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I tipped her chin back up and met her stormy gaze. “That’s not going to happen, pet.”
“How can you be so sure?” she argued. “If you believe what the church tells you, then you have to believe we’ve committed the ultimate sin.”
“That’s an ancient way of thinking, and it doesn’t apply to you,” I assured her. “If anyone is in hell, it’s Ricky. What happened that day was not your fault, and it wasn’t Birdie’s either. Someday, I hope you will come to understand and accept that.”
“Can you ever accept that what happened with Dawson wasn’t your fault?”
My fingers fell away from her, and a dark cloud descended over us. She was within her rights to say it, but it didn’t mean I liked it. “Let’s change the subject,” I said. “And save that conversation for another day.”
She was quiet for a pause before she acknowledged what I’d said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I know.” Our hands came together in the water. “It’s just a subject that’s better left for another time.”
She nodded and stared off into the distance again. “How did you become a lawyer with a criminal record?”
“It wasn’t easy,” I told her. “After the news picked up the story of Dawson, some of the media outlets began to cast doubt on Nessie’s previous accusations against me. I wasn’t in any state of mind to care if my circumstances changed or not, but those stories were how Nolan found me.”
I felt her eyes on me, studying my face. “He helped you?”
“He saved me,” I said. “If he hadn’t come along, I honestly don’t know where I’d be right now. But he was the only one who had ever really believed in me, and he went to bat for me. He was able to prove that the cell phone records used to convict me weren’t reliable evidence, considering Nessie’s phone had pinged off the same towers. But that wasn’t enough to convince a judge, so he took it a step further by visiting my ex in prison. At that point, she knew she was facing life anyway, and he managed to get a full confession of what she’d done with one caveat.”
“What was it?” Gypsy asked.
“She wanted to see me.” I shook my head in disgust. “That was it. That was all she cared about. She wanted to see me one last time.”
“Did you go?”
“I’m a man of my word,” I said. “As soon as I was released, I went to visit her. And I’m not going to lie; if there hadn’t been plate glass between us, I might have murdered her.”
Gypsy nodded, no judgment in her eyes as she tangled her fingers in mine. “She would have deserved it.”
I didn’t want to discuss that anymore or give her any more minutes of my life, so I moved on. “Legally, I was exonerated, but there were still issues. It wasn’t easy to get my license. I had to pass a character exam, and there were questions. I had to go into details I didn’t want to. But in the end, they determined I was of reasonable character.”
She rested her chin on the edge of the pool and peeked up at me beneath her long dark lashes. “And you’ve been saving lost souls ever since.”
“It didn’t really start out that way,” I admitted. “At first, it took me some time to figure out what my path was. I took on a few cases that I probably shouldn’t have, but it was a learning experience for me. Nolan was my mentor, and with his help, we found a happy medium. I worked for him in the beginning, and he helped me get established until he retired. Then I moved to another firm, and Nolan and I started a foundation for wrongful convictions.”
Gypsy reached up and toyed with a loose strand of my hair. “Do you always believe in the innocence of the cases you take on?”
I stared out over the water, watching the waves ripple back and forth as I tried to find a way to explain it. I never had to justify myself to anyone before, but I wanted her to understand. “It isn’t always that black and white. Some of my clients might not be innocent in the eyes of the law, but morally, I can relate to the crimes they’ve committed in the name of justice. It doesn’t mean I condone what they’ve done, but I can understand it, and I want to help them.”
“Like, for example, someone who kills a child molester,” Gypsy ventured.
She was referring to Ricky, testing the water to see how I felt about the circumstances. Even though she hadn’t committed the crime, she’d taken on the moral responsibility of it.
I met her gaze. “If it had been you, it wouldn’t change anything for me.”
