If she were lucky, maybe another bomb would drop at the trial and people would forget about her.
After the bath, during the evening news, the phone rang. The tone sent her heart racing, and she jumped a foot from her seat and floundered for the phone. “Yes?”
“It’s me.” Mark. If she could get him to feel guilty for dissing her maybe he’d bring her supper.
“Hey, hi. How are you? I mean, I’m glad you called. Thanks.”
He was silent. For a moment, she thought the connection had cut out. All she heard was a faint hiss. Then, he drew a breath. “How are you doing?”
Besides losing my job, and my best friend yelling at me, and my boyfriend not talking to me? “Bad. What do you expect?”
“With that kind of skeleton in your closet, you shouldn’t be surprised.”
Of course not. That was why the records had been sealed and she’d kept it secret. “Mark, I really wish you wouldn’t judge me based on something that happened when I was a kid.”
“What else am I supposed to do? It’s … weird, it’s not right. The Destructor is evil, and you wanted that … Are you telling me you’re a totally different person now?”
She kept her breathing calm so that she could speak clearly, nicely, without shouting. “Actually, I’m a lot different. I’ve worked hard to make myself different. I wasn’t a happy person then.”
“Just answer one question for me. The Destructor. Were you his…” He paused, grappling for words. “Did you sleep with him?”
The assumption lay between the lines of every news report she’d seen today. It was the question that no matter how much she denied it, no one would ever believe her. Her father hadn’t believed her, not even after she let Mentis into her mind, let him see whether or not she was lying. She’d let him broadcast her thoughts to the world if it would do any good.
“No, I didn’t. He wasn’t interested.”
“Wasn’t interested? Does that mean you tried?”
She’d been seventeen, fond of miniskirts and too much makeup, fascinated by her own burgeoning sexuality and the ways it could be used. How did she explain that to a thirty-year-old police detective who’d already branded her a criminal?
He was angry at himself, she realized. Angry at himself for falling for someone with a past like hers. He hadn’t seen it, and maybe he thought he should have.
“Mark, I’ve been trying for years to redeem myself. I guess I’m not there yet. But give me a chance, please.” She shouldn’t have to
beg. Damn him for making her beg.
“It’s just … it’s hard, looking at you now. Knowing what you did.”
She lost it. “I made a mistake! I know I made a mistake! Everybody makes mistakes! What do I have to do to make it up? Adopt a kitten? Crucify myself on my parents’ doorstep? What? Just tell me and I’ll do it. Tell me what you want me to do!”
“This really is all about your parents, isn’t it? You really do hate them.”
“Have you even been listening to me? Why can’t anyone talk to me without talking about them?” She kept getting louder.
Which might have been why he hung up on her.
She threw the phone. It hit the wall by the kitchen, chirped, and thumped to the floor.
If she could, she would go back in time and warn her seventeen-year-old self:
A mistake like this, you’ll never get away from it. It will mark you, brand you. A petty crime is one thing, but joining the Destructor? You? Don’t you know what this is going to do to your future?
The trouble was, the seventeen-year-old always replied, What makes you think I have a future?
* * *
She couldn’t remember what that had been like, wanting to seek out Sito, wanting to join him. Rather, she didn’t want to. She’d been a different person eight years ago. But the memories were still there.
She’d only put one foot inside the entrance of the eastside bar when a man with greasy hair and a scuffed leather coat put his arm in front of her, stopping her.