something. And lawyers need proof. So I told my lawyer.”
“What does it prove?”
“It proves that Luke lied to me,” she said, her voice breaking like waves. “He lied when he said he’d come back.”
“And that changes everything?”
“Yes. It changes everything for me. Everything.” Her mom cried more, a river of tears rolling down the plastic as Shannon stroked her hair, some strange kind of relief washing over her even in the midst of all this hollowness, all this hurt for the woman her mother had become.
Through it all, one fact remained starkly clear.
The case was closed. Her mother’s fate was irrevocably sealed eighteen years ago, and now she was paying for her crime in so many ways. With her life, with her health, and with her sanity.
Dora Prince lived in her own land, and she’d done it all to herself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Skittles? Salt and vinegar chips? Twizzlers?”
Brent plucked the snack foods from a dusty shelf, wiggling each bag in front of his wife.
She crinkled her nose. “I’m not that hungry.”
“Yeah, these might be stale.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I don’t think many people come around here too often.” He peered at the expiration date on the Skittles. “Whoa. These Skittles were past their prime two years ago.”
She laughed half-heartedly as he dropped the unwanted snacks on their shelves.
“I’ll just get a soda,” she said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the fountain drinks at the Lucky Seven Gas & Go somewhere in the middle of the desert. As far as he knew, they were halfway between Hawthorne and Vegas, which meant two and half more hours of cruising south on the highway to home.
“Shan, you need to eat. You haven’t had anything all day.”
“Maybe just some pretzels then,” she said. “Pretzels taste expired anyway.”
He grabbed a pretzel pack with gusto, as if his enthusiasm for potentially out-of-date road trip snacks would somehow buoy her spirits. She walked to the soda fountain, grabbed a cup, and pressed it against the Diet Coke spout. She leaned forward slowly, as if she was starting to tip over, then rested her forehead against the dispenser. She’d slept the whole ride back so far, slumping against the passenger seat with her shades on after she’d left the prison and given Brent the cliff notes as they drove out of Hawthorne.
Crossing the distance in a second, he took the cup from her. “I’ll do it.”
She rested her head against his chest. “Thank you.”
It was only a soda. That was all he was doing. Filling a flimsy paper cup at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. But it was something he alone could do for her right now. And she needed it.
He finished filling the cup and popped a lid on it.
“I’m sorry I made you drive me all the way here for nothing,” she said.
“Hey. You did not make me do anything. I chose to. And it was not nothing.” He set the cup down on the counter, and lifted her chin. “It was not nothing.”
“But you missed your meeting and it’s just the same old stuff with my mom.”
“Then that’s something. That’s exactly what you needed to know.”
“The same old stuff?”
He nodded. “The same old stuff. Because now you know. Now you know that nothing has changed. Now you can stop worrying that something is going to change. This is the same stuff she did to you in college,” he said, running a thumb along her jawline as he held her gaze. “She tried to work you over. She tried to get you to believe her madness. And you are good, and loving, and you did the right thing by seeing her, Shan. You visited her; you listened to her. You did a loving thing without compromising who you are. And now, you can let it go. The past is the past.”
* * *
She leaned her cheek into his hand, so strong, and so soft at the same time too. “How did you get to be so wise?” she asked softly.
“My wife taught me how,” he said, planting a kiss on her forehead, then rubbing her belly. “Now I need to go pay for this stale nourishment I’m procuring for you.”
He picked up the soda and pretzels and walked to the cash register to pay. As she watched him, she couldn’t help but feel an unexpected pang of guilt over the day, and what he’d miss tomorrow. The Tribeca club had been his single-minded mission for expansion, and he’d worked his