A Good Mother by Lara Bazelon (different ereaders txt) 📗

the grave, narrating a story of the marriage in which Luz was an instigator who gave as good as she got, alternating red-hot and ice-cold, and using every means at her disposal to get what she wanted. Now that window was glued shut: the waiflike woman-child safe inside. There would be no sharpening of the edges that Will had worked so diligently to plane—not from this witness anyway.

Abby would have pounded away when it was her turn, probing the dishonorable discharge, the PTSD diagnosis, and portraying Ravel as a drug-addled, memory-ravaged and badly damaged individual who might well have harbored his own feelings for Luz—the beautiful, untouchable wife of his far handsomer best friend, and who was, in any event, way out of his league. But Will had always worried that it would backfire badly. Dishonorable discharge or not, drug addiction or not, Ravel was a veteran who had served his country honorably during two tours in Iraq. He would start with the jury’s sympathy and if he did nothing to squander it, could have made Abby look petty, even mean by comparison.

Dars swivels his chair and stares up at the ceiling. They are all quiet, waiting. “Well,” he says finally as he turns back to them, “this is quite a turn of events. But while it is no doubt a tragedy for this young man and his family, I see no reason to stop the trial.”

“Your Honor,” Shauna says, “if we could just have until tomorrow morning. Our next witness is on a flight from Ohio and doesn’t land until this evening.”

Dars frowns but says, “I see no alternative. Madame Clerk will tell the jurors they are excused for the afternoon and we will reconvene first thing tomorrow morning.”

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

4:35 p.m.

Office of the Federal Public Defender

Los Angeles, California

Abby and Luz are sitting in Abby’s office, Abby drinking a can of Ensure, Luz taking sips from a can of a Diet Coke that Cherise had gotten her from the vending machine. Luz’s hair is limp, her mascara has clumped, and her nail polish is chipped. Abby, having glimpsed her own wan reflection in the bathroom mirror, knows she looks no better. So much for that post-baby glow that Jonathan had raved about.

“How are you holding up?” she asks Luz.

Luz looks back at her with glazed eyes. “I’m numb,” she says. “It feels like what the dentist does before he uses the drill...” She searches for the word and not finding it, gives up, shrugging her shoulders.

“The Novocain shot?”

Luz nods. “But the feeling is—it’s in my brain instead.” She closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them. “I need to get back to the hospital. Father Abelard texted me that he’s waiting downstairs with Cristina.”

“I know.” Abby had gotten the same text. “I won’t make you stay long but I want to go over what it’s going to be like with Jackie on the stand tomorrow.”

“We’ve been over it,” Luz says flatly.

Abby nods. She and Will had stressed to Luz the delicate balance that must be struck. But Luz never seemed to appreciate the gravity of the situation no matter how many times they have warned her of the consequences if she fails to react in exactly the right way.

“Every time Jackie opens her mouth to answer a question, the jury will be looking to you for your reaction. You can’t stare her down and you can’t look away. You can’t look angry and you can’t look catty.”

Luz shrugs. “She doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“You keep saying that, which is what worries me.” Denial is not a good thing, not when it could evaporate on sight. Abby leans forward across her desk, trying to close the distance between them. “They are using Jackie to prove that you premeditated in the hours between getting her email and Travis coming home. That you lay in wait. Her testimony is the heart of the first-degree murder charge.”

Another indifferent shrug. “That’s not what happened.”

Abby opens her mouth to say, “What did happen?” then thinks about Mr. Estrada and what Luz had said to Abby the last time she and Abby were alone together. He told me to trust you. So if you want to know those things now, I will tell you. Do you want to know?

Did she want to know?

Abby looks more closely at Luz, who is taking another sip of her Diet Coke, her eyes moving around the room until they settle on the picture of Abby and Rayshon.

“That was your big case, right?” she says, and nods toward it.

Abby doesn’t look at the picture. “Yes.”

“Mr. Estrada told me that everyone thought the guy was guilty—he was like a stone-cold killer or something.” Her eyes go to Abby’s face. “You don’t like talking about it, though, your big victory with him.”

“He wasn’t a stone-cold killer and no, I don’t like talking about it.”

“Why not?”

Now it’s Abby’s turn to shrug.

Luz looks at her. “He died right after, so it’s like you lost anyway.”

Abby says, not exactly knowing why, “He had a little boy—well, his fiancée, Sheila, was pregnant during the trial. He was excited about it.”

Luz looks interested. “What happened to the baby?”

“He lives with his mother. The family got a decent-sized settlement, after everything came out about the LAPD and the evidence tampering.”

“What’s his name?”

“The baby? Rayshon Jr.”

Luz nods. “So Rayshon Jr. will be okay?”

“I think so,” Abby says.

“Will Cristina be okay?” Luz’s eyes search Abby’s.

Abby drinks some of her Ensure, sets down the can. “You mean, if you’re...”

Luz nods.

“Mr. Estrada and I have done everything we can, I told you.”

“Is it enough?”

“I hope so,” Abby says. She rubs absently at the bruise on her jaw. “But I don’t know.”

They are quiet for a moment.

Luz says, “I’ve never had a real family. My dad left and my mother killed herself. My grandmother—” She shrugs again. “She’s never had any idea what’s going on with me.”

Abby nods. “Dr. Cartwright told us.” She pauses. “My father killed himself, too, in a