Party of Two (The Wedding Date #5)(33)

She touched his arm gently.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I don’t mind long stories.”

He looked into her eyes and could tell she meant it.

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “You know I was a prosecutor before I was in the Senate, right? Well, I had this mentor early in my career, a family friend; he was the whole reason I became a prosecutor in the first place. He was an old-school prosecutor, very hard-line, all about safety and how kids especially need to learn what they did was wrong, and I listened to him. Far too much. People talk about prosecutorial discretion; well, at first, mine went in the ‘more jail, more punishment’ direction. This isn’t a defense, but I floated through most of my life as a privileged trust fund kid, not really paying attention to politics and all of the bad things that could happen to people—sure, I volunteered some in school, but I guess I bought into that whole ‘they didn’t work hard enough’ bullshit.” He sighed. “That job made me wake up. After a few years in, and a few years of seeing the hard situations these kids lived in, and the racism they dealt with every day, and listening to advocates who somehow never gave up on me, I realized how much I didn’t want to keep being that kind of prosecutor. Hell, that I didn’t want to be that kind of person. Throwing kids behind bars could, and often did, ruin their futures and cause so much harm to their families. I was the one causing that harm. I came very close to quitting my job then.”

He looked at the floor. He still remembered how angry at himself he’d been then, how he’d realized how wrong he’d been, how much pain he’d caused.

“Why didn’t you?” Olivia asked.

He looked at her, for the first time since he’d started this story. She was giving him that look again, like she really cared about the answer. Like she really cared about him.

“My friend Wes. I called him and told him I was going to quit and why, and he yelled at me.” Max smiled to himself. “I’d never heard him like that. He told me he was glad I’d finally woken up, but what a damn waste it would be if I woke up just in time to hand over the job to another clueless trust fund baby. He said we needed good prosecutors, that those kids needed me, now more than ever.” He looked down. “Until then, I think I really believed I deserved everything I got in life. That job made me realize . . . so much. About everything. Among other things, I still can’t believe my eyes were so closed to the way racism infects every part of the criminal justice system. There were just so many little things that I just didn’t see. Or worse, ignored.” He shook his head. “I listened to Wes. I stayed at that job, eventually I even became the DA. I’ve worked hard for years now to help kids like the defendants I saw, so they can change their lives, and stay in school, and so one mistake won’t follow them forever.”

He looked down at his piece of baguette covered in cheese. He’d somehow lost his appetite.

“But?” Olivia said.

He sighed.

“But today, at the event this afternoon, I saw a kid there. He’s not a kid anymore, he must be in his early twenties now. His brother was one of those defendants who I worked hard to toss in jail in those early years of my career. The kid seems like he’s doing well, but when I asked him about his brother, he told me he’s back inside.” He shook his head. “And that’s my fault. All of it. I could have helped his brother. He wasn’t a bad kid; most of them aren’t. I could have gotten him into programs to rehabilitate him, made it easy to wipe his record, gotten him back to school, to his family, to people and places that keep kids—and the adults they become—out of prison. But I did the opposite, and here we are.”

Mateo would never call his office, he knew that. He wished there was something he could do for him and his family. Especially since he wasn’t accomplishing what he wanted to in the Senate.

“And I guess it hit me particularly hard today, because my criminal justice reform bill—one of the whole reasons I ran for Senate in the first place—has a really hard road ahead. I have such a big list of things I want to change. Mandatory minimums, policing, bail, funding for public defenders, the way we try children, and so much more. I know, it’s all ambitious, but I thought I could start big, and at least get some of that passed. But none of it? It just feels like . . . nothing I do in this job matters. Like nothing is going to change.”

Now that he’d started, it was like he couldn’t stop talking.

“I was really hopeful about the bill when I first announced it—I got a ton of press attention, I was on all of the TV shows, and people kept saying how important criminal justice reform is, blah blah blah. I know people bring up bills just to use as talking points—hell, I’ve done it, too—but with this one, I really wanted to make some real change. And there have been some strides, in the past few years, but I guess there’s a limit to how much change people can really handle. How much good they really want to do.”

Olivia rubbed his arm gently, up and down. The expression on her face was softer than he’d ever seen it.

“That bill was the whole reason you ran for the Senate?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Well, criminal justice reform in general.” He laughed. “I didn’t even think I’d win. I jumped into the race on a lark when the Senate seat came open. I just hoped it would raise my statewide profile enough so that when it came time to run for governor a few years later, I’d have a real shot. And then, strangely, everything just kept going my way.”