Chapter 17 Me Three
me three
Sariah
I don’t get pissed often. I can’t afford to lose control.
Feisty? Yes. Pissed right the hell off? Rarely.
But this situation calls for it. And the worst part is, I did it to myself.
Fingerprints. Apparently, that’s digital now, not that I wanted to know that information.
Surrendering everything in my pockets wasn’t that bad since it was a Chapstick, a used Kleenex, a stub from a parking garage, and a receipt from King Soopers, both I’ve been meaning to pitch.
My keys were still in the ignition, and Renée had my phone when I was hauled off and shoved in the back of the police cruiser.
It’s the mug shot that concerns me. For a variety of reasons. Employment, housing, renewing my driver’s license. That shit is public record, and Colorado and their open-records laws make it all too easy for this to resurface over and over again. Forever.
What’s worse is it gives away my location, my legal name, and my current appearance to anyone. And everyone.
Especially those I’ve tried like hell to keep in the dark.
I can handle it, but Renée… Like hell, I’ll subject her to what I went through. Or worse.
The jail cell is just like what’s on television. That research must be easy to come by. What I never considered was the noise. The sniffling, the screaming, the people talking to themselves. The smell of urine and vomit and the unshowered.
I blew a stop sign and sped through a residential neighborhood. I’d bitch and complain if it happened on my street, but a citation is more appropriate than an arrest.
The officer acted as if we were in a high-speed chase that required a helicopter spotlight to keep up with me.
The Denver metro police have actually given up on high-speed pursuits, citing danger to civilians.
So my measly fifteen over feels more like a power trip or someone trying to make a name for himself than is reasonable.
“Sariah Ocho-tee?”
Lordy, please. It’s not that complicated. “Ocotea? That’s me.”
The uniformed officer squints as if I’ve insulted him by correcting the pronunciation of my name.
“Yeah, that. Someone to see you.” He slides the bars open, and they hit the end of the rail with a clang before he slams it back home with a rattle. “Turn around.”
He smacks cuffs on me and pushes me forward toward the hall. For murderers or rapists, I’d be okay with this kind of treatment. Speeding home for a medical emergency certainly can’t warrant this kind of diligence.
I snicker thinking he expects me to headbutt or roundhouse kick him and then make a break for it. It often takes me two trips with groceries. I’m not weak, but I’m not an every-bag-in-one-trip kind of woman either.
“Something funny?”
I shake my head. The less I say, the better.
I’m not thrilled about a court-appointed attorney, but I’m smart enough to know the anything you say can and will be used against you means they plan to.
I move into a room with a gentleman with a cherubic face, wide button nose, and the thickest white hair I’ve ever seen.
Male pattern baldness does not run in his family.
His starched shirt looks expensive, and he has cufflinks.
I thought local defense attorneys weren’t paid like this.
Who shows up on a weeknight at what must be nearly eight o’clock with cufflinks?
“Please uncuff my client,” he says to the deputy. “That will be all.”
The deputy’s head shoots back as if he’s surprised he’s being given orders by a lawyer. “I stay.”
“You leave,” the white-haired gentleman extends a meaty palm to the door with a head tilt and waits to be obeyed. “Sheriff Denton is aware.”
The man looks around as if this is a trap or a test, before uncuffing me and leaving from the only door to the room.
“Sariah. May I call you Sariah?”
I nod.
“Please sit. I’m Sherman Nettles, your counsel. This is for you.” He pushes a bottle of water my way as I take the steel chair across from him. It’s cold and bolted to the concrete floor.
He looks at his phone before continuing. “First things first. Your daughter is with Ayla Barone. They had dinner of pizza and cookies with Liam Murphy. She required a photo identification of Liam.”
I exhale, letting that one worry ooze from me. “Thank you.” I crack the water and take a deep swig.
“She’s a smart girl. I don’t have an answer for you on Rosie Ocotea yet. We didn’t have much to go on as your daughter was busy putting Liam through his paces and giving us the information on you.”
I nod. We’ll get there. “I’m Mr. and Mrs. Barone’s attorney.
And now yours. I pushed them to get the bail value set.
