"They came to me because I had been to their school during career week. I had talked about justice, about doing the right thing and fighting for the truth." Her mouth twisted at the irony. "The poor little things believed me. I believed myself."
She could still see them, all those little faces staring up at her from the floor of the gymnasium, their eyes round as they absorbed her sermon on the pride and nobility of working to see justice served. She could still feel that sense of pride and self-righteousness and naivete. She had still believed then that right would always win out if one worked hard enough, believed strongly enough, fought with a pure heart.
"Nobody wanted me to touch their story. The adults they were accusing were above reproach. A teacher, a dentist, a member of the Methodist church council. Fine, upstanding citizens-who just happened to be pedophiles," she said bitterly.
"What made you believe them?"
How could she explain? How could she describe the sense of empathy? She knew what it was to hold a terrible secret inside, because she had held one of her own. She knew what courage it took to let the secret out, because she had never been able to muster it.
The guilt twisted like a knife inside her, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. She had never found the strength to brave her mother's unpredictable temperament or risk her mother's love.
"Don't tell Mama, Laurel. She won't believe you. She'll hate you for telling. She'll have one of her spells, and it will be all your fault."
If she hadn't been such a coward, if she had done the right thing, the brave thing…
A picture of Savannah swam before her eyes, rumpled, seductive, playing the harlot with a tragic sense of reckless desperation underlying her sexuality.
She pushed to her feet and walked down to the edge of the water, wanting to escape not only Jack and his questions, but her past, herself. He followed her. She could sense him behind her, feel his dark gaze on her back.
"Why did you believe them, Laurel?"
"Because they needed me. They needed justice. It was my job."
The denial of her own feelings built a sense of pressure in her chest that grew and grew, like an inflating balloon. It crowded against her lungs, squeezed her heart, closed off her throat, pushed hard on the backs of her eyes. She had crushed it out before, time and again. She had railed at Dr. Pritchard for trying to make her let it out.
"I wasn't atoning for anything. I had a job to do, and I did it. My childhood had nothing to do with it."
He just gave her that long, patient look that held both pity and disappointment. And she wanted to pick up one of the fat psychology books from his desk and hit him in the face with it.
"I didn't come here to talk about ancient history. I want help for what's happening now."
"Don't you see, Laurel? The past is what this is all about. You wouldn't be where you are today if not for where you started and what went on there."
"I'm not trying to atone for anything!"
She tried to suck in a breath, but her lungs couldn't expand to accommodate the humid air. The pressure was so great, she wondered wildly if she would simply explode.
Control. She needed control.
Ruthlessly, she tried to push aside the other thoughts and concentrate on simply relating the facts in a way that would satisfy Jack and keep her emotional involvement to a minimum.
"We worked day and night to build a case. There was evidence, but none of it could be tied directly to the accused. And the whole time, they were soliciting sympathy in the community, claiming to be the victims of a witch hunt, claiming that I was trying to climb on their backs to the state attorney general's office." Her hands balled into tight fists at her sides as she tried to leash the fury building inside her. Her whole body trembled with the power of it. "God, they were so slick, so clever, so smug!"
So evil.
You believe in evil, don't you, Laurel?
She clenched her teeth against the need to scream.
… and good must triumph over evil…
"All we really had was the testimony of the children."
She snatched half a breath, feeling as if her lungs would burst.
"Children aren't considered reliable witnesses."
Don't bother telling, Laurel. No one will believe you.
"Parker-the state AG-" She was gasping now, as if she had run too far too fast. A fine sheen of sweat coated her skin, sticky and cold. "He took the case away from me-It-was politically explosive-He said I-I-couldn't handle it-"
Jack stepped closer, his heart pounding with hers, for her. He could feel the tension, brittle in the air around her, snapping with electricity. He reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder, and she jolted as if he had given her a shock.
"You did the best you could," he said softly.
"I lost," she whispered, the words lashing out of her like the crack of a whip, the anguish almost palpable. Shaking violently, she raised her fists and pressed them hard against her temples. "They were guilty."
"You did your best."
"It wasn't good enough!" she screamed.
The ducks departed in a flurry of wings and splashing water. Egrets and herons that had been wading in the shallows for fish took flight and wheeled over the bayou, squawking angrily at the disturbance. Laurel twisted away from Jack's touch and ran along the bank, stumbling, sobbing, frantic to escape but with nowhere to run. She fell to her knees in the sandy dirt and curled over into a tight ball of misery, dry, wrenching sobs tearing at her throat.
For a moment Jack stood there, stunned by the depth of her pain, frightened by it. Instinct warned him off, like an animal scenting fire. He didn't want to get too close to it, didn't want to risk touching it, but an instant after that thought had passed through his head, he was kneeling beside her, stroking a hand over the back of her head.
"Darlin', don't cry so," he murmured, his voice a hoarse rasp. "You did your job. You did what you could. Some cases you win, some you don't. That's just the way the game goes. We both know that."
"It isn't a game!" Laurel snapped, batting his hand away. She glared at him through her tears. "Dammit, Jack, this isn't Beat the System, it's justice. Don't you see that? Justice. I can't just shrug and walk away when the bet doesn't pan out. Those children were counting on me to save them, and I failed!"
It was a burden with the weight of the world, and she crumpled beneath the pressure of it.
Gently, Jack drew her into his arms and rocked her. He kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair and shushed her softly, and time passed by them, unnoticed, unmarked.
Justice, he thought cynically. What justice was there in a world where children were used and abused by the people who were supposed to protect and nurture them? What justice was there when a woman as noble, as brave, as truehearted as the one in his arms suffered so for the sins of others? What justice allowed a man the like of himself to be the only one here to offer her comfort?
There was no justice in his experience. He had never seen any evidence of it growing up. As an attorney, he had been trained to play the court system like an elaborate chess game, maneuvering, manipulating, using strategy and cunning to win for his client. There had been no justice, only victory at any cost.
If there was such a creature as justice, he thought, then it had an exceedingly sadistic sense of humor.
Chapter Seventeen
They saw the commotion all the way from the dock at Frenchie's Landing. Cars were parked up and down the road. A crowd of considerable size had gathered. From that distance only the indistinct crackle of a voice could be heard through a bad speaker system; not individual words, just the rise and fall of pitch and tempo, but there was no mistaking the fact that something exciting was going on at the former Texaco station that had only yesterday stood empty across the road from Frenchie's.
Laurel glanced at Jack-something she had been avoiding doing all afternoon, since the humiliation of breaking down in front of him. His shoulders rose and fell in a lazy shrug. He was the picture of indifference with his khaki shirt hanging open, baseball cap tipped back on his head, stringer of glossy fish hanging from his fist.
He had no interest in what was going on across the road. His focus was on Laurel and the curious shyness that had come over her. He had never known a woman who didn't shed tears with gusto and impunity. Yet Laurel had shrunk from her emotional outburst-and from him-clearly embarrassed that she had shown such vulnerability in front of him.