The Reckless Oath We Made

“Well, you know he’s got autism, and he’s like schizo or something,” he said, grinning at the female reporter. “He’s pretty weird and he talks like Oh my lady dost think something. Like that.”

A few times, I saw Zee on the news, when some reporter was trying to get her to make a comment. She never did, unless you count words that have to be bleeped on television.

I got calls from reporters, too, but I never agreed to be interviewed. I wanted less to do with the story, not more. When Gentry’s lawyer called me, wanting to talk about testifying at his trial, I was floored. Obviously, as a friend, I owed him something, but I didn’t plan to pay that debt by perjuring myself.

Plenty of times, I’d thought about calling Zee and talked myself out of it, but that night I did. I got her voicemail.

“This is Zhorzha Trego. If you’re law enforcement or someone connected to the legal system, please leave me a message. If you’re a reporter, no, I don’t do interviews. If you’re a criminal law student, I still don’t do interviews. If you’re a creep who’s in love with my sister, get a life. If you’re calling for some other reason, leave a message.”

I’d forgotten how sexy her voice was. Husky, half bored, half amused. I hung up and sent her a text, asking her to call me. It was almost midnight when she did, and I could hear bar noise in the background.

“For real, this is Rhys?” she said. “How’d you get my number?”

“Gentry gave it to me that weekend at Bryn Carreg. I was trying to hit on his girlfriend, and he gave me your number.”

“I wasn’t his girlfriend, and he’s trusting like that,” she said. As though I were the one who’d taken advantage of Gentry’s trusting nature.

“His lawyer called to ask me to be a character witness for his trial. Did she call you?”

“You’re kidding, right? You think anybody would want me as a character witness?” She laughed. Then to somebody else: “Yeah, that keg’s almost empty.”

“So, it’s just not your problem?” I said.

“I didn’t say that, but you’re his friend, and I’m the person who fucked up his whole life.”

“And what the hell am I supposed to say in court?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you could say that Gentry is a really kind, decent person, who was trying to help somebody. Look, I gotta go.”

“Wow, it’s true what they say. Redheads really don’t have souls. I cannot believe—”

She hung up on me.

I worried about it for nothing, because a couple weeks after Gentry’s lawyer called me, I read in the news that Gentry had taken a plea deal. There wasn’t going to be a trial.

CHAPTER 54

Zee



   I should have said no. I didn’t owe LaReigne any goddamn favors. After what she’d done, I didn’t owe her anything, but I tried to remember that not everything is about what you owe or what you pay. If nothing else, that was the lesson I should’ve learned from Gentry.

So I took the envelope and I carried it around in my purse for two months, waiting for the trial to start. Every once in a while I’d take it out and look at it. Tague. Sometimes I thought about opening it and reading the letter. A few times, I thought about throwing it away.

The first two days of Tague’s trial, I had to work.

The third day, I stayed in bed with Leon and a pile of books.

I made myself read farther into Yvain. A noble lady found him wandering in the woods and helped him get better. For a second I thought he was going to cheat on his wife, but no, he just helped the noble lady and went on his way. Then halfway through the story, the lion finally showed up! Reading that, I understood what Gentry meant about being worthy of a dog’s devotion, because Yvain’s lion was so loyal that he went into battle with him. When he thought Yvain had died, the lion tried to kill himself.

Yvain was trying to get home, but on the way he volunteered to be a champion for a woman who was getting screwed by her sister over some land. Next thing I knew, Yvain and Gawain were planning to joust to settle the argument between the two sisters. They were best friends, but they were really going to fight each other to the death. I wonder how a Love so great can coexist with mortal Hate? That was how I felt about LaReigne. As much as I loved her, I hated her that much, too.

The fourth day of Tague’s trial, I had to go, or admit I wasn’t going. Honestly, I’d hoped it would be over on the third day. They had surveillance footage of him murdering a corrections officer, and Kansas doesn’t even have the death penalty. How hard could it be to send him back to prison for the rest of his life?

I went, and I spent the morning watching the back of Tague’s head. Every once in a while he would turn to look at his lawyer, but he didn’t take notes, because he couldn’t. That was part of the defense’s argument: he wasn’t a threat to society anymore. They had medical testimony about exactly where his spine had been severed by Gentry’s sword, but the end result was that he was paralyzed from the chest down.

The closer we got to lunch, the more nervous I got. I’d decided that at the recess, I would get up, walk to the railing behind the defense table, and hand LaReigne’s letter to one of Tague’s lawyers.

By the time the judge called the recess, my foot was asleep and my hip was locked up. When I stood up, I could barely walk. I shuffled out into the aisle, but before I could take two steps, I saw her.

Rosalinda.

She was wearing a baggy blue sweater, a long denim skirt, and tennis shoes. Instead of a medieval head scarf, she had her hair pulled back into a braid. Her eyes were red from crying. I turned around, I hoped, before she saw me. Using the rows of benches for support, I limped out of the courtroom and pushed through the crowd outside.

Down the hall on the left was the bathroom. I went into the first stall and pulled the letter out of my purse. Whenever I’d thought about getting rid of it, I’d imagined I would read it first, to see if there was some truth in it that LaReigne was keeping from me, but I didn’t. I left it in the envelope when I tore it up. Half and half and half and half until I had a stack of torn squares too small to tear again. I dropped them into the toilet and flushed.

After a couple of minutes, I pulled off a piece of toilet paper to blow my nose. I flushed that, too, sending LaReigne’s letter a little further on its journey to the sewer. Right as I stepped out of the stall, the bathroom door opened and Rosalinda walked in.

CHAPTER 55

Rosalinda



   I wondered if Zee thought I followed her to the restroom to fight her. I’d never so much as slapped someone, and I definitely couldn’t imagine doing it to her. She was a foot taller than me and she looked like a girl who knew how to fight. Except when I walked into the restroom, she looked scared.