Hold Still (31 page)

SIXTY-ONE

November 22nd

The offices of Rush and
Wilde hadn’t changed much since Jocelyn was a child. She hadn’t been there since she was about thirteen. The offices took up an entire floor of a swanky high-rise near Twentieth and Market. The elevator ride seemed to go on forever. Jocelyn hated elevators—and places with windows that didn’t open. The lobby walls were dark paneling, giving it more of an old-school courtroom look than a Sheetrocked office look. Her feet sunk into the plush blue carpeting, which showed wear in the places people walked the most. Paintings of Philadelphia’s biggest attractions—Boathouse Row, the art museum—hung below thick crown molding. Large potted plants sat like sentries beside the office doors. A receptionist sat at a large wraparound desk across from a seating area for clients. It looked a lot like someone’s living room, only far more elegant and less used.

Simon’s secretary ushered her into a conference room with a large, glass-topped table and high-backed leather seats more cushy than her couch. She didn’t have to wait long to see her uncle. He looked like he had aged ten years since she had last seen him. She had refused to see him in the hospital. She stood when he entered and they hugged awkwardly, their bodies not really touching, their hands barely patting each other’s backs.

He held an accordion file in his hand, which he placed on the table. “Please, sit,” he said. She sat back in the chair, and he sat next to her, turning so he could face her. “I’m glad you came.”

“I’d like to wrap up my parents’ estate,” Jocelyn said. “I am going into business for myself, and Camille will need the money—she’s got a lengthy rehab stint ahead of her, and she’s been talking about going to a place out in California, getting away from here.”

Simon’s eyes moistened. He smiled. “I think that would be lovely. We can make distribution today if you’d like. There’s just one thing. Something your mother wanted done before everything was put to rest.”

Her mouth was suddenly very dry. “It’s about the rape, isn’t it?”

He pulled the file toward him. “Your mother came to me—it was Camille’s second stint in rehab. I had known for years that something had changed in your family.”

Jocelyn nodded. “She wasn’t the same. She was angry and bitter. They hadn’t told you about the rape before that?”

Simon shook his head. “I was on trial when it happened. A big one. Lots of publicity, high stakes. It lasted four months. Your father didn’t want me to be distracted. Your mother called me a few times but I—I never returned her calls.”

He looked away sheepishly. When he turned back to her, his face was lined with sadness. “I’m sorry, Jocelyn. I asked your father what was going on. He said there had been a car accident, but that you were okay. He never even mentioned Camille. I didn’t give it another thought.”

Jocelyn sighed. “Of course you didn’t.”

Simon had always been every bit as driven as her father, if not more. It was that singularity of purpose that had made their firm so successful. When your cases came before everything else in your life, you were bound to win a good deal of them.

“Jocelyn,” Simon said.

She waved a hand in dismissal. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. My mother approached you. What did she want?”

“She wanted me to help her build a case that we could take to the Montgomery County DA. She thought once Camille was clean she would be strong enough to tell the truth, that she’d make a better witness.”

“Camille never really got clean.”

Simon hung his head. “Yes, I know. But there were other issues. Your father was criminally culpable.”

“Obstruction of justice is not that big a charge,” Jocelyn said.

“Bribery is,” Simon countered. “He bribed the hospital staff, the sheriff’s office. Think of the ramifications. The firm would be destroyed. Every case we ever won would come under scrutiny. All those people—some of them were innocent—and the people who took the bribes. The families of the boys who paid your father for his silence—”

“For my family’s silence,” Jocelyn corrected. She leveled a finger at Simon. “This destroyed my family. We weren’t perfect, but before my father brushed this under the carpet, we were okay. My mother was happy. Camille was a normal fifteen-year-old. Who knows what she would have been?”

Simon frowned, his eyes on the glass tabletop. His fingers tapped lightly against the file. “It wasn’t my decision, Jocelyn. I did as your mother asked, and once she saw the lengths your father had gone to, the extent of the cover-up, she couldn’t go through with it. The number of lives and careers that would have been destroyed was just too great, especially for something Camille had already denied to the authorities. You were the only witness, and you didn’t remember it. Credibility was a serious issue.”

“All of those people were just as wrong as my father. They deserved whatever consequences they had coming to them.”

Simon’s smile was sad. He looked down at her with pinched eyes, as if he were looking at a recalcitrant child. “Jocelyn, some things in life are not that simple.”

