Chapter Seventeen
Summer
T he June heat was inescapable and clung to Mia’s skin with the smell of sweat and sunscreen. She tugged on the hem of the rainbow T-shirt she was wearing, unsticking it from her stomach and hoping to stir a breeze. Bryce and Lilly looked nearly as miserable, hot and wilting as soon as they’d stepped out of the car.
“Mia,” Kennedy called, running up to hug first her, then Lilly and Bryce. She was beaming, face vibrant and nose sunburnt as the crowd pressed in around them. Her long blonde hair had been cut short and danced against her cheeks in the slight breeze. “I’m so glad you all came.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Mia assured her, looking curiously at the girl that was holding tight to Kennedy’s hand.
She was shorter than Mia by several inches, but she made up for it in vibrancy—the glint of silver shone from a piercing in her nose and her long hair was dyed electric pink. Her grin was fierce, slightly on edge like she wasn’t sure what sort of welcome she might receive.
To her, Mia and the others were Kennedy’s church friends and a note of dull pain echoed in Mia’s heart as she remembered what Gabriel had taught her. Faith was not always the guarantee of compassion that she had once thought it was.
“Or the chance to meet your girlfriend, finally ,” Mia said, offering her hand and her warmest smile. “I’m Mia, this is Lilly and Bryce.”
“Alison has been a little nervous about meeting everyone,” Kennedy admitted, leaning in to kiss her girlfriend’s cheek. “But I convinced her.”
“We are so happy to meet you,” Lilly said, “You’ve made Kennedy happier than I think I’ve ever seen her.”
At that Alison smiled back at them, some of her tension draining away. “Nice to meet you, too. Is this your first time at Pride?” she asked, voice barely carrying over the noise as she looked curiously at all of them, including the whole group in her question.
“Yeah,” Lilly acknowledged, “and it’s great!” She turned to Kennedy and gestured at the shirt she wore with its glittering rainbow flag. “If someone had asked you last summer if you’d be here like this in just a year—happy and in love—would you have believed it?”
Kennedy shook her head. “I don’t think I would have believed that I ever would have been able to do this. I couldn’t see a future beyond my parents.”
“You’re better than them,” Alison said fiercely. “They didn’t deserve you.”
“No, they didn’t and that’s why we had to come and support Kennedy,” Bryce said with a grin. “She’s been through a lot and it’s good to see her smiling again. I’m glad she has you.”
Alison’s cheeks flushed as Kennedy leaned in for another kiss.
Mia smiled, her heart full at her friend’s obvious blossoming, but her gaze slid from one happy couple to the other and the space between her own fingers felt empty.
She was alone and the hole in her life where Gabriel should have been was becoming a constant ache that had settled deep in her chest. They were all moving on—Kennedy was planning to move in with Alison at the end of summer and that had set Lilly and Bryce thinking about their own apartment—and each beat of her heart was a reminder of the part of her that was missing, each breath heavy with the weight of the passage of time, but how could she admit that to anyone, especially him?
He wouldn’t blame her for how she felt, but she blamed herself.
Gabriel watched as Amy settled into the seat on the other side of the table, her face set as she spread the papers in her arms out for him to look at. There was at least an attempt made to keep the air conditioning working in this part of the prison so the suit she was wearing was only slightly wilted as she passed him a neat stack of paper.
“What’s this?”
The P.I. report,” she explained, pressing a perfectly manicured nail to the first page, dotted with familiar names. “He was able to make contact with Michael Lansing, as well as Vincent Russel, David Hu, and Chris Mendoza. They’ve agreed to testify.”
He swallowed. It was a short list out of all the ones he’d given her. “The others?”
She averted her eyes. “It seems association with Seth Wiseman was as dangerous as you claimed. Andre Lewis died the same year you were convicted. Shooting. Ramon Vasquez committed suicide a few years later and no one can find Thomas Wilson. He’s simply disappeared.”
Gabriel nodded, unsurprised but heartsore. He had little doubt that whatever happened to Thomas had been unpleasant and irreversible. “None of the others from Richard’s?”
“Wealthy families and all that,” she said quietly. “Most of them won’t even respond to the P.I.’s inquiries, or they’ve slapped him with legal orders to force him to keep his distance.”
He nodded, again unsurprised. Wasn’t keeping the family reputation intact the reason most of them had been sent to Richard to begin with? Still …
“Brittany?” he asked, unable to shake the hope that maybe, after all these years, she had forgiven him.
Amy shook her head and he looked away at the unexpected sympathy in her eyes. “She was the first to file for him to desist his attempts to contact her. I know she was key to a lot of this, the final straw that drove you out and into Seth’s clutches, but we can’t get to her.”
“What now?” He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, worrying the soft flesh as he rapped uneasily on the table with his knuckle. Disappointment and hurt feelings wouldn’t help him get out of here, it wouldn’t help him get to Mia.
