The Truth About Love (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

G
ina stood from her desk as her boss unlocked the front door of Morgan’s Ladder and pushed the door open.

Suzanne let out a startled scream when she realized another person was in the room. Her hand flattened on her chest. The rasping of her quick breaths filled the room. “Oh, my God. If you’re in here”—she looked toward the front of the office—“why was the door locked?”

“I’ve been here since five a.m.” Gina worked hard to control her anger. It wasn’t going to do either of them any good if she yelled at her boss. “It was still dark outside when I got here.”

Suzanne moved toward her office, but Gina stepped away from her desk and into the center of the main work area—not really blocking her boss’s way, but pretty close to it.

Suzanne’s eyebrows rose with a questioning look. “Can I help you with something?”

“We’re dropping the case?”

Suzanne took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for the conversation. She let her worn messenger bag fall onto a nearby stack of file boxes. “I assume you’re talking about Cyrus Alexander?”

“It didn’t even take you forty-eight hours to come to that conclusion? You couldn’t even wait until Monday to enter the notes in the file?” Gina motioned to her computer.

Realization spread across Suzanne’s face. Her skin paled. “I was working on some cases Saturday night. I didn’t think you’d see the notes before I had a chance to tell you this morning.”

“So you let me find out by
reading
about it on the computer?” She’d even printed them out, ready to have the hard-copy proof in her hands when she confronted her boss on Monday morning.

What she hadn’t planned was for Landon to find the paper in her breakfast nook before she got Suzanne to change her mind. She couldn’t think of any other reason why he’d left the way he did.

Gina wasn’t sure who had been more callous—Suzanne for not telling her, or herself for letting Landon discover it before she’d had a chance to change Suzanne’s mind. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to approach this with him.

“We can’t drop the case.” Gina’s voice was forceful, unwavering.

“You leave in a couple of weeks and then it’s just me. I don’t have the manpower to work a case if the DNA isn’t going to help me.”

“So you just leave him there?” Gina held her hands in the air, begging. “Rotting in jail?”

Suzanne’s lip quivered. Gina could tell this upset her, too. “There are many others who need my help,” the older woman said, as if trying to convince herself as much as Gina. “Men and women I haven’t even met yet.”

“But Cyrus . . . and Landon . . .”

Suzanne’s chin came up. “So now we get to the crux of the matter.”

“I can’t let him not know who killed his mother. He deserves to know the truth.”

“They
all
deserve the truth.” Suzanne’s gaze was steady. “Not just the ones who”—she cocked her head—“get your attention for other reasons.”

Gina sank into her chair. She’d slept with someone involved in one of their cases. She’d own up to that fact. She’d figure out how to reconcile that at a later date, but for now she needed to figure out how to find Landon some peace.

She rested her elbows on her desk and braced her forehead on the heels of her hands, her head down. She heard Suzanne move to the little sink in one corner of the office and start a pot of coffee. The older woman then returned to where she’d once been and stood there silently, waiting.

Finally, Gina spoke, her head still down. Her anger had eased, leaving her in a pit of quicksand filled with sadness and loss. A pit she didn’t think she’d ever escape. “What made you take on Cyrus’s case to begin with? What made you think he was telling the truth?”

“Sometimes I can see how sloppy the work was done the first time around. Sometimes the facts don’t add up. But with Cyrus, it was like . . . a feeling I got when I looked in his eyes.”

Gina raised her head to look at her boss. “I thought the same thing, but I tried to ignore it. Lawyers are trained to look at the facts, not to feelings.”

“One of the many crocks of shit they teach you in law school.” Suzanne leaned against a filing cabinet on the other side of the room. “Or just about any school you go to.”

“Do you ever get used to this . . . futility? To this . . . up and down of emotions?”

Gina wasn’t sure she could handle knowing how much was at stake and not always being able to help. Maybe the party they’d attend this weekend to celebrate Buford Monroe’s release would restore her confidence in their ability to change people’s lives.

“I haven’t been through what you’ve been through.” Suzanne knew all about Gina’s testimony helping send Nick Varnadore to juvi. She’d said it was part of why she’d selected Gina for the internship. “And I’ve never been in love with someone who had anything to do with one of my cases.”

Gina reached for the bottle of water on her desk and twisted the cap off. She took a drink, contemplating what her boss had said. “Why do you think I’m in love with him?”

“Are you saying you’re not?” Suzanne moved back to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup.

“I don’t know.” Gina wasn’t prepared to answer the question. Not to herself. Not to anyone. “Have you ever been in love?”

Suzanne took a long breath, then smiled. “Rodrigo Martino Gonzalez.”

Gina grinned at her boss’s obvious pleasure at remembering him. “That’s quite a name.”

“He was quite a guy.” Suzanne opened an individual container of creamer and poured it into her cup. “We lived on Key Biscayne together for about a year and a half. In a little hut right on the beach.”

That explained a lot about Suzanne’s choice in footwear. “You were married?” For some reason, she’d never imagined her boss as anything other than single, like she was now.

Suzanne shook her head. “Living in sin.” She chortled. “At least that’s what they called it back then.”

“What happened?”

Suzanne seemed lost in the circles of her coffee as she stirred. “I said I was in love with him. I never said he was in love with me.”

So Rodrigo had been her boss’s equivalent of Christopher—a guy she’d thought she was in love with, but who’d broken her heart.

“How do you know when it’s the real thing?” This wasn’t exactly the kind of conversation one was supposed to have with their boss, but then she and Suzanne faced life-and-death issues that regular office workers didn’t face.

“When it’s the stupidest, most difficult thing that could happen”—Suzanne looked up, mist glistening in her eyes—“and you still want to do it. Then you know it’s really love.”

