Chapter 14
Beckett
Juniper Connelly was seriously annoyed with him.
Beck could see the tension in her jaw and the slight narrowing of her gaze when she looked at him.
Did she really want to dig through boxes of dusty papers, handwritten manuscripts, old letters from editors—all the flotsam
and jetsam of a writer’s life?
He could certainly understand her boredom. She was used to helping run a high-powered tech company. It must be tough to find
herself sidelined from such an undertaking, when she was used to the responsibility, pressure and prestige that came along
with being a vice president at Move Inc.
He understood that feeling well. When he first moved to Wyoming, he had struggled to figure out how to fill his time. He had
tried all kinds of projects, until he had accidentally stumbled onto the fun and challenge of making resin tabletops.
Carson had helped distract him. They had fished together, had gone for rides into the back country, had sat in front of the
fire at the cabin, sometimes talking for hours in the evening or often merely reading their respective books without saying
a word.
Beck had worried he was keeping the celebrated author away from his work, but Carson never made him feel as if his presence
was intrusive in any way.
Oh, he missed the man.
Juniper Connelly was struggling. As much as she clearly disliked him, the woman was trying to come to terms with a difficult diagnosis. His situation wasn’t completely analogous to hers, but he did understand what it felt like to have your life upended in an instant. He understood her upheaval.
She was Carson’s daughter, even if she didn’t know it yet. Loyalty to his friend compelled him to help her, even if she clearly
wanted nothing to do with him.
“What about the journals?” he said suddenly. By the expressions of all three women at the table, he realized his outburst
probably interrupted a conversation about something else.
“What?” Alison asked, clearly confused.
“Sorry. That was random. Go on with what you were saying.”
“We weren’t talking about anything important,” Loretta assured him. “I was only telling Juniper about a few events on the
schedule for the bookstore this summer. What journals are you talking about?”
“Carson’s journal entries.”
“Oh, those journals. He was always writing in them,” Loretta said with a rueful smile.
“Right. There are at least thirty years’ worth.”
“More. He kept them before he ever published his first book.”
“Ali and I had talked with his publisher about possibly coming out with a collection of short essays from his journal entries
at some point,” Beck said.
“Unfortunately, I haven’t had a minute to go through them,” Alison said. “You haven’t either, have you?”
“No. I’m afraid not,” Beck answered. In truth, he might have been able to carve out the time, but he hadn’t been able to bring
himself to sort through his friend’s most intimate thoughts yet.
“Beck and I are the cotrustees of his literary trust,” Alison explained to June, who was looking blank.
“I’m not familiar with a literary trust.”
“It’s a legal entity intended to protect an author’s legacy after he or she passes away. Carson assigned all the copyrights for his work to the trust before his death, which allows Alison and me as the cotrustees to make decisions about republishing his work or assigning sub-rights.”
“Movie deals, foreign editions, that kind of thing,” Ali explained.
“If you’re interested,” Beck said, “perhaps you could start reading through his journal entries and flagging some you might
think might be of interest to his readers, if we ever decide to publish some of his journal entries as possible essays in
book form.”
Her eyes lit up with more excitement than he had seen there in the short time he had known her. “Are you serious? That would
be amazing! I would love it!”
Her enthusiasm faded a little. “I don’t have any more experience in the literary world than I do in document preservation,
though. You should probably do it yourselves.”
“I wouldn’t be able to get to it until after the bar exam,” Ali said. “And to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll be able to bring
myself to read his journal entries for a while. It’s still hard for me to read anything he’s written, even the books and short
stories I’ve read before. I can only imagine how painful it would be to read his personal thoughts and reflections.”
Beck felt the same way. He knew that state of affairs would eventually change, but right now the loss seemed too sharp.
“You don’t have to feel pressure,” he assured her. “It was only an idea. And if you did want to read through them, we certainly wouldn’t expect you to make any final decisions. You would only be flagging those
entries you find meaningful or particularly insightful as a reader and fan. Anything that might help the world get a better
picture of Carson, both the man and the writer.”
“I would love it,” she said again. Her face seemed to light up from more than the dying rays of the sun. He liked seeing her
animated instead of defeated and lost.
“It sounds like a perfectly lovely idea,” Loretta said. “How kind of you to even consider it.”
“I would be honored to read any of Carson’s writings, especially anything the general public hasn’t yet had the chance to discover.”
“Your perspective would be wonderful,” Ali said. “I also love that through reading his journals, you can come to know Dad
a little better.”
That might be overplaying her hand, Beck thought. June blinked in confusion, as if wondering why Ali might want her to come
to know Carson better, though she didn’t ask the question.
“When can I start?” she asked instead. “Tonight? Where are the journals?”
