Someone Else's Fairytale (19 page)

Fifteen minutes later, my cellphone rang. A 505 number I didn't know flashed on the display.

“Hello?” I answered it.

“Chloe?”

“Yeah.”

“Doug Vanderholt.”

“Oh, thank you for calling.”

“Steve and I are going to help you out with this, okay?”

“Sorry? Wait I-”

“Listen to me. I happen to know that if you take Chris to court, you'll be up against Gloria Garcia, and she's the very best criminal defense attorney in the state, so you can't do this with a nonprofit lawyer. No offense to them, but Gloria and the Winters with their money would run circles around you. Nonprofit lawyers have heavy caseloads and limited resources, and no amount of talent quite compensates.”

“But-”

“The State Bar requires me to do a certain number of pro bono hours a year. I don't have mine yet. Steve wants some clinical experience while he's in law school. That kind of thing is invaluable and would give him a real edge when he applies for jobs. Please. We'd consider it a personal favor if you'd let us do this.”

Typical Vanderholt logic, let us give you stuff worth more than you can afford and we'll thank you for it. Now I could see where Jason got it from.

This wasn't a predawn tram ride, though, or a catered dinner at Tia Anita's, or free tickets to a movie premiere. Lawyers made hundreds of dollars an hour. Just the time it would take to do the hearing would empty my checking account. My savings would drain down fast in the time it took to prepare the documents. What Mr. Vanderholt was offering basically amounted to a the value of my car, and then some.

“Take your time,” he said. “Think it over, but please understand, this is a very serious offer.”

“I appreciate it-”

“Did my number show up on your phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Save it, and call me back whenever you're ready, okay?”

“Thank you.”

“Chloe, you've overcome way too much to let this creep jeopardize your safety. You don't deserve to ever have to even look at him again. If someone did something like that to one of my kids, I don't think he'd even be alive. You call me back, okay?”

“Right, okay.”

“Take care now.” He hung up.

That night, as I drifted off to sleep, I caught a whiff of dry, desert air. Not the kind that we got in the city, the really scorching stuff that blew around the open desert. In an instant my throat was parched, my eyes burned, my shoulder felt like it was seeping blood. A loud
pop
jolted me awake, and I was back in my bed, the soft sheets pressed to my cheek. A tear slid from the corner of my eye, leaving a little trail of wet.

I couldn't face this. Not alone.

I got up and dialed the police department's non-emergency number on my cell phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, can you tell me how to reach Officer Baca? Jesse Baca?”

“Are you in danger?”

“No, I don't need to talk to him now. Is there a department phone list or something I can get?”

“I'll pass on a message to him. Give me your name and number.”

I did, then thanked her and hung up.

Five minutes later, much to my surprise, my phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” It was the woman I'd just spoken to. “He's on patrol and he's going to stop by your house, okay?”

“Oh, okay, thanks.”

“Bye now.”

I threw on some sweats and a t-shirt, went to the front room, switched on the porch light, and sat and watched out the windows, already dusty and dirty, despite being new. Within ten minutes, a police cruiser came around the corner, its headlights cris-crossed with the push bumper and all the other equipment it had mounted on the front.

It slowed in front of my house. I put on my shoes and went out to the curb to meet it. It already had one window down. “You all right there, Miss Chloe?” It was Officer Baca's voice.

“Yeah, I just wanted to ask you something.” I peered into the dark cab. “I just heard that my brother, the guy who shot me? He's out of jail. He might have vandalized the house.”

“He's out?”

“Yeah.”

“Get a restraining order.”

“You think I should?”

“And if you can, move house. If he's breaking your windows, that's no good.”

“Okay.”

“Let me call some people at corrections. They have Victim Services... I may have the number for that here somewhere.” I heard him rustle around in the cab.

“That all I can do? Get a restraining order and run away?”

“You've already been the hero. This isn't your fight. You stay well away from it and let us do our job. Here.” He handed me a business card. “They'll tell you his incarceration and parole status. But you get a restraining order right now.”

“Will that help?”

