For Good (21 page)

That night Kristen pored over post-conviction relief cases and the court files from Marydale's case, toggling back and forth between screens on her laptop, then standing up and pacing, then willing herself to sit down and focus. She highlighted every name in Marydale's case file, and during the day she called each person.

The calls yielded one of two replies.

Aaron Holten's father answered her from a pier in Atlantic City, the sound of the ocean growling in the background.

“They should have locked her up and thrown away the key,” he said. “If I ever met the bastard who let her out on parole! You know Texas brought back the firing squad. That's what I say. Why should they get three hots and a cot? After what she did to my boy!”

The former Tristess police chief said, “Poor kid. With her father dying and her mother dying so young, bless her, and Marydale being, well, different.”

“Yes?”

“She was bound to get herself in trouble one way or another.”

“Did you think it was self-defense?”

“It might have been a fair fight, but that's the problem, isn't it? A girl's got to be strong to throw a hay bale like that. You don't do that by accident. I feel sorry for her, but she was at the wrong end of that throw.”

When Kristen called Marydale's defense attorney, Eric Neiben, all she got was a voice mail in return.

“I lost, okay?” he said. “Lawyers lose cases. She didn't appeal. That's it. That's final.” By nightfall on her fourth day in Tristess, the sky had cleared. Kristen stared out her motel window at the parking lot. The room felt cramped and empty at the same time. Kristen put on a coat, scarf, and hat and tucked her laptop under her arm and her phone in her pocket. Outside the air was cold and dry. Kristen walked around to the front of the hotel, stepping over the low, wrought-iron railing that surrounded the patio around the empty pool. She sat at one of the tables. The metal chair felt icy.

She checked her phone for the hundredth time, but the only new messages were from Donna. Donna had been calling, leaving a couple of messages a day. The Falcon Law Group had put Kristen on unpaid administrative leave. She had seventy-two hours to procure a medical diagnosis explaining her sudden change in behavior. Then she had forty-eight hours. Then she had twelve. Kristen had deleted the first half a dozen messages without returning them. Marydale's case was more important. But with the case stalled and the night stretching out before her with nothing to do but wait and hope, it felt churlish not to speak the words:
I quit. I'm sorry.
There was no way to pretend that that part of her life wasn't over. Kristen touched
call back.

Donna greeted her with, “What the hell?”

“I know,” Kristen said.

“Kristen!” For once, Donna seemed at a loss for words.

“I'm sorry,” Kristen said.

“Everyone has a midlife crisis,” Donna hissed. “I don't see why yours couldn't have waited until after DataBlast. Are you crazy? Suicidal? Are you being blackmailed? Did you start doing drugs? Did some parasite get in your bloodstream and eat a hole through your…your…” Always precise, Donna searched for the exact neurological structure. “Your
brain!
” she finished, apparently deciding that fury outweighed medical specificity.

“I know I'm getting fired,” Kristen said. “But you'll do great with DataBlast. You deserve that case. You did as much work on it as I did.”

“I won DataBlast,” Donna said. “DataBlast is over.”

“Already?”

“Yes, already. And we didn't get the Tri-State Global contract. And yes, you're getting fired. I had to talk Rutger out of an involuntary commitment.”

“You'd never get a four twenty-six on me. You can't prove danger to self or others.”

“I'm kidding, Kristen, but, seriously, what happened?”

The stars overhead were cold. Kristen's breath steamed before her.

“You want to know what happened?” Kristen had Google open on her laptop. Absently, she typed in the name of Marydale's defense attorney for the hundredth time. “You ever take a lit class in college?”

“I don't know. Probably.”

“You ever read one of those stories, like a Greek myth, where someone does one thing wrong? You know, they step on the sacred spring or something, and it ruins their life?”

“They sleep with their mother,” Donna suggested. “Kill their father.”

“You ever do anything like that?”

“No,” Donna said without hesitation. “I have not slept with Ma Hualing, and I'm pretty sure my father is doing just fine.”

