“I heard she pulled old Charleston coverage,” she said. “Some of the same outlets.”
There it was. The knot between her past and this town’s present.
“I know,” Reid said.
He didn’t look away from the window.
“They called my office this morning asking for comment on ‘patterns of prosecutorial discretion in cases involving missing women.’”
Eleanor’s laugh was soft and humorless.
“Catchy.”
“They mentioned you by name,” he added.
Her shoulders went still.
“Of course they did.”
“They wanted to know if having you here as defense ‘complicated the optics of accountability.’”
Eleanor took another sip of wine to keep from swearing.
“Did you enlighten them on the radical notion that I’m allowed to live in more than one city?”
“I told them Charleston’s history doesn’t get to write Sylva’s future,” he said. “And that my office doesn’t make charging decisions based on what plays well in a podcast.”
She huffed out a breath.
“Careful,” she said. “If you keep saying reasonable things, they’ll accuse you of having something to hide.”
He glanced at her then, eyes steady.
“I’m not hiding,” he said. “And neither are you.”
She held his gaze a beat longer than she meant to.
“Some days,” she admitted, “it feels like I’m still outrunning someone else’s narrative.”
Reid’s hand brushed against hers on the couch, a small, grounding contact.
“Then we outrun it together,” he said. “Or we let it catch up and prove it wrong. But we don’t let it make our decisions for us.”
Silence settled between them—heavy, but not suffocating.
Outside, a car drove slowly around the square. Headlights swept across the second-floor windows, then passed.
Eleanor set her glass down.
“You really think reopening Caroline Simms is a good idea?” she asked.
“I think not reopening it would be worse,” he said. “For her family. For Burke. For this place. For both of us.”
“For us?” she asked.
He looked at her. “If this town decides the DA and the woman from Charleston close ranks whenever things get messy…” He shrugged one shoulder. “Doesn’t matter if it’s true. It’ll feel true.”
She considered that.
