she probably would have cheered him on and volunteered to represent him if he was arrested.
But theyâd been deputies. The so-called good guys.
And their crime had been worse than any Miller had committed until that day.
âItâs an old argument that we may as well drop now,â she said wearily. âI canât accept your point of view, and you wonât consider mine.â
âAnd what is your point of view, Neely? That fairness should always win out over justice? That Millerâs civil rights were more important than Judyâs life? That you canât be held responsible for what your client does once he walks out of the courtroom? Because thatâs all just so much bull. We donât live in the courtroom. If you make it possible for your client to walk out of the courtroom, free to commit other crimes, you share the responsibility for every one of those crimes.â
Giving a shake of her head, she picked up the fork and took a bite of beans, shredded beef and cheese. Though she wasnât hungry and felt queasy, she forced herself to eat. She neededthe strength if she was going to make it through one more day with Reese.
How had they ever hooked up together when they were such different people? Had the intense emotions theyâd called love merely been stronger-than-usual lust? Had they wanted love so badly that theyâd fooled themselves into believing theyâd found it in each other? Surely at some point theyâd realized that they could never make the relationship work. They must have known it was only a matter of time before their differences became so great that they couldnât be overcome.
But she didnât remember realizing any such thing. Sheâd loved Reese with all her heart. Sheâd believed they would be together forever. Sheâd thought differences of opinion were inconsequential in the face of such love. Maybe they would have been, if the love hadnât been one-sided. If he had been as committed to her as sheâd been to him, they could have withstood anything.
But he hadnât been. At the first serious challenge theyâd faced, heâd folded. Turned away from her. Betrayed her. Broken her heart.
âAll right,â she said flatly. âYouâve been damning me for nine years. Iâll accept your blame, and Iâll share it with Leon, with Judy and every one of the deputies involved in his confession, with the sheriff of Keegan County, the district attorney, and with you. Thereâs plenty of guilt to go around, and Iâll take my portion if youâll take yours.â
Why shouldnât she? Despite her protests this morning that sheâd done nothing wrong, sheâd been living with her own guilt all those years. In the early months sheâd tormented herself with it. What if sheâd refused to represent Miller? What if sheâd persuaded him to plead guilty in spite of the civil rights violations? What if sheâd made it clear to the D.A. and the judge that she wouldnât raise any questions about the way the confession was obtained? That even though the stateâs entire case was tainted, she would stand quietly by and let her client go to prison because, after all, there was no question of his guilt?
It wouldnât have been fair, but it might have been justice. And it wouldnât have cost her muchâjust a lifetime of living with the knowledge that sheâd betrayed her client and herself. Her ethics, her morals, her self-respectâthe very essence of who she wasâall would have been destroyed.
But Judy wouldnât have been killed, and Reese wouldnât have left herâ¦though eventually she would have left him because her love would have been destroyed, too.
She ate as much of her lunch as she knew she could keep down, then pushed the plate away and lowered her face into her hands, rubbing her temples and the ache that seemed to have settled there