Someone Else's Fairytale

Fourteen: The Hearing

Steve and I met up again in the UNM law library the following day, and continued to work off the outline he'd drafted under his father's supervision.

“You don't have to do this,” I said to him. “I can try to look up statutes and-”

He shook his head. “I need to know how to do this stuff. You, I hope, don't.” He looked sidelong at me. “You still have scars?”

I nodded and pulled up one pants leg. There, in the side of my calf, was a silver dollar shaped scar. I twisted around so he could see the identical one on the other side. “That's one of them.”

“Yeah, I won't ask to see them all,” said Steve. “But can you take pictures? In case we can enter them into evidence?”

“Sure.”

He shook his head and launched his internet browser. “Statutes are online... here. Okay, a lot of them are going to be the same as in the old criminal complaint.” We had a copy of that on the table between us. “But we always check. I don't want to accidentally cite to some farm subsidy statute or something.”

I laughed.

“Right, so... kidnapping...” He clicked hyperlink after hyperlink until he found it, then jotted the statute number down in another window. “False imprisonment... right. Battery... okay. Assault with a deadly weapon... okay. I guess assault goes first, really. Um... right, endangerment of a minor... not sure what that'd be under. I still can't believe they didn't get attempted murder.”

“I wasn't in bad enough shape.”

“The heck you weren't.” I got the impression that the Vanderholts weren't big on swearing. “I'm looking up the criteria, just to see.” His finger tapped away again and again at the touchpad on his laptop.

He paused and looked up at me. “How are you, by the way? Here my dad and I have been so absorbed with this, we didn't ever ask. How do you feel about getting this restraining order?”

“I'm fine, I guess. Stressed.”

“Yeah, Jason said you guys hadn't talked much about it. He did get these, by the way.” Steve dug out a stack of pictures. I stared. Sure enough, the guy behind the wheel of the little sedan looked like an older, fatter Chris. His hair was buzzed and his eyes were behind sunglasses, but I could see his distinctive, tapering jaw.

Guilt welled up inside of me like blood from a wound. Jason had put me in touch with his family and gotten me some evidence, and I'd cut him off last night.

“I don't mean to pry, but... my brother did call me yesterday,” said Steve.

“What did he say?”

“That your 'friend',” he curled his fingers in the air, “dug up a bunch of dirt on him and made, like, a little case file.”

“He's just trying to protect me.”

“From what, exactly?”

“Matthew thinks Jason's trying to hit on me or something. And I don't know, maybe I talk to Jason too often. Maybe it does look bad.”

“Oh, well.” Steve scrubbed his fingers through his short hair, his wedding ring glinting in the late afternoon light that shone in the windows. “Jason's always on his phone. That thing's going to grow onto his ear. He gets real lonely in LA and doesn't relate to the people out there, even after all this time. But all of us in the family know you guys are just friends.”

“Well, so I'm sorry if last night really upset him.”

“You should talk to him, okay? Give him a chance to tell his side of the story.”