Chapter Twenty-Three

Denise smelled like sweat. She had drunk too much coffee again and could practically feel it leaking out of her pores. Her mind was a mess. The caffeine only served to further frazzle her nerves, and everywhere she looked in her cramp little office, things seemed to spin. Her leftover anniversary cake was sitting on the sheet in front of her, and her fist clamped her fork. There’d be no sensible dinner tonight with the caseload she was pawing through, so she opted for slightly stale cake over waiting on take out for the umpteenth time.

“Oh, now that’s just pitiful,” Branson said, poking his head through her cracked door. He always came around at the most inopportune times, but maybe that was easy because every time was inopportune for Denise. She pretended she couldn’t smell herself and said, “Cake is never pitiful.” She looked at Branson as she always did, slightly squinting like she was staring at the sun. He was pretty-boy good looking with a slight tan and honey wheat hair. His father played golf with her father on the weekends, which gave her father the bright idea to offer his friend’s son an internship at her firm. “Denise will show him the ropes,” he must have said with his million-watt smile, a watered-down Bloody Mary in hand. She had shown Branson the ropes, which made her aware of how weathered they were—how weathered she was. She was only thirty, but everything hurt, and it showed on her face. Whereas her biggest concern was a face full of acne in college, she now had the pleasure of battling crow’s feet and under eye circles that looked like they were going to consume her whole.

“Apparently you and my fifth-grade self would have gotten along.” Branson bridged the gap without asking and stood in front of her desk. “Jennings wanted me to get this to you. Said it was important. Something about doing a favor for a friend.” He plopped the file down on Denise’s desk, another case to add to the leaning tower of lost causes. She forgot why she became a pro-bono lawyer in the first place. Oh right. To incense her parents, well, mostly her father. But nights like these, the prospect of him having to fumble through what his daughter did for a living at some fancy country club event was hardly worth it.

“Thanks,” she managed, wondering what would happen if she quit now and took a chance investing in Beanie Babies.

“You okay? You don’t look too hot,” Branson said with the precise hint of confidence of

a commercial model. Compared to him, Denise figured she probably looked like week-old roadkill.

“I’m fine,” she lied and made eye contact with her open door. Branson got the hint, which she knew he would—at least he wasn’t an idiot—and watched as he backed out of her office. “Drinks this weekend,” he said like he always did, the novelty of inviting her most likely akin to asking his babysitter to watch him play Super Nintendo.

“I’ll think about it,” she said, knowing she wouldn’t. When he left, she went to move the file he had tossed in front of her, but something caught her eye. A name. “Barnes.”

The past came crashing down, and the pain in her neck that was only slightly irritating before managed to wreak havoc through her body. That day flashed before her eyes. News traveled fast on a college campus, so when a small-framed, white-blonde stranger killed a black student in cold blood, it wasn’t but mere moments until Denise had heard the chatter in the hallways of her dorm. It took a while for her to realize who had died, but once she did, and once she knew who had done it, she had vowed to do something with her life that she had never even considered before: protect the innocent.

She flipped open the file, and there it was, a picture. It was of a young man, practically just a boy, and it felt like Jamal was staring into her eyes. But this boy’s skin was the color of milk with a hint of chocolate, and his name wasn’t Jamal according to the paperwork. It was Travis.