The problem was her mother didn’t love her like she used to. And Daddy was busy loving Alicia in heaven.
She leaned over her bed and reached for the shoebox. Setting it on her bedspread, she lifted the lid and examined the contents: a bag with dozens of colorful pills, a water bottle, and an envelope containing a good-bye letter.
Jenny pulled the letter out, opened it gently, and began to read.
“Dear Mom …” She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to imagine what her mother would be feeling when she read the letter for the first time. She opened her eyes and continued. “First let me say I’m sorry. I never planned to hurt you with this; it was just something I had to do. Ever since the accident, you’ve been too busy with your speaking things to spend time with me. Too angry to notice me, even when you’re home. It’s okay. I understand, really. You lost everything that matters to you. Daddy and you have been together a long time, and I know you miss him a lot. Alicia, too. She was your first child, and I know she’s always been a little more special.
“Then there’s me. Ever since the accident, you and I haven’t been the same. We fight all the time and finally I decided it was time to go. I’m just in the way here anyway. Still there’s a few things I want you to know. I enjoyed being part of this family, at least before the accident. You were always a good mom, so don’t think this is because of you. It’s not.
“Also, you can do whatever you want with my scrapbooks and things. Give the clothes to someone who needs them. Maybe since it’ll be just you now, you can sell this house and get on with your life. If I’d stayed, I would have wanted to sell it. You can only walk around a museum of memories for so long, Mom.
“Anyway, that’s all. I just wanted you to know this isn’t your fault and that I’m sorry. I wanted to be with Daddy and Alicia and Jesus. You don’t want me talking about Jesus anymore, and sometimes I think I miss him as much as I miss Daddy and Alicia. This is the only way I know to make things right. Love forever, Jenny.”
Two tears fell from Jenny’s eyes and splattered on the sheet of paper. She brushed them off, folded the note once more, and returned it to the shoebox.
She was ready.
Now it was only a matter of waiting.
The cemetery looked like something from a postcard as Hannah pulled up and parked in the visitor lot. The setting sun cast a glow over the rolling green hills and elm trees, causing the leaves to shimmer in the gentle breeze. Rosebushes lined the roadway throughout the grounds, lending a sweet smell to the springtime air.
Hannah drew a deep breath and leveled her gaze eastward, toward the plot where Tom and Alicia lay buried. Then she checked her appearance in the rearview mirror.
She was still beautiful, she supposed, but not in the way Tom had always liked. He had always loved her eyes most of all, and since the accident her eyes had changed. They looked almost as if they belonged to someone else. Each morning she saw them—hollow, hard, hateful eyes with none of the beauty Tom had loved.
It’s all Brian Wesley’s fault.
The eyes looking back at her grew harder, angrier. Brian had stolen everything from her, even the way her eyes had once made the man she’d loved weak in the knees.
She tried to will the bright-eyed innocence back into her eyes—after all, she was going to visit Tom, and if in some inexplicable way he was able to see her, she didn’t want him seeing her eyes like this.
She tried thinking about happier times, about Tom, their childhood, the way he’d shown up on her doorstep the day before marrying someone else. She thought about their wedding and Alicia’s birth and Jenny’s.
But her eyes remained empty.
Brian isn’t the only one; it’s God’s fault, too.
You don’t believe in God anymore, remember? So it can hardly be his fault.
She ignored the thought. Maybe there was a God, and he didn’t like her. Maybe this was his way of showing that.
There was nothing she could do about her eyes. Not until she heard a guilty verdict. Then they would light up again.
She climbed out and stretched, gazing at the blue sky. Tom? Are you there? Are you looking down on me?
The temperature was cooling, and Hannah didn’t want her visit cut short, so she strode across the grassy knoll, weaving her way around various plots and tombstones until she found them—two simple, granite grave markers and a section of earth covered with new grass.
She sat gingerly on the edge of Tom’s stone and ran her fingers over his name. Dr. Thomas J. Ryan. The insanity of it all struck her. Tom Ryan, the man she’d loved all her life, dead … buried beneath mounds of dirt while she spent her days trying to change public opinion, trying to figure out how to make a life for herself and Jenny.
It wasn’t possible.
She traced the T in Tom’s name and felt the tears. She’d only come to the cemetery three times since the accident. She would have come more often, but she was simply too busy fighting the war against drunk drivers.
Or rather, the war against Brian Wesley.
“They got a delay.” Her whispered words sounded strange in the silence. She traced the H, and a single tear fell onto the grass. Maybe that was why cemetery grass was so green—it was watered by the tears of the living. She tried to swallow a sob, but it remained lodged in her throat. “No trial until July 14.”
Her finger moved slowly around the O. “But … Matt says it’ll be okay. He’s the prosecutor, you know. The one I told you about before.” She placed her finger in the groove at the base of the M and began tracing.
“I’m still getting the word out, talking to whoever will listen. Matt says it looks good. First-degree murder for a drunk driver, Tom. It’ll be the first time in California.”
Her finger moved along the upward slant of the A. “Things aren’t … they aren’t too good with Jenny.”
