AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Everybody knows I’m Rob’s friend. The DA wouldn’t call me, right?”
Somehow the possibility of being called seems to frighten my sister.
“Just putting it out there.”
She stares at me. “Wait,” she says. “Areyouthinking of calling me?”
“Only if you were with him.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I wasn’t?”
“Were you with Chris?”
Her husband. The principal.
“He was in Maine visiting his parents that week,” she says. “I was home alone the whole night, doing a binge-watch ofSuccession,as I recall.”
“People often make lies more elaborate than they need to.”
“So you’re flat-out calling me a liar now,” she says.
“I’m trying to keep the friend you begged me to represent out of a life sentence.”
“By trying to get your sister with cancer to admit to something she didn’t do.”
“Ah,” I say. “The cancer card.”
“Frankly didn’t think I’d need it for lunch with my sister,” Brigid says.
I lean forward, lowering my voice, so I’m not on social media in the next few minutes if somebody here has recognized me.
“For the last time,” I say. “Were…you…with…him that night?”
“Am I under oath here? Should I find myself a good lawyer?”
I try to swallow a sigh but fail. Doesn’t matter. Brigid has always seized on any change of expression with me, on the tone of my voice, even the slightest eye roll.
“Sorry I’m such a burden to you,” she says.
“I am trying to help you.”
“Really.”
I wait.
“You know I understand him better than his wife ever could, right?”
“Well, then you also need to understand he—and I—can use all the help we can get right now.”
She stares at me, through what becomes an awkwardly long silence. Maybe buying herself more time. So now it’s exactly the way it was between us when we were teenagers, and I’d press her for intel on one of her dates and could see her trying to decide how much to tell me.
“I don’t want to be a part of this,” she says, staring off.
And with that, she starts to cry.
She cries silently, tears running down her cheeks, making no effort to wipe them away. The waiter has started for our table, ready to clear our plates. He stops, turns, heads back inside.
“You have no idea what I’m going through.”
