Chapter 20: The Hallway

Miles's POV

She said no to the private meeting.

I was in Jenna's kitchen when she told her sister, and she did not raise her voice.

"If Dean wants me to see him, he can say it in a courtroom, where there's a judge and a record."

"And if the judge says you don't have to be there?" Jenna asked.

"Then I'll be there anyway."

On Monday I drove her.

I had traded two shifts to do it, and I had not told her.

She sat in the passenger seat of my truck in a gray dress with her hands in her lap and looked straight ahead.

The courthouse in Santa Monica has a long front staircase and a metal detector that beeps at everything.

I went through it with my keys in a plastic tray.

She went through it with nothing at all.

"You don't have to come in," she said in the hallway.

"I know."

"It won't be nice."

"I didn't come for nice."

She looked at me for a moment, and her mouth almost moved.

"Sit at the back," she said.

I did.

The courtroom was half full.

There were reporters in the last two rows, and Patricia alone on the left side of the aisle with her coat folded on her knees.

Willa walked down the middle to the second row and sat beside her sister.

Patricia reached over and took her hand.

Willa let her.

A deputy brought Dean through a side door in a county jumpsuit.

He had lost weight in a week.

He didn't look at the gallery until he reached the table, and then his eyes went straight to her.

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