He had to smile at her eagerness, grateful the idea had come to him. “They’re actually in a fireproof safe in the walk-in
closet of his office. You might have noticed it.”
She shook her head. “I haven’t been in that room yet. It seemed... presumptuous.”
Ali opened her mouth as if to disagree, but seemed to change her mind.
“Do you have the key?” she asked Beck instead.
“I have the code.”
“Oh, good.” Ali looked relieved. “I know I wrote it down somewhere but I can’t remember where. I was suddenly having nightmares
about having to call in a safe cracker to break into it.”
“We shouldn’t have to resort to that. I can open the safe.”
“Tonight?” June asked. “After we’re done here?”
He smiled again at her eagerness. “Sure. If you want me to.”
“I do. Thank you so much.”
They talked about inconsequential things until after Loretta brought out dessert, separate bowls of poached fruit with a delicious
chocolate sauce.
June, he saw, ate only a few bites of the fruit before pushing the bowl away.
“Thank you for inviting me for dinner. I had a lovely time,” she said after they had all worked together to clear the dishes
and load them into the dishwasher.
Here in the brighter light of The Painted Sky kitchen, she looked tired, with lines of exhaustion bracketing her mouth.
He again had that sudden wild urge to protect her somehow, to keep her safe and warm and comfortable.
What a ludicrous thought, when he had certainly demonstrated with abundant clarity that he couldn’t protect anyone.
“Let me grab a flashlight and I’ll walk you home,” Ali said, setting down the dishcloth she was using to wipe dishes.
“That’s really not necessary,” June said.
“It’s not,” Beck agreed. “I’ll walk her home. It’s basically on my way.”
“You walked all the way here?” Ali asked.
“It’s ten minutes through the trees,” he pointed out. “I was glad for the exercise. I’ve been hunched over a project all day
and I needed to move. So did Hank.”
“Hank’s here?” June asked. “I didn’t see him when we came over.”
“Last I saw, he was hanging out by the barn with the ranch dogs. He’s not a big fan of the cats who rule the house here. I
think he’s scared of them.”
Loretta and Alison both walked them to the door, where one of the Siberian cats sidled up to Ali until she picked him up.
“Good thing you have a sweater,” Loretta said to June. “It gets cold up here at night.”
He didn’t have a sweater, but she apparently wasn’t as worried about him. Just as well. He tended to run hot, anyway.
As if to contradict his words, Hank was waiting for them on the porch and June greeted the dog with a warm enthusiasm that
took him by surprise. She crouched down to the dog’s level and scratched behind his ears.
“What have you been up to, Hank? Have you been chasing any squirrels lately?”
The dog angled his head and gave that funny look of delight he sometimes wore around people he truly loved.
The three of them took off through evening. It wasn’t full dark yet, though the sun had set and everything was the amber and blue of dusk.
“Beautiful night, isn’t it?” she said, lifting her face to the mountains, where the moon was showing as only a rim above the
highest peaks.
“It really is. These summer evenings are precious and rare.”
“So, Beckett Hunter,” she said after they had walked a few dozen more yards. “What brought you out here to Wyoming?”
“How do you know I’m not a local?”
She sent him a sidelong look in the pale evening. “Because I know who you are. My first job out of Cal Poly, while we were
still trying to get Move Inc off the ground, was at a start-up in San Jose. You were kind of a big deal there.”
“Ah.” He didn’t know what else to say as memories crowded his mind.
“Last I knew, you were an up-and-coming prosecutor going after all the bad guys. Now you’re wearing jeans with holes in the
knees and making artistic furniture. What brought you here?”
He hated when his past rose up in front of him like that moon over the mountains, inexorable and inescapable.
“Circumstances change. People change with them.”
“They do. Which doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
“I moved here five years ago. My place was originally owned by a friend of my father’s. I came here to visit and fell in love
with the area and the property.”
“And you decided to stay.”
“I decided to stay. I bought it a short time later.”
There was so much more to it than that. He had been lost, grieving, battered by circumstances beyond his control. Much like
June herself, he realized.
“You must have really loved Bridger Peak to give up everything in California.”
“What’s not to love?” He gestured around to the mountains, the pines, the expanse of darkening sky.
“True. But you were a big deal in San Jose, as I remember. There was even talk in the media of you running for a state-wide
office.”
He gazed ahead, wishing they could talk about something else. Anything else. “I prosecuted a few high-profile cases. And plenty
of others that didn’t make headlines.”
One of those quiet, low-key, under-the-radar cases had completely changed the course of his life.
“You and your office chose not to prosecute plenty more.”
He had years of experience with depositions and courtroom testimony, trained to pick up the nuances in someone’s tone. Not
that he needed any particular insight here. June Connelly made no effort to hide her bitterness.
