Things You Won't Say (39 page)

“When is it going to happen?” Mike was asking. His tone revealed it wasn’t good news. Jamie felt a clutch of fear.

“Okay. Talk to you after.”

He slid his phone back into his pocket and stood there, staring into space.

Jamie handed the tube of sunscreen to Lou and walked over to him. “What is it?” she asked softly, not wanting the kids to overhear.

“Lucia Torres is holding another press conference,” he said.

Jamie gasped. A few days after Mike had left, Jamie had called and told him about her visit to Jose’s mother, knowing she needed to be honest with him. She’d been worried Mike would feel betrayed again, but he’d only said he appreciated her effort. Now Jamie wondered if she’d violated some sort of law.

“What’s she going to say?”

“He doesn’t know,” Mike said. “But she’s starting it in half an hour. He said it’s so rushed that a lot of reporters probably won’t get there in time.”

“That’s good, right?” Jamie asked.

Mike shrugged.

“Do you want to watch it here?” she offered.

Lou stepped toward them. “How about I take the kids to the park?” she suggested. “I can bring them back in an hour.”

Mike hesitated. “Yeah, okay,” he finally said.

He was probably going to watch it with her only because he didn’t have time to get to another television, Jamie thought, feeling stung. They saw Lou and the kids off, then Jamie busied herself cleaning the kitchen. Mike sat on the living room couch, flipping through the newspaper so quickly he couldn’t be reading a word.

“Seven minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. He flicked on the television and switched the channel to a local news station.

“Can I get you anything?” Jamie asked, sitting down a few feet away from him.

“No thanks.” Mike began drumming his fingers against his leg.

They stared at a commercial for a retirement community, then another for English muffins.

They should’ve watched the earlier press conference together, Jamie thought as she remembered how she’d stayed upstairs instead of going into the basement with Mike. She’d thought she’d been shielding him. Now it was just another regret.

A young male reporter appeared on the screen, holding a microphone and recapping the facts of the case. The press conference was taking place at Ms. Torres’s lawyer’s office, the reporter said. He wrapped up, and the camera cut to a podium positioned next to the doorway of a large room.

In a voice-over, the reporter narrated what was happening on-screen: “Ms. Lucia Torres is approaching the podium. She called this press conference unexpectedly and has not released any statement about its contents.”

Only when she began to feel light-headed did Jamie realize she was holding her breath. She exhaled and leaned forward, trying to glean clues from Ms. Torres’s appearance. Jose’s mother wore the same black dress she’d had on for the last press conference, and her expression was somber. She seemed
to have aged since Jamie had seen her just a few weeks ago. She reached the microphone and stood there for so long that Jamie wondered if she was going to speak after all.

“I have always told the truth, all my life,” Lucia Torres finally began in a low voice. “And I have tried to teach my children to do the same.”

Jamie gripped her hands together, wishing she could hold Mike’s instead.

“My younger son, Alejandro, is not here today, and I ask that none of you try to contact him in the future. My lawyer or myself will answer your questions. He is to be left alone. He is a little boy, eleven years old.” Her voice faltered on the word
little
and her mouth twisted. But then she straightened up and lifted her chin higher. “He made a mistake because he was trying to protect me from something he knew would break my heart.”

She stepped back, and the woman standing behind her—the lawyer? Jamie wondered—leaned toward the microphone. “Ms. Torres wants to let you all know that she received a gun from her younger son last night. The boy took it from where it had fallen near his brother Jose’s body just after Jose was shot by Police Officer Michael Anderson. Alejandro had followed Jose to the scene of the fight and was hiding under a nearby parked car during the time of his brother’s shooting.”

The room was silent for a moment, then it exploded with shouted questions.

“The gun was turned over to the district attorney early this morning,” the lawyer said, waving her hand for quiet. “That’s all the information I have at the moment. Please respect the fact that this is a grieving mother who tried to do the right thing. And Alejandro, too. Until recently he didn’t understand the extent of the repercussions of his actions. Once he did, he took the courageous step of telling the truth.” She took Ms. Torres by the forearm and led her from the room.

