“Your family sounds cool,” he offered at the end of the tale. His face, his tone . . . they were withdrawn. Sad, almost. And I hoped-hoped-hoped he would talk about his family. Or anything at all to do with his past or where he’d come from. I mean, had his parents died in a car crash? Had he been expelled for changing grades?
The latest rumor was that his uncle used to work for the CIA before leaking classified files and then vanishing off the grid, and while I did find a Gregory Moriarty who’d done all that (yeah, Jean, I Googled him), I couldn’t confirm he was Jim’s uncle.
And Jim certainly didn’t reveal anything about it. Instead, his head tipped back to watch me from the bottoms of his eyes, a hard gaze that set my hands to shaking again.
Were I someone else, I’d have offered up some kind of “sexy move.” I’d have flashed a coy smile or batted my lashes or . . . or giggled knowingly (that’s a thing, right?). Basically, I’d have done anything other than what I actually did, which was to turn red-faced and plop my knight to a stupid spot on the board.
“You want to be a lawyer,” he said eventually, attention still on me. It was his turn in the game, but he wouldn’t break that stare. “Your friend Jean Watson mentioned it.”
My lips puckered to one side. He had spoken to you about me. That had to be a good sign, right? Also, why did you never mention this to me, Jean?
“I mean,” I said with a shrug, “I’ve always planned on being a lawyer. You know. Go to Harvard, like my dad.”
“Why?” His eyes finally returned to the board. And I finally breathed again. “Are you just really passionate about heretofores and notwithstandings?”
“No.” I huffed a chuckle, heat rising up my neck. “I want to help people, actually.”
“You mean you want to help your wallet,” he countered. “Or maybe it’s your daddy’s wallet.”
“It’s not like that,” I insisted. Yet even as the argument flew out, I knew that it was like that. Still, I floundered on. “My dad uses the law to win justice. For victims. So I want to do the same.”
“But you do know that at least ten thousand convictions are wrong each year. Sounds to me like the ‘criminals’ ”—he air-quoted that—“are the bigger victims there.”
“Come on, now.” I leaned on my knees. “What about the convictions that are actually right? What about the people who really need help, and it’s up to the lawyer to make it happen?”
“Please, Holmes.” He made a face. A frowning, disappointed thing. “It’s never that simple, is it?”
Were he my father making that expression, I’d have instantly shriveled. Were he Ms. Adler or the headmistress or basically anyone in the world, I’d have rolled right on my back with my tail between my legs.
And honestly, if you’d asked me a few minutes before this happened How would you react to Jim Moriarty’s disappointment? I’d have expected to shrivel. I mean, I was crushing on him so hard. But instead, I found heat building in my belly. Found my fingers tightening around my bishop, my knuckles paling as I squeezed.
And as Jim continued: “Most people don’t steal or kill or sell drugs because they want to, Holmes, or because they love being ‘bad guys’ so much. They do it because they’re born to a life with no exits. No chances. Unlike you or me, they can’t just walk through walls.”
“Walk through walls?” Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you’re lucky to be where you are. Who you are.” Abruptly, he shot to his feet, the chair groaning back across the floor. “Wait here.” In three long steps, the towering bookcases swallowed him whole.
And I just sat there, inexplicably furious. I wanted to smack him. Or to break this bishop in two. I mean, no one—no one—had ever told me that the law was a stupid career path to follow.
And no one had ever accused me of doing it for the money, either.
Jim returned in under a minute. “Here.” A book fell onto my lap. Worn hardcover, barely taller than my hand and no thicker.
Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The English translation.
“Read it,” Jim ordered, “and tell me who’s guilty at the end. Tell me who you, as a lawyer, would lock away.”
“And should I write a five-paragraph essay on it, too, Professor Moriarty?” I shoved a pawn to H3. “Or will there be a pop quiz tomorrow?”
He sighed and settled back into his seat. “You don’t have to read it. I just think . . . it’s a good book, okay?”
I didn’t answer. It was childish of me—that sullen silence. Not to mention totally irrational. Yes, I can be abrasive, Jean. But you know me! I don’t ever let my temper come out. I make mistakes when I’m mad, and mistakes are for people who are not the offspring of William Holmes.
I moved my pawn to E5—a move as foolish as they come. I mean, instantly, the whole game unraveled for me, and in about fifteen turns, Jim said, “Check.”
A minute passed, during which I only managed to expose my king all the more, and when he finished with “Checkmate, Holmes,” all I could do was glare.
Remember that night I woke you up because I was crying?
I told you the book I was reading was sad, which was a lie. I mean, Chronicle of a Death Foretold wasn’t meant to be sad. It was supposed to be a commentary on who’s truly to blame: those who commit a murder or the village that does nothing to stop it?
Yet underneath, tangled between its sentences and its beats, there was a love story. A girl—Angela—whose life was controlled by the men around her. A girl whose worth was based on what she could give. A girl who finally found what she wanted in life . . .
But she was too late to claim it, leaving only one end for everyone: a senseless death foretold.
I didn’t tell Jim I had cried reading the book. I simply said, “The whole village was guilty” when I eased into my armchair the next day.
The landscapers were right outside our window, weed-hacking and hedge-trimming in a roar of engines and snapping branches. We were halfway into our game before they passed, and I was finally able to add, “The townsfolk knew the brothers planned to kill Santiago, but no one intervened.”
“So who gets punished?”
“The brothers.”
“Even though everyone around them was just as guilty?”
“Well, the village didn’t stab Santiago twenty times until his intestines fell all over the dirt! That was Angela’s brothers.”
A shake of Jim’s head, but not with annoyance. His eyes were crinkling behind his glasses as he jumped his knight forward to take my pawn. “You’re way too smart for the law, Holmes. Too smart to believe in things that aren’t real.”
I slid my rook to D4, claiming a black knight. “And how is justice not real, James?”
“None of it is.” He waved to the board. “Not the rules. Not the game.” He jerked his head toward the window, hair flopping with that gut-wrenching perfection. “Not the pruned trees or keeping up with the Joneses. Least of all that legal system you plan to get a ‘degree’ studying. They’re just myths. Giant lies that we all agree to believe in. And the only reason they hold power over us is because we let them.”