The arresting officer was dragging his feet, but it was done, and bail has been posted.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you not to leave town, mostly because I don’t like Christian on my bad side. ”
“Christian?”
“Ayla’s husband.”
“He… He posted bail for me? Why?”
“He did. He said you’re one of them, and that’s all it took.
Now, if you’re willing, I’d like to give you a ride home and schedule a time we can talk tomorrow at my office about your case.
Nothing’s going to change overnight and the sooner we get you home, the better you’ll feel.
” He leans in, but his voice doesn’t drop.
“Besides, I like to hear details in private. No need to give them any fodder.” He tilts his chin to the glass, before he stands and extends a hand for me to precede him.
I grab the water bottle and do just that.
He waits as I gather my coat and Chapstick. I leave the used tissue and the receipts in the bucket.
Sherman Nettles drives a small Cadillac SUV. He asks for my address and programs it in. He extends his phone to me as we leave the parking lot. “Mrs. Barone is programmed in.”
I take the phone, greedily, and dial Ayla.
“Hello?” the voice on the other end is hopeful and tears well in my eyes for the first time tonight.
“Ayla, it’s Sariah.”
“Hey. One sec. Renée?”
There’s a scraping across the mic before my world is set to rights. “Mom?”
“Hey, baby. I’m heading home.”
My daughter falls apart. The sobs are muffled until I hear, “I’ve got your girl. Come on home, Sariah.”
“Thanks, Ayla.” I disconnect.
“Mr. Nettles, I don’t know how to thank you.”
He waves a hand as if it’s no big deal. “Don’t worry about it. Delores is used to it.”
“Delores?”
“My wife. We’ve been together forty-four years. She was fool enough to take a bet on me fresh out of law school. Then again, I was a fool for her the first time I saw her. She knows I have odd hours occasionally.”
“Forty-four years is an accomplishment.”
“Forty-four years is the passing of time. Her not throttling me when I’m an ass is the real accomplishment.”
“My mom had a seizure, or what we think was a seizure. I sped to get home to her and my daughter who panicked witnessing it. I flew through a stop sign. I didn’t care. I left the door open for the officer and invited him in. It was a good-faith gesture.”
“It also gave him the right to enter and arrest you. Without that, he’d have been stuck trying to get a warrant. And no judge would sign off on that during a medical emergency with EMS on the scene.”
“Why does doing the right thing bite good people in the ass?”
“Sariah, you don’t think like a criminal. We can get you off. This was an overstep for sure. It’ll be done within the week.”
“Do I have attorney-client privilege if someone else paid you on my behalf?”
He stops at a red light and turns to me. “Yes.”
“I don’t… That mug shot could be really bad for me. Even worse for my daughter. Her biological father is not a good man, and I’d like her to survive to adulthood before making a decision to know him.”
“Is he named on the birth certificate?”
I shake my head. “No. I wanted no connection between them. I don’t know that he knows she exists. I’d like to keep it that way.”
The light turns green, and we pause for a long moment before he faces forward and continues to my house.
“I’ll do everything I can. Though, if I may say so, my daughters are the light of my life. If I didn’t get to know them, I’d be so disappointed.”
“He has others,” I whisper.
What I don’t add is I don’t think disappointed is the word he uses when he thinks of them. Property, maybe more so. Beyond that, I can’t consider it. I won’t.
Jumping bail is the least of my concerns for Renée to be free of that man.
I’ll do it if I have to.
In a heartbeat or less.
In no time, we’re back to my house. I’m dead on my feet but wired beyond belief. My body is sluggish and dragging, but my mind is what I assume it would be like on speed.
The kitchen looks the same as when I left it this morning. My daughter and Ayla stand in the living room with a movie paused on the TV. They were halfway through one of the Avengers movies or so it seems.
I rush to her and wrap her in a hug, not caring a lick about the movie for once. “Love you, Née. So proud of how you handled that.”
Her death grip on my jacket tells a story her words don’t. She holds me more tightly than any time I can remember. “I was so scared.”
“Me too, baby. Me too. But that’s behind us.”
I look over her head to the woman who was just about Renée’s age the last time I saw her and mouth, “Thank you.”
