“She tied this case to that one,” Eleanor said. “She made me the story again. She made Reid part of it. Cameras outside the courthouse before the ruling had even settled. They’re already asking whether I manipulated the witness. Whether the State knew. Whether Charleston proved I was capable of?—”
Her voice thinned.
Her mother finished it for her, quiet and cutting.
“Of whatever version of you makes the cleanest spectacle.”
Eleanor looked at her.
“Yes.”
Her father leaned forward, forearms on his knees.
“And Reid?”
There it was.
Always there now.
Eleanor looked toward the dark window.
“He did the right thing,” she said. “He didn’t fight the dismissal.
Her mother tilted her head. “That is not what your father asked.”
Despite herself, Eleanor smiled.
No one in the world could dismantle an evasive sentence faster than her mother.
“He did the right thing,” Eleanor said again, quieter. “I don’t know what happens now.”
“That,” her mother said, “isn’t true either.”
Eleanor looked up.
“You know exactly what happens now. You panic, decide his life will be easier without you in it, and start calling that sacrifice.”
The words landed.
Eleanor could only stare at her.
Her father, unhelpfully, nodded once. “That sounds about right.”
“I drove four hours for comfort,” Eleanor said. “This feels suspiciously like an intervention.”
“Oh, it can be both,” her mother said.
That won a small laugh.
Then it faded.
Her eyes burned.
“I am trying,” she said, and now there was no point pretending she meant only the case. “I am trying not to ruin another good thing. But I cannot go through this again. I cannot be the reason someone I…” She stopped.
Her mother waited.
Her father waited.
