Page 117 of Family Bonds- Garrett & Justine

“I said it before, Justine. There is no winning here. If I do what you say, it could put pressure on you and make you pull away. If I don’t do it, you’re going to think poorly of me or that I’m avoiding things. What do you want me to do? You’ve backed me into a corner.”

She hadn’t thought of it that way. “It’s my problem,” she said. “Not yours. I want you to be you. I have to make my decisions in life and live with them. I don’t want you carrying any guilt over it. And it’s wrong of me for you to do that. I am backing you in a corner as you said and hadn’t realized it.”

“It doesn’t change the fact,” he said.

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t, but I can’t give you any other answers right now. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

“I’ll accept it because I don’t have a choice. It doesn’t change my love for you though. Do you forgive me for not telling you about my cancer? Can we at least move past this?”

She’d be an idiot to say no.

A horrible person on top of it.

Everything he’d said was true and she was only looking at it from her point of view.

Guess they were both pretty flawed.

“Of course,” she said. “Can I get a hug before you go to work?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said, moving into her arms.

36

PAID THE PRICE

“Thanks for meeting with me on such short notice,” Justine said when she walked into a conference room to talk with Roark French.

Roark had gotten in touch with Garrett quickly, she’d been by his side and talked to him and they set up a time for her to meet with him and someone on his staff who is licensed to practice in Indiana.

“Not a problem,” Roark said. “I’ve done some reading on your father’s case. Or I should say your stepmother’s case. Karly is going to be here in a minute. She’s on a call right now. She’s one of my best. Like a poodle getting a bone from a mastiff. She’ll find a way to make it happen.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” she said.

“I’ve heard a bit about you through the family,” Roark said, smirking.

“From Selena or Gabriela?” she asked.

“Both and then my sister. She said she’d emailed you twice. She has no idea you are here and I wouldn’t say a word, but she calls me all the time to ask questions and then hangs up quickly once I answer. But she told me she’d met you and was going to be picking your brain.”

“I find it exciting,” she said. “I look forward to it. I think I’ve got to look forward to a lot of things right now. Or I’m trying to.”

Roark reached his hand over and laid it on hers. Maybe it was a family trait to comfort people.

“We are going to try to get you some answers. We’ll get that footage. Don’t worry about it. Whether there is anything on it or not is the question.”

“That is part of my frustration. If the company said it was only six months of footage, I’d let it go.”

“No,” Roark said. “You never let it go. You want proof that the footage was destroyed and not stored somewhere else. We will turn over every rock to find out. And much faster than the DA or police. But we need to get on the same page as them.”

“Working together,” a woman said, coming into the room. “I’ll play nice to start and then I’ll run them over. I’m Karly Paterson and you’ve got to be Justine Keller.”

She stood up to shake the woman’s hand.

Karly looked to be in her mid-forties with a bright smile on her face. She was average height, dressed unassuming, and most likely blended into a crowd.

People like that could be dangerous if it wasn’t their personality on the inside.

She was thinking that was how Karly got the wins.

---