Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,26
clothing online, then stared at the phone in my hand. Temptation. I’d lived on Instagram before everything went south. Did I dare go there? It would be like taking a drink; I’d start surfing and be unable to stop. I’d look up my old friends. I’d look up Trey. What was the point in that?
I slipped the phone in my pocket, proud of my self-control. It was nearly time to leave for the parole office, anyway. Grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl on the island, I headed out the door. It felt like a miracle, being able to walk out Lisa’s—Jesse Jameson Williams’s!—front door and take off down the street with no one watching my every move. My sense of freedom, though, took a hit when I pulled open the door to the parole office on Broad Street. I was not truly free. I wouldn’t be free for a long time.
At one forty-seven, I took a seat next to the desk of my newly assigned parole officer. “Supervision officer,” the woman called herself. Her name was Rebecca Sanders and she instantly reminded me of my mother, with her short, wavy blond hair and narrow black-framed glasses that kept sliding down her nose. I waited as she read through my file.
“So, let’s see what we’ve got here,” she said, studying the papers in front of her. “Class F felony. Driving while impaired. Aggravating factors: second DUI and serious injury by vehicle.”
I took in a very long, very tired breath. “I know that’s what it says,” I said, “but I wasn’t driving.”
Rebecca slipped off her glasses to frown at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that my boyfriend was the one who was driving and he took off after the accident.”
“So why did you end up being charged and going to prison?” She didn’t believe me. I could tell. No one believed me.
I shook my head. “At this point it doesn’t matter,” I said, not wanting to go through it all again. “Just … I just wanted you to know that I didn’t do it. I can’t sit here and pretend that I did.”
“You had an attorney, right?”
I nodded. My court-appointed attorney hadn’t believed me, either. “It was just … at first I said I was alone in the car because I wanted to protect him. My boyfriend. He’d just gotten a scholarship to Georgetown Law and I … He had too much to lose. I had no idea I’d end up in prison. I thought I’d be fined, or … I didn’t know what. I wasn’t thinking clearly. It was all so … terrible.” Sickening images flashed through my mind, and I raised a hand to my eyes as if I could block them out. “When I finally told the truth, no one believed me,” I said, lowering my hand. I was so tired of explaining it all. It was pointless. I should have gone along with what was in this woman’s file. Gotten it over with.
Rebecca pursed her lips. Cocked her head. “What about your previous DUI? Was your boyfriend driving then, too?” She raised her eyebrows. I supposed she was waiting for another lie.
“No, that was me,” I said. “I’m not proud of it.” An understatement.
“Well, if what you’re saying is true about the accident, I hope you’re done with your so-called boyfriend.” Rebecca lifted my file in the air. “And I have to go with what I have here,” she said. “That you served time for a Class F felony. And we move forward from there.”
I was surprised to feel tears burn my eyes as a familiar sense of helplessness washed over me, but I looked at her squarely. “I wish you could believe me,” I said. Why was this so important? Why did I need her—need someone—to believe me?
“I have to go with what I have,” she said again. “What I do believe is that you’re lucky to have your new lawyer.” She looked down at my file. “This Andrea Fuller. The one who got you out.”
What I heard behind her words was: Most people can’t afford a lawyer like yours and they end up serving their maximum sentence, and when they get out they have a record employers can’t get past and they can never find a job.
“I didn’t hire her. This all just fell into my lap.” I motioned to the file in her hands. “I just wanted you to know the truth about what happened.”