Jamie struggled to process the words. She stared at the tele
vision, remembering the pair of big brown eyes peeking out at her from behind Ms. Torres. Alejandro—Jose’s little brother. He’d listened as Jamie begged on behalf of her husband and talked about how her children needed their father. He’d seen her cry.

The male reporter appeared on the screen again, his voice tense and his words spilling out rapidly. “We have just heard from Lucia Torres that her—that a gun was recovered from near her older son, Jose Torres’s body immediately following his shooting death. The gun—Ms. Torres said—was picked up by her younger son and brought home, where presumably it has remained this whole time. We’ll, ah, we’re going to bring you an update on the case as soon as we have more information. Right now we are—we are confirming that Lucia Torres has just said there was a gun a few feet away from her teenage son, Jose’s body immediately after he was shot by Police Officer Michael Anderson.”

The phone erupted upstairs.

Jamie turned to Mike. His mouth had fallen open. He was still staring at the television, even though a weatherman was now on, predicting another scorcher.

The phone stopped ringing, then started up again. Jamie could hear her cell phone buzzing frantically.

Mike’s breathing turned ragged. “They found a gun?” he asked. “I knew—I thought—but then when there wasn’t any evidence—”

“Mike, he had a gun, just like you said.” Jamie felt dazed and muddy, as if everything was happening in slow motion. “You were right all along.”

“I saw it in his hand. There wasn’t any doubt—but then after I got to him so fast, and nothing was there—” Mike said.

Mike’s cell phone was ringing now, too, but he ignored it. He was a cop again, intent on puzzling out the clues.

“That was why I couldn’t find it. It must have fallen behind him, toward the cars,” Mike said, his voice gaining confidence. “Someone had to have cut in between me and Alejandro right when he bent down to get the gun. Otherwise I would’ve seen him.”

Mike was very still. He squeezed his eyes shut, something he only did when he was concentrating intently.

“But something still doesn’t add up,” he said. “Jose was a good kid. Everyone said so. He’d never been in any real trouble before. People don’t just turn on a dime like that. So why’d he have a gun? Why’d he aim it at Jay? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Jamie reached a hand toward Mike’s leg, then withdrew it without touching him.

“I gotta figure this out,” Mike said. “There’s another piece I’m not seeing yet.” He opened his eyes.

“You will,” Jamie said. “But Mike, we’ve got to tell the kids!”

She still felt numb, but she leapt to her feet. “And your parents!”

“Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t move.

“They’ll have to drop the charges!” she cried.

Why was Mike just sitting there?

She knelt down so they were face-to-face. “I know this has been horrible for you. We haven’t even really had any time to think about what you had to do. But I want to help. We can get through this.”

“Yeah,” Mike said again, leaning back. Away from her. “I just wish . . .”

“What is it?” she asked. She reached for his hand, but his fingers didn’t close around hers.

Fear clamped her body like a vise. It wasn’t over, not yet, she thought.

“I wish you’d believed me,” Mike said, and he dropped his hand from hers.

The knowledge of what she’d done slammed into her. “I’m sorry— I was just trying to help!” she cried. “I was scared!”

He didn’t respond.

“Mike, I didn’t mean— I wasn’t even focused on if there was a gun or not, I was just trying to protect us!” she continued. “To save our family!”

Why hadn’t she believed him? She thought back to right after the shooting, when Mike had come up their front walk, his head low, his gun missing from its holster. He’d gripped her shoulders and looked at her intently.
I swear to you,
he’d said.
I
saw
it, Jamie.

And she’d responded:
It was raining! It was hard to see! Anyone could’ve made that mistake!

“It made me doubt myself,” Mike was saying. “When you didn’t even pretend to believe me. You’re the person who knows me best, so if you thought I really did it . . . that was the worst part. Wondering if I’d killed a boy for no reason.”

“You have to understand,” she said, her voice frantic and choppy. “It was like J.H. said, it was about what the jury would believe! And it was raining, and you were so stressed, and— Mike, I’m not saying this well, but don’t you see that I couldn’t even think that much about what actually happened?”

“But it meant everything,” Mike said. His dark eyes were wet. “I see Jose on the pavement everywhere I look. I dream about him all the time. And I began to think it was all my fault again. Just like with Ritchie.”

