Chapter Fifteen
Spring
C hurch had been Mia’s sanctuary when she was little, a place of peace and welcome where she was sure of the goodness of God and his people. It amazed her how quickly one woman could change that into something unpleasant. Most of the congregation had accepted the news of Kennedy’s change in living arrangements at Christmas without fuss, but Mrs. Newberry had been digging from the start, asking questions around town for weeks until she’d finally gotten enough of the story to figure out what Kennedy’s parents had done and why. They’d tried to keep it quiet—embarrassed by the existence of their daughter rather than their own disgusting behavior—but it hadn’t stopped her from finding out or from telling anyone who’d listen.
Whispers traveled fast in a small town and this one was no exception. Their congregation had begun to turn their heads when Kennedy walked by and even the ones that didn’t mutter and gossip behind their hands tended to stare. A pointed Sunday sermon from Pastor Anderson on the importance of loving their neighbors hadn’t been enough to stop it entirely and Mia had stayed as close as possible to Kennedy’s side since then, both her and Lilly giving stern looks to anyone who’s eyes lingered too long or with too much curiosity. It was none of anyone else’s business what happened with her parents, and they hadn’t tolerated anyone approaching her with a bad attitude or a judgmental heart.
She’d done her best to make the whole unfortunate situation tolerable, but none of that mattered to those who preferred to use God’s words as a weapon and Mrs. Newberry did her damage as she always did, with a silver tongue and a cloying smile.
She was tired and uneasy when Gabriel called, and she answered with a knot of worry in her stomach. “Please don’t tell me something terrible has happened. I’ve had the worst night with Mrs. Newberry, and I don’t think I can handle any more bad news.”
“No bad news,” he said quickly, his voice bubbling with excitement. “You’re never going to fucking believe what’s happened, baby!”
“What happened?” Her eyes were closed, sleep shadowing the lights that crisscrossed the inside of her eyelids.
“They approved it!”
She sat bolt upright in bed, her problems and fatigue forgotten. “What?”
“They reversed the conviction! I’m not getting out, I knew that was too much to hope for and the prosecution made it clear immediately that they intended to refile the charges, but I’m getting a new trial!”
“Okay.” She blew a hard breath out through her nose, the air in her lungs electric as her thoughts tumbled over and tried to absorb his words. “I can’t believe it. Even if they intend to put you back on trial, shouldn’t you be released until then? Bail or something?”
“I hoped so,” his tone was bitter, the excitement fading quickly. “They’re apparently planning to argue that I can’t be trusted not to run. My mother still has money and a lot of influence and that makes me a flight risk.”
“She hasn’t spoken to you in years! Do you think they’ll get away with that?”
“Yeah, I think they will. You should hear the way the guys in here talk. Texas is notorious for the shit they do. Long sentences, shitty defenders, impossible fucking odds on appeal. It’s almost a miracle that they approved the writ at all so …”
“We’ll take the miracle,” she said firmly. “We take it and do our best to make it into a real opportunity.”
“I could get out.” It was awed, spoken gently like saying it with too much force could damage it somehow. “We could actually be—”
“We could,” she agreed. “Gabriel, I lov—”
“Don’t,” he said, and she faltered, her chest constricted around the words. “Not yet. I need you to know what happened to me, what I’ve done, before you say that to me.”
“Do you think I’m going to change my mind?” she asked. It was light, a gentle tease as she floated on the joy of their new possibilities, but he was serious when he answered.
“Yes.” He took a shaky breath, and she could hear him clench his teeth. “I’m terrified you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t but I’ll wait if you need me to and you can tell me anything you need me to hear.”
He was quiet, his breathing soft in her ear as she waited for him to begin. “Can I send it to you instead?”
“Of course.”
The letter he sent her was five pages long.
There were names that she recognized—his mother, father, and uncle. There were others that she didn’t—Seth, Brittany, Michael. They were all important and together it formed a tapestry, complicated and interwoven threads that told a heartbreaking story of abuse and his own anger and regret. He blamed the adults that failed to protect him or harmed him directly, but mostly he blamed himself. For not being able to stop it, for not being able to protect himself or protect others. His parents said he’d been wild, untamed and ungrateful. He’d internalized that to mean he was to blame for what had followed their decision to send him away.
He described how hopeless he’d felt, how filled with fear and panic, the night he had killed his father and she would’ve given anything to go back to that moment, to hold that broken child in her arms and tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that she would have done the same if she’d been in his shoes. The unfairness of it was enough to make her weep and rage and press her hand to her mouth as sickness clawed its way up her throat to coat her mouth and she slept with his words pressed against her chest and a heavy weight on her heart.
He was waiting for an answer and there was only one that she could give him that would be true to her own heart and reassure him that he had no reason to worry about her being there for him through the process of a new trial. She sat at her desk the next morning, ink flowing over the pages as she wrote her reply.
