccup. “It’s him she’s gunning for. In a trial he still has a strong defense. He can say he thought the kid was pulling out a gun, say that he truly believed he was shooting the other guy. You’ll need to say that the second you laid eyes on the kid, you knew he was the wrong guy, that you believe Cameron made a bad call. You’re the only other person who was there. Your testimony would probably sway a jury and she knows it. Without you, she might not get the conviction she wants. But if you both go to trial, you could both end up serving time. She wants an answer by the end of the week. I suspect she wants to know where you stand before Cameron turns himself in and is arraigned. She extended the deadline from forty-eight hours. Well, I got her to give us more time.” Brice quickly revises his statement to place himself at the center of the achievement. “It’s a big decision.”
Kevin turns to lean his forehead against the puke-green walls.
“Oh, and you can’t be a cop anymore, anywhere in PA. You resign effective immediately,” Brice adds.
“I can’t be a cop anymore?” Kevin sounds like a child who’s been told he can never see his mother again.
He looks at me. I just nod. Tell your husband to do the right thing.
Brice goes on. “If you want my advice—and that’s why you pay me the big bucks—I say take it. If it’s you or the other guy, might as well be the other guy, you know?”
Thank God Matt and Frank aren’t here. “All those guys,” Kevin chokes. “They came here to support me. If I turn on Cameron, I’m turning on all of them.”
Frustration seeps from Brice’s long sigh. Kevin is ruining his big moment. “Look, you have a week to think about it. But it’s a good deal.”
We’ve been dangling from a cliff for so long, and someone has finally thrown us a rope, only Kevin isn’t reaching for it. Why isn’t he reaching for it?
“We’ll make the right decision,” I tell Brice and grab my husband’s hand. “Come on, let’s go to the hospital.”
Back to Chase.
Chapter Fifteen RILEY
“It looks nice on you.”
I look down at the silk blouse, unsure.
My mom reaches up and firmly tucks the silk into the back of my jeans and then stands behind me in the closet-size dressing room, appraising me. I haven’t been shopping with her since my last back to school shopping trip to JCPenney in the summer before seventh grade.
“I don’t know, it’s expensive.” The price tag makes me wince and I want to hide it from my mom like it’s a shameful secret, but then, it was her idea to duck into this tiny boutique on Sansom Street in the first place. This whole outing today—lunch and shopping—was her idea, an invite she shocked me with this morning. I look up in the mirror at our chummy reflections—we’re just like the TV mother and daughter I’d imagined. At least, we have been for the last few hours. We even ordered aperol spritzes and gossiped, though I’m not sure she knew that aperol was alcohol and I decided not to tell her until she took a sip and pronounced it, “So refreshing!” I even told her I was meeting Corey today, in thirty minutes actually. I hadn’t intended to, but there we were, talking about Shaun and Staci’s latest spat and how my cousin was getting married in the summer and Momma would like us all to go to Memphis for the wedding, having made strides to make peace with Uncle Rod. So it just seemed natural to tell her about my love life, even if it’s terrain I avoided with a ten-foot pole all my life. New leaves and all that. That’s how we ended up here in this overpriced store—she insisted I should get a new blouse for our date. The tan sweater I was wearing was apparently underwhelming. “I’ve seen people wear sexier outfits to Bible study, Riley.” That must have been the second aperol talking for her to use “Bible study” and “sexy” in the same sentence, let alone drag me by the hand into a store that sells $400 cashmere sweaters.
“I always wondered what happened to him, that Corey,” she says now.
“You didn’t hate him, then?” I just assumed she did. I assume everyone starts out on Sandra’s bad side and has to work mighty hard to get anywhere from there.
“Child, I barely knew the boy. You brought him around all of once. He seemed nice enough and you liked him. That I could tell. You got this look in your eye. Damned if it wasn’t a sparkle. That’s why I was confused when he was up and gone.”
So was I, Momma. Sometimes I confuse my own self. I turn and angle myself to get a side view of the shirt. It’s blue, which is a plus; Corey loves blue.
“You look pretty.” She reaches up to smooth the collar. This compliment is also a surprise. Momma always said being pretty was a curse. “And especially with that long straight hair of yours, girls gonna hate you just for that,” she told me in middle school, and then said that I shouldn’t ever look in a mirror in front of other girls because they’ll think I’m conceited, that I am admiring myself. To this day I feel self-conscious seeing my reflection. Which probably means I’ve been walking around with food in my teeth most of the time.