Now, years later, the room was well established as her office, everything in recycling was something she’d put there in the last two weeks, she drank hot chocolate and rinsed her mug every night, the bite marks on her pens all corresponded to her teeth. She’d kept her dad’s diplomas up, but placed hers just beneath his, and as each brother/cousin graduated, she put theirs on the ego wall, too.
Everything else was hers: the laptop, the files, the printer that was broken and the printer that wasn’t, the accordion Post-it notes Paul liked to steal, and, to her amusement (some of her clients were old school), the fax machine.
She’d gotten her bachelor’s degree in paralegal studies, then sat for the NALA* and was certified by the Fourth of July. The certification was Mitchell’s idea: He’d pointed out that since she spent most of her free time researching their dad’s case, which led to other cases, why not get paid for it? “You aced everything,” he pointed out, “because by the time you got to college you’d been doing it for ten years. There’s gotta be jobs out there that fit those parameters. Also we’re out of milk.”
She’d thought about it for all of five minutes and realized he had a point. (She also wondered how the hell they could be out of milk when she’d bought two gallons the day before.) She knew she lacked the desire and discipline for law school (it took too long, and she’d have no say over the cases she got for years, if ever), and the selflessness to go through the police academy ($44,000 a year to get shot at? Pass). Research, she could do. Writing legal briefs, she could do. And she could do it from home, something that couldn’t be said for patrol officers. So, yes . . . why not get paid for it?
Now she telecommuted for a number of attorneys and sometimes it was interesting and sometimes it was dull, but she made a respectable living and between her salary and the insurance/pension from her father’s death and the fact that she lived at home and the mortgage was paid off, they were okay. Financially, anyway.
“I was wondering about your . . . ah . . . trip.”
Right. Back to the present: Her mother had decided to spend a few minutes feigning interest in her life. In a way, this was worse than the indifference.
“My trip?” She never says the words, Angela realized. It’s always “your trip” or “the errand.” “To the state prison my uncle’s been languishing in lo these long years?”
“Well.” The hand drifted up. Clutched the gown’s neckline. Fiddled. “Yes.”
“It was . . .” A rerun? A bust? A waste? Fun seeing Jason’s socks? “. . . like it always is.”
“So you won’t need to go back anytime soon.” When Angela said nothing, her mother continued. “There’s—there’d be no point. Right?”
She closed her laptop to give her mother her full attention. Oh holy hell. Let’s just get to it, okay? “Something on your mind, Mom?”
“I just think it’s a waste of time, is all.”
“So you’ve said. Many, many, many, many, many, many, many times.” And even that many manys? Not enough.
“And now”—here came the vaguely hectoring tone she knew well—“you’ve dragged your cousin back into it.”
Angela felt her eyebrows arch involuntarily. “‘Dragged’?” Not the verb she would have gone with. And that her mother thought Archer could be dragged anywhere was laughable.
“He has a new family now,” the sleepy banana masquerading as her mother went on. “He has . . . responsibilities. New things he should be focusing on, not . . . er . . .”
“Old business?”
“You make it sound like I don’t care.”
Because you don’t.
“Of course I care.”
Nope.
“But how long until you let this go?” Mom paused, like Angela actually had a time period in mind. Like she’d jump in with, I thought I’d give it another three years and seventy-eight days, and if I don’t have it solved by then, I’ll hang it up forever. “It’s been a decade.”
“Mom, I could understand your mind-set if it was one you had gradually come around to. But you’ve never liked me looking into Dad’s murder.” It was almost as if her mother knew more than she had told back in the day. Not guilty knowledge, exactly, but . . .
Wait. Why assume she doesn’t have guilty knowledge? I’ve never understood her paralyzing grief. What if she had something to do with Dad’s murder? What if it’s not grief, but guilt?
Ridiculous. The woman had problems, but ascribing guilt was a big step too far.
Meanwhile, Mom’s brows had rushed together and she nearly shouted, “Because you were a child!”
“Yes. But I wasn’t for long. We all grew up pretty fast.” Unspoken: We had to, because you fell apart. You know who paid for that robe, right? “After a while—and not a long while—I wasn’t a child. I was a pissed-off young adult looking for answers and you still did everything you could to discourage me.”
In response, a mutter: “Obviously not everything.”
“And it’s not just me.” Here was a conversation they should have had years ago. Oh, well, no time like the present. This’ll teach her to hover in my office doorway. “You’ve always been opposed to anyone researching the case, discussing the case, thinking about the case.”
“That’s not—”
“No. No denial this time. Let’s try something different, okay? Just for fun. No denial!” Angela realized she was rocking back and forth in her agitation. God, this ergonomic chair was the best gift to myself. “Hell, when I was in college, my prof offered extra credit to anyone who wanted to help me. He was goddamned enchanted by Dad’s murder and loved that I was working a ‘real-world scenario.’ And, yes, he was an insensitive boob, but half my floor took him up on it—free labor and a bunch of fresh eyes and you were still against it.”
“That’s not what college is for! It’s for drinking too much and learning new things and making terrible decisions about your sexuality but coming to your senses in time for graduation!”
“I . . . Wow.” Where? Where to even start? “If it’s any consolation, I did all that other stuff, too.” Oh, my God. I did not just tell her that.
Mom’s hand froze mid-fiddle. “Oh. Well. Good for you, then.”
I visited my imprisoned uncle in the company of the Andretti of Insighters and a detective wearing Van Gogh’s Sunflower socks and this is still the most surreal conversation I’ve had today.
“Mom, something I’ve always wondered.” Bad idea. No, good idea. No, terrible idea. Fuck it. “Why do you care? This . . .” She gestured to the files, the boxed files in the corner, the entirety of the office, which wasn’t a shrine to her father but was HQ for catching his killer. “All of this, it doesn’t affect or alter your life at all. Whether I’m working on Dad’s case or writing a brief for Judge Shepherd, your day-to-day routine is exactly the same. So what’s the problem?”
Her mother stared. “You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t know.”
A long sigh, followed by, “The problem is, I don’t want to see my daughter throw her life away like—” She cut herself off, so quickly Angela heard her teeth click together.
“Like my uncle?” she asked quietly.
“It should have been him.”
As a revelation, this wasn’t exactly shocking. Emma Drake had not kept that concept to herself. “But it wasn’t. So we had to deal. Have to deal. I understand why you’ve never visited Uncle Dennis—”
A bark of laughter, quickly choked off. “Figured that out, did you?”
“Yes.” This is the longest conversation we’ve had since Paul accidentally sent us all to the emergency room. Soooo many forms. The paperwork was worse than the stitches.
To Angela’s alarm, her mother took another step into the office. “Okay. I’ll reiterate, so there’s no misunderstanding going forward. It should have been your uncle—”
“There’s—”
“—bleeding out on that filthy floor—”
“—no misunderstanding—”
“—in that shitty little drug warren.”
“—on my end. Any of our ends.”
“Not your father.”
“Yes. Got it. But, again: We have to deal with what is.”
But her mom wasn’t listening. “So that doesn’t come as a surprise to you? That I wanted your uncle dead?”
“No, but it’s good to receive confirmation. I guess.”
“And now I’ve reiterated.”