Jo Leigh - Confessions Bundle

“You know that case I told you I was working on?”

Marcie watched her closely. “Eaton James.” She stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork. “He’s so big he’s your only client right now.”

Juliet nodded. Her sister always kept track.

“Blake Ramsden is going to be in court tomorrow, as a witness for the prosecution.”

Mary Jane took another bite of her sandwich, adding a potato chip to the wad in her mouth. She chewed and swung her feet while she watched her mother, and listened.

Fork midmouth, Marcie stared. “How do you feel about that?”

“Obviously uneasy.” Juliet focused on calm. Normalcy. She took a bite of chicken. “Surprise evidence is never welcome, particularly in a case as convoluted as this one is. True to form, Paul Schuster is attempting to confuse the jury with a paper trail that probably took years to accumulate, only half of which is really relevant.”

“Can’t you object?”

“She does.” Picking up her glass of milk, Mary Jane rolled her eyes. “The prosecution talks pseudo-logic, huh, Mom?”

“Yeah.” Juliet smiled. The milk mustache only slightly detracted from the maturity of her daughter’s contribution to the conversation.

“Doesn’t it present a conflict of interest having him as a witness for the other side?”

“No.” Juliet shook her head. “I certainly have no personal relationship with him!”

“Still…”

“I’ll explain to Eaton James that I met Blake Ramsden in a bar years ago, but that there’s been nothing between us since. He’s not going to care.”

“So what’s Ramsden got to do with the Terracotta Foundation?”

“I have no idea. Schuster’s faxing me a copy of the evidence he plans to present. I know that Ramsden’s father donated a substantial sum of money to Terracotta several years ago to be put in some land investment that didn’t pay off. Terracotta, and those particular investors, lost everything they put into the project. But no one has ever suggested any evidence of fraud. Eaton James was up front with everyone about the risk involved.”

“Mr. Ramsden died when I was a little kid,” Mary Jane reminded them all. “And Blake was still gone then, right, Mom?”

Juliet nodded.

“But he’s been back a long time,” Mary Jane added.

Marcie looked from one to the other of them, pushed the chicken salad around on her plate with a fork and took a small bite. Then she put down her fork.

“Okay,” she said, crossing her arms. “Nice try, but we both know the court case isn’t what I was asking about. Are you going to tell me how you feel about seeing him again?”

“You don’t care, do you, Mom?”

Juliet looked at her sister. “You have a plane to catch.”

“We don’t have to leave for another half hour. At least.”

If not for the somewhat questioning look in her daughter’s eyes, Juliet might still not have answered. Truth was, she didn’t have an answer.

“I guess I’m a little uneasy,” she said. “I mean, I did know him briefly. It could be kind of awkward.”

“Know him briefly? He’s the father of your child!”

“Biological, only.” Mary Jane was chewing again. She’d finished one-half of her sandwich, leaving the crusts, and had started on the other.

“A child whom, I might add, he knows nothing about.”

Pulling her hair down out of its ponytail, Juliet shook her head. “That’s a decision I made a long time ago.”

“I know. And I understand why. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be changed.”

“I don’t want it changed!” There was nothing childlike in the small body at the opposite end of the small table from her mother. “It’s always just been the two of us and I like it that way. Besides, it’s not like he wanted to marry my mom.”

With a quick frown in Juliet’s direction, Marcie leaned toward Mary Jane. “I know he didn’t, honey, and I know you like it with just you and your mom, but maybe you only feel that way because you don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Missing?” The look the girl gave her aunt was similar to one that Mrs. Cummings had bestowed on Mary Jane in her office the previous month. “You think I want to be like Tommy Benson at school? Or Sarah Carmichael? Or Tanya Buddinsky?”

“Buddinsky?” Marcie asked Juliet.

“Her last name is Buehla.” Juliet lowered her head a notch as she looked at Mary Jane. Her daughter knew better than to demean herself with name-calling. She couldn’t quite keep the twitch of a grin from her lips, however. Tanya had had a field day with Mary Jane’s possible expulsion from school the month before. She had spread some fairly inventive stories about Juliet and their little cottage on the beach as well.

Picking up her silverware, Marcie reached for Juliet’s plate and put it on top of her own. “So why don’t you want to be like these other kids?”

“They’re splits!”

“Splits?”

“Their parents are divorced,” Juliet translated.

“Yeah and they have to go part of the time to one house and part of the time to the other and their stuff is always getting left in the wrong place. And there’s the holidays.” Mary Jane’s forceful tone made it sound as though those would explain themselves.

“The holidays?”

“One at one house and one at another and everyone’s constantly fighting about it.”

“Oh, honey, it’s not always that way,” Marcie said.

“Mostly it is, and anyway, how would you like to open your Christmas presents and then have to leave them right away and go someplace else?”

“To get more presents? That might be cool.”

“Who needs more presents if you don’t get to play with them?”

With one raised eyebrow, Juliet asked her sister if she’d had enough.

“How about needing more love?” Marcie asked softly, sending a stab to Juliet’s stomach.

“You guys love me.” Mary Jane didn’t miss a beat. “More than most kids in my class are loved, I’ll bet, even those with two parents married. Some houses are good with dads. This one is good without one.”

“You sure about that, honey?” Juliet didn’t know where the question came from. She’d been very open with Mary Jane from the beginning, telling the child that she would contact her father anytime she wanted her to.

Getting up, Mary Jane dropped her plate on top of her aunt’s. “Positive.” She picked up all three plates and carried them over to the sink. “Now, would you two just go on talking about Mom and quit worrying about me?”

Juliet loved her daughter, but how in the hell she’d ever produced such a precocious and outspoken one was beyond her.

With her chin on her hand and her elbow on the table, Marcie looked at her. “So?”

“So what?” Juliet fingered the edge of her tweed place mat.

“How does Mom feel about seeing Blake Ramsden again?”

Shrugging, she looked at her daughter getting water all over the counter and floor as she sprayed the three plates and put them in the open dishwasher beside her.

“He never contacted me after that one time together. Never followed up on the event to find out if there’d been any consequences. You know, hurt feelings, disease, and—even though we’d started out taking precautions—a baby…”

“I know.”

“He should have.”

“I agree.”

Marcie always had. Juliet would never be able to repay her sister for all the support she’d offered, then and now. She remembered the nights Marcie had sat on the bathroom floor with her, helping her study for her bar exam. Juliet had fought an almost constant battle between mind and body in those days. She’d often thought she could have made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the length of time she’d suffered from a morning sickness that had never been limited to mornings.