Read Online The Man She Once Knew by Jean Brashear - Free Book Online Page A

until Jessie Lee danced back.
    “I’ll go tell Granny!”
    “Jessie Lee—” But the girl was already halfway to the road.
    Callie watched her go, wondering what she’d just gotten herself into.
     
    D AVID DIDN’T BELIEVE the guard the next day when the man informed him that Callie had returned. He openedhis mouth to refuse the visit, but at the last instant, he changed his mind.
    Time dragged here. He didn’t have to answer her questions, and he damn sure didn’t want her interfering, but she might have news about his mother’s house.
    God knows how he’d make payments to Callie and still send his mother money on an inmate’s pay, but being sure his mother had a roof over her head would make returning to prison a little easier. That he would was a foregone conclusion; he didn’t kid himself otherwise. Capwell kept mixing up his name, and the sheriff, a friend of Ned Compton’s, had his mind made up about David’s guilt.
    A powerful urge to sink back on his bunk and give up dragged at him. What was the use of trying when he was doomed from the start?
    He’d stepped on the road to failure the first day he’d laid eyes on Callie Hunter; he just hadn’t known it then. Having idolized his father, David hadn’t been able to walk away from his own child, however scared he was about what it meant to his plans for college and beyond. He’d done what he’d believed was right in sticking up for Callie, but he’d been out of his depth, trying to help her get over losing the baby, hadn’t even known how to handle it himself. Would he ever stop hearing her animal cries of pain, seeing the blood, so much of it…feeling her small hands squeezing his much-bigger ones hard enough to rub bone against bone as she fought to deliver the baby that was coming too soon? The baby that would never breathe?
    Grief had tangled with the guilt of being relieved not to have to figure out how to be a father when he was only a kid himself. Then Callie’s mom had spirited her back to South Carolina, and he’d had to swallow the bitter pill of a bright future sacrificed…for what? Callie was gone, and it was like waking up from a bad dream to find an even worse reality.
    Meanwhile his mother had begun seeing Ned Compton, and everything went further south after that.
    “You coming or not?” the deputy asked.
    What’s the point, Callie? But he rose anyway, and stuck his hands through the bars, grinding his teeth against the feel of metal being snapped around his wrists.
    Bound like an animal, every step watched. God, he’d thought this hell was over, that he could just move quietly through the world, keep to himself and everybody else would leave him be.
    If not for Mickey Patton—
    His gut clenched with the fury that never seemed to leave him. He could forget for only brief, precious moments, in the mindlessness of running or when the sun warmed his back as he tended the garden…welcome sailing on the smooth waters of life others took for granted.
    “Here.” The guard grabbed his elbow, yanked him into the room in front of Callie.
    Just because he could.
    David squeezed his eyes shut against the stabbing ache of his ribs, wished he could keep them shut long enough that Callie would disappear and not witness his debasement.
    Lock it down. Ruthlessly he squelched the anger and shame, holding out his hands for the cuffs to be removed.
    “Don’t think so,” the guard said. “Might make the lady nervous, being with a murderer.”
    “The lady,” said Callie in a voice tinged with its own anger, “isn’t one bit worried. Take them off.”
    “Ma’am, I don’t—”
    “I’ll be representing Mr. Langley as co-counsel. We have work to do. I am perfectly safe in your care, I’m certain.” While David was trying to absorb that bombshell, she continued with aplomb. “Please take them off.”
    The guard cast him a disgruntled glance. “Suppose it’s your call, Counselor.”
    “Thank you.”
    David rubbed his freed wrists,