I felt my increased heart rate in the way my head wound throbbed like it was trying to break free from its stitches.
I didn’t want to talk about what Becky did to me. I wanted to shove it back into my personal Pandora’s Box where I’d shoved everything else terrible that had happened to me in the past year. But all that had ever gotten me was sleep deprivation and an extra five pounds around my hips.
The PTSD support group might fall apart if half its members ended up in prison, but that didn’t mean I had to go back to my old, defective coping mechanisms.
I could face this, no matter how much it scared me.
“I understand why you felt you needed to stop Bruce Vilsack and Penny’s husband. A lot of people will understand that. What I don’t understand is why you felt it was okay to turn other people into victims in the process.”
Something I couldn’t define flickered across Becky’s face.
I caught myself taking shallow breaths and forced them to go longer and deeper. No hyperventilating. I could be strong. My mom put her faith in me. I had to prove her right. “You knew how what I’d gone through already kept me awake at nights and made it hard for me to be alone. You attacked me anyway. I almost died. So did Alice Benjamin. How do you think she’s going to feel the next time she needs to climb into a car? You took two victimizers off the street, but you became one in the process.”
Becky’s lips trembled, like little bits of her were cracking away until only the raw core was left. She didn’t cry, but the red around her eyes darkened. “I hit the car too hard. It was supposed to scare you off the case and make you think this was all about Alice Benjamin. The guard rail was supposed to stop the car.”
Becky couldn’t have known the guardrail was too fragile to stop a biker, let alone a car. Even though she hadn’t intended to kill us, she’d still meant to scare us. Scare me. She’d known my vulnerable area, and she’d chosen to exploit it.
Anger boiled up inside me and hardened the edges of my heart like metal tempered in a forge. “And Mandy? She’s innocent, and you tried to send her to prison for your crime.”
“I spread the evidence out. It was supposed to be too scattershot to point guilt at anyone. I shouldn’t have used Mandy’s car the second time, but it was the only one I’d duplicated a key for so no one would notice when I took the real key.” She reached out a hand to me, the same hand that had held mine when the memories had overwhelmed me. “I truly am sorry for what I did to you.”
The sympathy I’d once felt for her tugged at me again. She’d intentionally hurt me, but she was acting out of a soul that’d been badly damaged by the wrongs she’d experienced and witnessed. At one time, I’d have seen the fact that I still felt sad for her as a sign of weakness. It’s what my dad had always called it. This time, though, I saw it for the strength that it was. My ability to still feel compassion for her was what would keep me from ever becoming like her.
I squeezed her hand. “I know you do. So make this right by confessing. Be a better person than the men who hurt you.”
I sat with Becky while she wrote down and signed her confession. She refused to name her accomplices, even though the district attorney that Chief McTavish called in offered her a reduced sentence in exchange for testifying against them. Becky said she’d rather plead guilty in court, explain the circumstances to a judge, and take the sentence he or she felt was fair.
Even without her naming names, we had what we needed.
When Chief McTavish took Becky’s confession to Julia, Julia admitted to killing Penny’s husband, crying the whole way through. She’d forced him to go into the living room and write his confession, assuring him that, if he wrote it all out so that they could take it to the police and have him charged with assault, she’d let him live. She’d never intended to let him live. Their other accomplice told her she’d need to put his hand on the gun before pulling the trigger so he’d have GSR on his hand, but she was too afraid he’d be able to overpower her and take the gun.
Julia also refused to name the third accomplice, the one who helped Becky dispose of Vilsack’s body.
My mom and I waited in Chief McTavish’s office while he talked to Penny.
The look on his face when he came back told me without him having to say anything that she hadn’t confessed the way the other two had. “She said we don’t have anything on her, and she’ll argue her case in court.”
The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that she was the mastermind behind it all. All those years as a police officer’s wife had taught her enough about the legal system to know how to throw doubt into the case. Plus, she’d made sure she wasn’t the one committing the actual act. That almost guaranteed her a lighter sentence than either Becky or Julia.
But it was in the hands of the court now.
My mom slung her purse over her shoulder, said goodbye to Chief McTavish, and motioned that it was time for us to leave.
We walked in silence most of the way to the car. As she was unlocking her doors, my mom glanced back at the station. “With a good enough lawyer, she’ll walk free.”
My smile felt rusty at the edges, but it still worked. That was a small miracle in itself. The PTSD group probably didn’t encourage their members to face their attackers the way I’d once thought, but maybe it wasn’t such a terrible idea after all. Or, at least, maybe the principle of facing up to your hurts and fears until you ruled them rather than the other way around wasn’t such a bad idea. I didn’t have the same tumor growing in my stomach as I walked away from this case as I’d had in the past. “I guess it’s a good thing she probably doesn’t have the money to pay your fees, then.”
My mom grinned the most genuine smile I’d ever seen her give. “Indeed.”
22
The discomfort on my mom’s face as Mrs. Cavanaugh hugged her goodbye was almost comical. And I’d swear Mark’s mom knew exactly what she was doing. Based on the stories I’d already heard from her, she’d been an imp in her youth. In her youth, she was always careful to clarify, but I suspected that wasn’t something you completely outgrew.
Mark wished her goodbye, minus the hug, and then he and Mrs. Cavanaugh backed off to give my mom and me room.
“Give us some warning before you come down,” my mom said. “We’ll make sure we schedule in time for a couple meals.”
To most people, “a couple meals” might sound like my parents didn’t care, but I saw it for the peace offering that it was. My parents didn’t normally make guaranteed time for anyone who wasn’t a paying client. It was time I started accepting them for who they were rather than who I wished they were—it’s what I wanted from them, after all.
“It’ll be sometime in the next few weeks, but I’ll let you know when we book our flights.” There was still one thing I needed to know from my mom before she left, though. “Did you have something to do with Mark’s job offer in DC?”
Anyone else might have looked at least a little sheepish. My mom’s smile had canary feathers poking out the corners. Remorse, according to my parents, was a useless emotion. When you did anything, you should be confident and not look back.
“I brought him to their attention,” she said, “but Mark’s credentials got him the offer.”
I could believe that. Mark might be a medical examiner in a small county in Michigan now, but he still corresponded with researchers across the country who wanted his insights into the forensic pathology techniques they were developing. What he lacked in social skills, he made up for in scientific acumen.
But my problem wasn’t that I worried my mom had pulled strings to get Mark the job. I knew he deserved it on his merits alone.
My concern was why she’d brought him to their attention at all. Because I was afraid of what it said about my future relationship with my parents if we chose not to go. If I stayed here and gave up the law entirely and made maple syrup for the rest of my life. I was finally tired of pretending like my heart wasn’t crushed underneath the elephant that none of us ever wanted to discuss.
I ran a hand over my neck, trying to loosen whatever was making it hard for me to swallow. “It feels like the only way you and dad will ever be proud of me is if I come back to DC and become someone I’m not.”
My mom stepped backward. “What makes you think we aren’t already proud of you?”
The list was so long that it wouldn’t fit past my vocal cords and out my mouth. I stared at her with an expression that I knew showed utter disbelief. I didn’t even care if she found it disrespectful.
My mom slowly shook her head. “You’re not hard on the people who have no potential. You’re hard on the ones who do because you know what they can achieve. We were only ever trying to help you be everything we knew you could be. You’re smart enough to have figured that out.”
