Chance rolled the jar around in his hand, inspecting the glass as well as the label. He swiped the dust off the top against his shirt. “We’re good.” He sat the jar aside. “What else can I do?”
“Grab a plate.” She gestured to the plate rack above the sink. “Grab two, actually.”
When the plates were on the counter, Rory slid the first sandwich onto one, then quickly added more butter to the skillet and prepped the next one. Chance opened the pickle jar and added slices to each plate.
With the second sandwich done and the stove turned off, Rory sliced the two diagonally across the middle the way her aunt had always done. “We are ready,” she announced.
Chance was at the fridge. He held up bottles of water. “You good with water?”
“Absolutely.”
They settled at the table and focused on their sandwiches for a while. There was a lot they needed to talk about, but eating took priority. Plus, it was good to have a few minutes to consider the events of the morning before starting the discussion about what they meant. Rory was still struggling to gain her footing after the encounter with Eudora Harris. The idea that she was the mother of the man Rory had loved with all her heart was not only painful but disappointing. How could she have had so little confidence in her son? Pete was a good, intelligent man. He wouldn’t have been fooled by anyone.
But the ugly events of last night and this morning were precisely why when she first learned the news that a technicality might well give her a second chance at corroborating her innocence, she hadn’t been as excited about it as she should have been. She had really doubted that it would ever happen. Pete’s parents would see to it that she never had an opportunity for leaving that prison. After all, the find wasn’t that big or even particularly important, as best she could determine. A technician at the lab where all the evidence had been sent had gotten in touch with her attorney’s clerk and admitted that a single piece of evidence tested had not made its way into court. The DA’s office had claimed the evidence was irrelevant. An anomaly that was insufficient to change the course of the trial. And maybe it was—unaccounted-for fibers could be nothing, but they were on her body and on Pete’s, and that tiny, minute bit of fibers had not been found anywhere at the crime scene or in their shared home or in either of their vehicles. It truly was an anomaly that presented the opportunity to suggest someone else had been at the scene. That someone other than her had committed murder.
The DA had insisted it was insufficient to suggest someone else was the murderer.
By the same token, so was the evidence that she had committed murder. There really was no direct physical evidence beyond her presence at the scene and her prints on the murder weapon.
Okay, so maybe her prints being on the murder weapon was stronger.
Weeks after this revelation, the news came that she was being released. Even then she had decided it had to be a mistake. That someone would stop the process before she could get outside the walls of that awful place. Each night she would go to sleepconvinced that the next day she would be told it was all an error…a misunderstanding.
It wasn’t until she was outside the gate that she acknowledged it was actually happening. It was real.
She finished her sandwich and wiped her hands on the paper towel in her lap. She wanted to ask so many things but wasn’t sure how to begin. Instead, she reached for her water and sipped it until Chance kicked off the discussion. He had finished his sandwich and was looking at something on his cell phone. She had no idea if it was about her case or a text from his girlfriend or wife. She realized then that other than his professional credentials, she really knew nothing about him.
Except that he was kind. Patient. Caring. And good at this job.
He looked up as if she’d said the words aloud. “You made the headlines of the local paper.” He turned the screen around for her to see.
There was her face all right—a photo from her days as a teacher—on the screen beneath the headline,The Murder Bride Is Back for Round Two. Nothing she hadn’t expected. “Oh yay.”
He smiled. “It sells papers.” He glanced at the screen once more. “Nice pic.”
She scoffed. “I’m just glad they didn’t use one from my wedding the way they did last time.” She shuddered. It had felt like a stab to her heart to see the photo of her and Pete from that beautiful day turned into something so malicious as the story of how it appeared she had murdered him in cold blood.
Chance laid his phone aside. “Tell me about Shane Carter.”
Rory thought about this for a moment. “He grew up here, and so did I. He was related to Pete, so of course I knew who he was. I think I saw him at one of their family reunions once.” She frowned. “Wait, no. It was a birthday party for Anthony, Pete’s father. Anyway, Shane was always nice to me.”
“So you don’t reallyknowhim,” Chance suggested. “You’re not familiar with his friends, his love life or anything actually personal.”
She nodded. “That’s right. I have no idea who his other friends are or were. I honestly don’t recall ever seeing him with anyone I assumed to be a girlfriend. I had no idea he’d applied for a position with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department.” She made a face. “I guess I really don’t know him much at all. But I do recall that at that birthday party, he stayed on the fringes.” She shrugged. “Like he wasn’t really part of things. At the time I felt a sort of kinship with him. Like we were both outsiders…not really part of the family.”
“He comes off as a nice guy,” Chance suggested. He picked up his water bottle, downed a sip. “Concerned. Helpful. But very nonspecific about it all.”
She nodded, seeing his point immediately. “He didn’t really tell us anything, just alluded tothings.”
Chance braced his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “I got the feeling he knows more than he’s sharing. Maybe it’s the job stopping him from saying more, maybe it’s the family, but something or someone is holding him back.”
Anticipation fired in Rory’s veins. They so desperately needed some discovery to help in moving forward with their investigation. “He might actually know what evidence was overlooked but is afraid to share it since the family would disown him and his job might come into question.”
“He was just starting with the sheriff’s department when Pete was murdered.”
Rory nodded. “He didn’t want to make waves—he said as much. It was either help me or hang on to the job.” Wow, now that she said the words out loud, it was disheartening to realize that her life was not as important as someone’s job—someone who was supposed to be a friend. Pete’s own cousin.
“Then again,” Chance said, “he probably recognized given the power and influence of the Harris family that he would be fighting an uphill battle. Whatever he did or said might not have changed anything other than his job offer.”
