ALL THINGS PRETTY PART TWO (8 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - TOMMI

I haven’t slept a wink all night long.
 
I’ve cried until I ache from my stomach
all the way up to the top of my head, yet I’m not tired. Not really. I’m
exhausted, but I’m not tired. My mind won’t shut off long enough to let me get
tired.

I’ve been curled up in a ball on my cot most of the night.
 
I tried to sleep, even pretended to be
asleep for a while.
 
It was the
middle of the night–I don’t know what time exactly–when I heard
muffled footsteps coming down the hall of the jail.
 
I didn’t move. I just waited.
 
It was dark in my cell, but fairly
bright outside it.
 
Through the
slits of my eyes, I saw an enormous shadow fall over me.
 
I didn’t need to see the details of his
face or his body to know that it was Sig.
 
I could smell him, sense him,
feel
him.
 
I don’t know why I feigned sleep.
 
But I did.
 

He stood watching me for a long time.
 
Maybe close to fifteen minutes. At one
point, I saw him shift and lean his forehead against the bars. I heard him sigh
so deeply, I think I felt his breath fall across my cheek.
 
But he didn’t say anything.
 
Didn’t make another sound, in fact.
 
Neither did I.
 
What do you say to the man you love when
he’s the man who put you in jail?

Well, last night I said nothing.

I wanted to ask about Travis, but I couldn’t bare it.
 
Of course, I wanted him to be okay, but
in a way, I hated the thought of him being just fine without me.
 
All of a sudden, in the lonely concrete
square of my life, it felt as though I wasn’t needed.
 
Anywhere.
 
By anybody.
 
That even though I’d lived a lie and
killed to protect him, Travis would just move on and be fine without me.
 
That’s what I should want. It’s what I
do
want.
 
It’s just hard to see that right
now.
 
When I’m locked up and
everyone else is free.

After that, the harsh light of day seemed to bring nothing
good. I was left alone with nothing but doubts and regrets and fears, crowding
in on me.
 
Eating away at me.
 
Slow, like a cancer that was gnawing
ruthlessly at my soul.

Sometime around lunch, I suppose, the DA came to see
me.
 
He told me that Tonin produced
my brother’s frozen body and that the medical examiner will be conducting an
autopsy immediately. He asked me what would be found. I told him.
 

He asked me other
questions,
let me
tell my side of things.
 
It was all
very clinical and unemotional.
 
I’m
not sure that worked in my favor, but I just felt so cold and so…numb.
 
Like I’d cried so much, I was empty
inside.

After he left, I was taken back to my cell.
 
To wait, I guess.
 
To be tortured by minutes that tick by
like years and a bleakness that threatened to drag me under.

Now, it’s afternoon.
 
Despite the sun slanting through the window at the end of the hall, the
world is getting darker and darker. I feel myself sinking into oblivion and the
desire to resist it lessens with every passing minute.

Some time later–minutes or hours, I don’t know–Sig
comes.
 
I don’t get up.
 
I can’t.
 
My legs, my arms, my head, they’re so
heavy.
 
So, so
heavy.
 

He waits for me to move. When I don’t, he leaves for a few
seconds and then comes back to an electronic
click
and the opening of my cell door.
 

He walks slowly into my little cubicle of hell.
 
He says nothing. I say nothing. He watches
me for a few seconds and then gently picks up my feet, sits on the end of my
tiny bed, and sets them softly in his lap.
 
Immediately, I feel his warmth seeping through my jumpsuit like he’s the
only source of heat in a thousand miles.
 
It almost scalds the skin of my calves.
 
He doesn’t touch me for the longest
time, like he’s afraid to.
 
But
then, as he relaxes against the cold concrete block of my cell, I feel his hand
fall on my leg and he begins to trace imaginary shapes on my ankle.

That night, he comes back again.
 
I pretend to sleep. He watches me
without a word.
 
Like
a carbon copy of the night before.

The next day, the DA returns early.
 
He shows me all kinds of papers and reads
me all kinds of laws.
 

Basically, what the M.E. found corroborates my story. My
brother was killed with one blow to the back of his head. He died instantly.
 
Strangely, that gives me great comfort.
 
I close my eyes. Squeeze them tight,
fighting off another bout of tears.
 
It surprises me to feel the burn and prickle of them.
 
They seem to be the only thing sharp
enough to penetrate my fog of late.
 
But it doesn’t last long.
 
Afterward, I’m merely apathetic as the DA talks to me about a confession
and what it would mean, about the deal he would recommend to the judge and the
implications of it. And his
hope,
not
his
promise,
that it will go as
planned.

All in all, despite the fancy terms that make it sound as
though I’ll be a free woman if this works out, he still treats me like a common
criminal,
right down to the way his lips curl up in
disgust when he looks at me.
 

I can’t blame him, though.
 
When it boils down to it, I
am
a criminal.
 
No judge will be able to wash that away,
no matter what they decide to do with me.
 
It’s the way the world will see me.
 
The way Travis will see me.
 
And Sig.
 
The way I’ll see
myself.
 
I’ll always be a
murderer.
 
A girl
who sold her soul to the devil.
 
A woman who’s more a liability to the people around
her than a help.
 
Somehow
bringing it all out into the light like this makes it seem more
real.
 
Uglier
.
 
Less escapable.
 
I’ll never be able to leave the past
behind.
 
Because
I’m
the past.
 
I’m the black stain on our lives now.

It occurs to me, on more than one occasion, that it might be
better if they’d just put me to death.
 
There are two people I love who would be so much better off without
me.
 
I bring nothing good to their
lives.
 