Sleeping with Landon had certainly been stupid, especially with the case at such a critical juncture. Suzanne wanted to drop it from Morgan’s Ladder and Gina had slept with a key witness. She couldn’t have screwed up much worse than that.

So why did she think she was in love with him? Or, like Suzanne, might she end up middle-aged and alone? Not that her boss wasn’t an admirable woman. Gina had grown to respect her as much as anyone she’d ever known, but she wondered how her boss’s life might have been different if she were still on the shores of the ocean with Rodrigo Martino Gonzalez.

Suzanne picked up her messenger bag and moved toward her office. “We can’t stand here all morning wishing we were back in the Keys.”

“Will you tell me about him sometime?” Gina asked.

Suzanne laughed. “I don’t know. That was a long time ago.”

“Oh, come on.” The half smile on her boss’s face told Gina that at least some of the memories were pleasant. “Key Biscayne. Sounds exotic.”

Suzanne scoffed. “If you like being dirt poor and having to fish for your dinner every day.” She stopped in the doorway to her office and turned. “And Gina?”

Gina looked up.

“This is why you don’t get into a relationship with someone who’s involved in one of your cases. It doesn’t work here. It doesn’t work in a law firm. It doesn’t work if you work in a corporation.”

“You think I’m no longer objective?” That was the worst criticism an attorney could receive.

“I think you stopped being objective on this one a long time ago.” Suzanne walked into her office and shut the door.

Gina closed her eyes. She prided herself on her professionalism. On being above reproach. She’d done the worst thing she could have done this summer.

She’d fallen in love with Landon Vista.

Gina hopped from her SUV and looked toward the gathering of people who milled outside the white clapboard house where Buford Monroe grew up. An old abandoned chicken coop stood behind the house; weeds licked at the bumper of a faded red truck that looked like it hadn’t moved in years. A gaggle of children played in the water of an old hand pump.

This part of her job—the celebration of Buford’s release—made her proud of her work, but it also shone a bright, glaring light on their failure in the Barbara Landon case. It had been a week since Landon had discovered that Morgan’s Ladder was dropping Cyrus Alexander’s case.

She’d tried texting and calling Landon at first, but her attempts had gone unanswered. Finally, he’d texted back and said he was on some kind of business trip with the senator and had been really busy.

She shook her hair back and raised her head high. Today, she would concentrate on Buford and try to hide the gaping wound in her psyche from Landon and Cyrus Alexander.

She walked toward the gathering of people, knowing she’d be seen as a friend of the family, but it still felt funny when she realized she’d be the only white person in a crowd full of African Americans. Maybe this was how Lisa Pinkney, the one black girl in her graduating class, felt during high school. Like an outsider. A person who didn’t quite fit in. Someone whose life experiences had shaped them into a different person than those standing before her.

She knew her support of Buford and Ella Monroe would propel her forward. That there were many more similarities between her and these people than there were differences. They, too, had suffered grief and happiness. Victory and sadness.

“Hey, hey, Gina,” Buford called as he rounded the corner from the back of the house. His booming bass voice filled the air like the noise from a freight train. “Come on over to meet everybody.”

A sea of faces turned toward her. She jumped across the narrow ditch separating the yard from the roadway and was immediately engulfed in Buford’s burly arms. Men in seersucker suits and women in cotton dresses surged toward her.

“My redheaded angel,” Buford repeated as he introduced her to aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. One by one, they thanked her for helping to free Buford from prison.

“After all these years, you brought our Buford home,” an elderly uncle said as he held both of Gina’s hands in his.

An older woman placed her warm, leathery palm on Gina’s cheek. “I haven’t seen Miss Ella look so good in years,” she said. “Thank you, honey.”

“Where is Miss Ella?” Gina asked, looking over the woman’s head for Buford’s mother.

“Honey, she in the house checking on those pies o’ hers,” one of the older women chuckled. “Miss Ella’s pies are world famous.”

A burly man the size of Buford wrapped an arm around the former prisoner’s shoulder. “Buford thinks this party is for him, but it’s really about Miss Ella’s pies.”

Buford chortled. “Just ignore them, Miss Gina. They forgot their manners, anyway. You want a glass o’ sweet tea?”

“I’d love some unsweet, if you’ve got it.”

“Let me go find out.” The big man turned to go into the house. Gina followed. She had been inspired by Miss Ella’s quiet strength and wanted to greet the woman with the level of respect she deserved.

“Mama.” Buford lowered his head as he crossed into the house through the back door. “I got someone here to see you.”

Two other women and a man turned in the crowded kitchen as Miss Ella set a ladle in the spoon rest near the stove and turned. Her eyes lit up as a smile slid across her weather-beaten face. “Gina.” She held her arms wide. “Now the party is ready to start.”

Gina laughed. “What about Suzanne? She’s the one who did all the work.”

Miss Ella patted her on the arm. “Now you know I’m gonna say the same thing when she gets here, too.”

Buford chuckled. “She the boss. You gotta make her think she’s the most important one.”

Miss Ella motioned toward the others who stood in the kitchen, smiling at them. “Let me introduce you to some of our church family. We been going to church together since before Buford was born.”

Gina smiled and greeted each person one by one, shaking their hand as Miss Ella introduced them. She wondered how the older woman—and the rest of them, for that matter—had kept their faith while Buford spent time in prison. Had they trusted that he was innocent? Had Miss Ella known her child would come back to her one day? Had their faith ever wavered during this whole ordeal? Gina had so many reasons to admire this woman. Her hardships and character were as much a part of her as the wrinkles that dug deep lines into the beautiful caramel-colored skin of her face.

One of the uncles Gina had met in the yard stuck his head in the kitchen door. “Come on out, y’all. The band’s about to start.”