Chapter 26: Subpoena

The envelope was heavier than it looked, and it was addressed in a typed font to Rhiannon E. Sorrell.

"I'm a witness," I said.

"You're a witness," the agent agreed. "Not a subject. You didn't take the money, Ms. Sorrell, you gave it."

"And the fourteen months?"

"Waiting isn't a crime." She almost smiled. "The case is Mr. Gaines's. Nobody else's. He signed everything."

Behind her, through the glass, two uniformed officers eased Darrell into the back of a car with a hand on his head.

He did not look at the lobby.

I watched the car pull out into Michigan Avenue traffic and merge, and I waited for the feeling.

I had waited fourteen months for it.

I stood with a white envelope in my hand, in a lobby that smelled of new carpet and champagne.

All I felt was that my feet hurt.

Winslow took the envelope from my hand and put his arm around my shoulders.

"Come on," he said. "Let them have their party."

"I should stay."

"You should eat."

I ate.

It was a bowl of soup at the prep table in the Tower kitchen.

The cooks kept bringing me bread and would not let me say thank you.

I slept that night in my own bed with the window cracked.

On Tuesday I woke at seven with the sun on the lake and a heavy arm across my waist.

I did not have class until Wednesday.

For a few minutes I lay there with my eyes shut and did a thing I had done every morning for fourteen months.

I looked for Darrell's face in my head, to see what it would do to me.

It wasn't there.

I could have drawn it, if you'd asked me to, but I couldn't make myself see it.

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