Home Front(102)

That did it. Jolene grabbed the chair’s wheels and spun around. “What the hell did you say to me? Believe me, being late to school is not a tragedy, Betsy.” She lifted her residual leg up. It twitched upward; the empty pant leg did a little dance. “This is a tragedy. Make your sister breakfast. Yia Yia will be here in a little while. She can take you to school.”

“You said you’d be fine,” Betsy yelled, her cheeks pink. “But you’re not. You can’t even take care of us. Why did you even come back?”

“And you’re a spoiled brat.” Jolene gripped the wheels and rolled away from them. As soon as she was in the office, she slammed the door shut. Getting up, she hopped over to the bed and fell into it with a groan.

She wanted to call her best friend, say I just yelled at my daughter and she yelled at me. Tell me I’m not a bitch … tell me she is … tell me I’m going to be okay …

Through the closed door, she could hear Lulu’s crying. Betsy was trying to soothe her. They were probably huddled together, looking at the closed door, wondering who in the hell the woman behind it was. They knew their mom hadn’t come home from war. Not really. The woman who’d come home was a stranger to all of them, herself most of all.

I want my daddy.

When had Lulu ever wanted comfort from Michael?

It was yet another change. While Jolene had been gone, the heart of her family had shifted. She’d become marginalized, unimportant. Michael was the parent who comforted and cared for them now. The parent they trusted.

She heard a knock at the door and ignored it.

The door opened. Mila came into the room. She was dressed for work in jeans and an oversized denim shirt and the green canvas apron. Her black hair was hidden beneath a blue and white bandanna. She walked toward the bed, sat down on its edge. Leaning forward, she brushed the tangled hair from Jolene’s eyes. “A warrior doesn’t run to her bedroom and hide out after one lost battle.”

“I’m not a warrior anymore, Mila. Or a wife, or a mother. In fact, who the hell am I?”

“You’ve always been so hard on yourself, Jolene. So you’re having a hard time and you dropped a pan of water and you yelled at your daughters. Big deal. I yelled at Michael all the time when he was a teenager.”

“I didn’t used to yell at them,” Jolene said quietly, feeling a tightening in her stomach.

“I know. Honestly, it wasn’t natural.”

“They’re scared of me now,” she said, sighing. “I’m scared of me.”

Mila gave her a knowing smile. “We all knew it would be hard to have you gone, but no one told us how hard it would be when you came back. We’ll have to adjust. All of us. And you’ll have to cut yourself some slack.”

“I’ve never been good at that.”

“No, you haven’t. Now, get up and get dressed. We’re leaving for PT in twenty minutes.”

“I’m not going today. I don’t feel well.”

“You’re going,” Mila said simply.

Jolene thought about making a scene, getting angry, but she was too worn-out and depressed to do anything but comply.

*



Michael spent most of the day in court, questioning potential jurors. Of one person after another he asked probing questions, trying to get to the heart of bias. When court was adjourned for the day, he returned to his office and worked for an hour or so on his opening statement.

He knew the prosecutor’s opening in the Keller trial would be matter-of-fact. Brad would begin with the damning facts of the murder, repeating often how Emily had trusted her husband and loved him and how Keith had shot her in the head. He’d hammer home that Keith had never denied shooting his wife. He’d lay out the forensics of the case, layer fact upon fact until the jury would more than halfway believe that there was no reason for them to be there. They would be told that Keith’s memory loss was “convenient” and no doubt a bald-faced lie. He’d probably close with something along the lines of: “Who wouldn’t want to forget that he’d shot his young wife in the head? Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’ll tell you who won’t forget.” Then he’d turn to Emily’s weeping parents. “I don’t want to tell them their daughter’s murderer will go free. Do you?”

Usually, Michael would refute every piece of evidence in the opening, try to plant doubt about the case both in its specifics and in its entirety.

In this case, however, Michael was going to take a calculated risk. He wouldn’t refute that Keith had killed his wife. What he wanted the jury to understand was why. In Washington State, it fell to the state to prove each element of the crime, including intent. Put simply, the state had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Keith had intended to kill his wife.

Intent.

That was the crux of it.

He was still mulling it over at five thirty, as he drove off the ferry and headed toward home. As he turned into his driveway, he wondered how Jolene’s day had gone. For once, Mila wouldn’t be here, taking care of the girls after school. They were with Jolene again for the first time.

Pandemonium greeted him.

Every light in the place was on, the TV was blaring some movie with teenyboppers dancing together, and the girls were fighting. He could tell by the wild look in Lulu’s eyes that she was seconds away from a screaming fit, and Betsy looked pissed.