All the Truth by Laura Brodie

Author:Laura Brodie [Brodie, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101581025
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

WHEN she walked back into her office, Emma found Ruth and Maria on the couch, eating pumpkin bread.

“Maria would like to use the sewing machines,” said Ruth, “to make some pajamas for Christian.”

“Good idea.” Emma nodded. “Martha will help.”

She glanced at her watch: 5:30—two hours before Junot finished work and brought her some take-out Thai. Not enough time for her to ride home on the Metro, enjoy a shower, and relax before returning, but enough hours to stretch on the couch, close her eyes, and breathe deeply. “If you’ll take Maria upstairs to room 209, I’m going to unplug my phone and lie down. If I’m not answering calls again by seven, come and wake me.”

With the lights out, and only the evening sun sifting through the windows, Emma pulled two blankets and a pillow from her closet and draped them across her couch, took off her gray ankle boots and the red reading glasses she had almost forgotten on top of her head, then lay down and stared at the ceiling. Light brown cauliflower florets were spreading across the fiberglass tiles, blooming with each heavy rain like all healthy vegetation, and reminding her of the stain on her hallway runner at Wade’s Creek. She rolled onto her side, trying to envision the autumn leaves in Jackson: the maples’ descending layers of red, orange, and green like children’s striped Popsicles, and the dogwoods’ crimson leaves falling like drops of—no, she would not think of blood—just red leaves falling.

Emma closed her eyes and forced herself to imagine greens and blues and browns, the colors of life and health and growth, until her mind settled upon Junot Rodriguez’s lovely dark skin, the opposite of her porcelain arms with their rashes of freckles. But there, too, she couldn’t escape the past, because Junot’s complexion gradually merged with the tan shade of Jacob Stewart’s face as he lay dying in her lap, and she remembered thinking, as she knelt in her hallway, that somewhere, unbeknownst to her, a dark-eyed mother was losing a very beautiful son.

It was pointless to resist the past; Maggie’s e-mail had admitted the entire cast of characters from nine and a half years ago, and after another five minutes of trying to forget, Emma gave up and decided to examine them head-on.

First she thought of the kind-eyed deputy whom she had nicknamed Prince Charming because of his name tag—Prinze. He had wrapped Maggie in a blanket as soon as Emma reached the house with her, and had brewed a pot of coffee. An hour later, when Rob was home and prepared to watch Maggie, Prince Charming had driven Emma to the sheriff’s office to give her official statement. Emma’s lawyer, Jed Christianson, met her at the station and didn’t advise silence. From what she had told him, hers was a clear case of justifiable homicide, the legitimate act of a law-abiding mother protecting her child from drunk intruders.

“Under the law, your house is your castle,” Jed had explained. “It’s

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