“Maybe they aren’t,” she agreed. “But you don’t get to decide that. You don’t get to decide the consequences of people’s wrong-doing.”

“It wasn’t my decision,” he repeated.

“But it was. You made a choice. So did my mother and my father and Camille. And every person along the way who turned a blind eye. None of you are God. None of you are judge and jury, and apparently none of you have an ethical bone in your body.” Her next words shook in her throat, sounding tremulous and angry all at once. “Camille was fifteen years old. She was gang-raped. That is a crime. There is no way around that. What happened to her was wrong. Those boys should have been punished.”

“It would have been a shaky case—”

Jocelyn slapped a palm against the tabletop, making Simon jump and sending a skewer of pain reverberating through her hand. “Stop thinking like a lawyer, and start thinking like a human being. For God’s sake.”

She couldn’t look at him. Her body trembled with rage. The hole in her left hand ached.

“Jocelyn,” Simon said, reaching for her.

“Don’t,” she said coldly.

Simon didn’t have children. In a way, she could understand why the whole thing hadn’t presented as much of an issue for him. If anyone ever hurt Olivia, Jocelyn would kill them. She
had
killed to protect Olivia. Why hadn’t her parents felt the same? That was the thing that bothered her the most. The thing that kept her up nights. She couldn’t remember the day Camille was raped, but she remembered well the horrific aftermath. Why hadn’t they stood up for her? Damn the cost.

In her reverie, she hadn’t noticed Simon creeping closer to her. He laid a palm on her shoulder. As if reading her thoughts, he said, “They thought they were protecting her.”

Jocelyn stared straight ahead, past Simon, her eyes locked on the wall behind him where a framed photo of the Liberty Bell hung. It was a bitter pill to swallow. Whatever her parents’ motivations, it was done, and she couldn’t undo it.

You have to start from where you are.
Camille said that’s what a therapist at her new rehab facility had told her. It resonated for both of them.

She sighed and rubbed her right temple. Her head was starting to pound. “My mother would not have let this go. What did she ask you to do?”

He rifled through the file and pulled a large manila envelope from it. After slipping a finger beneath the flap, he opened it and handed it to her. She turned it over and glossy photos fell onto the table and into her lap. She surveyed them quickly, wanting to look away, trying to appear cool and unaffected. But each photo was like a knife twisting in her insides. They were all of Camille at fifteen, her hair mussed, her eyes glassy and vacant. She lay in a hospital bed. Her hospital gown only came to midthigh, handprint bruises showing beneath the hem. Some of the photos showed the bruising up close. Jocelyn could only imagine how hard the boys had had to grip Camille’s thighs to make those marks.

“Oh my God,” she gasped.

“There are lab results in there as well,” Simon said. “DNA tests.”

“Proof,” Jocelyn said.

“Your father held on to it, in case the families of the boys who raped her didn’t keep paying. Once the statute of limitations ran, he didn’t need it anymore. Your mother asked me to give it to you once she was gone.”

Jocelyn’s stomach burned. She pressed a bandaged hand to her middle. “To me? Why not Camille? And why now?”

Simon threw his hands in the air. He stood and paced. “I don’t know. Validation, maybe? She said you would know how to handle it—what to do with them. She wanted me to tell you girls that she was sorry.”

“That’s what she asked you to do? Give me proof that my sister was raped that I can never use? Apologize for something unforgiveable? No. She asked you to do something else. What was it, Simon?”

He grimaced and held his hands out, as if making an offering. “I think you know what she asked me to do.”

Again her stomach acids roiled. “Good God.”

He sat down again, leaning his elbows on his knees, his face inches from her. “Think about it. There was no touching these guys once the statute ran. Even if we went to the press with that,” he pointed to the envelope in her lap, “Camille would have been humiliated in the process. What else was there? What is the worst thing that you can do to them? That even if it doesn’t stick, their reputations will be forever ruined? They have to live with the shame, with the stigma forever.”

“My mother asked you to frame them for child pornography?”

He pursed his lips, screwing up his face as if he had tasted something sour. He didn’t answer. Of course not. He would never come out and say it. Not even to her. Because he knew that if she ever ended up on the stand testifying against him—testifying to this very conversation they were having—she would need more than his silent acquiescence to be credible. A good defense attorney would ask her, “Did Mr. Wilde actually tell you that he framed these men?” and she would have to say no. All he had done was pose a question, which he would claim was rhetorical. She was the one who said the words, not him. She made the suggestion, and that’s what Simon would say—it was only a suggestion, nothing more.

