“Apparently he likes you, too,” Jamie Lynn said, watching her usually cautious dog leap into the teen’s arms and begin to lick her face as if she were a long-lost friend.
Weezie was giggling. “Oh, I love him! This is going to be so much fun.”
“You don’t mind?” Jamie asked.
“Mind? No way. I am so going to spoil him while you’re gone.”
Satisfied, Jamie preceded Shane to the food display, chose her breakfast, then found a secluded little table in a corner of the room before Shane prodded her. “What are you thinking about?”
She sipped at her coffee. “My parents. I knew they were uptight about my brother’s trial but I had no idea anybody had been threatened. When Mom sent me to Tessie’s, I assumed the visit would be short. It wasn’t.”
“You never came home again?”
Jamie Lynn shook her head. “Not until now.” She sighed. “I think if the adults in my life had told me the truth back then, I’d have been much happier. I grew up believing I’d basically been thrown away.”
“Sad.” He covered her closest hand with his for an instant.
“Very. And confusing.”
“How did you reason it out?”
“By concluding that they had chosen my brother’s welfare over mine, and when he had disappointed them they’d washed their hands of all their children.”
“Even though you were totally innocent?”
“Yes.” She met his gaze evenly, meaning to assure him that she had had no personal knowledge of her sibling’s crimes.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Neither does sending me packing and acting as if I no longer existed. Try to see it from the viewpoint of a ten-year-old, Shane. My house had been a war zone ever since R.J. became a teen and started to get into trouble. Things eventually got so bad I used to hide in my room and put a pillow over my head to mute the shouting.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I get a headache just thinking about it.”
“You didn’t hear what was going on right before he was arrested? Not any of it?”
“The first I knew he was in real trouble was when my parents held strategy meetings at the supper table. I remember him denying any involvement in the hit-and-run, then finally admitting he didn’t remember driving.”
“Go on.”
Sighing gently, she met his inquiring gaze. “There’s not much more to tell. I suppose he may have recalled details as time went on, but he never acted guilty around me. Mostly, he seemed sorry and scared.”
“I can understand that. The authorities said he’d killed a man in cold blood.”
Jamie Lynn suppressed a shiver. Hearing Shane put it so bluntly seemed callous. She reached for his hand but he’d already pulled it away. “How can you be so detached? All I have to do is think about what happened that night and my stomach ties in knots.”
“Dad taught me that the only way to get to the truth was to keep your personal thoughts and actions under strict control.” He leaned back in his chair. “It’s a matter of discipline. That’s one of your failings. You get too caught up in proving your own hypothesis and don’t let yourself see the big picture.”
“Meaning, R.J. is as guilty as the judge said.”
“Yes. And he’s right where he belongs.”
“Then why are you helping me?”
“Mostly for my mother,” Shane told her. “I want to give her back the peace of mind she’s lost.”
He didn’t have to claim Marsha was unhappy because of Jamie Lynn’s return to Serenity. It was clearly implied. And he was right, as far as his reasoning went. She’d been over and over the transcripts of the trial and had also sent them to a friend who was studying law in Rhode Island. Everything seemed aboveboard. There were no unexplained irregularities, no indications that the prosecutor or Judge Randall had done anything illegal.
The key had to lie in her brother’s change of plea, she reasoned. Which brought her full circle. Back to her parents’ fear. And her father’s disappearance.
Meeting Shane’s gaze, Jamie Lynn reminded him of their morning plans. “Shouldn’t we be going?”
“It’s not far. We have time.”
“Since R.J. still refuses to let me visit, there’s one more person I’d like to look up while I’m here,” she added, rising and picking up her trash. “Does his old defense attorney go to your church, too?”
“Max Williford? No. He used to. I haven’t seen him around in ages.”
“I tried to find him online. I couldn’t find anything to indicate he’s still practicing law. Don’t you think that’s odd?”