“Just a beer if you have one,” he says. Will has found eating a difficult task lately, more of an ordeal. No matter how hungry he gets, he can’t seem to finish a meal, the food sitting in his stomach like a lead ball. The other night, working late, he’d tried to force down a hamburger at his desk and choked midway through, then thrown it up in the men’s bathroom, thankful there was no one still around to hear him retch.
Seeming to sense what he’s thinking, Abby says sympathetically, “I have trouble eating when I’m in trial, too. And about to be in trial. It didn’t used to be as big of a problem because I wasn’t responsible for feeding someone else.” She reappears from behind the refrigerator door, holding a bottle of Sam Adams. “Now I’m supposed to be consuming, like, 3,000 calories a day.” She roots around in the silverware drawer for a bottle opener, pops the top, and hands the beer to Will.
“How do you manage that?” Will asks. “They can’t be from—” He hesitates.
“Calories from alcohol?” Abby smiles. “None of them can be, I know.”
Will flushes. “I just meant, it must be hard to eat that much.”
Abby picks up a tin can from the counter and holds it up. “Protein shakes.” She smiles thinly. “Nic buys me cartons of Ensure. Kind of like a chalky milkshake. This one’s vanilla, I think.” She tips the can toward her mouth. “The more real food I eat the less of them I have to drink, so that’s some incentive. Also, being on a liquid diet makes me feel like an old person.”
“Or a baby,” Will says without thinking.
“Or a baby,” Abby agrees. She puts the can down, wipes her mouth with the back of her hoodie sleeve. “Well, thanks for trekking out here. I wouldn’t have asked, but I haven’t been home much—”
“It’s fine.” Will doesn’t add that he has no desire to be at home himself. He sits down, pushes the case file aside, and takes a sip of his beer. It is silk-smooth in his mouth, crisp and delicious going down.
Abby pushes her hair off her face, raising her arms to twist it into a knot at the back of her head. The shorter pieces come loose and she shakes them back impatiently. “Shauna starts putting on her case tomorrow, so we should take stock.”
“What’s the status with Travis’s best buddy Mike Ravel?” he says. Ravel had walked out of an Arizona rehab facility earlier that week, and after spending a few days on the streets had voluntarily checked himself back in.
“I think we have to assume he’ll be testifying.” Abby takes another swig of Ensure and rocks the bundle in the pouch slightly back and forth.
They are silent a moment, considering this. Ravel is not a good witness for them.
“There is an obvious bias,” Abby says. “Back when Antoine went to see him in Arizona last month, remember he told us that Ravel came off like someone holding a grudge?”
Will shrugs. “Of course. He loved Travis like a brother and he’s angry about what happened to him. I completely understand that.”
“But his thinking is so distorted.”
Will shakes his head. Military relationships are like a brotherhood, but someone like Abby would never understand. He doubts Nic has ever tried to explain it to her. In Will’s experience it’s a bad idea to try. I can’t even imagine, the response always begins, before going on to imagine with clumsy analogies that make Will cringe. Then don’t. Don’t imagine, he always thinks as he nods politely.
“Ravel minimizes Travis’s drinking,” Abby continues, “and says Luz is to blame for the jealousy. That she caused it by flirting with other guys. That she asked for it.”
“Asked for Travis to abuse her, you mean?”
Abby looks at Will. “Do you think that’s what it was, abuse?”
“What would you call it?” Will wishes he’d kept the edge out of his voice. For once, he and Abby had actually been getting along.
Abby, her fingertips grazing the baby’s hair, does not answer. She says, “We know that Ravel is going to say that Luz put pressure on Travis to change his will. That it was her idea after talking to Estrada and she badgered Travis until he did it.”
“Estrada to Luz to Travis out of the mouth of Ravel? That’s double—no, that’s triple hearsay. Dars won’t let it in.”
“I disagree. Estrada is unavailable because he’s made himself unavailable.”
“Even so, we are talking about an attorney-client communication.”
“Which is not protected if Luz shared it with Travis.”
“Who is not available to testify.”
“Because Luz made him unavailable by killing him,” Abby points out. “Shauna will argue that what Travis told Ravel comes into evidence under the exception of forfeiture by wrongdoing. And as a last resort, she can say she isn’t offering any of it for the truth, only to show Travis’s state of mind.”
Will says, tightly, “Travis’s state of mind isn’t what’s relevant here. He’s not on trial.”
“We’ve made it relevant by raising self-defense. Was Travis Hollis a violent person who dominated and abused his wife or was he a troubled, patriotic soldier with a drinking problem who was manipulated by his conniving wife?” Will starts to say something and Abby holds up her hand. “I know, it’s a stretch to say that Ravel should be allowed to talk about what was going through Travis’s mind weeks before the killing. But I know Dars. It’s coming in.” She brushes back a lock of hair that has fallen across her cheek.
“You know Dars,” he repeats flatly.
She
