Luz looks at her skeptically. “What do you mean ‘in a way’?”
“One night he was driving home from work, he was very drunk, and he drove into a median on the freeway.”
“But that was an accident,” Luz says.
“A single car accident,” Abby says, repeating the words her mother always used, then shakes her head in disbelief. “Do you know how drunk you have to be to drive into a median when there are no cars around you, when all you have to do is drive in a straight line on a flat road?”
“You’re still mad,” Luz says. “Me, too.”
“He had a drinking problem and he never dealt with it,” Abby says, knowing she should stop talking. She never talks about her family—not to anyone and especially not to her clients. But this breach feels minor given the weight of all the others in this case, and she keeps going. “My dad picked alcohol over his family. He left my mom alone to raise my brother and me. I grew up hating my father but now—” She stops. “Now I worry that I’m too much like him. He was a trial lawyer, too,” she adds after a moment. “Really gifted.”
“I grew up hating my mother,” Luz says, “but I know that I am nothing like her.”
“No,” Abby says, “you’re not.” She thinks that now is the time to steer Luz back to the purpose of this meeting. Instead, almost before Abby realizes the words are coming out of her mouth she says to Luz, “You really don’t give a shit about Jackie Stedman, do you?”
Luz looks slightly taken aback at Abby’s language, her sharp emphasis on the profanity, but doesn’t say anything.
“Why not?” Abby says, then answers her own question as the realization sets in. “Because the only thing you care about is Cristina. And that’s always been true, ever since you found out you were pregnant.”
“All I ever wanted was to have her.” Luz looks at Abby, and the glazed look is gone. “Imagine if this were your baby.”
“I do,” Abby says, “every day. And then I leave my baby to come here and defend you.”
Thursday, March 22, 2007
9:00 a.m.
United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Jackie Stedman is pretty enough: tall, ash-blonde, curvy. But her eyes are a bit small and close-set and she’s made the mistake of over-tweezing her eyebrows. As she makes her way to the witness box in her pink skirt suit and heels-dyed-to-match, she holds her head high, taking small, practiced steps. All eyes are on her as she settles in, tucking a lock of hair behind one ear and placing her hands on her lap. She bites down on her lower lip and casts a quick fluttery glance at Dars, who is regarding her with an interest that borders on covetous.
Abby watches Jackie put her hand on the Bible, repeating the oath after the clerk in a soft high voice. Like a little girl’s, except for its slight rasp.
A picture appears on everyone’s computers screens: Jackie in a full-length strapless turquoise gown, smiling at the camera as Travis, grinning in a white tuxedo, pins a corsage to her left breast. She is beautiful, he is handsome, they are happy and in love. The photograph has a poignancy not lost on anyone in the room. Travis Hollis had no idea about the darkness that was coming for him.
“The prom,” Jackie responds in answer to Shauna’s question about the photograph. “That’s Travis and me in our senior year of high school. My mom snapped that picture out in the backyard of his parents’ house.” Her voice trembles slightly and she bites her lip again.
“Travis Hollis was your boyfriend?”
“Yes, we had been dating three years at that point.”
“Did the relationship continue after high school?”
“We had the summer together, and then 9/11 happened. I had started at community college to get my associate’s degree in cosmetology. Travis enlisted in the air force.” Another tremor in her voice, another biting down on her lip. “I didn’t want him to go—there was already talk that we would be going to war, but he told me—” she straightens in her seat, eyes steadfast on Shauna “—that it was his duty as a patriotic American to defend his country.”
To Abby, she sounds as canned as a stumping politician, but the jurors appear to be eating it up.
Shauna nods sympathetically. “Was Sergeant Hollis ultimately deployed to Iraq?”
“Yes. After he completed his basic military training in San Antonio, he was sent to the air force base in Minot, North Dakota. In 2003, his unit was called and he went over there for a year.”
“Did the relationship continue during all of that time?”
“Yes, long distance. He was home for holidays, I flew to North Dakota when I could afford to. But mostly we talked on the phone and emailed. We wrote letters, too.” Jackie smiles wistfully. “It seems old-fashioned to say that now, but even a couple of years ago, it wasn’t as easy to call, the cell phone plans were expensive, and Travis just loved getting my letters.”
Abby writes those last words down to use later, then casts a quick glance at Luz, who appears to be listening politely, as if to a speech at the memorial service for a distant cousin.
“And during the deployment?”
“It was harder, of course. Travis didn’t talk much about what was happening, but I was following the news and I knew about the IEDs. I knew he was in danger every day he went out on patrol.”
More nodding from Shauna. “Was his unit directly impacted by IED explosives?”
Jackie nods. “About six months in, an IED hit the Humvee in front of Travis’s. Two of the men in his unit were killed and Travis’s friend Mike Ravel was hurt pretty bad with head and back injuries. Travis saw it all happen.” Jackie’s smallish eyes are bright with tears and her voice cracks. “He was never the same afterward.” Tears roll down her cheeks and Dars’s clerk hands her
