Sweet Sinful Nights

“Not if they find the real killer.”

“If they were going to, it would have happened already. It’s been eighteen years,” she said, reminding her mother that time was not on her side. She didn’t bother to bring up the powerful evidence that had put her there in the first place, including the shooter’s own testimony that Dora Prince had hired him. That didn’t need to be said, because it didn’t change this interaction.

“Oh, it’ll happen. They’ll realize.”

Shannon bit back all the things she wanted to say. All the truths she wanted to remind her mother of. She didn’t want to rehash the case. She didn’t want to play courtroom trial again. “What does this have to do with Luke?”

Her mom leaned across the table, coming as close to Shannon as she could, and said in a fast breath, “Because he promised to wait for me. He swore he would. And I just found out he’s remarried. One of my girlfriends on the outside told me. Baby, he married another woman. He was supposed to wait for me. For me, for me, for me. And now he’s with someone else, and I’m all alone.” She dropped her head to the table, tears spilling like summer rain from her eyes.

Shannon brushed a hand over her mother’s limp hair. “That’s what you talked to your lawyer about?”

Her mom nodded her head against the table as she sobbed. “Yes. Because it proves something. And lawyers need proof. So I told my lawyer.”

“What does it prove?”

“It proves that Luke lied to me,” she said, her voice breaking like waves. “He lied when he said he’d come back.”

“And that changes everything?”

“Yes. It changes everything for me. Everything.” Her mom cried more, a river of tears rolling down the plastic as Shannon stroked her hair, some strange kind of relief washing over her even in the midst of all this hollowness, all this hurt for the woman her mother had become.

Through it all, one fact remained starkly clear.

The case was closed. Her mother’s fate was irrevocably sealed eighteen years ago, and now she was paying for her crime in so many ways. With her life, with her health, and with her sanity.

Dora Prince lived in her own land, and she’d done it all to herself.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE


“Skittles? Salt and vinegar chips? Twizzlers?”

Brent plucked the snack foods from a dusty shelf, wiggling each bag in front of his wife.

She crinkled her nose. “I’m not that hungry.”

“Yeah, these might be stale.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I don’t think many people come around here too often.” He peered at the expiration date on the Skittles. “Whoa. These Skittles were past their prime two years ago.”

She laughed half-heartedly as he dropped the unwanted snacks on their shelves.

“I’ll just get a soda,” she said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the fountain drinks at the Lucky Seven Gas & Go somewhere in the middle of the desert. As far as he knew, they were halfway between Hawthorne and Vegas, which meant two and half more hours of cruising south on the highway to home.

“Shan, you need to eat. You haven’t had anything all day.”

“Maybe just some pretzels then,” she said. “Pretzels taste expired anyway.”

He grabbed a pretzel pack with gusto, as if his enthusiasm for potentially out-of-date road trip snacks would somehow buoy her spirits. She walked to the soda fountain, grabbed a cup, and pressed it against the Diet Coke spout. She leaned forward slowly, as if she was starting to tip over, then rested her forehead against the dispenser. She’d slept the whole ride back so far, slumping against the passenger seat with her shades on after she’d left the prison and given Brent the cliff notes as they drove out of Hawthorne.

Crossing the distance in a second, he took the cup from her. “I’ll do it.”

She rested her head against his chest. “Thank you.”

It was only a soda. That was all he was doing. Filling a flimsy paper cup at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. But it was something he alone could do for her right now. And she needed it.

He finished filling the cup and popped a lid on it.

“I’m sorry I made you drive me all the way here for nothing,” she said.

“Hey. You did not make me do anything. I chose to. And it was not nothing.” He set the cup down on the counter, and lifted her chin. “It was not nothing.”

“But you missed your meeting and it’s just the same old stuff with my mom.”

“Then that’s something. That’s exactly what you needed to know.”

“The same old stuff?”

He nodded. “The same old stuff. Because now you know. Now you know that nothing has changed. Now you can stop worrying that something is going to change. This is the same stuff she did to you in college,” he said, running a thumb along her jawline as he held her gaze. “She tried to work you over. She tried to get you to believe her madness. And you are good, and loving, and you did the right thing by seeing her, Shan. You visited her; you listened to her. You did a loving thing without compromising who you are. And now, you can let it go. The past is the past.”