“Did we have some kind of professional interaction in San Jose? Is that why you seemed to instantly dislike me?”
She was quiet as they walked through the trees toward the cabin. He thought for a moment she wasn’t going to answer him, but
she finally spoke in a low voice. “You and I didn’t have any interaction before I came here.”
“But?”
“But a good friend of mine was a victim of a horrific sexual assault. You and your office decided her case wasn’t strong enough
to go to court.”
Ah. He couldn’t say he was surprised. Sexual assault cases could be the hardest to prosecute, though he had tried his damnedest.
“I’m sorry. If it had been up to me, I would have given every single victim their day in court. I hated having to tell someone
that I couldn’t see a path to conviction in their case.”
“How can you possibly make that proclamation when you weren’t even willing to try?”
He chose his words carefully. “I was a prosecutor for years, working hundreds of cases. You get a sense for it. Sometimes the evidence isn’t there. Sometimes the victim won’t testify. Sometimes the police don’t feel confident in the case they’ve brought us and sometimes we didn’t feel they had enough evidence. I can’t say which was the reason, in your friend’s case. What was her name?”
“Robin Sanchez. We were college roommates.”
He had memory flash of a tall, elegant, traumatized woman who had told her story with quiet dignity and unmistakable sincerity.
“I remember that case. He was an acquaintance, if I recall.”
“Her boss at the tech firm where they both worked.” June’s voice shook a little. Much as Robin’s had, he remembered, when
she recounted the attack. “They were working late on a project when he came on to her. When she refused him, he didn’t give
her a choice. He forced the matter. This was before the Me Too movement and it took her a few days to summon the courage to
report. He was her boss. It was her first real job, and he was a Big Name in the industry. All the usual reasons.”
She gave a sound of disgust. “A few of us finally persuaded her that reporting the assault was the right thing to do. And
then you and the detectives working the case all told her bluntly that she didn’t have a case. Robin was devastated for a
long, long time.”
Oh, damn. He hated cases like that one, when he and the local detectives felt like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing the same lousy
rock uphill.
“I remember the case. It was a tough one. We all believed her, that wasn’t an issue. But he claimed the encounter was consensual
and said she became angry when he wouldn’t give her full credit on the project they were working on together.”
She scoffed. “Sounds like him.”
“The detectives and our investigators tried to find others with similar stories who could support her story. We knew they
were out there and we heard several friend-of-a-friend accusations, but nobody else would come forward.”
“There were definitely more cases out there.”
“How is Robin doing?”
He remembered her as bright, articulate, sincere. She would have been an amazing witness, though better if she had reported
the assault immediately afterward instead of waiting three days, when they could no longer find physical evidence to go along
with her testimony.
“She’s okay,” June said as they neared the cabin. “She’s had a great deal of therapy and it seems to have helped. She’s married
now, to a good man who adores her, and they have a toddler. She left the tech industry shortly after the assault and now works
very successfully as a marketing consultant.”
“I’m glad to hear she’s on a path to healing.”
“Meanwhile,” June went on, her tone acid, “absolutely nothing happened to her boss, who is still widely known in the industry
as a sexual predator on the hunt for vulnerable, defenseless young women.”
Her accusatory tone was nothing he hadn’t heard—or felt—about himself before.
“Only one of many reasons I’m no longer working in the prosecutor’s office. For every perp we were able to convict, a dozen
more slipped through the cracks in the system. I hated it.”
“Not as much as the victims of those perps did, I imagine.”
He thought of Soledad, so full of life and promise.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. As much as we tried to change things, we were sometimes forced to make a lot of decisions
based on a misogynistic system that unfortunately gives the predator the benefit of the doubt, especially where the victim
is a woman of color and the accused is not and when the accused is in a position of power. It’s a lousy system and it’s wrong.
I want to say things are changing, but any progress is far too slow . ”
In the glow of the porch light coming from the cabin, he could see his words didn’t do anything to appease her. Nor should they. He was the first to admit the flawed justice system often didn’t work for those who needed it most.
At least he knew her dislike of him was related to his previous work decisions and not necessarily personal. Somehow, that
didn’t make him feel any better.
“So that’s why you’re here spending your days in a workshop instead of a courtroom?”
“One of the reasons.”
That was as far as he was willing to go to explain all the events that had led him here.
“Do you want me to grab those journals for you tonight or would you prefer I come back tomorrow?”
She gave him a long look, as if trying to peer past his obfuscation. Finally, she shrugged. “Tonight works for me, if you’re
okay with that.”
“Sure. It won’t take long to open the safe.”
That was at least something he could probably manage without screwing up.