Donna Li
, Kristen thought. The daughter of Hualing and Junjie Li. Donna who wore three-inch heels to pick up milk at the Dairy Mart. Donna who got a score on the bar exam so high they had to readjust the curve. Donna who had grown up in the same squat, narrow-windowed apartments that Kristen had, only for different reasons.

“You've been in love. You know,” Kristen said.

“I have not been in love,” Donna said with indignation.

“What about the opera singer and the CrossFit guy and that military guy with the great jaw?”

“You thought I was in love with them?”

“Why would you go out with them if you weren't in love?”

“Um, because,” Donna said in a way that made the answer obvious. “What's this about?”

“I was in love,” Kristen said. “I am in love. Do you remember the job I had in Tristess?”

The story unfolded like her own personal creation myth. Five years earlier, she could have sat in the jailhouse visiting room and promised,
We'll make this work.
Instead, she had left, and now she had to move back into the Almost Home, like some flying Dutchman of small-town law, and recount the whole absurd, tragic, starry-eyed story to practical Donna Li.

On the screen in front of her, she stared at a blurry photograph of Neiben at his wedding many years earlier, a slender man with dark, oily hair. Behind him, the wedding party wore an assortment of sport coats and gunnysack dresses.

“So that's it,” Kristen said when she finished. “I came back to work her case. I'm going to practice under Doug Grady's professional liability insurance. He does defense down here.”

She looked up. In the distance, headlights cut the darkness.

“You quit over a girl?”

“Yeah.”

“You were going to be partner!”

“Marydale's the most important thing to me,” Kristen said.

Donna blew out a quiet breath. “Better you than me. You would have been a good partner. We could have taken the firm somewhere.” Donna was quiet for a moment. “How is the case?”

“It's a dog.” Kristen tried to keep the panic out of her voice.

An SUV pulled into the darkness at the far end of the parking lot, and a small group of people got out and made their way toward the hotel lobby. They were barely visible in the nonexistent security lighting, but Kristen thought they looked happy. They moved with the loose-limbed gait of people on vacation.

“Statute of limitations ran out unless we can find evidence that wasn't available at the time of the trial,” Kristen went on.

“You need a Jason Miter,” Donna said mildly.

Kristen looked around at the empty pool and the wide main road beyond.

“What if I don't find one?” she asked.

“You lose,” Donna said. “That's law.”

It took them a long time to say goodbye. Although Donna had been known to end a conversation in midsentence with
That's enough of us talking
or
Okay, I'm sick of this now
, this time she demurred like a true Oregonian.

“Right on…” Donna hedged. “Well, keep me posted…Okay, good luck…We'll talk soon.”

The longer Donna dragged out their goodbye, the more certain Kristen was that they would never talk again. Finally she touched
end call
.

The tourists had disappeared into the motel lobby. Now they emerged again, their silhouettes black against the yellow windows: a cowboy hat, two topknots, a woman whose outline suggested she carried a giant basket of twigs on her head.

The woman's voice floated across the empty pool. “I can see the stars.”

Kristen knew that voice.

“Sierra?” Kristen said out loud.

The woman raised her hands to the sky. “Hello, stars!” she called out.

“Sierra!”

Kristen stood.

A moment later, Meatball appeared, as if from nowhere, barreling up to the wrought-iron fence, which—at three feet—presented an insurmountable obstacle to his bowling-ball weight and Samsonite girth. He wedged his froggy smile between the fence posts.

 “Kristi!” Sierra called, breaking into a run and flying toward Kristen with her arms outstretched, her dreadlocks breaking loose from their scarf and flying around her like the hair of an energetic Medusa.

A second later, Kristen was engulfed in her sister's embrace. Behind Sierra, Frog and Moss ambled over along with Aldean Dean, who touched the brim of his hat, looking slightly embarrassed.

“What are you doing here?” Kristen asked, still hugging Sierra.

