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The man had another woman two nights ago. It’s time to forget him.
“What’s another source of the poison in question?” Richard asks, from the chair to my right. He’s the second co-counsel, who is handsome, confident, and currently running fingers through his longish wavy brown hair, as if thinking about his own questions.
“What about a food source?” Elsa says. “If we can find a food source high in that toxin, we can create reasonable doubt.”
“It might create doubt,” Cat says, shaking her head in the spot next to me, “or just come off desperate and farfetched.”
She’s right. It would, and I’m supposed to just be listening in, under a confidentiality employment agreement, of course, but I participate in my mind. I think of the person we’re defending and somehow that leads me to my father. He didn’t just make a bad financial investment with my uncle. The truth is he gambled, and got in trouble. His best friend at the time was in love with my mother and tried to get my father help, and her out, until he was cured. He ended up being painted as the enemy.
“It’s reasonable doubt,” Elsa argues. “If we get the jury asking what other source of toxin is in the food, we’ll nail this. Just get them thinking about pesticides with the data that shows how eroded our food is from them, and we kill this case.”
But it’s not a slam dunk, I think. Again, I go back to my father and his best friend and the connection clicks in my mind. Reese and his team are asking the wrong questions and giving the wrong answers. “Who loved her the way she loved him?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “Who would kill for her?”
The entire room turns to look at me, Reese’s intense stare landing on me the hardest. And the man’s stare really is intense. Like Cole’s stare—intense, piercing, probing. A man of power who looks at you and pins you with his presence. “Continue with that thought,” he says.
“If you really believe she didn’t do this,” I say, “and obviously, you do, then that toxin got in his body by a human hand and intentionally. Who wanted to save her, and she wouldn’t let them?”
Reese stares at me a couple of more moments and then points a finger in the air. “This is it. We need to find that person and now. I’m going to see my client.” He looks at Cat. “I need you to work that magic you work to get people talking.”
“Of course,” Cat says, standing up.
Reese looks at me. “Help them chase this from here. And that interview Wednesday. You’ll have another recommendation from me before it takes place. I need to hire you.”
Cat squeezes my hand and gives me a smile. “I’ll call you when we leave her house.”
I nod, and Elsa and Richard look at me. Our debate and research begin, and it’s invigorating. I feel like I’m back at Stanford. I feel like I’m me again. A long time later, I stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows of Cat and Reese’s apartment, staring out over the pitch-black sky, speckled with New York City lights. My father wasn’t a Prince Charming, but he did love my mother and she loved him.
The truth is, without Cole, I might not be in touch with my version of Prince Charming enough to think through this case. It’s in the eyes of the beholder that we define our perfect fantasy. Cole gave me that for a night. I’m going to choose to block out the part where he was with another woman he was picking up at the same bar. Unless I see him again. Then, I’m pretty sure I’ll land a properly placed knee. Or unless that blood test says I’m pregnant. Then I’ll find him. Otherwise, he’ll have to find me, and since he’s moved on, that’s not going to happen.
Chapter fifteen
Lori
Tuesday morning…
I’m in Cat’s kitchen making coffee when my cell phone rings. I set my cup down and run to the island to grab it. Cat comes running and stops on the other side of the island, well aware of the call I’m waiting on. I spy the doctor’s office on caller ID, with a stomach flip, and nod to her. “Hello,” I answer.
There is a greeting, and the nurse identifies herself before I hear, “Your test is negative.”
“Oh, thank God,” I breathe out, with Cat doing the same a second later. “Not that having a baby is a bad thing,” I quickly add. “It’s just not well-timed for me.” Especially, I add silently, since I don’t even know how to find the would-be father, besides asking the bartender at the bar to leave him a message, which would be a long shot.
“Of course,” she says. “That’s understandable. The doctor said if you haven’t started your period by Friday, go ahead and get going on the birth control pill. Otherwise, follow the instructions given at the office.”
We disconnect, and Cat watches me closely. “You’re happy, right?”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “I’m happy.”
I no longer have any reason to find Cole. It’s the end of the story of the “us” that never existed.
Asshole, why’d you have to be a manwhore?
Cole
Houston, TX
After a two-day delay in the court date, the case begins. I listen to the nonsense the prosecution ends with, pleased at how they play into my hand. This is my game and when it’s my turn, I work the room. I begin my opening statement: “The prosecution will have you believe that blood and a knife damns my client. If you believe that then I want you to go someplace difficult with me right now. I want you to think of the person you love the most in this world. Your child, your spouse, your sibling, whoever it may be.”
“I want you to think about hugging them, loving them, smiling with them. I need you to just embrace how good that feels. Now, do it without allowing yourself to pause to think because you wouldn’t in a crisis. You walk in your front door and that person you love with all of your heart is on the floor bleeding with a knife in their chest. I’ve gone through this in my head and over and over and I know what I would do. I would run to that loved one and try to find a sign of life. I may or may not pull out the knife. In the moment, I think we can all say we’d do what felt right, what we believed would save our loved one’s life. I, for one, would call 911, just as my client called 911, and then I’d offer aid. Any chance I had, I’d hold my loved one. I’d hold them and hold them and hold them, praying that it wouldn’t be the last time. If my client is guilty for doing those things, then I say I too would be guilty because I would do those things. The prosecution has nothing else to convict him on. So, ask yourself, would the very same thing that I would do, which I suspect many of you would do in the same circumstances, convince you that Callum Moore killed his wife? The prosecution has to give you proof he killed her. All they want to do is punish him for loving her. I hope you will not.”
