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Come lunchtime, I head back to the same food trucks I’d visited yesterday, and I’ve just gotten my nuts again when Reese reappears. “You have to eat something other than nuts.”
“My nuts are healthier than your hotdog.”
“Yeah, well, I only do hotdogs during trials,” he says as we step to the hotdog truck.
He orders, and a few minutes later we’re sitting on the same bench as yesterday.
“Why only during trials?” I ask, finishing off a handful of nuts. “Is it like a superstition thing?”
“It is,” he confirms. “I ate a hotdog at lunch the day I got my first jury win. It’s superstitious, but in this line of work, you take any advantage you can get.”
“You’re winning,” I say.
“Juries are unpredictable,” he says. “You know that.”
“I do. I worked for the DA for several years, and even when you believed you should win, you didn’t always win.”
“The DA with a Harvard law degree,” he says. “You could have been banking and you chose public service.”
“I come from money,” I admit. “I make my own living, but I inherited my apartment, and that gives me the freedom to do what I want. I can’t say I’d be different or the same in my choices if that wasn’t the case.”
“I came from nothing,” he says. “You should know that about me.”
He says those words with a hint of that arrogance that I don’t read the same way I have in the past. It’s as if the arrogance is a wall to protect him from those who might judge him unworthy. “You seem to be doing pretty well now. And you know that what you do have, you created.”
“And you don’t?”
“I do now. I walked away from law. I embraced what works for me and I’m better at what I do now because of how I started. So I can’t regret it.”
“Why the DA? Why public service?”
“I thought I was helping those who needed help. Instead, decisions are politics, and then pregnant dead women don’t get justice served on their behalf. And innocent people end up with a stigma attached to them that they don’t deserve. I don’t like it. Not one bit.”
“You underestimate me if you believe that’s how this ends.”
“You’ll have to hand over a damning case against someone else to end it differently.”
“And I will. If my client lets me keep going. He wants this to be over.” He balls up his wrapper and tosses it before taking my hand in his again. “Until tomorrow, Cat,” he says, using my little goodbye in each of my columns before standing and walking away. Leaving me with that spicy scent of him lingering in the air, and a date for lunch tomorrow.
I could no-show.
But I don’t want to.
Later that night, I am in bed with a pizza and no man. Just me. I’ve been alone like this for years, really. I mean, yes, there was the artist, but we had sex. The conversation was convoluted at best. Maybe that’s why I chose him, and stayed with him way too long. He’d never really known me. He’d never threatened my heart. But I got to have an orgasm. I got to feel a body next to mine. It had seemed like enough. Which brings me to my column, which I write carefully on this day, because I dare to talk about domestic abuse. My closing statement reads like this:
Who killed Jennifer Wright and her unborn child?
That is the question in the courtroom now, and as the defense presents their case, more and more the answer doesn’t sound as simple as who has been charged. Interestingly, I believe the defense could ask for a dismissal again at any time, and based on evidence, he should be granted that request. But I find myself wanting this trial to continue. I want to know who the killer is, and I want to see that killer brought to justice. Tomorrow is Friday. My assessment is that as much as I want this case to continue, it’s expensive financially and emotionally. If the defense plans to ask for that dismissal, Friday is the day. Until then, —Cat.
I shut my computer and stare up at the ceiling. If the trial is over, then what?
Do I dare my one night, followed by a goodbye with Reese Summer?
Or do I just say goodbye?
Or is it really hello?
No.