A sob escaped then and several tears fell. She wiped her eyes, and for a moment a torrent of sobs convulsed her chest in an attempt to break free. She sighed, struggling to control herself. Slowly, her finger wound lazily down the S. “I don’t know what to do about her, Tom. She … she hates me.”
Hannah squeezed her eyes shut, and more tears ran down her face. Could Tom see her, hear her? She thought for a moment and then opened her eyes. Slowly she traced the J. The only way Tom could see her now was if he was in heaven. And if he was in heaven, then God was real after all.
But if God was real, what were Tom and Alicia doing six feet under? What was she doing talking to a gravestone in the middle of a lonely cemetery on a beautiful spring evening? Hannah sighed and her finger found the R. “Tom … I miss you, honey. I miss you so much.”
People said the ache she felt from not having him to hold—from not having his hand in hers and his body in bed with her at night—would fade. But it hadn’t. It was stronger than ever. She traced the Y and moved on to the A. “Tom, I can’t do this without you. Where are you? Can you hear me?”
She finished tracing the N and buried her head in her hands, giving in to her sobs and allowing the grief. There had been so much involved in planning for the trial that she had rarely taken time to cry in the last few months. Now, with the trial moved to July and Jenny refusing to talk to her, there was finally time. Hannah cried until the cool breeze against her arm reminded her of the late hour. It would be dark soon.
Slowly she lifted her head and let her eyes fall on Alicia’s stone. Sliding herself over, she perched on the edge of the granite square and gazed at the name written there. Alicia Marie Ryan.
She began tracing the A. “Oh, Alicia … Alicia, baby, Mommy’s here.”
A mother’s instinct, strong and palpable, swept over Hannah. Alicia was in trouble. Hannah was consumed by a suffocating fear. The girl was trapped down there, underground where it was cold and dark and frightening.
“Alicia! Mommy loves you.”
She nuzzled her face against the cool gravestone, her tears mixing with the loose dirt. “Alicia! I’m here, baby!”
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For a single moment, Hannah considered clawing away the dirt, tunneling her way to the casket and prying it open so she could hold Alicia close. Just one more time.
Even if all that was left of her were bones.
Twenty-five
He has walled me in so I cannot escape;
he has weighed me down with chains.
LAMENTATIONS 3:7
Three months passed and finally the day of the trial arrived. In the warm early morning of July 14, four hours before jury selection, Carol Cummins read the final chapter in the book of Lamentations. “Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may return; renew our days as of old …” She finished the chapter, closed the leather cover of her Bible, and stared out her dining room window.
She had read Lamentations twice through since suggesting it to Hannah. She’d read about Jeremiah and how he and his people had felt deserted by the Lord. “The Lord is like an enemy …” Hannah might as well have written the words herself.
Carol had read Jeremiah’s feelings of abandonment and intentional persecution. It had struck her how, like a single light in a dark place, Jeremiah had declared amidst death and destruction that indeed, God’s mercies are new every morning, that his faithfulness truly is great.
She remembered the day she’d come to that realization herself, on the first anniversary of her husband’s death.
In the end, Jeremiah’s lament had turned from dark despair to a powerful desire for restoration with the Lord. If only Hannah could grasp that truth.
Hannah was poring over a scrapbook she’d made of newspaper clippings and of photographs of Tom and Alicia. When it came her turn to speak, she would be ready, complete with visual aids to show the jury the extent of her loss.
It was hard to believe it had all come to this. All the victim impact panels, all the interviews, all the effort at changing public opinion. In the end it came down to what happened over these next few weeks.
Jury selection would take two or three days. Hannah flipped a page and gazed at a photo of Alicia at her kindergarten graduation.
Matt wanted to stay away from singles. They would have the mentality a prosecutor feared most of all: “There but for the grace of God, go I …”
She turned another page and caught the image of Tom, grinning widely as he held a string of rainbow trout on one of his summer camping trips with the girls.
Retired people could be trouble, too. Most of them would be old enough to be Brian’s parents. They would sympathize with his youth and be hard-pressed to convict him of first-degree murder when he had so much of life ahead.
Hannah sighed and shut the scrapbook, staring absently at the wedding band that still adorned her finger.
Women jurors would be good, much better than men. Matt had explained the law of averages: a man was more likely to drink and drive. Therefore, men would empathize more with Wesley. They would look at him and see themselves, and that was something Matt wanted to avoid.
Hannah knew Matt intended to play the averages. She ran her hand over the leather binding of the scrapbook. “Wish me luck, Tom.”
She felt the sting of tears but willed them away. There was no time for grieving now.
It was eight o’clock and jury selection would begin in two hours.
In the end, it took Matt and Finch two days to choose a jury of seven women and five men. One of the women was single, a redhead in her early twenties. One of them was retired, a volunteer librarian quickly approaching seventy. The men included three who were married, two of whom were parents. One man was single and in his thirties; another in his fifties was divorced after two failed marriages. The alternates were a man and woman, both in their forties, both married.
Twelve ordinary people … representatives of society, the combined voice of justice. Hannah watched them carefully. Did they know the power they held now that they’d been chosen?
