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He smiles at me. It’s short and doesn’t totally reach his eyes, but it’s there.
“They’re too young to really understand what’s going on. Hell, they might feel some of their mother’s absence, and maybe Jim’s, but they don’t really understand.”
I nod along. Focusing on the boys again is what I need, it helps put everything back in order in my brain.
“And it will probably be a long time before they do,” I agree. “This is not your fault, Tucker. This is how things are, and you’re doing pretty well considering.”
“Thank you.”
There’s a lot left unspoken, but the emotion in those two words translates well enough. Then he clears his throat and I know he’s going to bring it all back . . .
“So if you don’t really have any close friends, and I don’t really have any close friends besides Eli, then maybe we can be friends?”
The open hope in his eyes should be illegal.
Seriously, can this man make any emotion adorable?
He clearly misinterprets my silence for rejection and starts overexplaining.
“I mean if you—when you need to—I just mean if you want to talk about anything with me, you can. If you want. With me. If that wasn’t clear.”
I chuckle, but he’s on a roll and maybe he doesn’t even notice.
“I know I’m technically your boss, but honestly, in my head it’s kind of the other way around. I definitely don’t want you to think of me as your boss.” He winces as if that’s truly an unpleasant thought. “I’d like it if we can be more informal, maybe . . .”
“Like friends,” I surmise, still unable to wipe the stupid smile off my face.
What has he done to me?
“Yes. Friends.”
And faced with a hurried nod, wide, earnest eyes, and a hopeful smile, how the fuck can I say no?
13
TUCKER
June 13th
“So you never saw your father abuse any of his ex-wives or Amanda Barclay?”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupt the DA, and hold up my palm because I can’t keep listening to him. “You went to law school, didn’t you? All of you?” I look around the conference room at all the damn lawyers sitting across the table from Baron, Beatrice, and me. “And I’m guessing you had to pass the New York Bar to work here. You’ve probably spent a good two decades reading and studying, and encouraging your brains to function, so how come I’m the only one here who knows the definition of abuse?”
“Mr. Barclay, we—”
“No,” I interrupt the assistant DA this time, and hold up a hand.
I know I need to chill, I know I’m supposed to be helping them, but goddammit, their plan to crumble Amanda’s self-defense story has to be better than . . . whatever this is.
“Amanda was an absentee parent to my brothers, maybe even cruelly dismissive at times. Jim was the same, but historically, Jim only started with his psychological warfare tricks on us when we got to about eight years old. I know he did with me, and with my sisters. If he lived for another five years, I was prepared to do anything and everything in my power to get my brothers away from him and his personalized course on how to be a sexist asshole fuckface. But Amanda killed him, so I don’t have to worry about Maddox and Mason growing up under his thumb. All of this doesn’t mean that what Jim did to everyone around him wasn’t abuse.
“He threatened all of us with the loss of our trust funds, with homelessness before we were adults, with paying for smear campaigns against us in the media, and tried to pay off anyone we got close to—sometimes he even succeeded—but that meant we barely had any real friends growing up and barely have any friends now. I already told you he used physical violence only once and only with me. At least as far as I or my sisters know. But that does not mean he wasn’t an abusive piece of shit.”
The silence is very telling after that.
They don’t want me to say any of this when the trial starts. They think . . .
“If you can’t put away a woman claiming self-defense, when she killed Jim with a knife in his back, and she didn’t have any injuries or bruises at all when she was processed, after being found at the scene of the crime with the murder weapon having her prints on it—you know, the facts—then I can’t fucking help you.”
