Shielded In The Shadows

“Yes.” She’d been right about Bill Heber four years before. And she was right about this, too.

“And you can speak for the people who love me, why? You’ve spoken to them?” He took a step closer to her, not menacing at all. More like he was toying with her. Or challenging her.

She didn’t like either option.

“One of them.” So there. He thought he knew it all, and...

She stared at him. Emotionally exhausted. Not sure how much fight she had left in her.

He took a step back. Smart man.

“I don’t think I’m Mr. Smith, by the way,” Jayden told her. “Listening to Emory’s mother...she divorced him because he pretty much forced her to, but it’s clear she still loves him. That she needs him. And his daughter, and her kids...it’s like he’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, as my mother would say. And another one from her—two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“I think I’d like your mother.”

“I’m sure she’d like you, too.”

Was he ever going to take those shorts off? Get in the shower, so they could go to bed? Couldn’t he see she was rocking on her feet?

“We’ve known each other...how long?” she asked him. Because she was thinking the answer.

“I don’t know. Two years. Three maybe.”

Three and a half, and she was counting. She’d been lead on a case, opposing parole, and he’d been at the hearing, giving his report on preliminary housing interviews and recommendations. He’d recommended the woman for parole.

She’d won. The woman had hung herself in her cell six months later.

She’d been right. Professionally. Facts had surfaced after the woman’s death that had substantiated that.

But he’d been right, too. Knowing that the woman valued a second chance so much she’d taken her life when that chance had been denied her.

“What’s it matter how long we’ve known each other?” he asked, curious.

“It doesn’t.”

Or did it?

“I was wrong to lash out at you earlier today, about...you know, not being perfect. Insinuating that you were failing the real challenge—learning to forgive yourself,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I was upset, thinking you were giving yourself permission to not have a life, with Emory’s father as your justification.”

“And it would have mattered to you so much...if I was like him?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. Picked a piece of lint off the carpet. Adjusted one of the pillows on the bed.

Wondered what was in his bag. Did he normally sleep in pajamas? Had he brought them over?

“What you said about the real challenge being learning to forgive yourself...” he said, moving to the end of the bed. “You might have been right about that.”

She glanced at him. “You think so?”

“Do you?”

“I know I need to be a little better about it, myself,” she said. Poor Ms. Shadow Side. Emma had shunned a part of herself, a valid, real, worthy part, because she couldn’t handle the excruciating pain life had brought her. She’d been running away from herself. “I didn’t want my baby to die, Jayden. I already loved it so much...”

She was crying. She couldn’t believe it. Tears streamed out of her eyes and down her face. She’d almost lost Jayden that night.