“I was wondering where you would have gotten the photos,” she said quietly. “Then I remembered that Caleb—Lieutenant Vaughn said that they were pretty old images, that they had been circulating for a while. Who besides the police and an actual child pornographer would have access to such things? An attorney who defended perverts in the past, of course. It’s sick, what you’ve done.”

Again he said nothing, but he had the grace to look as though she had slapped him. His eyes moistened again. In that moment, he looked very frail. Just a sad old man who had tried to remedy something horrific with something else horrific. A man trying to put a Band-Aid on a severed limb. A man who was utterly lost.

“Michael Pearce killed himself over this, Simon. He jumped off the Henry Avenue Bridge. His death is on your conscience.”

Simon smiled sadly. “Are you really sorry about his death?”

This time she didn’t answer. A moment passed between them. She shoved the photographs of Camille back into the envelope and snatched the file from the table, tucking both under her arm. “Framing someone for a crime they didn’t commit is wrong, Simon. Whether that person is morally bankrupt or not. You think I don’t want those men to suffer? I do. But not like this.”

“Jocelyn,” he said.

She stood up, her chair bumping the table. “You can mail me a check for my half of the estate.”

He called out to her as she reached the door. She thought she heard something like panic in his voice. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

She gave him one last look before she walked out. “The right thing,” she told him. “I’m going to do the right thing.”

EPILOGUE

December 23rd

Jocelyn winced as pain shot
through her left hand. She dropped the knife she had been using to chop vegetables, and it clanged against her dining room table.

“Shit,” she said, holding her hand against her middle.

“Mommy,” Olivia chided.

Jocelyn looked across the table. From where they sat, Olivia, Raquel, and Ana stared at her. Ana looked almost afraid, her eyes wide as saucers, her body unnaturally still. Jocelyn got that a lot lately. People didn’t know how to act around her—even people who had known her for years. It was as if they were waiting for her to explode, to go crazy, to fly into a fit of rage so big it would incinerate everything in its wake.

Only Olivia and Raquel treated her exactly the same as they always had. Using the red crayon she had been coloring with, Olivia pointed toward the far end of the table where a small jar sat, stuffed full of dollar bills. “That’s one dollar, Mommy.”

Damn swear jar.
There would be enough in it to buy Olivia her first home before she was even four.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jocelyn muttered under her breath. She reached into the left-hand pocket of her jeans and pulled out a crumpled dollar bill. She stuffed it into the jar, and another dagger of pain shot through her left hand. “Dammit,” she said before she could stop herself.

The holes had long closed up, and she’d had weeks of physical therapy to regain full function in her hand, but sometimes, if she used it a lot in a short period of time, the pain would return. Like spikes or barbs. Like the nail was being driven through all over again. She wondered if some of it was psychological.

“That’s another dollar, Mommy.”

Raquel’s giggles broke some of the tension building in the room. Ana’s body relaxed, and she walked over and stood beside Jocelyn. “You put the pasta on,” she told Jocelyn. “I’ll do the salad.”

“Okay, thanks.” Jocelyn smiled and disappeared into the kitchen.

As she filled a pot of water and put it on the stove to boil, she heard Raquel ask, “When are Mommy and Daddy coming back?”

“Not until tomorrow,” Ana replied. “You know that.”

Raquel’s voice took on a slightly whiny quality. “What are they doing?”

“They’re making you a baby brother,” Ana teased.

Jocelyn moved to the doorway. Raquel’s baby-smooth brow was creased with worry. “A brother? I don’t want a brother!”

“They’re not making a brother,” Jocelyn put in, moving around the table so she could look over the girls’ shoulders. She stroked Raquel’s long black hair. “Your daddy has been away for a very long time, and he only gets to come home for a couple of weeks. He and your mommy need to spend some time alone. You’ll stay with us until tomorrow.”

Olivia looked up at Jocelyn. “What do you think, Mommy? Do you think Aunt Camille will like it?”

Jocelyn studied the card the girls had been working on for the past day—ever since she’d told Olivia she had an aunt and that Camille would be coming to visit for Christmas. Jocelyn might as well have told her Santa Claus was spending the holidays with them, she was so excited about the prospect of a mysterious new family member. She had asked hundreds of questions, exhausting Jocelyn and testing the limits of what she was prepared to tell Olivia about Camille and why they had never met before.

