A Creed in Stone Creek - Linda Lael Miller [23]
Melissa swallowed, shook her head, braced for some dreadful prison story.
“He helped train dogs from the shelters to be service animals. Search-and-rescue, seeing-eye dogs, dogs to help deaf people, too. He’s a good boy, dammit!”
“Velda,” Melissa said, after nodding to acknowledge that Byron Cahill might actually have an admirable side, like just about everybody else on the planet, “let me take you home. Maybe Byron’s there. Maybe he caught a ride with somebody instead of getting on the bus, or something like that.”
But Velda shook her head. A tear slipped down her right cheek. Then she pivoted on the worn heel of one flip-flop and marched off down the sidewalk, probably headed toward the trailer park where she rented a single-wide, but maybe not.
Melissa, feeling as though she’d aged a decade in the last half hour, watched as Velda’s thin frame disappeared into a copse of trees. She hoped Byron would be at home when his mother arrived but, at that point, nothing would have surprised her.
After checking to make sure the way was clear, Melissa pulled back out onto the road, executed a U-turn, and headed for Ashley’s B&B.
Mentally, she reviewed her original impressions of young Mr. Cahill. He’d been sixteen when he was convicted and sentenced. Against the advice of his duly appointed public defender, but apparently with his mother’s encouragement, Byron had waived a jury trial.
Melissa, in her capacity as prosecutor, and the public defender, a newly minted attorney imported from Flagstaff, had tried to negotiate some kind of deal, but in the end, they couldn’t come to an agreement.
The defense wanted probation, with no jail time, and comprehensive substance-abuse treatment in return for a guilty plea. After all, the argument ran, Byron was very young, and he’d never been in any real trouble before.
Melissa had been in favor of the treatment program, but probation wasn’t enough. Chavonne Rowan had been young, too. And thanks to Byron Cahill’s reckless actions, she wasn’t going to get any older. She would never go to college, have a career, fall in love, get married, have children. Naturally, the girl’s family was devastated.
Not that Byron’s going to jail would bring Chavonne back.
Secretly, Melissa had agonized over the case, but she’d presented a strong, confident face to the public, and even to her own family and close friends. She’d examined her conscience repeatedly, taken her responsibilities to heart, and she had the reputation as a ruthless legal commando to prove it.
Except for those few who knew her through and through—Brad, Olivia, Ashley and one or two close girlfriends—most people probably thought she was a real hard-ass. Even a ballbuster.
And when Melissa allowed herself to think about that, it grieved her.
Sure, she’d wanted an education and a career. She loved the law, complicated as it was, and she loved justice even more. Justice, of course, was an elusive thing, very subjective in some ways, too often more of a concept than a reality, but without the pursuit of that ideal, where would humanity be?
She thrust out a sigh. Shifted the car and her mood. She’d done the best she could with the Cahill case. And that had to be good enough.
With no reason to hurry home, Melissa decided she might as well stop by the B&B—the octogenarian guests were due in the night before—thereby fulfilling her promise to Ashley. She’d look in on the old folks, make sure they were having a good time. And still breathing, of course.
Five minutes later, she bumped up the driveway next to the spacious two-story Victorian house Ashley had turned into the Mountain View Bed and Breakfast several years before.
Ashley.
Melissa felt a stab, missing her twin sister sorely. Although they were different in many ways, Ashley domestic, Melissa anything but; Ashley blond, with a love of cotton print dresses and