Laura Caldwell - Claim of Innocence

“Over the years I would see him occasionally,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Here and there, in a crowded street or a busy restaurant, I’d see him like a ghost. And I convinced myself that that’s what it was—a ghost. I really came to believe in those things—spirits and such—because there was no other explanation.” She gave a brittle laugh. “And because I kept doing that—closing down my instinct—I ended up shutting it down in other areas of my life, too.”

I said nothing. I was mesmerized by getting behind the curtain of my mother’s mind.

“I drifted wherever life took me,” she said, “rarely making decisions, rarely thinking I had any control or any part in this.” She waved her hand around her kitchen.

“But you ultimately ended up somewhere you wanted to be, with Spence.”

She nodded, gave a little smile. “You’re right about that.”

Just then Spence came in the room. “Need anything, ladies?”

Classic Spence—always trying to help out, always catering to my mother. And yet when I looked closer, there was something not so classic. I saw he had a nervous edge to him I’d never witnessed.

My mother walked to him and kissed him tenderly on the cheek. She touched his face. “We’re fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Fine.”

Spence didn’t look like he believed her. I wasn’t sure I did, either.

Spence made a face I couldn’t read and left the kitchen.

When he was gone, I looked at my mom. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not entirely sure.”

“What does your gut instinct tell you?”

My mother laughed, and it was a beautiful sound. But she didn’t answer.

S omeone was in her house. Valerie Solara knew it as soon as she stepped through the front door, her arms around a brown grocery sack of baking supplies.

It had made her feel normal, going to the store. She’d decided to make a torta de chocolate, the Mexican dessert her father had taught her. It would be a treat for Layla, and baking the torta would make her feel normal, too. She wasn’t exactly sure what had given her the motivation to bake for the first time in at least a year, but she knew it had something to do with the new lawyer. Izzy, her name was.

At first, when Maggie had told her she wasn’t sure if Martin would be back, terror had flooded in. Martin was one of the few men that Valerie had ever trusted in her life, and once the feeling of terror had covered her, it was hard to see or hear around it. Technically, her eyes watched Izzy sparring with a state’s attorney about some objection. But the image of Izzy’s white suit, her red hair—all that was far away, as if seen through a telescope. The sound was muted, like it was in the next room.

But then Izzy—so charged up and cheerful—had started verbally tussling with a juror, a muscled man in a baseball cap that read Semper Fi, and she was distracted away from her panic. Izzy had won, the man was dismissed, and Valerie felt oddly optimistic. Later, Izzy talked to her, really talked to her, suggesting they meet outside the courtroom. And just like that a bolt of something—air? space?—had come in. The optimism flamed.

But now this feeling. The front door opened into a hallway and she moved down it, listening, hearing nothing. She stepped into the small living room, walked past the stairs that led up to the bedrooms and entered the small kitchen. Again she felt it—that sense that someone was there or had been there.

“Layla?” she called loudly into the still of the room.

“Yeah?” she heard her daughter’s faraway reply from upstairs.

She felt relieved. “Nothing,” she called back.

She expected the feeling to go away then, but instead it returned.

She put the bag on the linoleum counter and looked around. Everything seemed fine, the same as she’d left it—the ugly brown linoleum countertops, the old, yellow fridge—but then she saw it; a black crack running alongside the bottom of the back door.

The door was open, she realized. As if someone had just left. She felt her mouth form an O. Startled and wordless, she made her feet move toward the door. That door was always locked, something Valerie insisted upon, because it led to an alley behind the apartment, a squalid, unlit space where a person could easily hide behind the electric posts or in darkened doorways. The alley had spooked her since they’d moved in, so much so that she’d forbidden Layla to go out there. It was always Valerie who took the garbage to the Dumpster and hurried back into the kitchen.

Yet the door was open. There was no doubt about it. Quickly, she moved to it and opened it farther, ignoring her fear, and looked out at the alley. As usual, she could see little and so she slammed the door shut.

Should she call the cops? But that was the last thing she needed during a murder trial—more problems with the police.

She turned her head. “Layla!” she yelled again.

“Yeah, Mom?” She could tell Layla was at the top of the stairs, closer now.

“Did you go outside in the alley?” she asked, not needing to yell any longer.

“No.”

“Was someone here?”

Silence. Then, “No.”

Valerie locked the dead bolt. She yanked at the door once, then again to make sure it was locked.

She turned back to the horrid kitchen, so different from the one she had when Brian was alive. She looked at the sack of baking supplies, hoping, somehow, they would calm her. She thought of Izzy. But nothing could soothe her. The panic, the nerves, the questions; they were all there to stay.

I should be embarrassed to say this—I should, I know this—but I was thinking about Sam that night as Theo moved inside me. I didn’t like myself for those thoughts, but I let them take me over. I saw the hallway light glinting off Sam’s blond head, felt his shorter, muscled legs connecting with mine, each time.

“Set me up with one of Theo’s friends,” Lucy said. Her blue eyes were wide and excited. It was early in the morning, but Nookies, the diner where we’d met, was already open.

Lucy DeSanto and I had planned this breakfast date a month ago. Originally, we’d planned to be there at nine, after her kids were gone for the day. When I’d texted her to say I couldn’t meet because of the trial, she quickly offered to meet me beforehand, promising to be quick. I could tell she needed to talk to me about something. But I hadn’t expected this.

“Set you up with Theo’s friends?” I said incredulously. “But you’re in love with Mayburn.”

“I know.” The excitement disappeared, a crease appearing on the usually smooth skin between her eyes. “But I don’t want to roll into another relationship.” She looked out the window. Across Wells Street, people left their brick three flats and headed for the bus, en route to work.

Lucy and John Mayburn, the private investigator I sometimes worked for, had fallen for each other when he’d been hired to conduct surveillance on her husband, Michael. At first, it was a crush on Mayburn’s part, spent from afar. But when Michael was charged with money laundering and sent to a federal prison, Mayburn and Lucy had met and begun to date. Then Michael got out on bail, causing Lucy to feel she should give their relationship another shot, both for her and her kids. That shot had failed, and recently, Michael was returned to prison when new evidence was received, and he was charged with additional crimes. Lucy and Michael’s relationship was finally over and it had seemed a happy ending was in store for Mayburn and Lucy.

The other happy ending was Lucy and me. When Mayburn was watching her husband, he had asked me to befriend her as part of the case, but we really did become friends.