He Defended My Mother's Killer, Now He Pays with His Life novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Is He Finished

We went through the tablet at my mother's kitchen table that night, with a lamp and a pot of tea neither of us drank.

There was one call log that mattered.

An incoming call from a contact saved as G.W., on October 14th, three years ago, at 11:49 p.m.

It lasted four minutes.

At 11:56 there was a text from the same number.

Leave it where it is. Don't call anyone. I'll handle it.

Samson read it out loud, and then he stopped.

The bus had crossed Route 9 at 11:42.

I looked at the screen until the letters stopped meaning anything.

"That's not proof of who drove," Samson said carefully.

"I know."

"It proves he knew."

"I know."

"Victoria."

"I can't do any more tonight," I said. "My hands won't stop."

He closed the tablet.

He sat across from me in the lamplight, and I saw how tired he was, and how long he had been tired.

"Can I say something I've never said?" he said.

"Yes."

"You didn't come to the trial. Nine days. I watched that gallery every morning, and the chair behind the prosecutor stayed empty." His voice was even. "I told myself you didn't care. I was angry at you for nineteen months."

"Brice made sure I wasn't," I said.

"I know that now."

"I would have crawled there."

"I know."

"I would have sat in the front row and looked at every one of them."

"I know. I'm sorry. I should have called."

I stood up and came around the table.

He looked up at me.

"Your rule," he said hoarsely. "Is he finished?"

"No."

"Then we shouldn't."

"I made that rule this morning," I said. "I was a different woman."

"Victoria."

"You were the one who said break it with me."

He stood.

He was very close.

"I don't want to be a thing you do because you're angry at him," he said.

"You're not."

"How do you know?"

"Because I was angry at you too, for three years," I said. "And I'm still here."

He kissed me.

It was slower than in the kitchen, and harder, and I felt every second of it in my knees.

We went upstairs in the dark.

My old bedroom still had the narrow bed and the glow stars on the ceiling, and he laughed softly against my mouth when he saw them.

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