“We wait.” Amy leaned back in her chair, regarding him calmly over the expanse of the table.
He nodded wordlessly. He was guaranteed the right to a speedy trial, sure, but both sides needed time to prepare. He wasn’t going to have tomorrow, or next week, or next month. There was nothing else he could do, nothing he had been able to do for years.
Just wait.
Fall
Mrs. Newberry smirked over the rim of her cup of cider as she approached, and Mia set her teeth. It had been a while since their last encounter, Mrs. Newberry had been mostly quiet the past few months, since she’d realized that nothing had come of her previous gossip. They’d started to believe that she’d given up and Mia had been too busy with classes to pay much attention to her anyway, but the sudden glint in her eye meant she must have found some new bit of information to torment them with.
“Mia, dear,” she said silkily, standing just a bit too close so she could lean in conspiratorially, “you look positively exhausted. Those classes of yours sure do seem to be taking a toll on you.”
Mia opened her mouth, rage coiling at the tip of tongue, but the other woman flashed a quick smile and plunged on without waiting for an answer. “Have you heard the good news? Mr. Prescott is engaged. It seems he found quite a sweet and God-fearing young woman in Emily, and I was just sure that you would want to know since the two of you were such good friends!”
“I hadn’t heard,” Mia said coldly. “I’m sure he’ll be very happy.”
“It is a shame that you won’t have the same opportunities, isn’t it? How are things going with you and that prisoner?”
Mia glared at her, good sense and courtesy falling away in her irritation. “Gabriel is fine. Better than fine, actually, he’s waiting now for a new trial. He might get to come home someday.”
Mrs. Newberry faltered for a moment, and Mia felt a vicious wave of satisfaction settle over her—one that was quickly followed by a deep and unshakeable dread. Nothing was more dangerous in Mrs. Newberry’s hands than information, and Mia was sure that bitterness had just goaded her into once again admitting something that she was sure to pay for later.
“Well, then, perhaps someday we’ll get to celebrate your engagement after all,” she said with a condescending smirk. With that she sauntered away, leaving Mia standing with her lips pressed together in a thin line of regret.
She’d fallen for the bait. Mrs. Newberry wasn’t actually happy about James’s engagement; she’d been looking for any reason to make Mia feel inadequate.
“Is she bothering you again?” Lilly appeared at her elbow with a frown and a cupcake.
Mia knew she was worried, and she leaned into Lilly’s shoulder, seeking the solace of her best friend’s embrace. It was humiliating that she had let Mrs. Newberry push her into making such a careless mistake. She had known that this was the cost of her choices, but she hadn’t known that it would hurt so much. “She just loves to remind me of all the things she thinks I can’t have. Every opportunity she gets she throws marriage and family in my face.”
“You’ve always wanted those things. A husband. Kids.”
“I know.” She tipped her head back, stared sightlessly at the ceiling as she pushed back the ache. “I’m not giving up on that. We can bring him home. Right?”
Lilly had no answer.
“Do you ever think about what you’re going to do if you actually get out of here someday?”
The question surprised him, coming from Alex, and he sighed, looking at the wall of pictures that held Mia’s smiling face.
“All the time,” he said honestly. “I just want to be with Mia.”
Alex nodded from his position on the bunk opposite. “More than that, though. What about jobs, places to live? I’ve only got a few more years in this shithole and I don’t know what I’m gonna do when it’s over.”
“You’ve got your brother waiting for you on the outside, right?” Gabriel knew he did, that Alex had landed himself here when he found his father beating the kid the way he had once beaten Alex. His cellmate had put an end to that with his fists, then drove his brother to the hospital and waited for the police to show up.
Not that Gabriel blamed him. What else was he supposed to do after countless calls to the cops and Child Protective Services had gone nowhere? The local prosecutor hadn’t agreed, and, from what he understood, Alex’s little brother had ended up in foster care and Alex had pleaded guilty to aggravated assault so he could get a lenient enough sentence to be out before the kid was grown.
“How am I supposed to take care of him with this on my record?”
The uncertainty in his voice was the most humanity Gabriel had seen from him, and he shook his head. “I don’t know, man, but I know you’ll figure it out.”
“Do you worry about Mia? Taking care of her and being normal after all this?”
Gabriel blew out a hard breath. “Every day.”
He wasn’t even out, and he had already disrupted her life, what was it going to do to her if he actually got out some day? The question kept him up at night, haunting the edges of his dreams and he knew he wasn’t the only one struggling. She was already doing so much—classes, homework, church—and now she was talking about getting a job on top of all that. Anything to keep herself distracted from the time that was passing them by. There were dark circles under her eyes every time he saw her, and he wanted to kiss them away, to hold her so he could make sure she was sleeping at night.
He couldn’t do any of those things and time ticked by.