My Name Is Venus Black(90)

“So we meet again,” says someone nearby.

Tessa looks up. Oh my God, it’s her! Venus.

She automatically gets to her feet this time, prepared to run if she has to.

“Do you know if it already started?” Venus asks, nodding toward the courtroom. “Can I still go in?”

“I don’t know,” Tessa says, surprised Venus isn’t yelling at her. “I’m just supposed to wait out here. My uncle Marco says they do more than one at a time, so you can probably go in whenever.”

Venus says nothing, but she continues to stand there. Finally Tessa ventures to ask, “Is your mom here, too?” Tessa is even more afraid to see the mom. She has no idea what to expect, but she imagines the woman will lash out at her, maybe even attack her. After what happened with Venus, Tessa wouldn’t be surprised.



“No. She’s back to the Holiday Inn,” Venus says bitterly. “She doesn’t want to lay eyes on him.”

“Oh,” says Tessa. She realizes Venus is talking about her dad, like he’s evil or something.

And then it hits her that Venus has no idea she’s really to blame. “You need to know it was all my fault!” she blurts out. “The police might not tell you, but I should be the one in there,” she says, nodding toward the courtroom doors. “I kept Leo. I practically made my dad keep Leo. It’s all my fault, not his.”

Tessa can feel Venus looking directly at her. She dares to meet her eyes, blue mixed with a gray the color of knives, rimmed by thick black lashes. To Tessa’s surprise, Venus’s eyes aren’t as angry or mean as she feared.

“You did a terrible thing,” Venus says, with a penetrating look.

“I know,” says Tessa, determined not to cry. But she can feel tears flowing, the kind you can’t help.

“If you had called the police, they would have known Leo was missing and he would have come home! Instead, we lost Leo for six years.”

“I know,” Tessa repeats. It’s all too much, and her legs go weak. “I know. And I’m so sorry. If I could just go back in time and do it differently, I would!”

Tessa feels so wobbly; she sits down on the bench again. And now Venus is so tall and her voice so soft that Tessa barely hears her say, “Yeah. Me, too,” before she walks away.



* * *



—

I ENTER THE courtroom just in time to hear the judge charge Tony Herrera with kidnapping and set bail at twenty thousand dollars. I feel angry to be alone, angry that Inez didn’t join me here.

“I already met him!” she told me. It was almost like she was embarrassed to see him again.

I also suspect that holing up at the Holiday Inn is less to avoid Tony Herrera than to drink her wine in peace or cry on the phone to her friend Shirley. After Tony Herrera is led away, I stay in the courtroom. I’m in a comfortable daze of some kind.



My mind drifts back to my own arraignment, when I was so in shock, I laughed at the charge of murder one. When the same judge gave me half the maximum sentence, I almost didn’t care. Five years or seven, my life was over. Or so I thought. Now it hits me in a new way how differently things could have gone. He could have remanded me to adult court or I could have served God knows how long in a real prison. And I can’t even remember his name.

I listen to four or five more arraignments. Watching people at the beginning of their journey toward incarceration, I feel my freedom keenly. Something like gratitude flutters at the edge of my emotions. Finally, I’ve had enough, and I stand and walk back out the big double doors. I glance at the bench in the hall where Tessa had been sitting.

Of course, she’s gone now. But something about our exchange took my breath away, totally gutted me. Maybe it was how brave she seemed, the way she took responsibility for keeping Leo. How she apologized so sincerely, the words tumbling out of her mouth without excuse or defense. It was all my fault….I’m so sorry.

Maybe I’m jealous of her protectiveness toward her father, the way she didn’t want him to carry the blame.

Back at the hotel, I go to Inez’s room and fill her in on the hearing. She thinks Tony Herrera will be out on bail soon and allowed to come home until a plea agreement is reached or it goes to trial. If she’s right, I’m secretly glad, for the girl’s sake. In the meantime, I hate that I can imagine how they will miss Leo. I can just picture how they’ll all hug and cry and wonder aloud if Tony is going to prison.

It seems ironic to me now that yet another bedroom belonging to Leo will stand empty.

I leave Inez’s room for mine. Even though it isn’t one of our scheduled times, I want to hear Piper’s voice. Since she moved to Spokane, I have missed her so much more than I planned. I’ve longed at times to read a book to her or simply to hear her yammering at me through my closed door. Since she left, we tell each other “I love you” before we hang up, and it feels so natural.



I read the directions by the phone for making long-distance calls and dial Spokane. While it rings without an answer, I wonder if Piper is another reason I was less harsh on Tessa just now. As different as we might be, we have a big mistake in common. We gave our hearts to kids related to us by nothing but love.





Monday morning, Tony is released on bail. He has no idea how M and M came up with two grand—and they won’t say. That afternoon, Tony shares a quiet lunch with Tessa, when they talk about why they miss Leo and all the funny things he does. Later, Tony agrees to drive Tessa to the Holiday Inn. On the way, he glances at her in the passenger seat. “Tessa, you know you’ll have to go in alone,” he says. “I’m not supposed to have any contact.”