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“Yeah. I’m on my way there now.”
“Okay. I’ll call you later.”
We say our goodbyes and hang up, and I restart the GPS directions to the prison.
When I get there, I sit in the car for a few minutes until I’m sure I have my shit together. I still kind of feel like crying, but it’s Christmas, for fuck’s sake. My mom needs some happiness and normalcy today, not to spend our entire visit comforting her distraught daughter.
But when I walk inside the visitation room with the series of glass partitions, I realize I’m not the one who needs comforting.
My mom is.
She’s a wreck.
I practically hurl myself into the chair in front of her, fumbling with the phone in my haste to grab it.
“Mom? What’s going on? Are you okay? What happened?”
Her face is streaked with tears, and she reaches up to brush them away roughly as she picks up the phone on her side of the glass. “It’s—it’s fine, sweet—”
She can’t even finish the words. She breaks off, pressing her lips together and shaking her head.
“Mom. What?”
Her soft brown eyes well with tears again as she looks at me. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. I don’t think he has any idea.”
“Who?”
“Scott Parsons. You were right. I shouldn’t have switched to the public defender. But I couldn’t afford to keep Leda on, and I thought…” She makes a noise in the back of her throat. “I thought it was enough that I was innocent. It’s not, Low. It won’t be.”
Oh, God.
My heart shatters in my chest as my mom—the most optimistic, trusting, pure-hearted person I know—shakes her head, her expression hardening.
She lasted months. Months before her hope broke.
And I don’t have any of my own to give her.
Our visit is quiet, filled with muffled words and long silences. It’s as comforting as it always is to be near her, but that doesn’t stave off the black cloud of despair that hovers over us.
When I finally stand up to leave and press my hand against the glass, she holds hers there for several beats longer than usual. It feels like a real goodbye somehow, a forever goodbye, and I hate that.
“I love you, Mom.”
“Love you more, Low.”
The world blurs in my vision as I make my way back out to the parking lot. The falling snow isn’t heavy, but it’s persistent, and it’s left a thin dusting on River’s car. I brush it off, then plop into the front seat, shivering and crying.
No.
No, goddammit. This isn’t fair.
My mom is innocent, and I’m not gonna let her be tried and convicted while I search for the real murderer. There has to be some way to defend her without revealing what the guys and I know.
Fuck Scott Parsons. If he won’t help my mom, I will.
I pull my phone out of my bag, but instead of pulling up the directions back to River’s house, I scroll through my previous calls. When I find the number I want, I press the little icon to dial the number.
It rings a few times, and I drum my fingers on the steering wheel, staring out through the windshield.
