The holidays come before we know it. We go to Christmas Eve services with Avery to see Kimba sing in the Cherub Choir. When we get home, we Skype with Kate. Dad’s condition doesn’t change, and Kate, thankfully, doesn’t press me to decide about moving him.
We struggle to find our footing, resume a life that is the same, and yet completely different. The MADD people have come to town a few times, mostly trying to drum up anger. I brace myself and insist Jess stay in when I know they are around.
“No sleepovers?” Jake asks one night when I am home early after dinner with Kevin.
“It’s not like that,” I tell him, but I know the only reason it is not is Jess.
— — —
Finally, in the first week of the new year, the district attorney offers another plea agreement. It is not what we hoped for. They refuse to budge on jail time. Jake picks up Jess and brings her to the office to meet with Kevin. We sit in the conference room at the enormous table that takes up the entire room but puts space between arguing spouses. I pull water bottles from the fridge, and we crowd around one corner of the enormous table. Kevin explains the deal they have offered. He has been unsuccessful in arguing them down very far.
“Why are they so insistent she go to jail?”
Kevin shakes his head. “I imagine it’s political. That’s probably why they’ve waited so long to start these proceedings. They wanted to see whether the public reaction would die down.”
The public reaction has not died down. If anything, it has amped up. The MADD people are like a mob who want Jess’ head. I have taken to shopping a few towns over and ordering anything I can online. Someone regularly dumps their trash can on our front lawn. Jake sat out there every night for a week after it first started, but the culprit didn’t come back. The first night he wasn’t there, the trash was back.
“I find it hard to believe that one man’s political ambitions will dictate my daughter’s future.” The entire experience has taught me that our legal system is not nearly as fair and just as we believe it is.
There will be a pretrial conference in one week and Jess will enter her plea. The prosecution will drop all the charges if Jess pleads guilty to criminally negligent homicide and goes to jail for 180 days (the minimum) and we pay a fine of $10,000.
“It’s not a bad offer,” says Kevin. “I can try to argue down the jail time, see if some of it could be served in house arrest.”
“It already feels like we live in house arrest.”
“What will happen at the pretrial conference?” Jess asks.
“It will be relatively informal. We will meet with the DA in front of a judge, he will ask if we have come to an agreement. If we have, the DA will explain that to the judge. If we haven’t, charges will be read again, and then you’ll enter a plea.”
“She’ll plead not-guilty,” Jake says.
Kevin turns to Jess now. “It’s up to you, Jess, not your parents.”
Her eyes give away her terror, but she says nothing. Kevin keeps saying it is up to Jess, but it is obvious he thinks she should plead guilty. With only Sheila’s account of the accident, he worries that no judge will believe she isn’t guilty.
Jess asks, “If I plead guilty, will it be over?”
“Well, it depends on what you mean by over. If we take their deal, the judge will look over the deal and agree to it or not.”
“What do you think he’ll say?”
“I have no idea, but likely he will do what the DA recommends.” He sets his elbows on the table, steeples his fingers, and looks at Jess. “But here’s the thing. If you plead guilty and we make a statement of some sort—about your exemplary record, your remorse, maybe the judge will go easy. But if you plead not guilty and at the trial, she decides you are guilty, the judge might not be so easy.”
“What are you saying?” I ask him. “You think she should plead guilty?” I try to read his face—does he think I am foolish to believe my daughter is not responsible for Robert Mitchell’s death? But causing a death and being responsible for a death aren’t necessarily the same thing, are they? Isn’t an accident, just that—an accident? No one meant for this to happen, no matter what happened. It is clear, though, from the radio talk shows, the messages on my phone, the notes left under my windshield wiper, and the trash on our lawn, that this town holds Jess responsible. They are just waiting for a judge to officially lay the blame on her.
“I’m just saying it’s an option.” He leans back, adjusts his dress pants when they pull at the knee, doesn’t look at me. “I told you early on that a case like this would be wide of my area of expertise. If we go to trial, you would probably be better off with different representation.”
Jake acts like he doesn’t hear Kevin.
“If Jess don’t remember what happened, I don’t think she can plead guilty. That makes no sense.”
While I agree with him, I also see what Kevin has been trying to tell us for the last few months. We need a different lawyer. A lawyer we cannot afford. And beyond the money, I also understand what Kevin’s saying. There is a good case for getting this over with. Jess needs to salvage what is left of her high school years instead of letting this case steal them. In all likelihood, it already has, no matter which way this thing goes.
“Can you just plead for me? Do I have to be there?” asks Jess.
“You have to be there. And no, I can’t enter your plea. It’s up to you.”
It seems like the only thing in this entire situation that is up to Jess is how she pleads and neither of her options is good.
“Pleading guilty and taking this deal doesn’t mean you are,” I say and realize the ridiculousness of my statement as I say it.
“But she’s not guilty, so why would she say she was?” asks Jake again.
