Stepping-Stone for Mia novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: June
This time they didn't put him behind glass.
His lawyer had arranged a contact visit.
The room was small, with a steel table bolted to the floor and a guard outside the window.
Kelly's mother drove me. She didn't talk the whole way to the detention center.
At a red light on Eastern Avenue, she finally spoke.
"He sings to her on the phone. Every night. They let him call at seven."
June slept in the back in her car seat, one fist up by her ear.
The lawyer met me in the hall. A public defender in her forties with a coffee stain on her blazer.
"He asked for this," she said. "Not me. For the record, I advised against it."
"For the record, so did everyone I know."
She almost smiled.
"I sent him the nurse's statement and Dr. Brogan's. From the peer review packet. He's read them about fifty times."
Ronnie was already sitting at the table when they let me in.
No shackles at his ankles this time. His hands were folded on the steel, and he was looking at them.
He'd shaved the beard off completely. It made him look younger and much worse.
I sat down across from him.
The lawyer stood by the door.
For a while nobody said anything.
"Your arm," he said finally.
I pushed up my sleeve and showed him the pink line.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then he looked away, at the wall.
"The nurse," he said. "The one with the notebook. She was there with Kelly. She held her hand at the end. I remember her."
"Yes."
"She wrote down the other one's name. Six times."
"Yes."
"And your guy saw her on the couch."
"Yes."
He rubbed his face with both hands, hard.
"I don't get it," he said. "Why'd you come? The first time. I cut you open in a hallway, and you came and sat in front of me and let me spit on you. Why?"
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