Her smile is her answer. She shoves a hank of her thick red hair behind one ear and slides to one side toward the kitchen.
“Will you stay for a moment?”
“Sure thing.”
I pull back from my daughter. “Shower please.”
Her eyes dart to Chris Hemsworth on the big screen frozen in flight.
“We’ll finish when you get out.”
Her questioning look can’t be missed.
“I’m calling in tomorrow, and we’ll call you out of school. You haven’t had your free day this year. I figure we’ll check on Rosie and then explore, but no need to be up at the normal time. Not after tonight.”
A smile lights her eyes, but it quickly morphs to concern. “How is RoRo?”
“I’m working on finding out. I don’t know where they took her, but you know she’ll call as soon as she can.” I spin her toward the hall and tap her booty. “Now go.”
Heading to the kitchen, I see what I failed to notice when I arrived. The peonies are in a tall glass recentered on the table. The broken vase was cleaned up and tossed in the trash. The bouquet is down by one or two blooms, but since it’s been almost a week, that’s reasonable anyway.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I start only to be bum rushed by a second hug of the night.
“Sariah. You look amazing.” She pulls back. “I’m happy I could help. Ci is— Well, you know, right? He’s supposed to be on bedrest. Tonight about did him in. He can’t drive and didn’t want to scare either of you.”
“Why would he scare us?”
She uses her whole hand to wash air around her face.
“It’s bad. He’s bad off.” Her face falls.
“It’s my fault. Well, no. It’s my prick of a father’s fault.
But Cian came because I needed him.” Her words spill from her lips as if she’s spent days holding them behind the dam of her lips.
“Plastic surgery to his eye first, then the implants.”
At my questioning look, she continues, “He needs four teeth implanted, but the jaw bone has to be stabilized first. They think the measures they’ve taken are enough they won’t have to break and set his jaw.
That’s supposed to be terribly painful. Not that it’s not right now.
I’m not medical, so take this with a grain of salt. ”
She paces and talks with her hands as the words continue to flow.
“He’s struggling. And he misses you. And he’d thump me for saying that, but it’s Ci.
You know how he is. He’s all in with his people.
And he’s all in with you.” She looks over my shoulder down the hall.
It doesn’t take much as she’s got several inches on me. “And he’s impressed with her.”
Her smile matches my own when I say, “She’s impressive.”
“She is. When I got here, she was freaked.” She extends her hands as if I need to be calmed, and in part, I do. “Sorry. But she was. She refused to let Liam in.”
I am proud and disturbed at this. Proud that she stood up for herself and held that boundary. Sad that she knew he was safe and still couldn’t relax.
Ayla continues, “By the time I got here, he was cold from sitting on the stoop and mumbling about teenage girls and hormones. Little does he know, right?” She continues before I can answer.
“She let us both in when the pizza got here, which is to say, when she was comfortable we were who we said we were and that we wouldn’t hurt her.
Liam spent most of the time trying to find your mom but didn’t have any luck.
He took off after he knew Sherman had found you. ”
I open my mouth but my stomach growls in the silence of the kitchen.
“Pizza in the fridge. Three different kinds. My husband doesn’t know how to do normal. And there are cookies in the microwave.”
I scrunch my face in question. “Microwave?”
She shrugs. “It’s just what we’ve always done. I don’t know why.”
I open the door to the unit and grab the pink box and flip the lid. Breaking one in half, I inhale the iced sugar cookie and almost moan. It’s so sweet it shouldn’t be good, but lunch was a day ago or so my stomach thinks. “Damn that’s good.”
“Ci doesn’t do normal either.”
“Mom?” My girl comes in, fully showered with wet hair, in long pajamas. She burrows into my side and wraps both arms around my waist.
“I see why my brother is smitten,” Ayla says.
“He told me he never fell out of love with my mom,” Renée offers the woman before me.
I go perfectly still. He did say that, but I don’t think it was supposed to get back to him via his sister.
Her face goes from shocked to beaming. “I love that. Your mom and my brother… That sounds weird to say. But they were great together. I hope they find their way back to each other.”
“Me too,” says the voice at my side.
Me three.
But it’s way too early to think that.