Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (28 page)

He moved closer to the edge of the sofa, but would not let her sit. Not even when her muscles began to tremble. Not even when her legs began to shake and she gripped his shoulders to stay on her heels. She steadied herself on his shoulder. He held her hip with
one hand, fascinated by the quickening of her breath, the whimpers in the back of her throat, the heat that meant there was nothing in the world for her, no sensation but those he gave. Moments passed that might have been hours—until she cried out, nails digging into his neck, and her body jerked forward. He stood fast, held her up just as she went slack against him. Her breath was ragged in his ear.

He didn’t know how long they were standing there while she waited to recover. He closed his eyes and leaned into her—the pain of his own desire burning, the minutes taut.

Later, he would wonder about the order of events—if he’d opened his eyes before Arlen had come through the door and said,
Oh
, or if he’d opened them after. He would wonder if Lauren had pulled down her skirt to cover herself, if she’d even needed to, or if she hadn’t thought that fast. But in the moment, there was only Arlen’s face, the confusion, then embarrassment, then disgust, then anger—frames of emotions on a reel. And Lauren was turning around in his arms calling,
“Wait!”
but Arlen was leaving, the moment clipped short. And then the two of them were alone again.

“Don’t worry,” Will said. “I don’t think he realized.”

When she spoke, she was breathless. “He realized,” she said.

Not everyone who heard that Arlen Fieldstone was innocent believed that justice had gone wrong. After the retrial, Lauren had sought out her ex-colleagues who still worked in the prosecutor’s office. The head prosecutor was an acquaintance with whom she was sometimes friendly: she’d gone to his house for a New Year’s party, and she knew all his children’s names. She’d asked,
Shouldn’t the state make a formal apology?
To her surprise, her friend—who had been sitting behind his desk and drinking a fast-food milk shake at the time—laughed.

“Apologize?” he’d said. “For what?”

As far as he and his compatriots were concerned, Arlen’s original trial had gone off without a hitch and Lauren was beyond reproach for her part in it. Sure, the jury had put the wrong guy behind bars. But as far as the prosecution was concerned, Arlen’s conviction was proof not of the system’s failure, but of its success. During the first trial, the jury had found Arlen guilty based on
what evidence they had—evidence that had been compelling enough to make them conclude he was guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If they’d found him
not
guilty based on such airtight evidence, the jury would have been either stupid or bribed.

“But Arlen wasn’t guilty,” Lauren had said.

And he’d shrugged. Actually shrugged. “I know he wasn’t guilty. And now he’s being let out of prison and he’ll be compensated. As far as I can tell, that means the system’s working. You’re making this into too big a deal.”

Though she’d suspected him of trying to make her feel better, Lauren had decided that day that
someone
needed to apologize to Arlen Fieldstone. And that it probably needed to be her.

But now, with the feel of Will’s hand still burned on her skin, she wondered if she was doing more harm in Arlen’s life than good.

She stepped out into bright sun that made her squint, not yet fully trusting her muscles to carry her weight. She walked fast toward her car—it was parked down the street—and she fumbled for her sunglasses only to realize they were perched on her head. At one point, she paused, leaned against a wall. She wanted the afternoon to freeze, to stop, because it was going by so unexpectedly that she couldn’t get a firm grip on it. She felt as if she’d just been lifted high out of her body, out of normal life, and then dropped like a thousand gallons of water to splash back down into it. And yet, here was the day—doing its usual thing. Going on.

She dug her cell phone out of her bag and saw that she had a new voice mail. Her boss. She didn’t listen to it; she called him back.

“Burt.”

“There you are,” Burt said. “Haven’t you been getting my e-mails?”

“I didn’t check them yet today . . . ”

She heard him say something to his assistant, then—the sound of a closing door. “I’m worried about you, Lauren.”

“About my heart?”

“Yes. But other things too.”

“My heart’s going to be fine. I just have to get some things under control. I’m really close,” she said. And yet, she’d seen Arlen’s face—the disbelief, then the anger. She wondered how much he’d seen. Anything at all was too much.

“What exactly are you doing down there in Richmond?” Burt asked. “I thought I was giving you time off for your health, but you’re down south on some pleasure trip?”

Lauren hesitated.

“Come on, Lauren. We know I’m your boss. But I’m your friend too. I wouldn’t be calling you if I wasn’t. Believe me.”

“Honestly?” Lauren leaned her shoulder against the brick of an ice cream shop. “I thought I came down here just to apologize to Arlen Fieldstone. But now I think there’s something more.”

“So . . . what? This is some soul-searching mission?” Burt asked, his voice tight with frustration. “You’re going to throw everything away?”

“Of course no—”

“You’re going to quit doing real work and pick up cases for one of those ramshackle 501(c)3s that try to break criminals out of jail.”

Lauren paused. “That hadn’t even occurred to me.”

