Jo Leigh - Confessions Bundle

Until the day the trial began.

“You’re not wearing red,” Mary Jane said that morning, her voice almost accusing as Juliet came into the kitchen.

“It’s not my turn yet, you know that,” she said, pouring herself a second cup of coffee. She’d taken the first one into her bathroom with her while she got ready for a day she was dreading.

Marcie had come into the bathroom and talked with her while she put on her makeup and did her hair, but, not feeling well, she’d gone back to bed for another half hour rather than follow Juliet out to the kitchen.

“But this case is special. You should wear your power suit every day.”

If she’d had more than one red suit, she would have changed. “I can’t wear the same suit every day of the trial,” she told the little girl. “Besides, it loses effectiveness if you wear it all the time.”

Mary Jane dug into her bowl of cereal, spilling some of it over the side of the bowl onto the table. “You’ll wear it the first day it’s your turn, though, right?”

“Right.”

“And you’re going to win.”

“I’ll do my best.” She couldn’t give the girl the promise she wanted.

Eight years of love and trust had seen them through this crisis with Blake. Neither of them had ever mentioned Mary Jane’s mistaken assumption that Juliet had lied to her. But she couldn’t risk having Mary Jane accuse her of lying a second time.

JURY SELECTION TOOK ten days. The prosecution only took four to present enough evidence to put Blake away for life. Much of it was circumstantial. The bank account was not.

Juliet had a few tricks up her sleeve, but even with those, things didn’t look good for Blake.

“We’re up first thing in the morning,” she told him as they left the courtroom the second Wednesday in August. Dressed in a navy suit and sedate navy and cream tie, Blake walked beside her out of the building and toward her car.

It was the first time he hadn’t taken his leave of her at the first opportunity.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, hands in his pockets, “I have complete faith that you’ll do the best job that can be done. I won’t blame you if things don’t go well.”

He blamed her for robbing him of his daughter, but she got full marks for her legal ability.

Juliet wondered if that said something about her priorities. She hoped to God it didn’t, and was scared to death it did.

SHE ASKED HIM to go for drinks, to talk over the questions she’d be asking him on the stand the next morning. He figured he already knew the drill. They’d been discussing the case for months. But for some reason, he agreed anyway.

Probably because Mary Jane was out with Marcie that evening and Blake didn’t want to go home to a house empty of her sweet voice. He’d had her for dinner almost every night since the day he’d met her. She wouldn’t let him get too close, wouldn’t discuss her feelings and interrupted him or pretended not to hear any time he tried to tell her how he felt. But she was friendly and generous with her thoughts on any number of topics. And she had hundreds of questions. Blake attempted to answer every one of them. He tried to be patient, although the days were passing far too quickly—days that might be his only chance to establish a relationship with the daughter he’d lost.

Juliet had been completely generous with the little girl’s time; he had to hand her that.

Or not. So she’d given him a couple dozen nights. She’d taken eight years.

He’d have preferred to meet Juliet downtown, some bar with a lot of people and enough noise to make conversation just difficult enough to keep the meeting short. They ended up at their usual bar out in Mission Beach, but only because Blake wanted to stop in and see Mary Jane before she went to bed.

As soon as Lucy had served them, commenting on their absence in the past weeks, Juliet got right to the point, outlining the questions she’d be asking—about his time abroad, his relationship with his father, certain business dealings that revealed him as a man to whom integrity came first. She didn’t acknowledge the possibility of losing, only of giving a win their best shot.

He’d been right to think he had it all down. There were no surprises here. He nodded. Sipped his whiskey. And nodded some more. Until her voice trailed off.

And then there they were, with half a drink apiece, and nothing left to say.

Had Lucy been close, he would’ve motioned for the check. She was across the room, her back to them as she waited on a group of guys in another booth.

“I was wrong.”

He considered pretending that he hadn’t heard Juliet speak. He looked at her through half-lowered lids, instead, saying nothing. But listening.

Not because he believed she had anything to say that he wanted to hear. Or because there was anything she could ever say that would make him okay with what she’d done.

Perhaps what he felt was morbid curiosity. Or maybe just the simple fact that anything was preferable to being alone the evening before he took the stand in his own defense.

She toyed with the stem of her wineglass, her eyes focused somewhere between it and the table.

“I didn’t figure it all out until just recently,” she said. He couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or just taking out loud to herself. Somehow that made him pay more attention. “I had this conversation with Marcie…”

She looked over at him. “She lied to me.”

“Must run in the family.” Blake regretted the words as soon as they were said. Not because she didn’t deserve them, but because they were beneath him. He’d never deliberately hurt another individual in his life.

“I told you my mother committed suicide,” she said, her eyes narrowed and tired-looking as she peered at him through the dim lighting. “What I didn’t mention was that I was the one who found her.”

Shit. She’d been what? Twenty-three? Four?

“I came home to help her get ready for a surprise birthday dinner in the city. I’d brought a new outfit for her to wear—a silk dress just like she’d worn when she was married to my father. I even had pumps to match…”

Blake swirled the whiskey in his glass. She didn’t have to tell him this. He didn’t need to hear.

“She was lying faceup in the tub. She’d only been in there a couple of hours, but already her skin was gray, her body bloated and wrinkled.”

He wanted to down the rest of his glass and order another. He couldn’t make himself lift it to his lips. Couldn’t be that present in the moment.

“I called 911, and then got obsessed with the idea that she’d be mortified if perfect strangers came in and saw her naked. She’d want to be seen in that new dress…”

He was still watching her. Couldn’t pull his gaze away from hers, even when her eyes filled with tears.

“So I hauled her out, dried her as quickly as I could, struggled with underwear. And panty hose…”

Juliet’s voice trailed off and Blake breathed a sigh of relief that she was done. Even though he knew she wasn’t. He waited.

“I had her completely dressed, shoes and all, by the time they got there.”

She shook her head and smiled, as though trying to pretend that she hadn’t just been talking about dressing her dead mother’s naked body.

“You should never have had to go through that.” He hadn’t meant to comment. “Especially not alone.”

With a half shrug, Juliet picked up her glass, swallowed the remainder of the contents.

“Yeah, well, the thing is, I thought I’d dealt with all of that. I went to counseling. I understood the phases of grief. I went through them and got on with my life.”

He wanted to hold her in his arms. Just for a second.