Margaret Haynes stepped forward. She was small and gray-haired and looked like somebody’s favorite librarian, but her eyes were sharp as a hawk’s.
“Mr. Whitmore,” she said pleasantly. “I’m glad to run into you. Saves me a phone call. What is that document your associate is holding?”
Richard’s associate quickly began stuffing the papers back into the briefcase.
“Please don’t,” Margaret said, in that same pleasant voice. “Sergeant Alvarez, would you mind?”
Sergeant Alvarez stepped forward and held out her hand. The young associate looked at Richard. Richard looked at the floor. The associate handed over the papers.
Margaret flipped through them slowly, reading. Her eyebrows rose higher with each page.
“An offer of money in exchange for a victim recanting her statement and requesting dismissal of criminal charges,” she said. “Delivered in person, while a protective order is in effect, by a sitting prosecutor who is also the defendant’s uncle.” She looked up. “Richard, you’ve taught continuing education seminars on witness tampering. I attended one. It was very good.”
The room was absolutely silent.
“I think,” Margaret Haynes said, “you should go call your own attorney. And Mrs. Whitmore, you should probably call one, too. Because my office has reviewed the audio from the night of the assault, and I’ll be presenting your conduct to a grand jury next week.”
Mrs. Eleanor ripped off her sunglasses. Her eyes were wild.
“My conduct? I didn’t do anything! I barely touched her!”
“Ma’am,” Margaret said, “the doorbell camera across the street doesn’t show the kitchen. But the recording of the phone call does capture you saying, and I quote, ‘If she loses the baby, it’s because she doesn’t know how to take care of herself.’ And Ms. Reed’s statement, along with her medical injuries, indicates she was pushed into a granite countertop. We’ll let a grand jury decide what that means.”
Mrs. Eleanor turned toward me, and for the first time since I had known her, I saw something in her face besides contempt.
I saw fear.
“Claire,” she said, and her voice was suddenly sweet, almost pleading. “Claire, dear, you know I never meant—”
“Mrs. Whitmore,” I said, “please leave my room.”
And they left.
Richard first, walking fast, already pulling out his phone. His associate scurried after him. Mrs. Eleanor last, her pearls clicking, her heels echoing down the hallway.
When the door closed behind them, my father set one of the coffee cups on my nightstand, moved the roses off my oatmeal and dropped them into the trash can, and sat down heavily in the chair.
“You did good, sweetheart,” he said. “You did real good.”
“I wanted to scream at them.”
“I know. But you didn’t. You told the truth, plain and steady.” He smiled. “Your mama would’ve been proud.”
Margaret Haynes paused at the foot of my bed.
“Ms. Reed, I’ll be honest with you. Cases like this are hard. Powerful families fight dirty. But I’ve been doing this for thirty-one years, and I’ve rarely seen a victim walk in with this much evidence.” She tapped the stack of papers. “And now, thanks to Mr. Whitmore’s visit, I have a second case.”
She nodded to my father.
“Colonel.”
“Ms. Haynes.”
“I appreciate you keeping your distance from this investigation.”
“I appreciate you doing your job,” my father said.
After she left, I looked at him for a long moment.
“You knew she was coming,” I said. “You knew they’d show up.”
My father sipped his coffee. “I had a feeling. Families like that, they don’t believe rules apply to them. They always overplay their hand.”
“Did you set them up?”
“No, ma’am.” He shook his head firmly. “I didn’t set up anything. I just made sure that when they showed their true colors, the right people were standing in the doorway to see it.”
PART 6
Samuel spent fifty-four days in the NICU.
There were good days and terrible days.
On the eleventh day, he came off the breathing machine and started breathing with just a little tube under his nose, and the nurses clapped and Gloria hugged me so hard my stitches ached.
On the nineteenth day, he developed an infection. His temperature spiked. His tiny body went limp and gray, and the doctors moved fast, starting antibiotics and running tests, and for two nights I sat beside his incubator without sleeping, my hand resting on his chest through the porthole, praying harder than I had ever prayed in my life.
My father sat behind me both nights. He didn’t go home. He took vacation days for the first time in eleven years. He brought me sandwiches I didn’t eat and blankets I didn’t use, and at three in the morning on the second night, he started humming softly.
It was the old hymn my mother used to sing while she hung laundry on the line behind the farmhouse. “I’ll Fly Away.”
