Page 44 of Never Alone
"And the conviction?"
"Public record. I don't have the docket number. I can find it."
"We'll find it." She tapped the pen on the pad once, lightly. "Alright. This is useful. We'll work with it."
She looked at us. Both of us, then me alone, then back at both.
"Is there anything else either of you hasn't told me. Anything that, six weeks from now, I am going to learn from opposing counsel rather than from you."
Tessa shook her head.
"No," I said.
"You're sure."
"I'm sure."
"Then I want both of you to hear this. Information that lives in your heads is not information I can fight with. Anything that touches the case—old report, old relationship, old anything—comes to me first. Not because I'm going to spin it. Because I can only protect a story I know all of. Are we clear?"
"Yes," Tessa said.
"Yes."
"Good."
She walked us through what came next. Our deliverables by Friday. Her work in the meantime. What we should and shouldn't do in the days before Nicholas was served. We agreed to all of it.
By the time the meeting was over, the morning was gone.
I drove out to Sam's and Jamie's the next afternoon. I needed someone to talk to about it, and the list of someones I trusted was short.
Aunt Jenna and Quinn were the obvious calls and the wrong calls. Quinn would tease me until I lost the will to live. Quinn couldn't keep anything from Aunt Jenna. And the story went further if Aunt Jenna and Quinn believed the relationship was real.
That left Sam.
He let me get all the way through the briefing first. The lawyer's office. The petition. The lease. The affidavit due Friday. He took it in the way he took everything—without performing surprise, without asking the questions other people would have asked first. Then he set down his coffee.
"You know I'm going to have to tell Jamie."
It hadn't crossed my mind.
"Got burned once," he said. "Lesson learned. I don't keep things from her."
It made sense. It also meant the briefing I'd just delivered was about to get delivered again, by Sam, in the kitchen. By dinner, every adult in the Reeves house was going to know.
"Alright," I said. "Tell her."
"I will."
He picked his coffee back up.
"Stay for dinner. Rosie's home."
Rosie was leaving for college after the weekend. I hoped that meant it wouldn't be a problem.
"You're going to have to propose to her."
I set my coffee down and looked at Rosie.
