Chapter 37
One of the strangest things about life was you eventually started to feel better.
No matter how torn apart Kelly was, no matter how much it felt like the pain would actually kill her during the night, she felt a little better the next day.
Not good. Not anything close to good. But just a little better. Enough that she could take a shower, get dressed, and drink some coffee.
Jack hadn’t yet left, so the three of them sat around Reese’s small living area with their coffee, with a kind of bleak exhaustion that was at least a little better than the traumatic grief of the night before.
When no one said anything for a while, Kelly told Jack, “You need to shave.”
He rubbed his chin, the bristles making a rasping sound in the quiet room. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
“So what now?” Reese asked, looking from one of them to the other. “What happens now? Are you going to expose what you know? I mean, the whole story. I know you’re not going to put the story out there that Caleb did the killing.”
Kelly sighed and closed her eyes. “I’m not going to expose anything. I know Caleb and Vinnie were wrong. Obviously they were. But I just…” She cleared her throat. “I’ve been wrong too. And it doesn’t feel right for me to punish them when I’m just as guilty as they are.”
“You’re not—” Reese began.
“Yes, I am. I know I am.” She stared down into her mug at the black coffee.
“You don’t get to play with other people’s lives the way I did and claim you did something good.
The truth is good. Knowing the truth is worth doing.
But the way I got it… It doesn’t feel right to me.
Not any more right than what Caleb did back then. ”
She could still see Caleb’s face—how utterly broken it had been. She’d done that to him. She’d loved him, and she’d still broken him. “I don’t get to claim I did something good.”
“So no justice at all,” Reese murmured. “Are you going to be okay with that?”
Kelly shook her head. “Who could be okay with that? If there was justice available for me, I think I would take it. But the people who are really guilty are dead. They’re beyond justice now. And all that’s left would be… would be a gesture that accomplishes nothing.”
She could still hear Caleb’s voice on those old recordings—how horrified he sounded, how young and upset he’d been. He hadn’t taken any pleasure in her father’s death. It had twisted something in his heart that had never been untwisted.
Actions had consequences even if they were never addressed in the criminal justice system. Caleb hadn’t been untouched by his sins.
Neither was she. She was paying for them even now.
“We can put all the evidence away,” Jack said. “But I think you’ll need to talk to your mother. She knows what we learned yesterday. I called her last night to tell her we weren’t going through with it, but I’m not sure…” He cleared his throat. “You need to talk to her. I’d do it soon.”
Kelly felt a flicker of anxiety, a sharp emotion that was almost a relief as it slashed through her chilly numbness. “You think she’ll go ahead with our original plan? Publicize the evidence that makes it look like Caleb did the killing?”
“I think it’s possible. She’s a lot angrier than you ever were. And she’s a lot less reasonable.”
Kelly knew Jack was right, and the knowledge propelled her to her feet. “Shit. This thing is never over, is it? Where is she? Do you know?”
Jack stood up too. “She’s in hospice care,” he said. “She’s not been doing well.”
She was dying. It shouldn’t matter that much to Kelly since her mother had abandoned her a long time ago and she’d done nothing to make up for it.
But it did matter. It made Kelly’s stomach twist with feeling. Like here was another sad story that was about to reach its end.
An hour later Kelly was walking into her mother’s room.
She was shocked by how frail her mother had grown in just a couple of weeks. She was dying of cancer. She’d had a prognosis of three months almost three months ago.
She didn’t have much time left.
She was awake, though, and fully alert when Kelly entered the room.
“Jack said he called to tell you what happened,” Kelly said without greeting or preamble. She and her mother were way beyond the niceties.
Her mother nodded. “He told me. It doesn’t make a difference.”
“It does make a difference. Caleb isn’t guilty of this after all. Our whole plan to seek justice can’t go anywhere now. I told Jack to call the whole thing off.”
“I know you did.” Her mother’s voice was thin and brittle. “But you’re not the only decision-maker here.”
“I know that.” Kelly sighed and rubbed her face, feeling so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. It was like the past three months, the past seventeen years, had finally caught up with her, leaving her with no energy at all. “I don’t want to do anything though.”
“That’s because you fell for him, like a silly girl, but I’m not so blinded by feelings or hormones or whatever it is. Caleb Marshall has never been anything but a cold, selfish bastard, and I can still make him pay for that.”
“He didn’t kill Dad. I heard the phone calls. It was Roman and Arthur Marshall. And they’re both dead—beyond the scope of our vengeance now.”
“Someone has to pay for it.” That had been her mother’s refrain all along. It had turned her into this driven, obsessive, pitiless creature. She hadn’t always been like this. Grief and injustice had twisted her into it.
Kelly released another long breath. “Someone has paid for it. You and I have paid for it. For way too long now. I’d like to… I’d like for us to stop, and only we can make that happen.”
Her mother met her eyes across the distance. Kelly didn’t expect anything to change. Her mother had hardened herself so much to this battle she’d lived to fight that nothing was going to soften her. Not her daughter. Not her death. Not the truth.
But something did change in her mother’s eyes. Not softness or sympathy but something that looked almost like understanding. “And you think it’s that easy. You just let go. Release. And we finally stop paying.”
“I don’t know. But I want to try. I’ve done everything I could to make the world change. It won’t. And now there’s nothing left for me to do but let go. So that’s what I’m going to do. I really want… I really hope you’ll be able to let go too, if only so you can have some peace at the end here.”
“I want justice. All I ever wanted was justice.”
“I know. Me too. But what we have instead is the truth. It’s going to have to be good enough. If you expose Caleb as the killer, when we both know he’s not, then you’ve taken that truth away from us so we’ll be left with nothing again.”
Her mother was silent for a really long time. “What are you going to do?”
Kelly gave a little shrug. “What I should have done a long time ago? I’m going to live my life and not keep reopening old wounds.”
“And Caleb?”
“That’s his choice to make.”
“Are you going to go back to him?”
“He’d never take me back, but my choices aren’t dictated by his. I know that now. It’s not a happy truth, but it’s the only one I have. I’m still going to live my life.”
Indecision and bitterness twisted on her mother’s face for a few moments until it finally resolved into an exhaustion that was akin to what Kelly felt herself. “Okay then.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay. So you live your life.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to die.”
And that was the answer, Kelly realized. Her mother was too far gone to embrace forgiveness or reconciliation. But in her own way she was letting go too.
It was the best she could hope for.