You Are Not Alone(24)
The junkie texted her again on Adam’s phone: How long? My dog’s hungry.
She’d taken over Adam’s clients while he was gone, not expanding his business but making enough to pay the rent until she could find a real job, one that paid at least minimum wage. She’d filled out dozens of applications. But a woman like her—a high school dropout, an outcast from her solidly middle-class family, not much to look at—didn’t get a lot of opportunities.
She took a long sip of Pepsi and glanced over at the wall. It was quiet next door. Even the music had stopped.
She was sliding her sandwich onto a plate when she heard the scream.
Stacey closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.
“I’ll stop! Don’t!” the little girl shrieked.
Stacey’s grip on the handle of the frying pan tightened as the little girl cried out again.
Then the high, piercing scream ceased.
Its absence felt even more alarming.
Stacey’s skin prickled. She didn’t hesitate. She picked up the frying pan and ran out the door, bursting into the neighboring apartment. She had a clear view into the kitchen. The wild-eyed mother was holding her daughter’s head down in a sink full of dirty water and dishes.
“Get off her!” Stacey bellowed, swinging the pan like a baseball bat. It connected with the mother’s head and she collapsed to the kitchen floor.
The little girl’s head popped up and she drew in raggedy breaths, then began to cough, water streaming down her face and onto her Princess Elsa nightgown.
Stacey lifted the pan to swing it again, but the little girl begged her to stop. So she lowered it.
When she looked around again, the little girl had run away through the open apartment door, disappearing as she’d probably done numerous times as a survival mechanism during her short, violence-filled life.
Stacey returned to her own apartment, leaving the mother slumped on the floor. She wasn’t even finished with her sandwich when two uniformed officers burst through her door.
She tried to explain about the little girl, but the mother claimed Stacey had robbed and assaulted her. It didn’t help Stacey’s case that she had a baggie of crack on the counter next to her, ready to deliver to Adam’s client.
The next day she was leaning against the hard bench that served as her bed, staring into space, when the guard rapped on the bars of her cell and told her she had a visitor.
She’d blinked at him in surprise. Nobody knew she was there. She hadn’t even used her single phone call. Adam was unreachable. Her father and two uptight, social-climbing sisters hadn’t spoken to her in years, ever since she’d brought Adam, who was high, to her nephew’s first birthday party, where he’d dug a big serving spoon into the cake and scooped out the first bite for himself. And her mother—who maintained secret contact with her despite her father’s wishes—was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
Stacey let the guard cuff her and lead her to the small room where inmates received visitors.
A woman with short, frizzy red hair was waiting by the small table.
“Hi, Stacey, I’m your public defender,” she’d said, her Boston accent sharpening her words. “My name is Beth Sullivan.”
* * *
Despite Stacey’s excellent legal counsel, the evidence against her was overwhelming. Still, Beth got Stacey’s sentence reduced to four months in jail since no signs of drugs were in Stacey’s system—she never used—and the prosecutor couldn’t prove she was actually selling crack.
“It’s bullshit,” Beth had said when the judge handed down his verdict. “You saved the kid’s life.”
Beth had shaken her head as she’d told Stacey that she’d become a lawyer because she wanted to give a voice to people who didn’t have one. But instead, she’d watched too many guilty individuals go free and innocent ones end up behind bars. Instead of giving, she’d had something taken from her: her trust in the judicial system.
“I think you should meet Stacey,” Beth told the Moore sisters at one of their regular gatherings. Ever since Valerie had introduced Beth to Cassandra and Jane, they’d become a tight-knit group of four.
When Beth had brought Cassandra and Jane to meet Stacey in the medium-security prison, they were immediately taken by the small blond woman whose eyes constantly flitted around while they chatted. It was as if Stacey always needed to see what might be coming at her, as if she was accustomed to being viewed as prey.
“She deserves another chance,” Cassandra had said to Jane as they watched the guards round up all the prisoners at the end of visiting hour. “Beth was right.”
When Stacey was released from jail, she expected her prospects as a broke, convicted felon—one whose scumbag boyfriend had moved on to some prison groupie he’d met online—to be even more dismal.
Instead, a small studio apartment in Alphabet City awaited her. Soft, fresh sheets—heavenly compared to the scratchy ones in prison—were on the sofa bed. The refrigerator held fruit and yogurt and bread. Cassandra and Jane, who had several more times come with Beth to visit Stacey in prison, had learned of her prowess with computers, and they hired her to help them in the office.
Once she’d proven herself to the sisters, they gave her stellar references. Stacey found work as a consultant quickly and insisted on paying back every penny the sisters had spent on her behalf. Even so, Stacey considered herself forever indebted to them.