Island Girl (38 page)

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Authors: Lynda Simmons

BOOK: Island Girl
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“Now don’t you wish you’d left me the hell alone?” I moved her out of the way. Stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.
She banged it back before I could turn the lock. “Why are you doing this? After all the work we’ve done, when we’re this close. Why are you backing out now?”
“More important question,” Nadia said as she lumbered down the hall toward us. “What has changed your mind? What has made you so afraid?”
“I’m not afraid, I’m practical. I’ve told you over and over again that Champlain is represented by a big firm that never plays nice. I finally took a long hard look at the petition and realized it was not in your best interest to have my name at the bottom. You need a name that has equal strength, equal clout. So I set up a meeting with Mark. I was sure he’d help, but apparently being back on the Island has turned him into a prick, so he refused.” I started to close the door again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Brenda held it open. “He seemed like a nice guy. Maybe if I talked to him.”
“Won’t make any difference. He won’t help unless I move back to the Island.”
“Why would he say this?” Nadia asked.
I sighed, already tired of justifying myself to them, to Mark, to the whole fucking world. “Because my mother has Alzheimer’s and she wants me back home.” I tried closing the door again. “You really need to excuse me.”
“Then you should go,” Nadia said. “Look after mama.”
“That’s not what she wants.”
“What does she want?”
“She wants me to take over the house and live there with my sister after she’s gone.”
“She wants to give you house? But you don’t want house?” She turned to Brenda. “Brain impairment also is common in alcoholics.”
“I don’t have brain impairment, but I am desperate to pee.”
Nadia shrugged and moved aside. Brenda finally let me close the door, but Nadia kept talking at me. “So he will not put name on petition and you are afraid your name is not enough.”
“What difference does a name make?” I heard Brenda say. “It’s the paper that matters.”
“You think that way because you don’t know lawyers.” I rose and washed my hands. Purposely avoided the mirror and opened the door again. “The way the petition works, I have to deliver the papers to Champlain first, the bank second, and then I have to file them with the bankruptcy court. Our plan has always been to avoid that last step. We only want Champlain to
believe
that we’re going to register that petition so the bastards write you a check. But once their legal team sees that it’s just me out there on a limb, they may tell their clients to hold off. See if I really do get the sucker registered.”
“Do you think they’d do that?” Brenda asked.
“If Champlain were my client, and I saw my name on those papers, I would call my bluff.” I wandered into the kitchen and slumped into a chair. “I would eat me alive.”
Nadia sat down beside me. “Why? What is wrong with your name?”
“It’s not worth much anymore.”
“Because you are drunk?” Nadia asked.
“Nope, that came later.”
Brenda went to the sink. “Anyone want tea? Coffee?”
“Car Bomb?” I suggested. She gave her head a disgusted shake. “Coffee’s fine, thanks.” I leaned back and closed my eyes. Why anyone thought sober was better was beyond me. I would have given anything to have a Car Bomb going off inside my head right now.
Nadia tapped me on the arm, waited until I opened one eye. “What did you do? Sleep with client? Rob bank? Kill someone? If you killed someone, we are finished for sure.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.” I grabbed the saltshaker. Slid it back and forth between my hands. “But I did ruin my sister’s life.”
Nadia smacked me on the head. “Stop playing with salt.” She grabbed the shaker and put it out of reach. “How did you ruin sister’s life? Maybe steal boyfriend? Marry lover?”
“Post ugly pictures on the Internet?” Brenda offered, still busy measuring and scooping—making fucking coffee instead of something a person could really use. Useless twit.
I pulled the sugar bowl toward me. Slid it from my right hand to my left. “Believe me, there are no ugly pictures of my sister. She’s the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. And I did not understand how much trouble that could be for her.”
Nadia nabbed the sugar bowl on its return trip to the right. “How can being beautiful be problem?”
“Because she’s slow,” Brenda said, setting out cups, going back for spoons.
“‘Mind of a ten year-old,’ my mother always said.” I put my elbows on the table and propped my head in my hands. “But I never believed her. I was convinced that all Grace needed was a chance to grow, to learn, to experience a few things, and she’d surprise us all by becoming an independent woman.”
“You were wrong?” Nadia asked.
“I was wrong,” I admitted. Then I told them about Bobby Daniels and William, and how much he’d looked like her, and what a great mother she’d been. And finally I told them something I hadn’t talked about in a long time. About the day I came back from lunch with a client and found a message waiting for me. A message that had already been there for two hours.
“‘Call Grace,’ it said.”
I sat back, hands clasped on the table in front of me so I wouldn’t be tempted to play with the cream or the cups, or the pepper shaker I’d just noticed. “Nothing else. Just ‘Call Grace.’ Being the rising star of the firm, of course, I had other calls to make first. Important calls to clients and other lawyers, one of them from the firm that now represents Champlain. Naturally, I made those calls first because the message only said, ‘Call Grace.’ When I finally did call her another two hours later, she said, ‘William’s dead.’ Not ‘William’s sick’ or ‘I’m worried,’ just ‘William’s dead.’”
Even now, years later, just thinking about that call made my skin grow cold.
“She must have been frantic, poor thing,” Brenda said, leaving the stupid coffee at last and sitting down on the other side of me.
I shook my head. “Not at all. She was quite calm, which the prosecution used to their advantage later. She just wanted me to come home, because she didn’t know what to do next.”
“Of course you blame self,” Nadia said. “For not making call earlier.”
“But you couldn’t have known,” Brenda said. “She should have said it was an emergency.” Echoing the very words my friends and colleagues had said over and over again.
It’s not your fault, Liz. You couldn’t have known, Liz
. But always, always, there was Ruby’s voice in the background whispering,
You should have known, Liz. You should have known.
