“Ma’am, please. If you don’t cooperate, we’ll have to take you in, too.”
She trembled, saying nothing. But eventually she nodded. The officer took her outside, but when she asked to stay by her car, he seemed to take pity on her and let her stay.
She watched as the three other cops brought Jaime out of his house, his hands behind his back and his gaze on the ground. He still wouldn’t look at her. The tears that had disappeared returned, and she let them fall unimpeded. This wasn’t right. This couldn’t be happening, yet no matter how hard she’d tried, it had all been for nothing.
Sheriff Jennings placed Jaime in the back of a cop car, shutting the door. All but the officer who’d escorted Grace from the house went back inside. Sensing this was her only opportunity, she walked up to the officer; she read his nametag: HALDON.
Officer Haldon was fairly young, perhaps not much older than Grace, with surprisingly kind eyes and a look about him that seemed to hint he hadn’t been on the force for long. When he saw Grace approach him, though, he narrowed his eyes.
“Ma’am, please step away from the suspect.”
She stopped, but in a pleading voice, said, “May I just talk to him? Say goodbye? Please. I’ll leave and never bother you again.”
Officer Haldon considered. She knew he saw the tears on her face, and how desperate she sounded. She also knew that he’d probably assume that a young woman like her couldn’t be any real threat. He glanced back at the house, then back at her. “Three minutes,” he said. “You can sit on the passenger side. But if you do anything suspicious, you’ll be going to the same place as him.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
Officer Haldon opened the passenger front door, and then Grace slipped inside. The officer stood right next to the door with Grace in his line of vision and with the window cracked so he could hear their conversation. But she didn’t care. She turned and saw Jaime through the mesh that separated the front seat from the back.
Jaime stared at his feet. She could only see that his expression was grim, his mouth in a thin line.
“Jaime. Jaime, look at me.”
He clenched his jaw. Then he looked up at her, and his eyes were such a mixture of defeat and sadness and shame that her tears started all over again.
“I wanted to tell you. I wanted to warn you. That’s why I’m here.” She was babbling, making no sense. “I had no idea this was going to happen.”
The hardness in his face softened some. “How could you have known? It’s not your fault.”
“No, no, don’t be kind to me.” She cried harder. “You’re the one who needs people to be kind. You shouldn’t be here. This is wrong.” She wiped her eyes, but the tears wouldn’t stop. “I know you’re innocent.”
“Hush, Graciela.” He leaned toward the mesh, his forehead almost touching it. “You can’t do anything, at least not right now.” His gaze intensified, like he could impart what he really wanted to say in that look. “But we both know this isn’t the end. Right?”
She nodded. “Yes, of course.” She pressed her fingers into the mesh, touching his cheek. She knew she was probably overstepping her bounds, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care if they threw her in jail, too. “I have some savings. I can use that as bail.”
He shook his head. She could see him still clenching his jaw, and through her haze of tears, she saw the shimmer of tears in his eyes. She touched his bottom lip, and her heart broke when he kissed it. Just a brush of his lips. But it was enough—for now.
“You’re killing me,” he said simply, devastatingly. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Don’t say that. You’ve been nothing but kind to me. You were my first, in so many ways.” When she saw Officer Haldon giving her a look to knock it off, she pulled away from Jaime. But she didn’t stop speaking. “I love you,” she said in a soft voice.
Jaime didn’t say anything, but he seemed to breathe harder. She saw a tear track down his face.
“I love you,” she repeated. “And I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of this.”
He swallowed and she heard him say her name. She was about to reach out to touch him when the passenger door opened.
“Okay, time’s up,” Officer Haldon said. “We’re taking him in.”
Grace stepped out. “Where are you taking him?” Heron’s Landing was too small to have its own holding cells.
“We’ll take him up to Columbia. We’ll book him and set bail. You can call up there for updates if you want.”
She nodded. She watched as Sheriff Jennings got into the car and she stepped away. The car drove off with the other two officers following close behind. Officer Haldon stayed standing next to her, and she had a feeling he almost wanted to touch her shoulder in sympathy. But he just cleared his throat and asked in a gruff voice, “You'll be okay, ma’am?”
She almost laughed. “I’ll be fine. I’m not the one who you should be worrying about.” Before she turned to leave, she added, “Thank you for letting me talk to him.”
He nodded tightly before also driving off.
Grace stood there, feeling the world turn to twilight. It was cold, and she was—as usual—not wearing a coat. She went inside Jaime’s house and locked the door before lying down on the couch. She inhaled his scent, rubbing her cheek against the fabric, and she let the tears flow. She cried and cried, not even sure how much time passed. All she knew was that heart was broken, and she wasn’t sure how she’d ever be happy again.
Much later, she got a text. Then another. When she got a third, she took her phone from her bag and scanned the words on her phone. It was from Joy.
I heard what happened. Are you at Jaime’s? We’re worried about you. Do you want to stay with me?
Then: Grace, please answer.
Then: I’m coming over.
It was only a few minutes later that Grace heard a car door slam. Joy entered and Grace simply lay on the couch, like she were paralyzed.
“Oh, Grace.” Joy squatted down next to her and brushed her hair from her face. “We’re going to my place, okay?”
She bit her lip and then, before she could stop herself, she threw her arms around Joy’s neck and sobbed into her shoulder.
Chapter Sixteen
Jaime stared down at the concrete floor of his holding cell and watched as a spider scurried into a corner. The spider—some little brown thing with more legs than sense—crawled up the wall, to hang in a web it’d created between the cell door and the wall.
He wondered if this was a metaphor for his life. He’d gotten caught in a web, or maybe he was the spider stupid enough to create a web in a jail cell. He closed his eyes. He wished he could sleep, but the thought of closing his eyes in this place was unbearable.
So he stared at the spider and watched it rebuild a hole in its web instead of thinking about everything that had happened that day.
Of course, it was impossible not to think about what had happened. The knock on his door, the officers pouring in, the cold bite of cuffs on his wrists. That had been bad enough. But then Grace had shown up and seen him like that, and it had taken all of his strength not to beg her to leave. He couldn’t bear for her to see him as some criminal. It didn’t matter that he was innocent: that had been lowest point of his life.