Chapter Twenty-Eight
Abbi took a deep breath and surveyed herself in the mirror. She was lucky her burns hadn’t been more severe. She’d been healing pretty well, and with dress pants on and a long-sleeved blouse, no one could see there’d been a problem.
She didn’t want to hide what had happened. But right now, she wanted her outside to match how she felt on the inside. Like no one could fuck with her today.
Or at least that’s how she hoped her insides would get around to feeling soon.
In reality she was wishing eight a.m. wasn’t too early for a gulp of liquid courage from the wine Mack, Claire, and Sam had left at her place. She couldn’t believe none of them were free to come with her.
But they had work, family, other commitments. It reminded Abbi how much she’d already put them out. She could do this by herself. Anyway, she didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t like anyone else could take the stand for her.
And the weird thing was, she wanted to testify. She was done sitting on the sidelines. She wanted to make her voice heard.
Passing through the metal detector, Abbi couldn’t help thinking of the last time she’d been in a courtroom. She’d been terrified then—and for good reason.
But she wasn’t terrified now.
She was ready to face Russ—without a pretend boyfriend or a real boyfriend or anyone else intervening.
She’d thought about calling Tyler. A million times she’d reached for her phone. She knew he’d helped get Russ arrested, and that he’d testified the day before.
But she hadn’t been able to make herself go through with it. Some part of her thought she might see him when she walked in—surely he knew it was her turn today. But he’d walked out on her and never even checked to see how she was doing. Somehow she wasn’t surprised when she scanned the faces and didn’t see his.
She expected to feel that wave of hot panic when she faced Russ and his attorneys. At the very least, she thought she’d be glad to see him get what he deserved. But the weird thing was, as soon as she was sworn in, she felt nothing. He may have been a giant, but he looked small to her, this lonely man who’d been so desperate, he’d made an unbelievably dumb decision he was going to pay for for the rest of his life.
She answered the prosecutor’s questions, identifying the cigarette butts she’d taken from the site where the fire broke out. DNA proved they were Russ’s, and Abbi’s testimony placed them at the scene days before the fire broke out. The point wasn’t to prove he’d done it, since he’d already confessed. It was about intention—whether the fire was an accident, or whether Russ’s recklessness showed he wanted the land to burn. The confirmation he’d been “stalking” the site, as the prosecutor put it, didn’t look good.
The sheriff was called to corroborate, and Abbi took a seat in the back to watch the rest of the proceedings play out. Russ had a criminal record, but it was for drugs, not property damage. In the end, the judge sentenced him to five years in prison and a twenty-thousand-dollar fine, although he could get out earlier for good behavior.
Abbi didn’t know whether that seemed like a lot or a little. Cash had been locked away for eight years and he’d served every day of it. She’d never looked him up after. She refused to google him. As far as she was concerned, he no longer existed outside the Gothic spires of the school campus. His yellow house had been sold long ago.
She wondered if she should feel bad that here was another man she’d slept with flinching as the gavel came down.
But she was done feeling guilty over other people’s fuck-ups. She wasn’t the one on trial. It was time to stop feeling like so much was her fault.
She was turning to leave, not wanting to see the moment when Russ was taken away, when she heard a commotion. “I’m sorry, Abbi!” he shouted. She snapped around, immediately on edge, just in time to see him straining against the officers, scanning the room for her until his eyes locked on hers. “I never meant to hurt you,” he called. “Just know how sorry I am.”
She stood there, frozen.
She knew she didn’t have to do anything. She didn’t have to apologize, or appease him, or stand up for herself in any way. She could leave this on his shoulders for the rest of his life.
But she nodded. Once. She believed him. That was enough.
Then, before he could yell anything else, she walked away.
…
It had been a long day at the trial. Forget the work she had to catch up on at the nature center—Abbi went home, kicked off her shoes, slid on her most comfortable pants, and grabbed the whole bottle of wine and a glass. She went to open the screen door to the backyard with her foot, then remembered that hadn’t worked since it had gotten jammed off its tracks and never slid right anymore.
Just another thing she’d have to fix when she got her life back together again.
But the screen opened just fine. It didn’t even make that squeak it had been doing for the better part of a year.
Abbi put the wine down and came back to the door. She kept sliding it, waiting for the catch. But it never came.
She looked around. Something was seriously wrong with her working screen door.
It happened again when she got home from the doctor’s the next day. She walked through the gate to look at the yard, and instead of the smashed hinges and splintered wood, Russ’s little present for her when he’d first come back that summer, the hinge was new and the wood replaced. It was a little bit lighter than the old fence, but the stain matched pretty well, and it would weather over time.
The next day, it was the leaves in the gutter.
After that, the small problems she hadn’t even noticed were issues until they were fixed: hedges that needed pruning, a touch-up on the paint to her front door.
“What the fuck?” she said, staring at the mint on her front stoop like it had magically repotted itself.
But it didn’t say anything back.