“I haven’t made a decision yet,” she said.
“I can already predict what Casey will tell you. She was drugged at the fundraiser by some unidentified stranger.”
“I know, I know,” she said, checking her briefcase to make sure she had everything she needed for the day. “Her blood tests proved that she had consumed not only alcohol, but Rohypnol. She’ll tell me it’s what people call a roofie, used to incapacitate a victim, not as a recreational drug.”
“Except she wasn’t drugged by a stranger, Laurie. She drugged herself so she could blame the crime on someone else.” Leo shook his head in disgust.
“Dad, I have to go, okay? I promised Casey I would at least consider her case. You’re the one who taught me: Once you give your word-”
“Well, why do you have to go today? Take some time and consider some other cases.”
She wanted to say, Because Brett is breathing down my neck, but she didn’t want to give her father another reason to despise her boss. Her father was supportive to a fault. How many times had he told her that she could join any television team in the country? If you asked Leo, she should have had a cabinet filled with Emmy Awards and 60 Minutes was pining to recruit her.
“Apparently Casey’s mother doesn’t want her going on my show.”
“Smart woman,” he said emphatically. “She probably knows her daughter’s guilty.”
“In any event, I’d prefer the chance to get to know her sooner rather than later, in the event I do decide to cover the case.”
“Which I hope you absolutely won’t do.”
Timmy and Leo walked Laurie to the black SUV waiting outside their building. Laurie gave Timmy a final hug, and then watched as he and Leo began their daily walk to Saint David’s school.
As she watched the city roll past her through the window of the SUV, she was grateful that she was making the long trip to Connecticut and back today. Her son was not the only one who was excited to see Alex tonight. A busy schedule between now and then would make the time fly by.
11
Paula Carter stood in the doorway of the guest room, watching her daughter sort through the makeshift office she had created. Casey had left the prison with two boxes. From what Paula could see, most of the contents were files and notebooks, now stacked on the top of the dresser and both nightstands. With the exception of her trip into the city two days ago, Casey had spent all of her time in here, poring over these documents.
“Oh dear, the room is quite small, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It’s a palace compared to what I’m used to,” Casey said with a sad smile. “Seriously, Mom, thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I know it must have been hard to move up here.”
Up here was Old Saybrook, Connecticut, only ten and a half miles from the prison that had been Casey’s home for the last fifteen years.
Paula had never thought she’d leave Washington, D.C. She moved there when she was only twenty-six years old to marry Frank, twelve years her senior. They had met in Kansas City. He was a partner at one of the nation’s largest law firms. She was a paralegal for one of his corporate client’s local counsel. A massive product defect that originated in the client’s Missouri plant meant months of depositions. By the time the case was settled, Frank had proposed and anxiously asked her if she would consider moving to Washington, D.C. She had told him that the only downside was that she would desperately miss her twin sister, Robin, and her little niece, Angela, who had just learned to call her Aunt Paw-Paw. Robin was a single mother; Angela’s father had never been in the picture. Paula had gotten Robin a job as a secretary at her firm and was helping to raise the little girl. Growing up, Paula and Robin had both dreamed of going to law school.
Within three days, Frank had a solution. Robin and her daughter, Angela, would move to D.C., too. His firm would hire Robin as a secretary and would give her a flexible schedule if she wanted to pursue a paralegal license or even law school. All three of them-Paula, Robin, and little Angela-headed to D.C. together.
And what an adventure it had been. Paula and Frank were married within a year, and Casey came along before their second anniversary. Paula never followed through on her dream of becoming a lawyer, but Robin did, while Paula had a wonderful life with Frank. They had a beautiful home in Georgetown with a small yard where the girls could play outside. The White House, the National Mall, and the Supreme Court stood just outside their door. Whoever thought, she and Robin would say, that our daughters would grow up with all of this at their fingertips?
The capital became a member of her family.
Then, just two years after graduating from law school at the age of thirty-six, Robin got her cancer diagnosis. She did all the treatments, lost her hair, felt sick around the clock. But it didn’t work. Angela was still in high school when they buried her mother. She lived with the Carters in the Georgetown house until she graduated and then moved to New York City with dreams of being a model. Four years after that, Casey also left, at first to attend college at Tufts, then to pursue a career in art in New York.
It was just Frank and Paula in D.C. At least the girls had each other in New York-at first, before the trouble with Hunter.
Then three years ago, as Paula and Frank walked up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Frank collapsed. The doctor at Sibley Memorial Hospital told her that he didn’t suffer. “It would have felt like the lights turned off.” In her mind, her husband died of a broken heart. It broke the day Casey was convicted.
Without Frank, the house in Georgetown felt much too large. Paula would go for a walk and see all of the sights she used to visit with people she desperately missed. Robin and Frank were gone. Angela was still in New York. And Casey lived in a six- by eight-foot cell in Connecticut. No, the nation’s capital was not her family. Casey, Frank, Angela, and Robin were. So she sold the house and bought this townhouse in Old Saybrook for no other reason than its proximity to her daughter. Truth be told, she would have paid a million dollars to move into the cell next door to Casey’s if they had let her.
But now her daughter was here, so it felt a little more like home. She wiped a tear forming in the corner of her eye, hoping Casey hadn’t noticed. Frank begged you to take that plea deal, she thought. I’m old, he had said, and I’m only getting older. Casey, you could have been out nine years ago. Frank would have had at least six years-maybe more-to spend with you.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a knock at the door.
“That must be Laurie Moran,” Paula said. “I don’t know why you want to put yourself through this, but Lord knows you never take my advice.” Just like you refused to take your father’s, she thought.
12
“Are you sure I can’t get you some tea?”
It was the third time that Paula had offered. In between, she had repeatedly straightened the hem of her skirt, stood to adjust a painting on the wall, and shifted constantly in her corner of the sofa.
“Actually, that would be lovely.” Laurie had no interest in tea, but was willing to drink sour milk if it would give her a break from the woman’s nervous energy.
Once Paula had left the room, Casey said, “I’m having flashbacks to the last time I was under the same roof with my parents, right after Hunter was killed. They came up from D.C. and insisted on staying in my apartment because they didn’t want me to be alone. I wasn’t sure I wanted that, either. But for two straight days, my mother offered me fruit, cheese, juice, tea. She’d stand up in the middle of a conversation and start scrubbing the kitchen counters. The floors were so clean, you could see your reflection.”