Claim of Innocence. Laura Caldwell
Now, in my mom’s kitchen, I sighed a bit. “Yes, Theo is gorgeous.”
“Has your father met him yet?”
“I don’t think they need to meet.”
My mother’s eyes narrowed a little. “He is your father. And he lives in Chicago now.”
“When did you start advocating for Dad?”
My mom looked pensive, but her thoughtfulness appeared to have some curiosity about it, as if she were looking inside herself and interested in what she found there. This was different from how she usually did things; usually she shut down, became depressed and we all tiptoed around her.
In the living room we heard Charlie guffaw and Theo saying, “Exactly, dude,” laughing with him. A good sound.
“Your father deserves your respect,” she said.
“Does he?”
She looked at me, her blue eyes slicing into mine. “Yes.” A slight bob of her head. “And you should make some attempt to give him that.”
I’d seen my dad occasionally, but it was always awkward. More than awkward. For most of my life, he wasn’t around. We had believed him dead, when in truth he’d been working undercover for years. When I’d first seen him again, it was shocking. I was hunted by a faction of the Italian mob that my father had worked most of his life to shut down. As far as I knew, those particular dangers were gone now. But then again I knew that only because my father had told me so. The truth was, I didn’t entirely trust my father. Mostly, we made small talk, as if we weren’t ready to go into the big things yet. Lately, I’d avoided him. I didn’t know where to place him in my life, in my emotions. Avoidance was unlike me, but it had seemed the only workable option as of late.
“I’ll ask again,” I said to my mom, “when did you start being his advocate?”
The air was prickly as we stared at each other. We were in a minor spar, new territory.
A rueful smile came to my mother’s face, accompanied by—what was it?—a look of contentment, it seemed. It was that contentment, more than her smile or our spat that shook me somewhat. So unlike her, I thought.
“Do you know what it’s like to lose your sense of intuition?” my mom asked. Without waiting for my answer, she shook her head. “No, you have always been so good at following your gut instincts.”
“That’s not true. Last year, when Sam disappeared, I had no idea if my gut instincts were right or wrong. I was confused all the time.” I let myself feel the grief of that situation again, the whallop of confusion that had hit me over and over.
“But ultimately you followed your intuition,” my mom said. “Your intuition told you Sam was a good man and he had a reason for doing what he did. And you were right.”
“I still lost him.” But now he might be back.…
“I know how hard it’s been.” She gave me a sad face. “Really, Isabel, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought this up. This isn’t the time for that conversation.”
In the other room, Charlie said something about preseason football, followed by the sound of a TV being turned on. My mother shook her head a little. Spence had insisted that they put a TV in the living room. It was hidden behind a painting that would slide away, but my mother still firmly believed TVs had no place in a formal living room. Spence had won.
“What conversation are you talking about?” I asked.
An exhale. “Well, I was just going to say that what I’ve learned lately, or maybe what I’ve decided—” she paused, seemed to be regrouping her thoughts “—is that someone can have a gut instinct and struggle with it, just as you did when Sam disappeared. That wasn’t easy, but you were smart enough to think of all the options, to play them out, and ultimately you stuck with your intuition.”
I thought about it. “Okay.” I searched for my intuition about Sam now and found my head empty.
“When your father died so many years ago, I lost that ability. I knew he was alive. I knew it in my soul. But every thing told me I was wrong. And so I had to shut down that instinct. Because he was dead. Because I buried him. Or so I thought.”
Her blue eyes shone bright against the white backdrop of her skin, more animated than I’d seen in years. Maybe ever.
“Over the years I would see him occasionally,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Here and there, in a crowded street or a busy restaurant, I’d see him like a ghost. And I convinced myself that that’s what it was—a ghost. I really came to believe in those things—spirits and such—because there was no other explanation.” She gave a brittle laugh. “And because I kept doing that—closing down my instinct—I ended up shutting it down in other areas of my life, too.”
I said nothing. I was mesmerized by getting behind the curtain of my mother’s mind.
“I drifted wherever life took me,” she said, “rarely making decisions, rarely thinking I had any control or any part in this.” She waved her hand around her kitchen.
“But you ultimately ended up somewhere you wanted to be, with Spence.”
She nodded, gave a little smile. “You’re right about that.”
Just then Spence came in the room. “Need anything, ladies?”
Classic Spence—always trying to help out, always catering to my mother. And yet when I looked closer, there was something not so classic. I saw he had a nervous edge to him I’d never witnessed.
My mother walked to him and kissed him tenderly on the cheek. She touched his face. “We’re fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Fine.”
Spence didn’t look like he believed her. I wasn’t sure I did, either.
Spence made a face I couldn’t read and left the kitchen.
When he was gone, I looked at my mom. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not entirely sure.”
“What does your gut instinct tell you?”
My mother laughed, and it was a beautiful sound. But she didn’t answer.
14
S omeone was in her house. Valerie Solara knew it as soon as she stepped through the front door, her arms around a brown grocery sack of baking supplies.
It had made her feel normal, going to the store. She’d decided to make a torta de chocolate, the Mexican dessert her father had taught her. It would be a treat for Layla, and baking the torta would make her feel normal, too. She wasn’t exactly sure what had given her the motivation to bake for the first time in at least a year, but she knew it had something to do with the new lawyer. Izzy, her name was.
At first, when Maggie had told her she wasn’t sure if Martin would be back, terror had flooded in. Martin was one of the few men that Valerie had ever trusted in her life, and once the feeling of terror had covered her, it was hard to see or hear around it. Technically, her eyes watched Izzy sparring with a state’s attorney about some objection. But the image of Izzy’s white suit, her red hair—all that was far away, as if seen through a telescope. The sound was muted, like it was in the next room.
But then Izzy—so charged up and cheerful—had started verbally tussling with a juror, a muscled man in a baseball cap that read Semper Fi, and she was distracted away from her panic. Izzy had won, the man was dismissed, and Valerie felt oddly optimistic. Later, Izzy talked to her, really talked to her, suggesting they meet outside the courtroom. And just like that a bolt of something—air? space?—had come in. The optimism flamed.
But