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“If they want to talk to you again. We get you a lawyer.”
“I don’t care about me…” Bubba said, and looked up the hallway. “How is she?”
“She’s Frankie,” I told him. “She endures.” That was the worst part of all of it. The pain in her eyes and the fact that she put on a brave face for us. But I’d heard her crying. We all had. Jake looked like he wanted to take the door down, but Coop kept a hand on his shoulder.
How the fuck did he stay so calm?
I hated him.
I envied him.
Nauseated, I leaned forward and dropped my head. Elbows on my knees, I tried to suck in a deep breath. I was not going to puke. They’d offered me something for this earlier.
I refused.
If Frankie had to endure this, then I could. I didn’t want to forget one miserable second.
A hand settled against my back. “Easy, man, what can I get you?”
“Can you get me that twenty minutes back for her? So one of us is at the bathroom when she comes out?” So that asshole never put a finger on her.
“I wish.”
Yeah. Me too.
We sat there for a while, and when Jake came back, he looked like hell. The rage in him seemed to shimmer in the air around him like heat rising off the pavement. “They want to talk to you, Arch.”
“I don’t fucking care.”
I didn’t.
“Be faster if you talk to them. Sooner we get this done, maybe the sooner we get out of here.”
Take Frankie home. Try to make this better somehow.
“Fine.”
Bubba gave me a pat on the shoulder as I stood.
“You need to eat,” Jake told me, and I just stared at him.
“Can you eat?”
He shook his head.
“Me neither.”
The next hour blurred, but I answered the cops’ questions. They were pretty basic. Who was I? What had I noticed? When had I drunk the water? Did I see how Frankie got it? When did we notice she was missing? Were we aware of some long-standing problem with Mitch?
On and on.
After, it was Coop’s turn, and I took his place outside her hospital room. It seemed like the doctors and cops had been in there forever. But she wasn’t alone, the advocate was with her.
Still, by the time they cleared out, it was mid-afternoon and someone had to think about getting back to feeding her cats. Bubba volunteered. He hadn’t gone anywhere near her room. Instead, he’d been the one running to get drinks, talking to the cops, or just sitting down the hall. Waiting.
He wanted to be there, but he wouldn’t go.
Coop gave him the keys. Bubba said he’d bring food back, then he left.
