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“If you didn’t go to rehab, then you didn’t get clean. So when you came home to find out your father was going to cut you out of the will as your step mother had asked him to do, were you not upset?”
“Yes,” she said with tears in her eyes. “But he never thought about it, until she put it in his head.”
“Three weeks later, you found out that your father had been murdered, isn’t that right?”
She opened her mouth and then shut again.
“I have no further questions for this witness.”
“YES!” I jumped up and down on his couch. When I heard my phone ring I answer it immediately. “Bomb goes the dynamite! Did you see that? Genius! Pure genius!”
“THEA!”
I stopped finally looking at the ID of the caller on the phone’s screen—.“Selene? Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”
“I figured. I’m sorry to bother you, I can call you back later—”
“No, no. It’s okay, I’m good, I just got a little worked up over a case.”
“Grams, said that another one of dad’s appeals failed today. So I thought I'd write my first letter to him today, and I wanted you to read it. I know you’ve been writing to him since you found out, and I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t care or that we aren’t paying attention to what’s happening to him.”
And just like that, my excitement was gone and I crumbled back onto the couch. I didn’t even know one of his appeals failed today. Usually the “lawyer”, if I could call him that, spoke to me.
“He won’t write back,” I said to her. “I know he gets them, he just never writes back. Don’t read anything about him on the internet, okay? If you have questions, call me.”
There was nothing but hate on the internet when it came to him. Once you dove in, it became a black hole that shredded you on the way out.
“I know. I just want him to have something of mine. Can you read it over for me?”
I didn’t want to.
“Sure.”
LEVI
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find when I got back to my place. Half of me figured she would have run home, and the other half of me hoped that she was still in my bed, curled up and naked. However, it was neither of those things.
My living room had been converted into a small office, with files and photos all over the coffee table. She sat with her cat in her lap, and headphones on, flipping through pages upon pages, and highlighting large blocks of text. It reminded me of the night I walked into the conference room to find her still working.
Dropping my things onto the couch, I came up behind her, kissing her neck before taking off her headphones. “I thought I told you to relax. I honestly don’t need that much help with the case anymore.”
“It’s not your case, it’s mine,” she whispered, looking back up at me. “Well really, it’s my dad’s case.”
I looked around the room at all the boxes stacked around her.
“Did you collect all of this?”
“There wasn’t that much to his trial, so I basically started from the bare bones. If I see anything, I send it over to his lawyer, but that’s only happened twice. It was useless. I’m sorry about the mess. I promise I’ll get it cleaned up before I leave. I just couldn’t be at my house right now.”
Jesus.
Sitting down next to her, I pulled off my tie. “It’s fine, really. I have space, but I’m just confused, why are you looking at this now?”
“My sister called me today, to tell me his appeal fell through again, and that she’d written him a letter,” she said, as she handed me her phone to read the hand written note her sister had scanned and emailed to her.
Dear Father, Mr. Walton, Ben, Dad,
I’m just going to skip the introduction. I’ve written it so many times that I’m almost out of paper. I don’t know if you remember me, I’m Selene, your other daughter. I wish I remembered you, because from what Thea can recall, you were pretty cool. She’s becoming a lawyer to get you out herself, and believe me, if there is anyone in the world that can do it, it’s Thea. She’s like a mule; once she puts her foot down, she isn’t moving until the jobs done. Believe me, I know this because she’s basically raised me all my life. So what I’m trying to say is, we got your back, and I hope that you’re doing okay… as okay as you can be at least, given the circumstances. I can’t really do anything but cheer Thea on right now, but just know that we haven’t forgotten about you, so just keep holding on for us.