Because I
am
nothing good.

They’ll be fine.
 
Great, even.
 
Sig will make
sure Travis is taken care of. I know in my heart that he will.
 
They’ll put Momma in a facility where
she can be better cared for, by someone smarter than me.
 
And without that to worry about, the two
things that I’ve worried about for half of my life, there’s nothing keeping me
here.
 
I will only bring hurt and
embarrassment and shame to those I love if I stay.

I wrap my arms around my waist, drawing my legs up and
turning my face into the musty County pillow.
 
The hollow ache, the soul-deep
pain–I don’t know how much longer I can suffer through it.
 
I only want to be put out of my
misery.
 
And if the State of Georgia
won’t do it, I wonder if I will have the courage to?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - SIG

Eight days. That’s how long it takes the law to realize and
accept the things that I’ve known all along–Tommi isn’t a felon. She’s
a woman
who grew from
a girl
who reacted
in fear
to a dangerous situation.
 
Simple as that.

The judge agreed to the misdemeanor charges on both counts.
He gave her community service for forging her mother’s checks, mainly because
her mother is still alive and the recipient of the care afforded by the checks.
If she had been dead, he might not have gone so easy on her.
 
As for the murder, with all the facts
that they were able to obtain, including the medical examiner’s report and
Travis’s sworn statement about what he witnessed the night of his brother’s
death, the case was open and closed.

Travis’s situation will take a little more time, but I’m not
worried.
 
He’s in better shape,
legally, than Tommi was.
 
He has
agreed to testify against Chaps, which gained him a lot of leniency.
 
And that fact that he’s no flight risk,
which I personally guaranteed, means he gets to remain free.

All in all, everything worked out as I had hoped and
planned.
 
Tommi is free to pursue
her life as Tia Lawrence with only a couple of misdemeanors attached to her
sealed juvenile record, nothing that would ever prevent her from becoming gainfully
employed.
 
Travis will continue on
in school.
 
Everyone should live
happily ever after.

Only it doesn’t feel like that.
 
It feels like there’s a dark cloud and I
can’t quite put my finger on it.

Travis and I arrived here at the jail fifteen minutes ago to
get Tommi.
 
We brought her clean
street clothes to wear home rather than the ones she was booked in.
 
If I had to guess, I’d say
she’ll
burn those as soon as she can.
 
I probably would.

Tommi took the clothes with a vacant smile and when she was
changed, the officer brought her down to collect her belongings and sign
out.
 
A free woman.
 
But a changed one, it seems.

In the truck, I ask her, “
Wanna
get something to eat?”

“Let’s get pizza. We haven’t had it in a while,” Travis says,
smiling at me in the rearview mirror.

I laugh.
 
“Yeah,
it’s not like we’ve had it twice for dinner and once for lunch in the last
eight days.”

I glance over at Tommi. She’s staring out the windshield, a
sad curve to her lips and a haunted look in her eyes.
 
“Maybe we could get it to go.
 
That way, you two could drop me at the
house and then go get it to bring home.
 
I’m a little tired and I could use a few minutes alone, if you don’t
mind.”

I want to argue. I want to ask her what’s wrong. I want to
make her smile and appreciate the second chance she’s been given. But I do none
of those things.
 
I guess she just
needs time and space. It’s hard to tell what this whole traumatic experience
has done to her.

“Sure. We can do that.”
 
I peer into the rearview.
 
“Right, Travis?”

He nods and flops back against the seat.

At her house, I walk Tommi to the door. She seems frail and
unsteady.
 
“Are you sure you’ll be
okay here by yourself?”

She tries to give me a reassuring smile, but fails
miserably.
 
“I’m sure. I just need
some time.
 
Alone.”

I nod. I get it.

I
get it
, but I
don’t
like it
.
 
“Okay.
 
Well, we won’t be long.
 
And then be prepared to celebrate.
 
Italian style.”

She nods again.
 
Smiles slightly again.
 
She’s like some strange reflection of the person I kissed just a little
more than a week ago–not quite real, ready to shatter if I touch her.
 

I push the front door open. Before she crosses the
threshold, I gently take her upper arm, stopping her. She looks up at me with
those big, glistening green eyes.
 
They’re
so sad and empty they hurt me all the way to my soul.

I bend toward her slowly, so as not to startle her, and I
press my lips to her cheek right near her mouth.
 
Her skin is cool and clammy.
 
“I’ll be right back.”

Again, she nods and pulls away from me, closing the door
behind her before I can even make it off the step.

I try not to let Travis see my worry, but I can tell that
he’s upset by her bizarrely distant behavior, too.
 
I guess, like me, he thought she’d be
ecstatic to have come out of this relatively unscathed.
 
Only she doesn’t seem to be.
 
In some ways, it doesn’t feel like she’s
come out of this
at all.

I call in the pizza and we pick it up, along with some
breadsticks and soda.
 
We drive
straight home.

Back at the house, Travis walks on ahead while I carry
everything in.
 
I’m just setting the
pizza on the kitchen table when I hear Travis’s shrill, “Sig!”

I don’t know why my name would alarm me so much.
 
I don’t know why I would feel like
someone reached inside my chest and ripped my heart out, breaking ribs and
tearing skin in the process. I don’t know why I would feel like my life is
hanging in the balance, or like the sun might never shine again, but I do.
 
All from one word.

I feel the blood drain away from my face when I race around
the corner and see Travis sinking to his knees in front of the open bathroom
door.
 
Bile rises in my throat and
my stomach turns in on itself before I even get a look inside.
 
Some part of me already knows what I’ll
find.

And that I can’t bear it.