Sandy Wolcott, and so did the woman running her campaign.
Wolcott and Reese Parker both had a motive to make Neal Hathorne look guilty of something in the middle of a neck-and-neck campaign. “But a district attorney elected in this county should not be allowed to bring up charges on the family members of her opponent and get away with it,” he said, “else we’ll see no end to this kind of trickery. And that’s exactly what this is, a trick and a waste of your time and the voters’ time and, most egregious, a waste of that family’s time,” he said, pointing to Maxine and Mitchell Robicheaux. “They deserve justice. As does the next family out there who don’t even know it’s coming, the phone call after midnight, or a police officer on their front door, a trip to the morgue . . . because make no mistake, he’s still out there.” He glanced at the empty seat next to Maxine, where Keith Morehead would have been sitting if he’d shown his face since Jay attacked him in the courthouse hallway. “And a thing like that, he will kill again, all the while Reese Parker is playing games with this election. The voters in this county, you deserve better,” he said. “My client deserves better, and most of all, Alicia Nowell deserves better than what the prosecutor has presented in this case and tried to pass off to you as truth.”
The state’s rebuttal, he didn’t listen to even half of it.
As far as Jay was concerned, it was over.
The jury walked out, and he left to wait it out at home.
Neal went with his uncle and his grandmother and his father, A.G. Jay patted Neal on the back and said he’d be the first to know whenever Jay heard word from the courthouse. Lonnie went to her place to write, trying to get it all down on paper: America’s Tomorrow and the donors for George W. Bush, Reese Parker’s experiment in Pleasantville and the death of consolidated black voting power, which the Voting Rights Act and the tireless work of activists from Sam Hathorne to John Lewis to Dr. King to Diane Nash and James Bevel and countless others across the country had created, which people like Parker were now looking to poison from the inside. With help from Sam. He’d delivered Jay’s client files to Parker in exchange for her help greasing a just-good-enough settlement from ProFerma, which just happens to also be a major donor to her PAC. Lonnie’s already gotten calls from two different newspapers that are interested in the story. Sam, who had been careful to leave no paper trail, no phone records or letters or electronic mail of any kind, between himself and a Terrence Jerard Cobb, was, as Jay had heard through Lonnie, on his second interview with the Houston Police Department regarding the attempted kidnapping and the break-in at Jay’s office, this time without his elder son, Axel, as an advocate. He was spending the night, on his own, in an interrogation room. Rolly was home by now, convalescing in his girl’s arms. All this left Jay free to be with his kids. They had finally agreed it was time to tackle the tree.
It’s Jay’s job to find the box of decorations in the garage.
Ornaments, a tangle of lights, the angel from the clearance sale, it’s all out here somewhere, along with his fishing gear, the three-piece dinette set from their old apartment, Ellie’s first bicycle, and his son’s train set, which Ben doesn’t want anymore but had begged his mother not to throw away. There are some of Jay’s old law school textbooks and a quilt Bernie started and never finished and on the top, top shelf just past the garage’s side door, a white box with pages and pages of something Bernie was writing in her last year, which Jay is not ready to touch.
And there’s Bernie’s car, of course.
After he finds the Christmas stuff, in a cardboard box along the rear wall, he sets it all on the roof of his wife’s Camry and climbs inside. The air is dry in here, but without the film of dust covering everything else in the garage. It’s as it always was, the leather soft and clean, the radio still set to KTSU, the carpet on the driver’s side with the same mud stain under the gas pedal from the last time Bernie drove the car, the last appointment she was able to drive herself to, last September, a few days before Ellie’s birthday, when it had rained and rained and rained, Bernie stumbling into the house after dark, her whole body shaking. She knew then. He can still see the haunted look on her face and knows that she knew then what was coming. But she had soldiered on. For them, he wants to believe, and it’s true too, but he also knows she did it for herself. Just as he knows he’s got to do this now, to beg her forgiveness. “I’m sorry, B,” he says, sitting in the same spot he’s been in so many times this past year, nights he thought this was his way out, engine idling, garage door sealed shut, his way back to her. “I can’t wait,” he says. “I can’t sit out this life for you, Bernie.” He takes a deep breath, pulling in what’s left, the last he can smell of her, Dove soap and sandalwood. “I’ve got the kids, I’ve got Christmas, I’ve got the next day and the one after that.” He’s crying by now, the tears fat and warm, rolling down his chin as he lays his head on the steering wheel. He’s got to stay. Bernie said it herself. But what’s harder to admit is that he wants to. He asks her to forgive him for staying behind, speaking the words out loud inside his wife’s car, knowing, even as he does, that he’s only talking to himself.