“We're here for you and for Marydale,” Sierra said. “We all are. And we'll visit her every day in prison. We'll take shifts. We'll stand outside with a petition and signs, and if that doesn't work…” Sierra dropped her voice. “Aldean will show us where to tunnel in, and Moss and Frog will get a drone and fly over the prison so we can get a blueprint of the layout. But first we'll write a story about her. About injustice and homophobia and the prison industrial complex. The
HumAnarchist
is about social change.” Sierra pulled back, holding Kristen at arm's length. “If you don't think it would hurt Marydale's case. I mean, maybe there'll be a jury, and we can't taint all the jurors by telling her story, but maybe we
can
! They'll read the story, and then they'll be on the jury, and they'll acquit her.”

“There's not going to be a jury,” Kristen said. She didn't mention that the chances of a Tristess jury reading the
HumAnarchist
were about as good as the chances of the Heavenly Harvest running out of the sprouted tofu bowl.

Sierra said, “We'll think of something.” Behind her, Moss and Frog nodded vigorously. “We're HumAnarchists. We'll think outside the box.”

Sierra squeezed her again, enveloping Kristen in the smell of essential oil, stale marijuana, and the failure of natural crystal deodorant.

“Are you mad that I'm here?” Sierra asked.

Kristen pressed her face into her sister's dreads. “Sierra, I'm sorry,” she said.

“For what?” Sierra asked, as though she had not stomped out of the Port Call.

Everything
, Kristen thought. “The other day at the bar,” she said instead, “you said we both followed our dreams. You followed your dreams. I followed mine. We had that in common.”

“Yeah.”

Above their heads, the stars sparkled in frozen abandon. The motel felt like a tiny enclave on a vast, alien landscape, a tiny trailer beneath a UFO sky.

“I didn't follow my dreams,” Kristen said. “You followed your dreams. I ran away.”

Marydale sat in the chow hall, a tray of peas and hamburger crumbles before her. The halogen lights made everything white. Even the bright orange of her uniform bleached out beneath the glare.

Across the room she felt Gulu watching her.

A woman at the next table called out, “Hey. New girl. Do I know you? I never seen you in the yard.”

Marydale said nothing.

“I hear you're Gulu's baby,” the woman added.

Another woman at the neighboring table muttered, “More like Gulu's bitch.”

Marydale drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She tried to picture Kristen's apartment, then the distillery, but the images felt like pictures torn from a magazine, flat and well lit but unreal and unreachable.

The two women rose, moved to her table, and sat down on either side of her. Marydale glanced back and forth.

“Me and Jazz are playing poker,” the older women said. She had dark circles around her eyes, and Marydale could not tell if it was eye shadow or diabetes. “We need four to play.” She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a stack of paper slips, each adorned with a hand-drawn card.

“You and your cheating cards,” Jazz said. “How do I know you don't have them all marked?”

“You want to play or no?” the other woman asked. “We play with whatever. Peas.” She pointed her fork at Marydale's tray. “That's like a hundred pennies from your commissary. We'll settle up later.”

“She always cheats,” Jazz said, wrapping her long dark ponytail around her wrist and then letting it slide off. “And what about you? You cheat at cards?” She nodded to Marydale.

“I don't want to play.” Marydale showed her empty hands. “I don't know how.”

“I'll teach you.”

Marydale jumped at the voice directly behind her ear. The two women laughed. Marydale turned. Gulu stood behind her, her prison-issue jeans hanging off her hips, and her tight gray T-shirt outlining more muscle than breast. Marydale remembered Gulu doing bench presses in the open-air gym in the yard, the rain beating down on her face as she breathed out and pushed up.
One hundred one. One hundred two.

“She's sneaky, isn't she?” the older woman—Marydale thought her name might be Leena—said.

Gulu swung her leg over the bench across from Marydale. “This is my girl,” she said, pointing her chin in Marydale's direction. “She's been my girl for a long time.”

