“We’ll be right behind you,” Aly said, though he didn’t know if that was for his account or Jill’s.
Didn’t matter.He climbed into the cramped bench seat in the back of Jill’s truck and ignored the concerned look she gave him in the rearview mirror.No one spoke as they drove.Cal thought Jill opened her mouth a few times with theintentof talking, but she never actually said anything.
Once at the courthouse, she pulled into a parking spot and Cal moved to help Glenda out of the truck before Jill could.He left the muffins behind.
He held Glenda’s arm across the lot.Though it had been plowed and salted, there were still some slick spots.
They made it inside, but Glenda stopped.She stood in his way, then reached out and fixed his lapel that had twisted in on itself.A kind of maternal gesture that had heavy, sharp things twisting in his chest.
Mom had gone to Glenda Harrington when she was in trouble, when she needed help.No matter what secrets there still might be, there was one simple truth.Glenda had been someone Mom trusted.Depended on.
Over the past six-plus months, Glenda had become some kind of piece in this whole ordeal.She had found the shovel that was really the only physical evidence that might tie his psychological testimony to Dad.
She had hummed a lullaby he’d only ever heard from his mother.She’d told Cal things, spokenwordsto him.When he knew she hadn’t done that with anyone else, even her own granddaughter.
And when it came down to it, he knew Glenda trustedhimwith all these things.Him, the one who’d left Marietta of his own choosing.Not because of Dad beating him.Maybe in part because he’d been running away from the trauma he hadn’t realized his brain had been hiding from him, but also in part because he really had needed to be away.To find himself somewhere else.
He didn’t know why Glenda had this connection to him, and maybe it was hidden in those old memories.Maybe it would be another terrible thing.
For the first time he considered that maybe, somehow, it would be something good.Sure, it’d be mixed up in the awful, but Glenda hadhelpedhis mother.
“You helped her a lot, didn’t you?”he asked, knowing he didn’t have to clarifyhermeant his mother.
Glenda’s gaze met his for a humming moment.That nauseous feeling swept through him, but it didn’t take out the foundations like it usually did.Something about her wrinkled hands on his lapels kept him steady.
After a moment, she lifted one hand and made a motion, but Cal wasn’t familiar with it.He looked to Jill.Whose dark eyes were suspiciously shiny.
She cleared her throat.“She’s saying shetriedto help her.”
Cal squeezed Glenda’s hand that was still on his chest.“Trying is all any of us can do.”It was a good reminder to himself as they walked into court.As he prepared himself to take the stand.
He could not control the outcomes here, but he could try.
There was some glimmer of his old self here in this courthouse.A self-possessed man with confidence and certainty.Because that man had been running from everything he was about to face.That man hadn’t been perfect, God knew.But he’d carried the weight of things.
So Cal walked into the courtroom with his family and fully accepted that they wereallcarrying the weight of things.And the more they shared those things, the more the weight felt bearable.
Cal went up to the front when called, swore to tell the truth, then took the stand.A witness, for the first time in his life, instead of the man on the other side.
Cal looked out at his brothers.Aly.Glenda.Maybe he was still falling apart, but for today, he was going to hold all the pieces together.
Vanderbilt took him through it all.The memory of his mother’s bloody face when Landon had been a baby that Cal had thought was a dream for many years.Everything he remembered from the day and night his mother had been murdered.How it had come that he’d remembered after so long.
He felt a little sick, but he felt that added to it for the jury.He shouldn’t sound controlled when talking about watching his lifeless mother be thrown into a barn that was subsequently set on fire.He shouldn’t find it easy to recount remembering fifteen years later.
He couldn’t control what the jury believed or didn’t believe.He had to trust that the testimony of the psychiatrist and trauma experts Vanderbilt had lined up would support his testimony.
Cal didn’t feel any nerves, until Vanderbilt rested and it was the defense’s turn.Still, Cal was in his body.He didn’t feel like he was crumbling.Because he was strong.He would be strong for this.
He looked over at Glenda for just a second.Her gaze was steady and that light green.Yes, he’d hold it together.For his mother, if no one else.
Dad’s attorney took his sweet time.Rearranging papers, sighing a bit.When he finally spoke, it was condescending as hell.
“This all seems very convenient.”
“Nothing about my mother being murdered has been convenient,” Cal said quietly.“But that wasn’t a question.”
The lawyer’s face got a little pinched looking at that, and Cal figured he’d won his own point there.