Camille had been in rehab in California for several weeks. It was her idea to come home for Christmas. It was Jocelyn’s idea for her to stay with them and finally meet Olivia. But now Jocelyn was a nervous wreck. She hadn’t spent any meaningful time with her sister in two decades. She had no idea how Olivia and Camille would react to one another or whether or not they would hit it off. But the greater part of her couldn’t wait to see her sister and spend a holiday like a real family.

Jocelyn bent and kissed her daughter’s head. “I think she’ll love it. Look at all those hearts and rainbows. It’s very colorful and beautiful.”

“I drew the unicorn,” Raquel said, pointing to a purple unicorn flying over top of an array of flowers.

“I love it!” Jocelyn exclaimed.

“We both did the flowers,” Olivia said. “When will Aunt Camille get here?”

Jocelyn glanced at the clock on the wall. “Hopefully in another hour or so.”

A knock at her door drew their attention. “Ana, watch the pasta, will you?”

Ana nodded as Jocelyn left the girls in the dining room. She looked through the peephole on her front door and found Kevin and Nurse Kim waiting on her porch. She opened her door wide, smiling in greeting. The hair the neurosurgeon had shaved to operate on Kevin’s head had grown in nicely. He still walked with a cane and had several more weeks of physical therapy before he could resume his normal routine. Nurse Kim had been looking after him quite diligently. It gave Jocelyn hope.

“Rush,” Kevin said as he and Kim entered. “Good to see you.” He pulled her into a bear hug. Kim said hello, then wandered into the dining room to greet the girls. Kevin released her but kept an arm around her shoulders. “You look good,” he said. Leaning into her ear, he lowered his voice. “Your friend is outside. I’ll distract the kids while you talk to him.”

Jocelyn smiled despite the characteristic heat that rose to her face at the mere mention of Caleb. “Thanks, Kev.”

As she stepped outside into the frigid December air, she could hear Olivia and Raquel’s gleeful shouts of “Uncle Kevin! Uncle Kevin!”

Caleb waited in her driveway, leaning casually against her Explorer. The smile he gave her made her heart skip. She picked up her pace, nearly falling into him when she reached the driveway. He caught her in his arms, steadied her, and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Hey,” he breathed into her hair.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, inhaling his scent. “Hey,” she replied.

He looked up at her house. “Is Camille here yet?”

“No. Soon, though.”

She let go of him, putting some distance between them in case Olivia came looking for her and spied them from the front door.

“I just came to see how you were doing,” Caleb said.

Jocelyn shrugged. “Great. Nervous but good.”

Caleb glanced again at her front door. “I have some news. We tracked down one of your uncle Simon’s old clients. A guy with more burglary arrests than this city has potholes. He admitted to pulling a job for Simon.”

Jocelyn’s breath caught in her throat. “Is it enough to exonerate Whitman?”

Caleb frowned. “No. He’ll only admit to Simon hiring him to plant the cranes, nothing else. We think the pornography was planted remotely. We’ve got someone in computer crimes looking into it.”

“What about clients Simon represented for cybercrimes—hacking or identity theft—that sort of thing?” she suggested.

Caleb nodded. “That’s next on my list. We’ll keep working it.”

They stood in companionable silence for a long moment, Caleb furtively running his fingers along her forearm. “I’d invite you in,” Jocelyn said, “but Olivia . . .”

Caleb grinned. “Don’t sweat it. My son never met anyone I dated unless they were around for at least a year. When the time is right, Olivia and I will meet. For now, I’ll settle for this.” He caught her in his arms once more and planted a slow, soft kiss on her mouth, making every inch of her body hum with pleasure.

“Okay,” she said breathlessly.

He let go of her and stepped away. “I’ll call you later,” he said, then winked at her before sauntering down the street. She stood in the cold for another minute, watching him until he reached the end of her block and turned the corner.

Back inside, everyone was gathered around Jocelyn’s kitchen table, talking and laughing. The delicious smell of garlic bread filled the air. Jocelyn stood and watched them for several minutes, her heart full. A mixture of gratitude and relief washed over her—bigger and more all-encompassing than any fit of anger she had ever felt.

A second knock at her door startled her. She pulled the door open and grinned at her sister. “Camille, it’s good to see you.”