Marydale made a move to rise, but Leena clamped her hand on Marydale's shoulder.

“You talk to your Jane?” Gulu pressed the tip of her tongue to her top lip and sucked it back.

Marydale let her face settle into a stony stare, but her heart was racing. Gulu sat across from her, but that was close enough. The guards wouldn't see, and Gulu would be careful. Leena kept her arm around Marydale's shoulder. Touching was forbidden, but from behind it would look like a friendly gesture. If the guards balked, Leena would apologize. If Marydale tried to rise, Gulu and her friends would catch her ankles under the table.

Leena dealt. Gulu raised Jazz's bet by rolling two peas across the table, her thumb squashing them slightly, leaving a streak of moisture on the plastic surface. “Scholar's got some posh girl, but I don't think it's gonna last, do you, Scholar? Not much you can do for her in here.”

Marydale didn't touch the cards in front of her. “I don't have anything to bet.”

“You will. I got a feeling you'll be staying for a while,” Gulu said. “Scholar put a fork in Aaron Holten when he touched her girl back in the day.” Gulu had added a few small prison tattoos to her neck. They looked like liver spots.

“You butched out on the outside, too?” Jazz asked Marydale, then dismissed her own question. “Who even gives a shit, right?”

Leena said, “You did a Holten? You're down for a dime. I hate that family. Buck Holten down at PD in Burnville called INS on my brother, Brian. Brian was born here. Brian don't even speak Spanish.”

“I heard one of the new fish saying she's scared of you,” Gulu said to Marydale. “You got snake eyes, she said. All flat like you've done hard time.” Gulu's smile was all low, sleek curves like the back of a coyote moving through sheep. “Scholar thinks she's getting out, but I think she fits right in.”

Gulu and the young woman folded. Leena won and the deal went to Gulu. Gulu and her friends kept talking, running over old gossip like diners at the Ro-Day-O. Still, there was something in the way they projected their conversation. It was a scrim over other, more subtle communications. Out of the corner of her eye, Marydale saw Gulu slip something from hand to hand. Marydale stood up. “Inmate, where are you going?” a guard yelled.

Marydale felt something touch her hip. She tried to brush it away.

“Guard!” Gulu cried. “She's got contraband!”

The tiny packet lay on the ground by her shoe. Marydale froze. They would charge her with possession, smuggling contraband into a secure facility, maybe dealing. In her mind's eye, Marydale saw Kristen disappearing like a figure on the horizon. Time slowed down, and she was watching Aaron Holten fall again, every dust mote in the barn illuminated by the bulb hanging overhead so that he fell, not through darkness, but through a glowing snow of stars.

Then the guard was at her side.

Leena rose and bumped into her. “Watch it,
guera
!” she said. To the guard, Leena added, “She's trouble. Don't let her get near me!”

But when Marydale looked down, the packet was gone.

The guard gave a cursory pat to Marydale's pockets and the back of her sports bra.

“Clarocci, watch it!” the guard said to Gulu.

Gulu leaned over. “Don't worry. I'll find a way to make you stay.”

Marydale said nothing. She heard Gulu inhale deeply.

“You going on the rag soon,” Gulu whispered. “I can smell it. Does your girl know how you get before your rag? All pent up?”

A guard called time, and the crowd rose. Some women lined up for the yard. A few lined up to return to their cells. Gulu stepped close, and Marydale felt Gulu's hip bone against her ass.

“It's hard in here. You probably got a whole box of toys up in Portland. Got no relief here. Eh, Scholar? You think your girl's going to do you in the bathroom at visitors? She a little slut like you are?”

“Fuck you,” Marydale said without looking at Gulu.

Leena glided by, flashing Marydale and Gulu a quick glimpse of the contraband in her fist.

“What the…!” Gulu hissed.

Leena glanced over her shoulder. “Waste not, want not. Anyway, she cut a Holten. I owe her one.”