“How’s Kirsten?” Lesley asked.
“We broke up.”
“You’re kidding. When?”
“Couple of days ago. It was coming for a while, though.”
“Your idea?”
Tim nodded and rescued a runaway dribble of his own.
“What is it with you?” Lesley said. “That’s like the third time this year.”
He put on a wry smile. “I guess going out with you spoiled me for anyone else.”
“Right.”
They walked in companionable silence for a while, each of them keeping the melting at bay.
“Do you think you’ll get back together?” Lesley asked.
“No. It wasn’t working.”
“Good,” she said with an impudent grin.
“You don’t like her?”
“It’s not that. I’m sure she’s nice and everything, it’s just … I don’t know.”
“Cause she used to go out with Rob.”
“Whenever I see her I get feeling all insecure. It’s stupid, I know.”
“Sounds like the time in high school when you thought Rob had a crush on that student teacher we had in French. What was her name?”
“Miss Hanson.”
Tim snapped his fingers. “That’s it. You sat and glared at her every day for three weeks.”
Lesley rolled her eyes and smiled. “Don’t remind me. Rob teased me about it for months when he found out.”
“Hey,” Tim said, “remember the time we made Bobby McIntyre laugh so hard that Pepsi bubbles came out his nose?”
“Oh my God I forgot all about that. We were in the cafeteria.”
“He had to go around the rest of the day with that stain down the front of his shirt. When we got to math class Miss Tingley looked at him like he had a communicable disease or something.”
Lesley laughed. “She was an old battle-ax anyway.”
The last crunchy part of their cones disappeared as they left the Common and started walking along Beacon Street toward Tim’s car. Tim felt like he could barely breathe. He wanted more than anything to touch her, to hold her hand, but he knew it was too early. Way too early.
He glanced at her and saw that her face had turned grim and she was staring down at the sidewalk as she walked. When she let out a deep sigh, Tim asked, “You okay?”
She shook her head, the laugh lines long gone from her face.
“When we were joking around,” she said, “it was the first time today I stopped thinking about Rob. It doesn’t seem right somehow. We’re out here enjoying ourselves while he’s sitting in jail.”
Tim felt the heaviness descend over him once more, the same guilty feeling that had enveloped him for much of the last twenty-four hours, ever since he realized Rob was facing much more than simply being fired. Rob didn’t deserve jail — and that was never Tim’s intention — but what was Tim to do now? He couldn’t undo the sabotage or take back the evidence he had planted. And no way was Tim going to step forward and take the fall. That was out of the question.
The best he could do was to send the keyword in the snail mail he had prepared. He had been careful to wear gloves when he touched the paper and the envelope, and to wet the stamp with water instead of his saliva. He could think of no way for the authorities to trace the mail back to him, but he was still working up the courage to send it. In the meantime, he might as well continue on with Lesley. However things worked out for Rob, Tim had every intention of regaining what Rob had stolen from him.
“You can’t mope around all the time,” Tim said. “That wouldn’t help Rob. It’d just make you miserable.”
“I know. You’re right. But I still feel rotten.”
She stared at the sidewalk as they walked. “The FBI showed up at my place today,” she said.
Tim raised his eyebrows. “You too?”
“It was awful. They made Rob sound like such a criminal.”
“Been there, heard that.”
“I just wanted to shout at them, tell them they were wrong.” Lesley shook her head. “But by the time they were done, it was getting harder and harder not to believe them. I think that’s why I feel so lousy.”
Tim nodded as if he understood, but really this was more to give himself a moment to think. He had to be careful.
“They make a convincing case, don’t they?” Tim said.
“And my mother was sitting right there, too. After the FBI guys left, she told me I should ditch Rob and never see him again.”
I hope her mother sticks around a while, Tim thought.
“Must have been hard to take,” he said.
“You have no idea. She just kept harping about how thoughtless he is, all the people he’s affected, stuff like that.”
Tim saw she was crying.
“Everything is just so messed up,” she said with a hitch in her voice.
He put one arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze.
“Hey,” he said, “it’ll be okay.”
She shook her head without saying anything, but she didn’t shy away from him. The brief contact was enough to lift his spirits. Tim had been waiting so long to hold her. He gave her another squeeze before taking his arm back, then turned his face away so she wouldn’t see him smile.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rob felt completely powerless as a marshal led him into the courtroom. Reporters filled nearly every available seat and he noticed an artist working on a sketch. He picked out his parents seated in the front row behind the prosecutor’s table and was surprised to see Dysart sitting beside them. Rose and Tim were there too, on either side of Lesley. It was a regular reunion.
All of these people were here to play their part in the spectacle. They were witnesses to the ritual unveiling of Rob as a criminal threat to his fellow citizens. Lesley held up both hands with fingers crossed. Rob nodded at her but couldn’t manage even the grimmest of smiles.
The marshal accompanied Rob to where Pettigrew waited. Rob sat down behind a worn wooden table and looked up at the empty bench, which would soon be occupied by a judge who held Rob’s immediate future in his hands. Suddenly the magnitude of his predicament struck home in a way it had not yet done. Since his arrest he had been floating in a fog of semi-denial. Everything was certain to work out okay, some inner part of him had insisted. How could it not? He was innocent.
But the imposing somberness of the courtroom made the gravity of his situation sink in. He was truly in danger of losing everything.
“I spoke with the Assistant U.S. Attorney,” Pettigrew said.
Rob looked over to where a striking woman with her black hair pulled back in a ponytail sat behind the prosecutor’s table.
“Her name is Monica Giordano,” Pettigrew said. “She’s good, really does her homework.”
“You always reassure your clients this way?” Rob said.
“She’s still open to cutting a deal if you’ve changed your mind.”
Rob gave his lawyer a steely look. “Just fix it so I can go home today,” he said.
The judge swept into the courtroom, accompanied by an officious announcement that court was now in session. Rob felt like a puppet as he was instructed alternately to stand, then sit. The proceedings seemed to swirl around him without really involving him. The clerk read the charges in an impressive burst of legalese, the essence of which was that Rob had caused extensive financial damages by diddling electronically where he had no right to do so.
Rob actually got to participate at one point when he stood to plead “Not guilty.” His voice resonated with indignation as he said the words loudly and clearly.