It would take a few days to get to him, and she spent all of them worried about how he was doing and waiting for him to call.
“Hey.”
“Hmm?” Mia looked up to find James standing in the doorway, smiling at her hesitantly as she arranged chairs for the Bible group meeting.
She’d been distracted thinking about Gabriel’s last letter and hadn’t heard him approaching. She flicked her gaze quickly to check on Kennedy, who was laying out the cookies on the snack table and pasted a polite smile on her face.
“Listen, uh, I know things didn’t exactly go well the last time we talked, but since you’ve had some time to cool down …”
She smiled and straightened to her full height, back ramrod straight. “I’m afraid I’m still not interested, but thanks anyway.”
He sputtered awkwardly at her quick rejection; his tone perplexed as he stammered. “You’re still mad?”
“I’m not mad, I’m just not interested.” She shrugged and decided to give him the whole truth. “I’m in a relationship with someone else.”
“Who?” He tapped his fingers on his thigh, the corner of his mouth turning up in disbelief. “I haven’t seen you hanging around with anyone. Is it someone I know?”
“No, I’m romantically involved with Gabriel.” It certainly wasn’t any of his business who she dated, but she wanted him to know. He needed to understand that she had made a choice and it wasn’t him.
“Gabriel? The guy from prison that you’re writing to?”
“Yep, that’s the one.” She went back to rearranging chairs and turned her back to him.
“So, you won’t date me because you’re talking to some guy that won’t ever get out of prison? He’s a murderer!”
Mia turned to face him, her defense ready on her lips, when she noticed that someone else had come to stand behind James, her eyes now glittering with undisguised malice.
“How interesting,” Mrs. Newberry muttered. “It seems those felons have brought sin into our midst, after all. Exactly as I predicted.”
Mia smiled stiffly, baring her teeth as Mrs. Newberry flounced away triumphantly without another word. She tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that at least Kennedy wouldn’t be the subject of that night’s gossip, but by the time they got home she was livid. She’d spoken without thinking and there was no way to stop Mrs. Newberry from gossiping about her relationship and pointing a finger of blame at Lilly for suggesting the program to begin with.
She’d have to have to tell her father about the trial now and her commitment to be with Gabriel through the process, something she might have been able to avoid for months if she’d taken the time to choose her words more wisely.
Gabriel held her letter as his past rose up from his memories to wrap around him, the sounds and the smells of it all almost as real as it had been when it happened. He’d had to tell her, couldn’t let her love him or hope for a future when she didn’t know the things he had done, but now that she’d read the letter there was no going back.
It might have been enough to finally drive her away and if she was going to reject him now, if he had to find out that she was disgusted by him and the things he’d lived through ... Fear of her disgust was a writhing coil inside him. He was glad he’d decided to write it instead of telling her during a call. Her rejection would be devastating either way but if he heard her say it out loud, he knew he’d never stop hearing it, that it would echo in his mind in the dark silences for the rest of his life.
He would deserve that, but he knew he couldn’t live with it, that it would drive him mad.
Opening the letter would be the hardest thing he’d ever done, worse even than standing alone in that courtroom so many years ago waiting to find out his fate. Somehow it felt like there was more of his life resting on the contents of this envelope than there had been on the judge’s words. His hands shook as he tore the envelope and inside was a single sheet of paper covered on both sides with the same three words written over and over again, as though she knew he wouldn’t believe her the first time and hoped by the end he might.
He put his head in his hands, his heart breaking painfully open to let her the rest of the way inside. She knew the worst there was to know about him and this was her response, to reach out to him with more love than he had ever known.
It was agony to wait, but he called her as soon as he was able, and she answered on the first ring, like he wasn’t the only one that had been waiting.
“Hello?”
“Mia! I love you, too.”
After that all he could think about was her and what he could do to make sure he didn’t let her down. He mulled it over for weeks, holding one copy of the photo Mia had paid for of the two of them together and imagining the way that she had looked as she sat perched on that stupid fucking wobbly orange plastic chair in the visitor’s room. She was everything to him and he could have a life with her if he could just have this new trial go his way. He was being offered a miracle, and he wasn’t going to turn his back on it even if he did think God owed him an apology.
He didn’t know if he could get a decent lawyer in time, six months wasn’t long when you had no money and the idea of depending on whoever the court assigned to his defense made him sick to his stomach. There were people he could write to, ones that took on cases for people like him and did it for free, but there were always more requests than they could actually take on and he knew his chances were slim.
