took in laundry. And during my last year of law school, she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, ran a bubble bath, went to sleep and drowned.”
Blake’s exclamation wasn’t anything she’d ever heard before. Or wanted to hear again. But she shared the sentiment. More than she wanted to.
“I’m over it now,” she quickly assured him, sliding her hand from beneath his to wrap her arms around her middle. “It took a while, but once you work through all the guilt and misplaced responsibility, you move on.”
“Do you?” The glance that had been so warm seconds before was piercing.
“Of course,” she told him, nodding for emphasis. “What other choice do you have?”
“I’m not sure it’s a matter of choice.” He sat forward, head bent, elbows resting on his knees. “Do we choose to forget and move on? Or do we just push things away and refuse to deal with them?”
He wasn’t just talking about her. She wished he had been. She’d have been able to defend herself against such an attack. But when she put herself in his shoes—wondering about his parents’ deaths, and his ex-wife’s—putting herself in Mrs. James’s shoes, feelings arose that she wasn’t prepared to face.
They’d been there, slowly attacking from the inside, since she’d first seen the news earlier that day, seen the press photo of Eaton James that had been shown on air during the trial, when there wasn’t any bigger scandal to talk about.
“Can we choose to forget?” “I think we can.” She was a walking testimony to it. “Really?” Turning his head, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “You’ve forgotten, then?”
Damn him.
“What do you suggest we do, Blake? Run around burdened down with all the problems and challenges life hands us—until they pile on so high they’re too heavy and we die? Sounds suspiciously like what my mother did. And maybe your Amunet. And Eaton, too. There’s got to be a better way.”
He nodded. “Or maybe it’s a question of the differences between people,” he said. “Maybe some of us have a built-in defense mechanism that kicks in and protects us when life feels overwhelming, some sort of self-preservation. And the rest of us have other great characteristics but lack that core of self-preservation that will sustain us.”
“Do you think so?”
He shook his head. “I honestly don’t have any idea. It’s just a theory I’ve come up with to try to understand.”
But if he was right, if those types of people didn’t have what it took to help themselves, wasn’t it up to those around them to provide that help?
“In the end, we’re each responsible for ourselves,” Blake said, as though reading her thoughts.
It was something he’d done more than once on their long-ago night together.
What was it about this man that made him somehow…different?
They sat silently for several minutes, thoughts wandering. She had to go, Juliet knew that. She just wasn’t ready to leave the peculiar sense of peace that had settled around her.
Thinking about trying to explain the moment to Marcie, she couldn’t find a way. Blake’s life was in complete turmoil. Hers wasn’t much better. And still, in this room together, for these few minutes out of time, they’d created a moment of calm.
It was a precious commodity.
“So how soon should I expect them?”
He hadn’t moved, other than to turn his head on the couch. Hadn’t said who he was expecting, either, but she knew. Them. The Law.
“Could be late this afternoon. Or tomorrow.”
Licking his lips with the tip of his tongue, Blake said nothing.
“It’s always possible the grand jury will find that Schuster doesn’t have enough evidence.” Possible, but not likely. She just couldn’t leave him sitting there without hope.
“Schuster’s as seasoned as they come,” Blake said, his voice a monotone. “How often do you think he goes to the grand jury without sufficient evidence?”
“Never.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You’ll call me?”
His gaze locked with hers. “You’ll take the case?”
“If I can,” she told him, wondering how the hell she was going to get him off when the evidence so clearly pointed to his guilt. And how she was going to survive however many weeks it took to do the job, becoming intimately acquainted with the father of her child, torn to the roots of her soul about one solitary choice that had seemed so right at the time and now just seemed too huge to handle.
She couldn’t tell Blake about Mary Jane now. That much was clear. The timing was all wrong. For everyone.
She could only hope that, by some miracle, she’d be able to hold things together for all three of them.
CHAPTER TEN
THERE WERE MANY REASONS Blake didn’t sleep that night. Walking around the home he’d built upon his return to the States, he felt haunted.
By Amunet and the things he should have seen but didn’t. The things he still didn’t see. By Juliet and a night that had taken on surreal qualities in its perfection and therefore stood before him as a measure by which to judge every relationship he’d ever have—a measure by which every relationship could only fail. A measure that was pure fantasy.
Haunted. And hunted, too. By a judicial system he’d always taken for granted would offer him security and protection. Would they come with the light of dawn? To his home? His office? Would he soon no longer be free to wander his house in the dark? To hear the ocean as it crashed against the shore?
Was this all he’d ever be, what he was in this moment? Was there to be no chance for a family? A chance to have loved ones in his life again? People he could call his own?
And God in heaven—he knelt down at the window of his living room, fists and hands resting against the glass as he faced the ocean—he knew what they did to guys in prison.
When he couldn’t stand the pain of viewing the magnificent, moonlit ocean before him, he squeezed his eyes shut. And let the tears escape.
How the hell was he going to survive?
THEY CAME TO HIS HOME. Before Pru arrived for work Tuesday morning. Up and dressed in a blue suit, white pressed shirt and red tie, Blake was glad they’d spared him the discomfort of having his staff gathering around him. This particular moment he wanted to face alone.
“Mr. Blake Ramsden?” the uniformed man at the door asked.
“Yes.”
The fifty-something peace officer held out his badge. “I’m Deputy Thomas from the sheriff’s department, sir.”
Blake
