“Jesus, Eva. How the hell does a mistake like that happen?” His voice was perplexed, but mostly he sounded angry.
“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.” I’d pretty much come to grips with what had happened in the past. I couldn’t change my past or my fate. I could only hope I had a future.
“How did you survive?”
I knew what he meant. He wanted to know how I’d endured being in prison. “It was difficult at first. But I started working in the kitchen at the facility. I kept quiet and stayed out of trouble. I didn’t really talk to anyone. I read a lot whenever I could get my hands on books. Time passed.” I didn’t want to admit that every moment I was in prison seemed like forever, and that staying to myself caused tension with the other women. When I finally left incarceration, I swore I’d never go back. I’d die first.
“And when you got out?” he prompted.
“I got any job I could find. I lied on my job applications, or I stretched the truth. I lost plenty of positions because they found out I was a felon one way or another. When I could, I worked under the table. I did whatever I could to survive.”
He gripped my shoulders and turned me toward him. “Why didn’t you contact us, Eva? Christ! We would have helped you.”
I met his eyes and asked bluntly, “Would you? Would you really? You didn’t even know you had a stepsister, and the last thing that would have occurred to me is that you’d actually believe me. Nobody else ever has. My mother and your father were dead by the time my trial started. Why would you want to help me? I’m nobody to any of you, and you were dealing with grief and losing your dad. Do you know how hard it was just to get into your office, just to have the chance to talk to you? If you hadn’t mistaken me for someone else, I wouldn’t have been able to get a conversation with you at all.”
He stood and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “There had to be a way to take care of this, keep you out of prison for a crime you didn’t commit.”
I smiled as I saw his frustration, his concern over the fact that justice hadn’t been done in my case. “You want to think the justice system is infallible. I wanted to think that, too.” Unfortunately, I’d learned just how unpredictable it could really be. “My illusions were shattered the minute the verdict was read.”
“You were only seventeen, right?”
“I was when the jewelry was stolen, but they found the stolen items in the apartment on the day after my eighteenth birthday. My mother died with your father not long after I was arrested, so I was on my own. I was tried as an adult.”
“Fuck!” Trace ran a frustrated hand through his hair, making him look even more gorgeous in a mussed up kind of way. I knew he was trying to make sense out of a situation that was completely unfair.
I knew that look, but he couldn’t change what had happened, even if he was a Walker.
“It’s Thanksgiving. Let me get dressed and I’ll cook us an incredible meal. We can forget about what happened for a little while,” I suggested, standing up to go take a shower.
Although I was touched that Trace had faith in me, I still didn’t have any faith in myself. I didn’t want to talk about my past.
Trace grabbed my upper arm as I past and swung me around. “I’ll never forget, Eva. I swear I’ll make this right.”
Looking at his enraged expression, I almost believed him. But after so many years and so many failures, I knew I couldn’t outrun my past. “It doesn’t matter.”
He let go of my arm reluctantly. “The hell it doesn’t,” he grumbled.
I smiled at him as I shrugged out of his grasp. He couldn’t change my past, but I wish I could make him understand how much his belief that I was innocent really meant. Since it was impossible to explain, I simply kept smiling at him weakly and headed for the shower.
Chapter Eight
Eva
“That was incredible, Eva. It’s the best meal I’ve ever eaten,” Trace said earnestly as he sipped a cup of cappuccino in the living room.
I rubbed my belly, wishing I could have eaten more. The Thanksgiving feast had turned out well, and it was the best meal I’d ever eaten. I didn’t think it was so much my cooking skills, but Trace’s fabulous kitchen. It had every convenience and the fanciest equipment I’d ever used. I was guessing it would be hard to screw up a meal in his kitchen.
“Thanks for letting me cook. Your kitchen is amazing.”
He raised a brow as he lifted his mug to his mouth. “You say that like I was doing you a favor instead of vice-versa.”