“How did baby die?” Nadia asked.
“Quietly, in his bed.”
“SIDS?” Brenda asked, whispering the word, not wanting to say it out loud, to give it weight, power.
I pushed myself back from the table, frustrated, restless, desperate for a drink or at least something to play with. I rose and picked up an orange from the basket on the counter. Tossed it back and forth between my hands. Back and forth, back and forth. This time Nadia didn’t try to stop me.
“The original medical reports listed the cause as uncertain,” I said, “which ultimately led to the broad catch-all of sudden infant death syndrome. But I can tell you with certainty that he was not outwardly sick, he did not fall, and he certainly was not shaken, despite their initial attempts to prove otherwise.”
“He just died?” Brenda asked.
“He just died.”
She shook her head. “How could that happen?”
“Sometimes there is no definitive reason.” I tossed the orange, caught it. Tossed it again. Caught it. “Grace and I learned that little truth the hard way, but the problem is that the public can’t accept it. They need someone to blame, something to point to. Something definitive like vaccinations, mattress bugs, infections, even the time of year will do, because it lets them believe in a root cause, a concrete reason for the death. A root cause that could have been avoided by a discerning parent.
“And every time, every single time this happens, there are those who believe the mother is the root cause. She must have done something. Was he in her bed? She must have smothered him. Was he crying a lot? She must have shaken him. She must be guilty because babies don’t just die. But the thing is, sometimes they do.”
I smacked the orange down. “My sister did not kill her son. Her only crime was in not calling 911. In knowing he was dead, not by measuring brain waves or lines on an EKG, but by being his mother. By touching his skin, feeling for a heartbeat, listening for a breath, anything that would have given her a sign that he could be saved. But she saw none of that. She only saw her baby, her son, lying in his bed, lifeless, cold, dead. She knew from experience what would happen if she called 911. And all she wanted was to hold him a while longer, without medical staff and social workers and all the other things that would have kicked in if she had made that call. So she called me instead. Then she wrapped her baby in a blanket and she rocked him, she sang to him, and she waited for me to call.”
“And that was start of problem,” Nadia said.
I leaned back against the counter. “They charged her with criminal negligence causing death. I acted as her lawyer.”
“This was not best decision.”
“I know that now,” I said, keeping my eyes on the floor. “But at the time, no one could talk me out of it. I was convinced a jury would see that my sister was innocent and she would be acquitted. And for the first time in her illustrious career, the shining star lost a case.”
“How could that happen?” Brenda asked. “Your sister was obviously traumatized, even if she didn’t show it. Her reaction was completely understandable. How could the jury have convicted her of anything?”
I smiled at her indignant tone, her unqualified support. Even if she didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, it was nice to have Brenda on my side. “The trial was a difficult one with expert testimony on both sides, conflicting autopsies, and psychological evaluations that didn’t always put Grace in a good light. It was hard enough for the legal teams to wade through everything, harder still to gauge which way the jury was leaning. My sister was facing at least ten years in prison if I lost. So my mother went behind my back and convinced her to take a plea. To admit to the lesser charge of failing to provide the necessities of life, leading to death. Grace went home with a security bracelet around her ankle and I went to my favorite bar to start working on her appeal.”
I left the kitchen. Walked back to my room. I didn’t expect them to follow. Didn’t
want
them to follow. All I wanted right now was to get dressed up and go out. Find someplace that was loud and fun. A place with music and dancing, where they didn’t water the vodka and limitless joy was an all-you-can-drink happy hour.
I opened my closet and hauled out fresh jeans and a sparkly tank top—jade green, my best color—and threw them on the bed. Was rooting through the underwear on my desk when the two of them came to my door. Brenda crossing her arms and planting her feet, Nadia scowling and tossing jelly beans into her mouth—Sideshow Legal at your service.
“I do not see how this affects your name,” Nadia said. “Everyone loses cases. Is nature of business.”
“True,” I said, tugging a jade green thong out of the tangle of bras, panties, and still more thongs. “And everyone has to learn to put those losses aside and move on. But I couldn’t do that. All I could think about was the appeal. Grace hadn’t even agreed to one, but I was already on the job. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think about anything but getting her acquitted.”
“This was when you started to drink,” she said. Not a question, just the truth.
“Only one before going to bed. To get some sleep, smooth things out a little.”
“But one became two,” Nadia said softly.
I gave her a tight smile. “And two became three, and three become four and so on and so on, and still I never slept past three A.M.”
I tossed the rest of my clothes onto the bed and went to the window, looked out at the street. Aware of a woman walking a dog, and little kids running, but seeing only Grace leaving the courthouse. The police escort. The throng of brash and pushy reporters. And Ruby screaming at me to leave my sister alone, just leave her alone.
“But I kept working on that appeal,” I told them. “And I started hanging around the Island more too. Blowing off appointments and hopping on the ferry. Hoping for a glimpse of Grace, a moment when I could get her alone, make her understand how important it was that we strike back hard and fast. Ruby wouldn’t let her speak to me, of course, and the local police escorted me onto the ferry, three, four, times a week.” I stepped back from the window, looked over at them. “It’s no wonder my mother took out a restraining order.”
Neither one had moved from the door, and neither one said a word. Then again, what was there to say? I was setting out the evidence clearly and concisely, making my case step by step. When I finished, they could only come to one conclusion, the right conclusion—Liz Donaldson was not the one they wanted.

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