It took nearly all day, several shouting matches, and a few intermittent silent treatments to get out my entire side of the story and answer all her questions. In the end, she hated me for it. I could see it all over her face—the way she grimaced as I shared the darkest details. She didn’t realize that I hated myself for it, too.
But I had to trust and believe she would exonerate Liam. This wasn’t just about me, or my family, anymore. Liam could be put away for the rest of his life just because he’d gotten involved with the wrong girl. I couldn’t let that happen. His mom and brothers needed him.
Silver was the one who needed to pay for his crimes, not me. And certainly not Liam.
Before I went to bed after our long day of disclosure (and nondisclosure), Mom stone-facedly assured me she’d take care of it. But I didn’t know how she could do it with the media working against her. Most of the news outlets, from the local paper to CNN, had already judged Liam guilty—sensationalizing the whole thing for their own profit. Despite the fact that the police hadn’t released even the most basic information from the crime scene (like the facts that Dr. T and the Key Killer were there at all), some of the nation’s best-known criminal defense attorneys were called in on prime-time television to discuss how bad it looked for not only Liam, but D. A. Jane Rose and her bid for reelection. They argued that the only reason I wasn’t in jail with Liam was because of the “abuse of her position.”
Everyone knew I had to be involved; they just didn’t know how. But with schmucky reporters like Sammy roaming around and opponents like Bill Brandon looking for dirt, it was only a matter of time before more damning discoveries were made.
But I believed in my mom’s ability to fix everything—she was powerful, influential, and had an uncanny ability to get what she wanted. I had to trust that she was keeping the police away from me for the right reasons. And yet I couldn’t help toying with the idea of storming into my dad’s old department to see Mathews, or into Martinez’s unit office and demanding that someone release Liam immediately as I revealed the details needed to exonerate him. Surely my sworn testimony would provide immediate proof of his innocence. But every time I thought through that scenario, I saw myself cuffed and escorted to a padded cell where I’d wait until Jane could come parading in to save me.
If worse came to worst, I was prepared to confess to Martinez’s murder myself. I figured the probability of me going to prison for life was already so high that tacking on another murder to my rap sheet hardly mattered.
While Liam had been detained for six days now, the press was lined up and down our street, turning our house into my own personal detention center. Closed curtains, locked doors, and complete isolation. I roamed the house with a frenzied tension that became more unbearable by the second.
The only human contact I’d had all day was when my mom came into my room this morning. She stood at the foot of my bed and cleared her throat to wake me up.
“Ruby, I shouldn’t have to say this, but I am going to make it abundantly clear. Don’t do anything stupid today. Don’t leave this house and don’t talk to anyone. The two guards stationed outside will inform me if you try. Do you understand?”
Barely awake, I nodded.
When I sat up to face her, she was already gone, leaving me in the wake of her Chanel No. 5 perfume. It was like I had taken the role of one of her desperate clients—and she had taken the role of my distant high-powered attorney.
She didn’t even say good-bye or reassure me that it would all be OK. Not that I expected her to. But that didn’t mean that I’d forgotten the days when she did.
Now, I sat on the stairs and clutched my phone, wondering when my mom would call to give me an update. A shred of info, a scrap of hope. I’d already called her four times with no answer.
I scrolled down my contact list until I saw my backup mom’s name—Mother Teresa. I hit “Send” knowing I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone today, but Dr. T probably wouldn’t answer anyway. She’d blocked me at every turn. She left the hospital before I was granted permission to leave my room. And she hadn’t answered one of my calls or texts since. Whatever her “SECRETS” were, she was hanging on to them like they were still duct taped inside. She had to know something that would help Liam’s case, but she was staying silent. The call went to her voicemail, and I hung up.
I considered writing a letter to Liam, telling him how sorry I was. But what was I going to say? Sorry I got you framed for the murder of a police officer. I hope your family’s hearts aren’t broken and that Tug doesn’t cry himself to sleep at night. Oh, and I trust the guards aren’t beating you too badly.
He didn’t belong in there. He belonged out here with me. Except, I worried he would finally come to his senses and decide to distance himself from me entirely. I wouldn’t blame him, but I would miss him more than I wanted to admit. I ran a finger over my lips, remembering the last time we kissed. The taste of him was gone, but the memory of him would last much longer. Maybe forever.
I scrolled down to the next favorite on my contacts list—Alana. I pressed “Send” knowing she wouldn’t answer, either, but just hearing her voice on her outgoing message made me feel connected to her again:
Aloha, you’ve reached Alana. I’m either at the beach, at the mall, or…at the beach. Leave a message at the beep.
Instead of hanging up, I inexplicably started to cry. Right there on her voicemail. My voice cracked as I tried to say, “I miss you.” It cracked again as I sobbed, “I really need you.” And then my heart cracked along with my voice as I begged, “Please call me back.”
I hung up wondering what I’d just done. I’d never been the pathetic, pleading kind of girl. After all that time of pushing Alana away, all I wanted was her friendship back. As I held my head in my hands—ashamed as well as alone—I tried not to admit to myself that all my “irrational fears of abandonment” had been realized.
I was completely on my own. Just like Liam would be for “twenty-five to life” if my mom didn’t pull a miracle out of her hat.
Out of complete desperation, I went to the family room and turned on the TV, flipping through the local news channels to see if my mom was being interviewed. The last few days I’d been avoiding the news like the plague, imagining all sorts of terrible headlines.
“Ruby the Death Rose—Involved in Yet Another Murder”
“Ruby Rose: Hot Damsel in Distress or Cold Psychopathic Killer?”
“Incumbent D. A. Jane Rose Drops Twenty Points in the Polls to Bill Brandon—Wayward Child to Blame”
Instead, what I saw made my heart plunge with sorrow. Coverage of Detective Martinez’s funeral service showed huge crowds of uniformed police officers, decorated Marines, and hundreds of civilians dressed in black among the flags and flowers. So much sadness, so much pain. A fresh set of tears came to my eyes, and I wiped them away with both hands like windshield wipers, remembering my dad’s funeral. The sight was so morbidly similar.
With a dark emptiness in my chest, I wondered whether Dad would’ve been there today. Had he and Martinez really put the past behind them? In any case, I should have been there. I should’ve been standing there next to his family, telling them the truth of what happened.
And then I spotted my mom at the head of the procession, walking through the graveyard with two Latina women. One was older, like grandma old. And the other was young, like my age or a few years younger. She looked vaguely familiar. Some part of me felt like I knew them. Martinez’s mom and daughter, perhaps?