Jess sits up. “I must be. Everybody says I did it. Sheila says I did.”
Jake frowns, mutters, “Sheila says a lot of things.”
“Well, it’s not like an alien took over my body and drove my car. Just because I don’t remember doesn’t mean I didn’t do it.”
Nothing is decided. Kevin tells Jess to think about it and Jake takes Jess shoe shopping for new running shoes and spikes. I know he just wants to distract her. Like me, he wants to believe there will be a track season, that Jess will not miss it because she is in jail. I hug Jess, but it is like wrapping my arms around a board. “See you at home,” I tell her.
40
JESS
I can almost see the question hanging in the air—a gray thought bubble with my entire future in it. The moment goes on impossibly long.
The courtroom for our pretrial conference is dark and foreboding, with lots of dark paneling. The rain outside lends an ominous air. The judge has explained the charges to me and now everyone is waiting for me to tell them whether I did this. But I don’t know if I did. The conversation in Kevin’s office yesterday felt like a poker game—everyone hedging, trying not to tell me what to do while telling me what to do, and then saying over and over that it’s up to me. Which it is. Right now.
Pleading guilty would be the smart thing to do. When Kevin pulled me aside this morning after my parents were seated, I told him I would. It makes sense. Then I can just be the bad guy, everyone can hate me, the MADD women can go back to Dallas, I go to jail or whatever, end of story. I no longer have to be this person no one knows what to say to or how to deal with. There will be no need to defend myself to anyone. They can all be right—the kids at school, the MADD women, the person who keeps throwing trash on our lawn, and Sheila.
I know Mom and Dad don’t want me to plead guilty. They don’t want me to take a felony charge with me when I finally leave Jefferson. Mom says it wil
l hamstring my future as if I still have a future. They don’t want to believe I could have done this, but every day it seems clearer that I did. Mom keeps saying to trust her, to trust the process, to trust Kevin. But of those three things, she is the only one I trust. I have absolutely zero faith that my mom can figure a way out of this, but in all my life she’s the only person I’ve ever been able to count on. I know that recently we haven’t exactly agreed about a lot of things. She wants me to be her, but not be her. She wants me to be the exemplary student, the happy, joiner girl she was. I’ve seen the pictures—she was in every club, every cause, everywhere at Jefferson High. She wants me to be the girl she was, but not the girl who slept with some guy and got pregnant. Not that girl. Not the girl who made her dad so angry he moved away and still doesn’t talk to her. Not the girl who didn’t take the scholarship ticket out of town, who instead stayed here and had a baby and then had a divorce and now works with old people who can’t remember what they had for lunch, let alone what she might have been.
I look at the judge. She’s staring at me over her glasses, eyebrows raised, pen in hand. Kevin whispers, “Jess, you need to answer.”
I glance back at mom in her suit and nylons; her face implores me to speak, to deny that I did this. She is holding Dad’s hand, and he is all cleaned up, no remnants of his trailer park life clinging to him. He winks at me and smiles like I’m in a school play or something instead of about to confess to killing or not killing the coach he’s looked up to all his life. All those years when I was little, I tried to be good, so they would get back together and now I do something seriously bad and they’re finally getting along. Go figure.
The Mitchells are here today because they believe that this is the end. They have come to see me locked up. The parking lot was jammed with the crazy MADD people and reporters. If I can just tell them all I’m guilty, then they can put this one in the books. They can say, “See? She was texting and driving. She killed Coach. It was her fault.”
I can’t look at Helen Mitchell, so I turn back around and face the judge.
“Not guilty,” I tell her.
41
LIZ
“It really may come down to what Sheila says. It will be hard to refute as long as Jess can’t remember what happened. We can say we don’t think she’d text and drive all we want, but when the only eyewitness says otherwise…”
Ever since the pretrial conference, Kevin has been different. He is working hard on the case, but he also seems scared. And that scares me. We spend every waking minute together, even though we cover the same ground every time.
“Sheila’s lying,” I say.
“Even if she’s lying and I can cast some doubt on her, we don’t have another logical explanation. Jess was driving.”
He is right; I know.
“I will do all I can to paint Jess as a good kid and to muddy the waters of what might have happened, but I’m just being honest here. I told you I’m out of my league.”
I touch his arm. “And I appreciate all you’re doing for us.”
We both look at my hand on his arm. Every time we touch there is electricity. I can’t deny that, and I am certain if what we were discussing was not how to keep my daughter out of prison there is no doubt where all this flirting and conspiring and time together would lead.
“Just dinner,” I tell him every time he asks me out. And when he invites me to his house, as he always does, I tell him I can’t, but sometimes I think, “I can’t—yet.” Avery says I am just being cruel, but I have had unplanned sex turn my life on its end once, I can’t do it again. If I sleep with Kevin, it will be after careful consideration.
