Stevens’s hands are clenched tightly on the table.Rachel watches him flex the fingers, loosen them.He’s on edge with the conversation, and a pang of guilt hits her, tempered with curiosity about why.“And you didn’t, did you?”he asks.
She pauses.“Have you pulled the case file?”
“No.I wouldn’t do that.”
She nods approvingly.“I told your uncle everything.He interviewed the neighbours, too.Ron saw it all from his porch next door, he was out having a smoke when the fight broke out.It was his wife who called the police, right before my mother pushed my grandmother.So it was pretty clear what had happened, plus our stories corroborated.They called poor Kevin into court, too.He was just stunned by the whole thing.I really do think he knew a completely different version of Mary than we did.She’d crafted it well.But she tried to plead not guilty, said Dora had emotionally abused her her whole life, and it was some form of self-defence.”She chews on her tongue.“Of course that all fell apart with the prosecution’s witnesses.We saw what happened.She wasn’t in any danger of my grandmother killing her.She deliberately murdered her own mother in a moment of impulsivity fuelled by mental illness and years of pent-up hatred.Self-loathing.That was her MO.That was justher.”She shrugs.“Impulsive and sick and unable or unwilling to controlanythingto do with her choices.It would almost be poetic if it weren’t so fucked up.
“And they called in John Holland, the reverend at Millgate Methodist.”She lets the name dangle, distaste stinging her tongue.
“Oh!Shit,” Stevens says.“But…wait—”
“Senior,” Rachel clarifies.“The current reverend’s dad.He fancied himself my mother’s counsellor, except I was always advocating that she get real medical help, and he maintained that all she needed was God.Just pray the cray away, right?Because that’s how it works.Anyway—” She takes a deep breath, tries to gather herself.“He turned on her.In court he testified that he tried to counsel her religiously, but realized she was beyond that and needed medical attention that she didn’t seek.He said he should have pushed her harder to get it.Which was total bullshit.And that’s the thing I hate him for, honestly.That’s it.”
She runs a thumb around the rim of her mug now, worried she’s overshared.Just thinking about John Holland sends her nervous system into flight mode, and her verbal filter disappears.She’ll need to talk to her therapist and sponsor again tonight.But Stevens doesn’t seem fazed.
“Did you have to testify?”he inquires gently.
Rachel rolls her shoulders.“Yeah.I wanted to, though, to be honest.After everything she’d put me through, and taking my grandmother away from me.”She swallows.“I couldn’t let Mary sit there and disparage Dora, for one thing.”A deep breath as she regains her composure, pushes down the rage.“She didn’t have much to go on, though.There was no evidence of emotional abuse, and plenty of evidence of her own neglect and mistreatment of me.But I think the clincher was the death of Walter Jr., my uncle.They now had this woman on the stand accused of murdering her mother by pushing her off the same cliff her own brother mysteriously fell off twenty-seven years before.”
They’re quiet for a while, and Rachel takes the opportunity to ground herself, finding five things she can hear, five she can see, five she can smell.The job is well-suited to her for many reasons, not least because she’s forced to touch down with her own senses as part of an investigation, to notice everything; the same skill she uses to quell panic attacks and her chronic anxiety.Stevens watches her silently.
The espresso machine.That woman’s weird laugh.The pager buzzing on that table…
Coffee.Cinnamon.That guy’s cologne…
“I wondered if your uncle was going to re-open Walter Jr.’s case,” Rachel says once the spinning has stopped.“But he didn’t.And Green hasn’t.But Mary’s in prison.No point spending the resources, I guess.She’s serving time.”
Stevens is quiet a moment, nods.“So you’ll just never know if she deliberately killed her brother?”
Rachel presses her tongue to the inside of her mouth, feels the ridge on her cheek where her mouthguard digs in every night.She’s clenched and ground her teeth since she was nine years old.She cracked right through a guard while the trial was going on, woke up with it in three pieces, panicking that she’d shattered her teeth.
“The last I heard, she still maintains that he tripped.The same word she used when she tried to gaslight me into lying for her.Make of that what you will.”
Stevens exhales, takes a sip of his tepid coffee.“She went away, I assume?”
Rachel nods.“Yeah.Second-degree.She’s in max security at Grand Valley.”
“Have you ever visited her?”
“No.She writes me letters sporadically, but I never open them.There’s nothing she could say at this point that would make me forgive her.I decided to find my own closure elsewhere.”
Stevens watches her.“Where?”
“Well, first it was vodka.”She pulls her eyes away from his.“Then expensive rehab and therapy paid for with my grandmother’s life insurance.”
He runs a thumb up the handle of his empty mug.“And now?”
“Oh, Stevens,” Rachel says, exhaling half a nervous laugh.“That’s uh…that’s a question.Right now, it’s my job.Helping find answers, solve mysteries.”Her eyes widen and she smiles with bitter sarcasm.“Because I’ve got enough of my own unanswered questions and cold casesthat I know will just never be resolved.So I pay it forward and try to help other people not have to live with the unknowns.Because those unknowns can eat your fucking brain.”
She hails their server and asks for some ice water, mentally checks herself as she feels her nervous system go into overdrive again.If she isn’t careful, the eye twitch is going to make an early reappearance.It happens every July, near the anniversary.She sips the water gratefully when it arrives a minute later.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about this,” she tells the rookie, who is now leaning a little on the table, arms crossed.She didn’t even like to talk about it with Lynn in rehab, but she had to.
“Well…thanks for telling me,” he says.
She nods.“Good cops need to understand where people are coming from,” she says.“Especially, you know…” She hesitates, rubs a shoulder absently.“When it comes to mental health.This job affects most of us, but we don’t talk about it, do we?And you and I both know a lot of us got into policing because of shit from our pasts.Let’s be real.”
They share a faint, knowing smile, then both sit back, relaxing a little.Rachel feels the tension drain from her shoulders.The café has gotten busier as they inch closer to the lunch hour.Conversation swells around them as mugs clatter.A milk frother hisses from over near the counter.
