act like I’m not welcome in her house? She should be throwing herself at my feet, groveling for me to forgive her for defending that piece of shit that murdered my brother.
She heaves a sigh and says to me, “I’m sorry. I really am. This is an unusual situation, to say the least. I wish someone had given me a heads-up….”
“I didn’t think you’d actually decide to come home,” Zach mutters.
She glares at him and then turns back to me. Smiles a toothy crocodile smile. “We’ll just have to be careful to avoid talking about the elephant in the room and we should be okay, legally speaking.”
I dig my nails into my palm, hard. “Great. Fine by me.” The last fucking thing I want to do is discuss anything with her.
After that, dinner collapses into an awful, awkward event, even worse than before. I retreat into my own head, the world fuzzing, the words around me muffled by the anxiety coursing through my body. Zach’s dad attempts to make conversation, cracking little jokes, trying to make light of one of the most fucked-up situations in the history of the world. A pain grows in my stomach, making eating impossible, so I gulp down glass after glass of water, just to have something to do.
After dinner, Zach drags me into the living room.
He looks like he might cry. “I am so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know why I said that about Carter. What is wrong with me? She asked, and…I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head and shut my eyes against his face, his words, the light of the living room. After a moment, I open them. I’m too tired to be upset. I’m too tired to be much of anything right now.
“It’s okay.” I make a halfhearted attempt at shrugging. “It was bound to happen.” And it was. The moment I agreed to come here, I set this on course. Zach didn’t force me here. I agreed. “I just want to go home.”
“I’ll drive you,” he says.
I nod in thanks. “Can I use the bathroom first?” All I want to do is leave this house and never ever return, but I drank about a gallon of water at dinner and now I think I might pee my pants.
“Sure. I’ll be here.”
I’m leaving the bathroom when I hear hushed voices coming from the kitchen. Michelle Teller and her husband. She sounds exhausted. I linger for a second in the hallway, out of sheer morbid curiosity. What does this woman, who I’ve thought about every day for months, talk about with her husband when they’re alone?
“How could you not have known?” She’s speaking softly, but the words are clear as a bell.
“How could I not have known?” Zach’s dad sounds incredulous. “He’s your client! This is your case. Shouldn’t you have all the faces of the victims memorized?”
“I do, Jay. I know all the faces of the victims….They visit me in my sleep. When I close my eyes, they’re all there.” She pauses. “But that girl survived. And there were reasons behind her survival that maybe even she doesn’t know.”
My stomach twists.
There’s a beat of silence, and then he responds, “What does that mean?” He sounds confused. “This is the first friend Zach’s made all year. I know it’s awkward, but you talk to opposing counsel all the time in your cases, so what—”
She interrupts. “Nothing. I shouldn’t have said that. You know I can’t talk about the case with you.”
“Jesus, Michelle. You’re the one who brought it up!”
There’s a noise behind me and I whirl around. Gwen’s standing down at the end of the hall. She doesn’t even seem to register me, just her parents’ angry voices floating toward her.
The expression on her face punches me in the gut: her sad eyes, her turned-down mouth, her pinched eyebrows—they all look so familiar, so much like what I see on my own face in the mirror.