Chapter 12: The Plea

The mop handle fell against the counter and clattered on the floor.

"Eight years," I said. "For something you didn't do."

"Lawyer says if it goes to trial I'm looking at fifteen. Maybe more."

"They've got the tip, the truck at the scene, her blood all over my jacket."

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Eight years, I'm out in five with good time. I'm forty. I still got the shop."

"You're thinking about it."

"I'm thinking about it."

He turned and walked back out into the dark.

I called the laundromat lady to sit with Lily, and I went after him.

The light was on in the back bay of Ortega Towing.

He was standing next to the tarp over my mother's crushed hood, with his hands hanging at his sides.

"Don't," I said.

He didn't turn around.

"Don't take it."

"You don't get a vote, Grace."

"I paid fifty thousand dollars for a vote."

"That was his money."

He turned around then.

His eyes were red.

"You think I want to sit in a cell for five years?"

"I got two men who need paychecks. I got a lease. I got..."

He stopped.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Say it."

"I got you showing up at my door every night with a reason," he said. "And I can't keep you from a cell upstate."

Then I got angry, because it was easier.

"So you plead guilty to killing my mother. That's your plan."

"You stand up in front of a judge and say you ran her down and kept going."

"And Vivian walks out of that courtroom with my mother's eyes, and Daniel buttons his jacket, and the record says you did it."

"And her last words? Who carries those? You're the only one who heard her."

"I know that!"

He'd never raised his voice at me.

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