“That’s boring as shit, you know,” she teases.
“That’s me, though, boring as shit.”
She laughs. “Don’t I know it. Your job is too.” She says that but I know she is enjoying the position and she is good at it.
It would be too easy to let my relationship with Kevin become all-consuming, but right now Jess is my priority. There is no room in my life or my heart for him. I hope there will be someday I tell him, and I hope when that day comes he will still want me. Every time I try to explain this, it comes out wrong.
One night in frustration I say, “Maybe if you had a child, you’d understand.”
He looks at me long and hard, and I brace myself for the words I deserve, but he looks away, tells me I am probably right.
I know Kevin can only be patient for so long. It is not that I’m not interested; I assure him; I am more than interested and each time he kisses me goodnight, it takes all my willpower to get out of his car and walk back into my house. I assure him I just need more time, but mostly I don’t go to his place because I am afraid if I go to Kevin’s beautiful home I will want to stay. I will want what he is offering—security, love, an escape. We talk about everything, but what we don’t talk about is what will happen if they send Jess to jail. I can’t entertain the possibility. It has only been a week since the pretrial conference when Kevin says, “Jess doesn’t want there to be an appeal.”
“Why would there be an appeal?”
“If they find her guilty.”
“But they won’t.”
He sighs. “It’s possible they will.”
“Then there has to be an appeal. She just doesn’t understand.”
“Actually, it’s not up to you.”
We are sitting in a restaurant near the office. It is a rare lunch date for us. Kevin insisted. I pick up my water glass and fish out an ice cube, place it in my mouth. He watches me. I look away.
“I’ll talk to her.”
“And there’s something else.”
I raise my eyebrows, clutch the ice cube between my teeth, say nothing.
“The Mitchells are exploring a civil suit.”
I gasp involuntarily, and the ice cube lodges in my throat. I try to cough it out and finally do, but now my eyes water and I can’t speak.
Kevin tells me he has already spoken to my insurance company, but it doesn’t look like they will be a whole lot of help. Jake and I bought insurance from a local outfit years ago because it was all we could afford. We have never given a thought to our coverage. Every time the price went up, we dropped another benefit and raised our deductible to keep it affordable.
“Some of the fine print also gets the company off the hook if they charge Jess with a felony.”
“Of course it does,” I whisper. Panic threatens to engulf me, and I try to picture myself sitting beside Curtis, rocking back and forth. I am the roadrunner, running in thin air, moments from smacking into reality. I barely listen as Kevin says he is hopeful he can get them to take part in a settlement if it comes to that.
“Let’s not worry about that until we have to,” he says, but I feel the cliff disappearing beneath my feet.
42
JESS
Mom and Kevin are together all the time, but whenever I ask her what’s up with that, she says, “We’re just friends.” Only it’s clear they are way more than friends. Friends don’t make such an effort to assure everyone they are ‘just friends.’
“Are we finished?”
“For now,” says Kevin. He has just finished asking again about Sheila. I don’t know why he is obsessed with Sheila. I told him, once more, that she’s lying, but maybe he doesn’t believe me.
We’re sitting in the living room. Kevin looks at Mom, and she nods. I groan and look away. For people who are ‘just friends’ they sure act like a couple.
“I know you’re opposed to an appeal, but if things don’t go the way we hope, there’s an argument for appealing. If Sheila is lying…”
“
She is lying,” I remind him.
“Well, lies tend to unravel over time.”
“Or maybe she will come to her senses,” Mom interjects.
“She might not be able to keep up the pretense through an appeal.”
“You don’t know Sheila,” I tell them. “She always wins.”
I get up and leave them there to make googly eyes at each other. I don’t want to think about Sheila or the trial that is a little more than a month away now.
A little while later, Mom knocks on my door. “Jess? I’m going to dinner with Kevin. You want to come?”
“No.”
“Can we bring you something back?”
“No,” I tell her. I shouldn’t be angry. She has a right to this. I get that. I have seriously screwed up our lives; I really can’t begrudge her being with Kevin. Even if he is a serious dork. I don’t think she’s nice to him only because of me anymore. I think she might be in love with him, which is totally inconvenient now that Dad is back in our lives.
“I won’t be late.”
After they go, I make myself a peanut butter sandwich and work on my English homework. It’s an essay about one of the three novels we’ve read so far this school year. I’m writing about Holden Caulfield. I like him, even though I know he has problems. He doesn’t operate in reality. And he expects way too much of people. People disappoint you. I could have told him that. I remember the moment I figured that out as a kid. I was all hopped up about going to see the latest Harry Potter movie and Dad had promised to get tickets for opening night. I bragged to all my friends I was going. And then he forgot. “We can go see it next weekend,” he told me and didn’t understand why I was upset. That was only the beginning, though. Dad is an Olympian when it comes to disappointers. So I get Holden’s frustration with the adults in his life.
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