“Oh, Mike, no, it wasn’t your fault! Neither of them,” Jamie said. She was crying hard now. “I was just— Mike, I was so afraid for you, for our family . . .”

Her voice trailed off as he stood up, leaving her kneeling on the floor. “I should call my parents, like you said. And J.H. But Henry first.”

“Do you want to do it from here?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’ll go meet Lou and the kids at the park. I can phone everyone on my cell there.”

“Mike, I know you’re still so angry with me,” she said. She tried to catch her breath, to find the words to make him understand. “You deserve to be angry with me! But I did what I had to. Can you try to see that? It wasn’t just me—J.H. talked about PTSD, and—”

Mike cut her off. “Christie believed me,” he said.

Jamie went still. “I was wrong, Mike,” she said.

He nodded, just one quick up-and-down movement of his head. Then his phone rang again, and this time he looked at it. “Henry,” he said.

He answered and began walking away as he talked to his son. “I know,” Jamie could hear him saying. “Me, too. Yeah, I’ll come get you right now. I want to see you, too . . .”

Mike left without even saying good-bye. Without looking back at her.

Chapter Nineteen

A PUFFY WHITE CLOUD
drifted in front of the sun, providing temporary relief from the relentless heat. Dozens of parents and siblings packed the bleachers of a local community center for the final game in the summer youth league baseball tournament, but it was so quiet that Christie could hear a breeze rustling the leaves of the tree behind her.

Her eyes were fixed on Henry, who was leading off second base. In the bottom of the final inning, the game was tied six-all, with one out.

Henry was in position to score, and his team’s other best player was up at bat. “He’s got this,” Christie announced to no one in particular, then began gnawing her thumbnail.

The pitcher wound up and let the ball fly. At the crack of the bat, Christie jumped to her feet, screaming, “Go, Henry!” Next to her Jamie and Lou leapt up, too.

Henry sprinted toward third base as the ball hung in the sky, then it began arcing down as two outfielders ran to make the catch. But Henry’s teammate had hit it into the sweet spot, the no-man’s-land between first and second base, and the ball bounced against the turf before being scooped up by one of the opposing team’s players.

Henry rounded third hard, never hesitating as he headed for home plate.

“Gogogogogo!” Christie shrieked.

“The play’s at home! The play’s at home!” the opposing team’s coach bellowed, his voice soaring over the noise of the crowd.

The ball smacked into the glove of the cutoff man, who pivoted and hurled it toward the catcher. Henry’s arms were pumping, and his feet kicked up puffs of brown dirt with every step. He ran so fast the batting helmet flew off his head and bounced behind him. But the ball was faster.

Just after it slammed into the catcher’s mitt, Henry threw his head and shoulders backward, sliding in feetfirst.

“He made it under the catch, didn’t he?” Jamie asked, grabbing Christie’s arm. “The ball didn’t touch him, right?”

“Of course it didn’t!” Christie said, although she wasn’t sure.

The umpire extended his arms straight out, and half of the people in the stands erupted in applause. Lou reached over and stung Christie’s palm with a high five.

“Did Henry win?” Eloise asked. She was eating a snow cone and her lips were the color of blueberries.

“He sure did,” Jamie said. “Him and the rest of his team. Aren’t you proud of your big brother?”

Christie squinted and caught sight of Mike running toward Henry, pumping his fists over his head. Even though he’d never played baseball, Mike had signed up as an assistant coach for the summer league, saying he wanted to spend more time with Henry.

Christie had been with Henry at the time of Ms. Torres’s second press conference. She’d been getting ready to take him out for breakfast when Henry had pounded on the door of her bathroom, yelling for her to come quick. She’d stood there with him, her hair damp on her shoulders and mascara coating only her right lashes, staring at the television screen while everything changed.

Immediately after that Mike had picked Henry up, but this time, he hadn’t come upstairs. Instead, Henry had waited outside the apartment building, eager to see his father the moment he arrived. Christie had thought about going downstairs to wait with him, but in the end, she’d thought Henry deserved to be alone with Mike.