It was Friday morning. Opening statements were minutes away, and Hannah was the first to arrive in the courtroom. She found a seat in the front row, directly behind the prosecutor’s table. At this point, she had worked so hard she almost felt like part of the team, one of Matt’s assistants, battling for justice in a system that rarely seemed just.
Matt entered the courtroom through one of the side doors and found her immediately. “Hannah, how’re you doing?” He spoke in hushed tones.
“I’m ready. I have a good feeling about this.”
“Have you prayed about it?” Matt stared deep into her eyes, and she felt a connection there, something she couldn’t define.
Reluctantly she looked away. If only she could say what he wanted to hear. But she couldn’t. “You know I haven’t.”
“Pray, will you, Hannah? For me. I need all the help I can get.”
Hannah nodded, but she could tell by his expression that he didn’t believe she would do it. She pushed away the guilt tugging at her.
Carol moved in beside her, took her hand, and squeezed it once. “Here we go.”
Hannah leaned over and hugged her. She wouldn’t have survived the past year if it hadn’t been for Carol. The two had spent nearly every day together at MADD’s office, and many times Carol had taken Hannah to lunch to talk about her feelings. Sometimes just knowing Carol had made it through this dark valley was enough to keep Hannah going. She searched Carol’s face now. “I feel good about it. How ’bout you?”
Carol nodded and whispered. “The way Matt works, I think we’re about to make history.”
Matt was up first. He stood, and his dark, tailored suit hung gracefully on his lanky frame. He looked youthful as he approached the jury and nodded a greeting, thanking them for serving as jurors. For fifteen minutes he talked about the details of the case. Then he turned his attention to Hannah.
She knew what he was about to do, and she watched him amble slowly toward where she sat. When he was inches away, he greeted her. Then in a voice loud enough for the jury to hear, he asked if he could borrow the photo button she was wearing. Hannah took it off and handed it to him.
Matt studied the photograph as he made his way back to the jury box. Holding it up for them to see. “This is Dr. Tom Ryan and his little girl, Alicia.” He moved slowly in front of the panel so that each member could see the photo. Hannah watched them strain to get a closer look, and she knew Matt had been right. They needed to be familiar with Tom and Alicia, not just with the cold facts of the case.
“Tom Ryan was a family man, active in his church, involved in the lives of his daughters. Each summer he and the girls took a camping trip, sort of a summer’s end hurrah. They would fish and hike and boat, but those trips weren’t about the number of trout they caught. They were about building love and relationships. Something at which Tom Ryan was brilliant.”
Matt looked at the photo once more. “Alicia was just fifteen when she died at Brian Wesley’s hands. She was on the verge of everything wonderful in life. She was active in student government, a cheerleader whose smile made an impact on everyone around her.”
Hannah shifted her gaze to the defense attorney. He was busy making notations on a pad of legal paper. Probably trying to appear disinterested in Matt’s statement.
Matt continued. “Dr. Ryan left behind his other daughter, Jenny, a twelve-year-old who has had trouble smiling since the accident. A young girl who will never know the security of having Daddy waiting at home when she goes on a date. A girl whose dad will not be there to walk her down the aisle when she gets married. A very sad, very troubled girl who once was the picture of carefree innocence.”
Hannah could see tears sparkling in the eyes of two female jurors. Matt turned his attention back to Hannah as he crossed the courtroom and passed the photo button back to her. He kept his focus on her as he continued. “And of course there is Hannah Ryan. Tom and Hannah were childhood sweethearts.” He smiled sadly. “In all her life, there has never been—” Matt looked deeper into Hannah’s eyes, and again she felt a connection she couldn’t explain—“probably never wi
ll be anyone for her but Tom Ryan.”
“Hannah lost her husband and her best friend, her confidante, the father of her children. The man around whom she had built her life.” Hannah felt a strange tugging at her heart, and she directed her gaze at her wedding ring. Matt was right. There could never be anyone else.
Matt looked at the jurors and strolled toward them again. “I am here to prove to each of you that what happened to the Ryan family was not—absolutely not—an accident.”
Matt put one hand on the railing in front of the jury, the other in his pants pocket. He leaned forward, facing the jurors squarely. Then his gaze traveled to Brian Wesley, who sat, white-faced, his hands on the table before him. When Matt finally spoke, his voice rang with sincerity. “Don’t let Mr. Wesley, or anyone else who chooses to drink and drive, get away with murder.” Matt straightened, nodding to the jury. “Set a standard that other prosecutors can follow. A penalty that will save lives.”
He nodded toward them politely. “Thank you.”
Hannah caught only fragments of Harold Finch’s opening statement. Something about being deeply troubled at the thought of drunk driving being a murder-one offense and how anyone might make such a mistake. She wasn’t really listening. Her thoughts were still swimming from all that Matt had said.
She realized Finch was winding up and sat up straighter in her seat, determined to pay attention. “Mr. Wesley had suffered through a bad morning. He’d been laid off from his job and didn’t know how to tell his wife.” Finch hesitated. “What happened? What happens to a lot of people when they get bad news? He wound up at the bar. He had a few drinks, thought about his troubles, and set out for home.”