CHAPTER 24 SHAWN—COURT DAY
The suit doesn't fit right. Borrowed, county-supplied, sleeves too short and shoulders too wide, and Shawn stands in it feeling like somebody playing dress-up as a man who might walk out of here today or might not walk out at all for a very long time.
"Remember what we talked about," his attorney says, low, in the hallway outside the courtroom. "Eye contact with the judge. Don't fidget. Let me do the talking unless she asks you something directly."
"Twenty years," Shawn says. Not really a question. Just the number sitting in his mouth same as it's been sitting there for weeks.
"Isn't happening today. Might not be happening at all—I think we've got a deal on the table that keeps this reasonable, assuming the judge signs off on what we've negotiated.
" She straightens his jacket collar, brisk, businesslike, the kind of gesture that's meant to be comforting and mostly isn't. "But nothing's final till it's final. You know that."
"Yeah."
"You ready?"
"No."
"Good. Means you're taking it seriously." She pushes the door open. "Let's go."
The courtroom's smaller than Shawn expected, colder too, and every eye that turns toward him as he walks in feels like it's already decided something about him before he's said a word.
He finds his seat, hands folded tight in his lap to keep them from shaking, and doesn't look for anybody in the gallery because there isn't anybody there to look for.
No mother. No Jorge. Just his attorney and a public defender's quiet, tired confidence standing in for everybody who isn't in the room.
The prosecutor speaks first, same tone Shawn remembers from the prelim, flat and procedural like his whole future is a line item instead of a life.
Numbers get mentioned. Priors, or the lack of them, mitigating factors, restitution possibly owed.
Shawn's attorney counters point by point, calm, prepared, laying out a plea agreement that's been weeks in the making and comes down, in the end, to words Shawn's been terrified to actually hear out loud until this exact moment.
"Given the defendant's lack of prior adult convictions," the judge says, reading from notes in front of her, "and the terms agreed upon by both parties—"
Shawn stops breathing. Doesn't decide to. Just does.
"—the court is prepared to accept the negotiated plea, contingent on the following conditions."
Conditions. Not twenty years. Conditions.
Shawn's attorney's hand lands on his arm, steadying, and Shawn realizes belatedly that he's shaking, hard, the suit jacket doing nothing to hide it.
"Time served," the judge continues, and the rest of the sentence blurs past Shawn's ears in a rush of terms he only half processes, probation, restitution schedule, conditions of release, none of it landing with the weight of those first two words.
Time served.
"Does the defendant understand the terms as read?" the judge asks, looking directly at him now.
"Yes." Shawn's voice comes out cracked, barely his own. "Yes, Your Honor."
"Then this court finds the plea acceptable, and orders release processing to begin immediately, pending completion of administrative paperwork."
The gavel sounds distant, like it's happening in another room entirely, and Shawn sits there gripping the edge of the table because if he lets go he's not sure his hands are going to stop shaking on their own.
"You're going home," his attorney says quietly, close to his ear. "You hear me? You're going home."
Shawn doesn't answer. Can't. Something's caught hard in his throat, half relief and half a grief he doesn't have a name for yet, because going home means something different now than it meant three months ago.
Means a shop with an empty second bay. Means a man who said he'd be there without knowing exactly when there was going to arrive.
"Processing takes a few hours," his attorney adds, gathering her folder. "You'll walk out today. Not tonight—today."
Today.
Shawn's led back out through a side door, legs unsteady under him, twenty years finally, fully off the table after weeks of carrying it around like a stone in his chest he never got to set down.
He doesn't call anybody. Doesn't have anybody to call except a shop number he's memorized without ever once being allowed to dial it.
The paperwork takes four hours. Feels like forty.
And then the door in front of him opens onto a parking lot bright enough to hurt, sun hitting his face for the first time in longer than he can stand to count, and Shawn stands there a full minute just breathing air that isn't recycled through a vent, not sure his legs remember how to carry him anywhere at all.
He doesn't know yet if anybody's coming.
Doesn't know yet that somebody already is.