“Bunch of hippies,” Burt scoffed. She bristled, but bit her tongue. “They undermine the system. And anyway, Lauren, you’re
already
doing good in the world. You help defend defendants. If you weren’t looking out for the underdog, who would? Isn’t that giving back?”

Lauren drummed her fingers on the wall behind her. Burt
seemed to be ahead of her in some way, so that she was racing to catch up with him. He seemed to know a thing about her that, until this moment, she herself hadn’t known. She worried that she wasn’t doing enough good in the world.

But she was . . . wasn’t she?

She heard Burt’s sigh. “How long have we known each other now—professionally? Over ten years? Since before you took our breath away with your work on the Fieldstone trial. And in all that time, you’ve worked so hard to get where you are. The only thing you’ve ever wanted was to be a partner here. And now that you’re finally a few steps away . . . you’re panicking.”

“I’m not panicking. I earned this promotion. I
deserve
it.”

“You deserve it if you can handle the pressure.”

“I can,” she said, annoyed now that she needed to assure him—as if her track record gave him room to doubt. She shouldn’t need to justify her work ethic with lip service; apart from Arlen, her success spoke for itself.

“I
thought
you could handle the pressure,” Burt said. “But now I’m not so sure. I’ve seen this before. The stress . . . it can wear you down. And that can lead to self-sabotage. I don’t want to see you self-sabotaging, Lauren. I want to see you succeed.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Then come back. You have to.”

“I will.”

“No—I’m saying,
you have to
. Now. Bryce convinced the board to move the vote to Tuesday.”

“What? That’s two days away. They can’t do that.”

“Well, they did. Lauren, you know you’re a shoo-in. But if you’re not here, there’s a good chance you’ll lose your support and the votes will swing the other way. I can only do so much.”

Lauren shut her eyes and, for a moment, blocked out all of Richmond. She thought of her office, with its silver desk lamp,
bright windows, and shelves of books—her office that sometimes felt more lived in than her own living room. She thought of her clients at the pharmaceutical company—they’d been depending on her firm to help defend them against unreasonable claims. She thought of how good it would feel to walk through the hallways of her office—like she
owned
it.

When she was a partner, she would be the sole owner of her time. She wouldn’t have any boss to answer to. She wouldn’t need to defend her life’s work because she’d taken a week off. She wouldn’t have to justify herself to her father. She would be the captain of her fate—finally—when she was a partner. Her mind was focused and clear.

“I’ll be back before the vote,” she said. “I promise. Can you and Rizzi watch my back until then?”

“You know you’ve got my support.”

“Thanks,” she said. “By the way, my father didn’t put you up to this, did he?”

“He doesn’t know I’m calling.”

Lauren knew a nonanswer when she heard one. But she said, “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

By the time she hung up the phone, her blood was beating normally, aftershocks of pleasure now merely the faintest echoes of thunder long after a storm. Her heart in her chest had settled into its old spot, fixed firmly as an anchor. She pushed back her hair, started forward, and rejoined the foot traffic on the sidewalk as she headed to her car.

An hour passed, then two. Will stayed at the antiques shop, sorting, dusting, taking pictures of things to post and auction on the Web. He heard Arlen upstairs, his feet making the boards creak. Will was torn between staying out of Arlen’s way and going to
speak with him. He didn’t debate with himself, vacillating this way and that, but instead he was squarely wedged between both the notion of going and the notion of leaving Arlen alone. He owed Arlen an explanation. And yet, there wasn’t much to explain.

As he worked, his fingers fumbled. His brain had drifted a million miles away from his body. Lauren—her eyelids heavy, her lips parted, her head lolling so her hair fell across her cheek—was burned on his retinas. And instead of feeling satisfied or triumphant over what he’d just achieved, or what he’d just made
her
achieve, he was instead feeling strangely let down. He got what he wanted and found it wasn’t what he’d wanted at all. He needed something else. Something more.

He was on the telephone with a friend, trying to get a quote on an old gumball machine, when he realized that Arlen was in the store. He appeared like a ghost might appear, in silence and with a vacant stare. He must have walked with purposeful soundlessness down from his apartment.

Will got off the phone quickly. “Arlen.”

Arlen nodded.

Will wasn’t quite sure what to say. And when he opened his mouth to speak, Arlen held up his hand.

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Arlen said. “I didn’t see anything. And I don’t want to know.”

Will pressed his lips together, uncertain of everything except that it was Arlen who needed to lead the conversation.

When his friend spoke again, his voice was quiet. “What if we get out of here for a while? Go do something.”

“Yeah,” Will said. “Let’s.”

Though it was the middle of the afternoon, and so hot that even the glint of sun off the roof of a car was offensive, Will drove them to Byrd Park. They went in relative silence, talking here and there only when necessary. Will went out of his way to park in a shady
spot, and then they got out to walk for a while. Arlen looked around with passive interest at horseback riders, joggers, and picnicking families—all trying to make the most of the afternoon despite the heat. Will felt sweat trickling down his back.

“Wanna sit?” he asked. He gestured to a bench under the browning leaves of an old tree.