Page 89 of Justice Delayed

“That will do,” Billings said. “Jared, the floor is yours.”

Jared cleared his throat. “The night Jesse went missing, Ruby asked me to keep an eye on Jillian and Jesse. She and my dad were going to some charity function at the country club, and the nanny would be helping out there after getting Jesse ready for bed.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d been so annoyed at being saddled with his half-siblings. All he’d wanted was to score some pills from Snake and get high in his room while listening to his latest heavy metal album.

“Jesse wouldn’t settle down. He kept fussing in his crib. Jillian said he wasn’t feeling well, so I gave him some medicine. Infant Benadryl and liquid Tylenol.” Jared walked them through the rest of the night. Jesse’s crying, Jillian playing peek-a-boo with Blue Bunny. Finding Jesse not breathing with Blue Bunny on his face. Calling his father in a panic.

“What happened after you called your father?” Ms. Valbuena asked.

Jared hung his head. “I checked to make sure Jillian was in her bed, then I left to meet Snake, my dealer.”

“You left Jesse lying there in the crib?” Livingston’s question cracked like a whip across Jared’s back.

Jared flinched at the harshness in the detective’s voice. “I couldn’t do anything for him.” Even as he said the words, he knew how pitiful they sounded. But he’d been only nineteen and jonesing for a fix.

“Why didn’t you call 911?” Ms. Valbuena held her pen over her legal pad.

“My dad told me he’d take care of everything.” And if the cops came, he could kiss his chance at meeting Snake goodbye. He held his head, and for the first time, the enormity of his actions crashed down on him like a house collapsing in on itself during a fire. The crushing weight of remorse squeezed his chest, making it difficult to answer the questions Ms. Valbuena and the detectives asked.

All Jared could think about was the look of betrayal in Melender’s eyes as he lied on the witness stand about his whereabouts that night. At the time, keeping the generous monthly allowance his father settled on him for committing perjury had been his top priority. He’d negotiated the settlement with his father after realizing he could never spend the ransom money. Jared’s testimony had been crucial to convincing the jury that Melender had been left in charge of the children. How Melender must hate him for his role in sending her to prison for a crime she didn’t commit.

“Mr. Thompson?” Ms. Valbuena’s voice held a note of impatience.

Jerking his thoughts away from his cousin, Jared refocused on the attorney. “Sorry.”

She didn’t acknowledge his apology. “What happened to Jesse’s body?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” Ms. Valbuena tapped the legal pad with her pen, her expression unreadable. “Who would know?”

Jared exchanged a look with Billings, who nodded. Drawing in a deep breath, Jared let it out slowly. He had to take care of himself now. What happened, happened. He couldn’t go back and change the actions of his nineteen-year-old self, but he could help his thirty-nine-year-old self. Straightening in his chair, he looked the prosecutor directly in the eye. “My father took care of it.”

ChapterThirty-Five

Melender rolled onto her stomach in bed. Three hours after she’d clocked out at work, she still couldn’t fall asleep despite being physically tired. She’d done her shift last night by rote.

The voices on the recording kept playing over and over in her mind. The fear in Jared’s voice. Jillian’s high-pitched singsong as she entertained Jesse with a game of peek-a-boo. The snuffles and cries of her littlest cousin. She hugged a throw pillow to her chest. She thought the truth would ease the ache in her heart but instead, it had increased it.

During her incarceration, a dozen different scenarios as to what had actually happened to Jesse, mostly involving a kidnapping gone wrong, came to mind. But she’d never considered that Jillian accidentally smothered her younger brother and her father had spirited the body away rather than let his daughter discover what she’d done. Melender figured Quentin had allowed her arrest because of his love for Ruby and his children.

On her back, she stared at the ceiling. If she were being honest, it wasn’t only the recording that kept her tossing and turning. Thoughts of Brogan also vied for her attention.

Brogan’s disappointment remained baffling. Maybe he’d been upset because her decision to protect Jillian from finding out the truth had hampered his ability to report the entire story. After all, he had been upfront about his interest in the story and the potential it had of catapulting his career back into national prominence.

As she recalled the kiss with Brogan, her body warmed.Love. The one word Melender hadn’t successfully guarded against when it came to Brogan had allowed Cupid to aim his arrow directly at her heart.

She’d asked Sudie about love once after her grandmother had related one of her stories about star-crossed lovers. Her grandmother smiled as she rocked in a wooden chair, her hands busily knitting a baby blanket for a young family in the hollow. Sudie’s words now replayed in her mind.

“Child, sometimes, people do fall in love at the drop of an acorn.” Her hands stilled in her lap as a faraway look came into her eyes. “The summer I turned twenty, I met my future husband at a barn raising. Even in patched overalls and scuffed work boots, Trilby Harman caught my eye. My, how that man could swing a hammer.” Sudie smiled, her faded blue eyes twinkling with the memory.

“Trilby was too shy to ask me to take a spin during the dance that evening, so I grabbed his hand and pulled him out on the floor. We were married three months later, and I never regretted a moment of our life together. We had fifty years of wedded bliss before the Lord saw fit to call Trilby home.”

Sudie resumed knitting and rocking, her eyes on fifteen-year-old Melender. “You’re coming of an age to think about young men.” Then her grandmother had pointed her knitting needle at her. “Find a young man who loves the Lord more than he loves you, and you won’t go wrong.”

Oh, Sudie. If only I’d had more time to glean additional wisdom from you before you joined Grandfather Trilby in heaven.Melender blinked back tears as a wave of homesickness crashed over her.

Maybe returning to the little log cabin tucked into the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains would banish unrealistic thoughts of a relationship with Brogan. Surely there were still people there who would remember her. She didn’t need much and could easily leave behind the trappings of the modern life to forge a living on the mountain. No one there would care about her recent past, only that she had once belonged to the mountains. That was her true heritage, and she would be welcomed back when she chose to reclaim it.

A gentle smile curled the corners of her lips as the words of the nineteenth-century naturalist and preservationist John Muir summed up her desire.The mountains are calling, and I must go.

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