Page 80 of American Love Story

“Easton—”

She began, but I held up my hand, not wanting to hear her once again explain why my being the next DA would be the salvation of the entire town. “Cindy, I need to do whatever isbest for me, as well as for this office. I will not be the DA so that you can continue to run things by proxy.” I ran my hands over my face in frustration when I saw how hurt she seemed by my words. I ran my tongue over my front teeth a few times, trying hard to say what I needed to say in a way that didn’t break her heart.

“I need to do this my way. You put me in a terrible position by announcing my candidacy alongside the Suarez conviction.”

She sighed, crossing her arms across her chest. “Lorraine is pissed with me, too.”

“Of course, she is,” I protested, unable to muster any humor.

“I just wanted to give you a push. I know how much this town needs you. I was a decent DA, but I’m not even half the trial lawyer you are.”

“Cindy, being DA is about a lot more than trials.”

She nodded as she tightened an arm around my waist. “You’re good with people and I think you have the political courage to do a few things I could not. You’d be an outstanding DA.”

I shook my head and lifted my wrist to look at the time. “I need to be in the conference room for this interview, why don’t you walk me down?”

As we made our way down the stairs, I stopped so I could look at Cindy. “It’s not that I don’t want it, but I need to be in control of my path. If I wanted to be in an environment where someone else held the reins of my life, I would’ve gone to work for my father.”

The color rising on her cheeks told me she’d finally understood just how much she’d fucked up with me. “Don’t worry, I still like you a lot better than him.”

She scoffed. “Glad to hear I still make it above that extremely low bar.” She frowned as we made our way down the stairs again. “No matter what you do, I’ll support you.”

I smiled at her as we got to the conference room. “It’s killing you not to be able to try and talk me into it again?”

She pinched my cheek. “You think you’re cute.”

“Not cute enough to keep a boyfriend though.”

She waved her hand around as if I was talking nonsense. “You’re a keeper. Never ever doubt that. Let’s hope the stunner gets his head out of his ass and does right by you.” She clicked her tongue regretfully, and for a second, it felt like it usually was between us. “There’s just been a lot letting you down going around.”

I shook my head as she straightened my tie. “You didn’t?—”

“Yeah I did. I let you down, and we’ll need to figure out how to come back from it. Now, go.”

This time, I did give her a hug and hoped that we could. I walked into the conference room and quickly went to shake hands with the two journalists from theIthaca Star. I’d done enough of these to know the drill, so within seconds, the camera was rolling and a very young-looking Latinx woman was getting on with the interview.

“Thank you for sitting with us today, ADA Archer.”

I nodded and gave her the full, veneer smile. “My pleasure. Easton, please.”

She gave me a short nod and raised an eyebrow like she was not planning to pull any punches. “You’ve had an eventful couple of weeks. The jury voted to convict in the assault case of Ms. Suarez, and on that same day, your intention to run for district attorney was announced.” She said it in a tone I couldn’t figure out, but whatever it was, there was a lot of sarcasm there.

I nodded in response to her comment, as she launched into the next part of her question. “You’ve been operating as the interim DA now for a few months and know how things work. Can you tell me why you think you should be the next District Attorney?”

I shifted in the chair I was sitting in and angled my head, figuring out how to get out what I needed to say.

“Before I tell you about all the ways that I have been a great ADA, I want to talk about ways in which I need to do much better.”

She leaned in closer at my answer, her eyes trained on my face, as if not wanting to miss a single word of whatever was about to come out of my mouth.

“In the past couple of months, a concerning trend of incidents have been occurring in our county. Young men of color, especially black men, have been the subject of an unusually high number of traffic stops. Most of those have gone on without incident, but a couple of weeks ago, a young man who was stopped with two other friends was hospitalized.”

I shook my head, still so shaken by the facts around that incident. “Even though that young man was in the middle of a severe asthma attack triggered by the stress of being stopped, he was too scared to reach into his pocket and get his inhaler.” She nodded at my words in encouragement, and I obliged, feeling like it was finally time to be honest.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to be so scared you’d rather risk losing consciousness than make a sudden movement and risk getting shot. And what that tells me is that no matter what we may think about the intentions of our law enforcement, we need to face the fact that we are not immune to what has been going on around our county. If we can’t take a moment to be honest with ourselves and the biases that exist within our institutions, then we are failing the public we are supposed to be serving.”

I shifted again in my seat and tried to focus on something on the far side of the wall so I could say what I needed to say. “When I say “we” I want to be clear, I very much mean me. I should’ve been more vocal when the stops began to happen more frequently. I should’ve challenged myself and my colleagues tofind a way to publicly talk about why they were happening. To deal with the reality that these stops don’t feel routine to the black and brown young men; they feel like life-or-death situations. That for certain communities in our county, contact with the criminal justice system feels dangerous and at times like the opposite of justice. We have to be courageous enough to say we’ve failed our community.”