Chapter 38
Allison
The Monday after. I’ve spent three days recovering from the Marlow Luckett incident last Friday, downing painkillers, wearing ice on my face, getting very little done for my trial. It was time I did not have to waste. Today is the twenty-third of March, forty-nine days from trial.
One more day working from home. The bruising on my face and neck hasn’t completely faded, but if it’s still visible tomorrow, I’ll just add extra layers of concealer. My ribs are still sore, too, but clothes will hide that problem.
I’m constantly texting and jumping on the phone with Vivian and Aaron, doling out instructions, drafting pretrial motions, and preparing for my Zoom conference later today with the congressman.
He doesn’t like the idea that we are going to point the finger at his chief of staff.
I keep reminding him that juries don’t like politicians, and they will need to blame someone. They will need a villain.
During all the back-and-forth with my lawyers, Finley is setting records for communications with me:
Today 9:52 AM
Should we talk about this? Doesn’t 19 years of marriage deserve at least a conversation?
I won’t change my mind. I don’t want to hurt you. For Gray’s sake, if nothing else, I want this to be amicable.
You think getting divorced doesn’t hurt me? It’s killing me.
Is there someone else? Did you meet someone?
You did, didn’t you? Someone at work? Some rich lawyer? Some pencil-dick egghead?
The silence is deafening. You have a boyfriend!
I don’t even care. We can get past that. Just give me one more chance
When my phone buzzes, I don’t recognize the number. I answer anyway.
“Ms. Brice? This is Ken Ratliff. The baseball coach at Benedictine?”
Oh, right. I’d forgotten. I reached out to him after Luke was arrested five weeks ago, just to get some preliminary information.
Benedictine was the squad that Luke’s team was supposed to scrimmage the day Luke drove Trinity’s car.
The scrimmage had been canceled, freeing up Luke’s time.
I just wanted to confirm the cancellation, cross my t’s and dot my i’s.
“Sorry it took over a month to call back,” he says. “I was confused about your message.”
“How so?”
“Well, you said you wanted to confirm that I canceled the scrimmage. But I didn’t cancel. Luke did.”
I sit forward in my chair. “Luke canceled,” I say. “He canceled the scrimmage, not you.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Like a week in advance. Does that make a difference?”
For my purposes, it makes all the difference in the world. It means…
Luke wanted to drive that car the day the cops pulled it over.
It wasn’t Finley who helped Trinity set me up. It was my brother.
It was you, Luke. You were working with Trinity. You took my grocery bag and tube of my lipstick from my house.
You planned this. You didn’t just happen to have some free time after your scrimmage was canceled. You created that time. You canceled the scrimmage to free up that Monday.
You knew, presumably from Trinity, from some video that captured me in the act, that I stuffed that bag of Oxy in Trinity’s trunk. But did you confront me? Did you ask me why I would do something so extreme? Did you give me the slightest benefit of the doubt, a chance to explain myself?
No. You just opted for revenge served cold.
All for a woman who doesn’t even love you back.
You dumped those Oxy pills into my grocery bag, dropped a tube of my lipstick in there, and stuffed it in Trinity’s trunk.
You’d heard my suspicions about Trinity’s trips down to Olivet Nazarene on Mondays.
And you’re not dumb—you figured, someway, somehow, with my connections to law enforcement, I’d make sure that the police were on the lookout for Trinity’s car traveling on a Monday morning down Interstate 57.
So you picked whatever Monday was convenient for you.
One scrimmage aside, Presidents’ Day fit your schedule pretty well.
You drove that car that day, figuring it would be pulled over and knowing that, sooner or later, they’d find my DNA and my prints on the contraband.
And with that, plus whatever video Trinity had, you would be exonerated, vindicated in the most public and dramatic of ways—a frame-up!
a frame-up, I say!—with me playing a starring role as the villain.
Yeah, I know, I get it—I initiated this thing by planting the drugs. I started it. But I did that to Trinity, not to you. And I did it because she was screwing my husband.
But you? You did this to hurt me.
Well, I have to hand it to you, big brother. You played this perfectly. You and Trinity must be having quite a hearty laugh. But guess what, Luke? Two can play that game.
And I don’t play nice.