“It won't stop him coming to bother you, but it'll give me the right to throw his butt in jail the moment he does. Also, anything you dig up to support a restraining order, I want to see it. Maybe there'll be some parole violations there we can use to get him back in jail before he bothers you again.”

“Do I need a lawyer? He's got Gloria Garcia.”

Officer Baca cursed. “That's not good.”

“Do you know Doug Vanderholt?”

“Nope. Vanderholt... wait... DA's Office? Yeah, sure, heard of him. Or was it a her?”

“They're a married couple.”

“DA's Office beats Gloria sometimes, but she's hard. She don't lose often. You want the best attorney you can get, all right?”

“Okay.”

“Meanwhile, I'll keep watching your house. I'm on duty all night.”

“You don't have to-”

“I haven't been around lately. I assumed it was an isolated incident, but if some guy's still mad at you after ten years, that's really not good.”

I shivered. “Thank you for helping me.”

“I hear you're on track to be valedictorian?”

“Yeah... looks like it.” Seemed like an odd change of subject.

When he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotion. “Good for you. Couldn't be prouder if you were my own. No one's gonna stop you walking across that stage, you hear me? Now get some sleep.”

Steve and Doug Vanderholt met me at the District Court two days later. I still felt consumed with guilt. I felt like I should at least bake cookies for them, but I wasn't sure if that was an insult. I couldn't make thousand dollar cookies.

I followed the two of them, both in their suits, through security and back to the clerks' windows. Ten minutes later we were in a little room with a wooden table, a small bowl of paper clips, and manila folder stuffed to bursting. We sat on rickety plastic chairs that creaked every time we so much as breathed, or so it seemed.

“Your original case,” said Mr. Vanderholt, who insisted I call him Doug. He patted the manila folder. “Is it okay if Steve reads this?”

“Of course.”

Steve flipped it open and started to skim. His eyes went wide and he blinked a few times and he started over again from the beginning. This time he took his time and read.

“It's not a pretty case, son,” said Doug.

“I'll say.” He flipped a couple of pages, read some more, then flipped the entire stack of papers and read the very last one. “They sued for attempted murder. How did they not get it?”

“She healed too fast,” said Doug. “And the Winters paid a king's ransom on attorneys.”

“Was there ever a civil suit? For damages?”

“Chris doesn't have any money or assets of his own, I'm guessing,” said Doug.

“This why we stopped getting our teeth done by Dr. Winters?”

“No, we stopped going there when I learned Dr. Winters ran around on his wife. Found it hard to look him in the eye after that.”

“Whoa, wait.” Steve reread something, then covered his eyes for a moment. “Sorry. Chloe, I had no idea.”

“Good,” I said. “I don't want to be known as the girl who went through this for the rest of my life.”

“I hear that.”

Doug clasped me on the shoulder. “Thank you for letting us do this.”

“Thank
me?”

“When you have kids,” said Steve, “you will totally understand. I can't read this and not work on your case, Chlo.”

“Exactly.”

I thought back to my mother's reaction. She'd cried a lot, but she hadn't tried to do anything about it. In fact, she'd just gotten drunk for a week. Whenever we talked about it, in the very rare instances when we did, she just got all wide eyed, like she'd been the night her house got vandalized. It was as if all of this had happened to her, not me, and that still burned me up inside.

“Okay, kidnapping-” Steve jotted this down on his notebook “-assault with a deadly weapon, battery, reckless endangerment of a minor... and we add in the fact that it's been ten years and there is evidence that he's still taking an interest in her.”

“Right, good,” said Doug.

The two were on a roll, and I'd been right, I had no idea what I was doing when it came to writing up the documents I'd need.

“I feel guilty,” I told Jason that evening over Skype. “They're doing so much for me.” I was sitting on the floor of the front room with my notebook and a biology textbook open in front of me.

“Chloe, when I told my dad Chris was out of jail, he swore. He never swears. Ever. This is my dad really angry: 'Son, I am very disappointed in you. I would like you to take a moment and think very hard about what you've done wrong.'” Jason tapped the table in front of him like a patient kindergarten teacher. “If I'd wrecked his brand new car, that's the lecture I'd get. Not that I... let's not talk about that.”

I smirked at him and carried on drawing my diagram of a cell membrane.