There was only one option if he wanted to be with Mia so he did the most humiliating thing that he could think of, because he had meant it when he promised her that he would do anything in the world for her. He picked up the phone and called his mother—whose name he had added to the list of people he could call when he first came to this fucking place and who had never once actually tried to contact in all the years since—prepared to beg for her to help him afford the lawyers and the private detective that he needed to have a real chance at a life.
She didn’t answer.
“What do you mean she still didn’t answer? How many times have you tried calling now?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said but there was enough sorrow in his eyes that she wanted to scream her frustration. “We need to focus on trying to find someone who’s willing to take the case. Anyone has to be better than another public defender who doesn’t give a shit.”
Her hand tightened on his reflexively, rage bubbling in her stomach. It was a blessing to know he’d at least have a lawyer now that they were dealing with a new trial and not an attempt to undo the effects of a conviction but depending on overworked and underpaid lawyers had gotten him into this mess in the first place. “We’ll find someone. I can’t believe how awful and underfunded the public defender program is in this state.”
“Hey,” he shook his head, nodding slightly at the guard that had turned to look at her as her voice rose in agitation. “It’s alright, calm down.”
She huffed but settled back down in her seat. “It’s just bullshit,” she said quietly. “It’s already been two months. Have you heard back from that non-profit place?”
“Not yet,” he told her grimly. “They’re still reviewing my request for help. They have more cases than they can handle, and only take on the ones that are most desperate, with the highest chance of success.”
“I’m sure they do have more than they can handle,” she snorted, “that’s what happens when the state doesn’t provide adequate services.”
“Did you expect them to?” he asked gently. “Someone profits off of every aspect of this place—the prison labor, the phone calls, the fees—all of it. They have to keep the beds full.”
“Bullshit,” she muttered again, but she knew he was right. Prison was a for-profit system that broke families for the bottom line and peddled their wares to the public as a service to keep them safe. Convincing them all that what they did was done in the name of justice instead of the almighty dollar was the biggest con ever pulled.
“Are you sure you want to be a lawyer and get mixed up in all this mess?” He looked sad, like maybe he regretted encouraging her.
“Absolutely,” she said fiercely. Every day that she learned more about it, she was more determined to help fix it. “What happens to people like you, people like them,” she said, waving a hand to indicate the other tables, “if everyone gives up on you?”
“I love you,” he said softly. “You give me hope for the world and I thought I had lost that a long time ago.”
“I love you, too,” she said, her cheeks flooding with heat under the intensity of his gaze. “What happens if they do decide to take the case?” she asked, trying to smooth over the tension and return the conversation to something more productive than her own frustration.
“I’m not sure. I know my chances are better—if not to get an acquittal to at least get a shorter sentence—if I can get all the evidence admitted this time that the jury didn’t hear the first time, but all those witnesses … I have no idea where they are now.”
“There has to be a way to track them down,” Mia said with a frown.
He shrugged, clearly uncertain. “I guess we might be able to find them if we had a lot of time to spend combing the internet and social media accounts, but who knows how long that might take.”
“We have to try,” she said. “Mail me a list of names and I’ll start looking.”
“You need to focus on your classes,” he said, brow creasing in concern. “I’m grateful that you want to help, but you have plans that will help a lot more people than just me so you’ve got to keep your grades up.”
“My grades are fine, and I have plenty of time to help. Lilly spends most of her time with Bryce these days and when Kennedy isn’t with her girlfriend, she just hangs out in my room eating snacks so she can do that while I look.”
“You can try,” he agreed, “but it might not be enough.”
It wasn’t. She couldn’t find any of the people he needed, but she wasn’t going to give up that easily. Her next plan was more direct, and it took a few weeks for Mia to convince Gabriel. He was adamantly opposed to her being involved but she wore him down, reminding him that he promised her that he would do anything. If he wanted to be with her, then there had to be no chance that they weren’t willing to take.
She took a deep breath and dialed the phone number he had given her.
An unfamiliar voice answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Yes, hello. I would like to speak with Senator Miller.”
“This is Senator Miller. Who is this?”
“My name is Mia Anderson, I’m calling—”
“If you’re lobbying for someone, this is highly inappropriate. This number is only for friends and family.” Her tone was brisk and stern, clearly this was a woman used to having and wielding power.
“Yes, ma’am, I know that,” Mia said quickly, the words spilling over themselves in her haste to get them out before Gabriel’s mother could hang up. “I got this number from your son.”
There was a heavy silence until Lilah spoke again. “I have no son.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mia said stubbornly, “you do. I know that there’s no way for me to understand the pain that you must be in after everything that happened, but there is more to this story than what was on the news. I’m sure you’ve heard that Gabriel has a chance to get a reduced sentence. He needs your help.”
“Why would I help him?” Lilah said coldly. “After what he did to our family?”
“Because he deserves for his mother to finally know the truth about what happened,” Mia said firmly, “and you deserve to hear it.”