Karin Slaughter - Fallen

Will tried for light conversation. “I’m glad that your mother’s okay.”

He kept glowering. Emma hiccupped again. Will felt bad for the man. As the owner of a Chihuahua, he knew the difficulties of acting tough while holding something impossibly tiny in your hand.

Jeremy saved them from their staring contest. “Hey, Will. Thanks for coming.”

Will shook his hand. He was a scrawny-looking kid, but he had a strong grip. “I hear your grandma’s doing better.”

“She’s tough.” He draped his arm around Faith’s shoulders. “Just like my mom.”

Emma hiccupped.

“Let’s go, Uncle Zeke.” Jeremy grabbed him by the elbow. “I told Grandma we’d move my bed downstairs so Mom can take care of her when she gets out of the hospital.”

Zeke took his time breaking eye contact. Emma’s continued hiccups probably had something to do with his decision to follow his nephew down the hall.

“Sorry,” Faith apologized. “He can be a bit of an asshole. I don’t know how it happened, but Emma loves him.”

Probably because she couldn’t understand a word he said.

Faith asked, “Do you want to go ahead and talk to Mom?”

“I was just here to check on you.”

“She’s already asked for you a couple of times. I think she wants to talk about it.”

“She can’t talk about it with you?”

“I’ve got the gist. There’s no reason for me to know the gory details.” She forced a smile onto her face. “Amanda told her that she promised you an hour.”

“I didn’t think that’d actually happen.”

“They’ve been best friends for forty years. They keep each other’s promises.” She patted his arm again and started to leave. “Thanks for coming.”

“Wait.” Will reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the envelope that had come in the mail this morning. “I’ve never gotten a letter before. I mean, other than bills.”

She studied the sealed envelope. “You didn’t open it.”

Will didn’t need to. She would never know how much it meant to him that she’d known that he could read the letter. “Do you want me to open it?”

“Hell no.” She snatched it out of his hand. “It’s bad enough Zeke and Jeremy saw those videos I made. I had no idea I was such an ugly crier.”

Will couldn’t disagree.

“Anyway.” She looked down at her watch. “I need to take my insulin and eat something. I’ll be in the cafeteria if you need me.”

Will watched Faith walk down the hallway. She stopped in front of the elevator and looked back at him. While he was watching, she tore the letter in two, then tore it again. Will saluted her, then pushed open the door to Evelyn’s room. Almost every surface was covered with flowers of all kinds. Will felt his nose start to itch from the heavy perfume smell.

Evelyn Mitchell turned her head toward him. She was lying in bed. Her broken leg was elevated, Frankenstein bolts jutting out of a hard cast. Her hand rested on a foam wedge. Gauze was packed where her ring finger should’ve been. Tubes ran in and out of her body. The gash on her cheek was held together with white butterfly tape. She looked smaller than he remembered, but then, what she had been through was the sort of thing that could reduce a person.

Her lips were chapped and raw. She held her jaw still, talking with as little movement as possible. Her voice was stronger than he’d imagined it would be. “Agent Trent.”

“Captain Mitchell.”

She showed him the trigger for the morphine pump. “I’ve held off on this because I wanted to talk to you.”

“You don’t have to. I don’t want to cause you any more pain.”

“Then please sit down. It hurts my neck to look up at you.”

There was already a chair pulled up beside her bed. Will sat down. “I’m glad that you’re well.”

Her lips barely moved. “Well is a bit down the road. Let’s just say I’m hanging in there.”

“Beats the alternative.”

She said, “Mandy told me about your part in all of this.” Will assumed that had been a very short conversation. “Thank you for looking out for my daughter.”

“I think you get more credit for that than I do.”

Her eyes watered. He wasn’t sure whether it was from pain or the thought of losing Faith.

And then he remembered that she had lost another child, too. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She swallowed with obvious difficulty. The skin on her neck was nearly black with bruises. Evelyn Mitchell had been forced twice now to choose between her family with Bill Mitchell and the son she’d had with Hector Ortiz. Both times, she had made the same decision. Though Caleb had made it pretty easy for her the last time.

She said, “He was a very troubled young man. I didn’t know how to make it better. He was so angry.”

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

A gravelly chuckle came from her throat. “No one wants me to talk about him. I think they’d rather he just disappear.” She indicated the cup of water on the table. “Could you—”

Will picked up the cup and angled the straw so that she could drink. She couldn’t lift her head. Gently, Will reached around and supported her.

She drank for almost a full minute before releasing the straw. “Thank you.”

Will sat back down. He stared at the bouquet of flowers on the table across from him. There was a business card attached to the white bow. He recognized the logo from the Atlanta Police Department.

Evelyn said, “Hector was a CI.” Confidential informant. “He snitched on his cousin. They were in this gang, and it had started as something small, a reason to break into cars and snatch purses so they could play video games, and then it got really mean really fast.”

“Los Texicanos.”

She nodded slowly. “Hector wanted out. He kept talking and I kept listening because it was good for my career.” She waved her good hand in the air. “And then one thing led to another.” Her eyes closed. “I was married to an insurance salesman. He was a very kind man and a very good father, but …” Breath stuttered through her lips as she sighed. “You know how it is when you’re out there in the street chasing down bad guys and your heart is pounding and you feel like you’ve got the whole world bucking between your legs, and then you go home and—what?—cook dinner? Iron shirts and give the kids a bath?”

“Were you in love with Hector?”

“No.” She was firm in her answer. “Never. And the strange thing is, I didn’t realize how much I was in love with Bill until I had hurt him so badly that I was going to lose him.”

“But he stayed with you.”

“On his terms,” she told him. “I was out of the negotiations by then. He met with Hector. They came to a gentleman’s agreement.”

“The bank account.”

She turned her gaze toward the ceiling. Slowly, her eyes closed. He thought she had fallen asleep until she started talking again. “Sandra and Paul had a lot of debt from helping her family back home. They couldn’t afford a child, even if they could’ve had one of their own. Part of the money in the account was from Hector. Part of it was from me. Ten percent of every paycheck I got went to Caleb. It was like tithing, only not for the church—but still for penance.” The corner of her mouth went up slightly in something like a smile. “Though I suppose that Sandra gave a lot of that money to the church every week. They were very religious. Catholic, but that didn’t bother me like it bothered Bill. I thought they would give him a strong moral foundation.” The sound of laughter came from her mouth. “So much for that.”

“Caleb found out about you when Sandra got sick?”

She looked at Will. “I got a call from her. She sounded like she was warning me, which didn’t make sense at the time, so I ignored it. The first time I saw him as a grown man was at her funeral.” She shook her head at the memory. “God, he looked just like Zeke at that age. More handsome, if you want to know the truth. More angry, which was the problem.” Her head kept moving side to side. “I didn’t see how angry he was until it was too late. I had no idea.”