Page 90 of The Right to Remain

“You keep talking as if I have some kind of magic power over the prosecutor. Like all I need to do is push a button. How could I make this stop, even if I wanted to?”

“Confess.”

Elliott scoffed, almost chuckling. “Is that why the prosecutor brought you here? She thinks I’ll give up a jailhouse confession to my mommy?”

Serena kept a straight face. “You should confess.”

“To something I didn’t do?”

“Confess.”

“Okay. I’ll play this little game you and Ms. Weller cooked up. Why would I confess?”

Serena’s expression turned even more serious. “Because it saves you from being buried by your own mother’s testimony against you.”

Their eyes locked. The hatred that had consumed a teenage Elle—that had taken Elliott years to suppress—was rushing to the surface. There was the constant stream of strange men to their apartment. The cooked meth on the coffee table from all-night binges. The teenage girl who had to run to her bedroom and hide from her mother’s so-called boyfriends, as Serena lay passed out on the couch. With those memories and worse flooding back, the only thing to stop Elliott from standing up and screaming at the top of his voice was the certainty thatSerena wasn’t bluffing about a burial. Elliott needed this conversation to end, so he said what should have been said at the start.

“Fuck off.”

Serena smiled, seemingly satisfied in her own perverse way that she’d gotten to Elliott. She picked up her tray and rose but lingered at the table for another moment. She had something more to say.

“No mother should have to do what I’m being forced to do. But I guess you wouldn’t know anything about being a mother, would you—Elliott?”

It was enough to push anyone over the edge, but Elliott still had bruises from that first jail fight with his cellmate, and a second disciplinary report was far too many. He didn’t make a move. He sat with his fists clenched, watching, as Serena carried her tray across the cafeteria to another table.

Chapter 32

Andie’s nonstop flight to Miami landed just after sunset. She was first in line at the taxi stand at Arrivals, and she was eager to get home, but she wasn’t going straight to Key Biscayne.

“Coconut Grove,” she told the driver.

Her first stop was Cy’s Place. And it wasn’t for happy hour.

Five hours in the air had given her time to process Francine’s advice. Her old friend was right. Unless she wanted to get herself and Francine fired, Andie couldn’t tell Jack or Theo that, whatever Theo was up to, it had caught the attention of law enforcement. But she couldn’t, as Francine had put it, “do nothing and let the chips fall where they may.” There was no perfect solution. But time was of the essence.

The driver dropped her outside Cy’s Place. She grabbed her bag, went inside, and took an open stool at the bar. Theo was mixing a cocktail when he spotted her.

“Hey, welcome back,” he said. “Is Jack coming?”

“No. Just me tonight.”

It was a thought-provoking moment, as if they simultaneously came to the realization that not once, ever, had Andie visited Cy’s Place without Jack.

“Everything okay?” asked Theo.

She forced a smile. “You got a minute?”

Theo wiped his hands on a towel and invited her back to his office. Andie followed him to a tiny room adjacent to the kitchen that served as both a business office and a surplus storage room. Metal beer kegs lined one wall. Canisters of mixed nuts and bar snacks lined the other.There was barely enough room for two people, which didn’t make it any easier for Andie to say what needed to be said.

Theo closed the door. “Did something happen between you and Jack?”

“No, nothing like that. We’re fine.”

“Okay, good. What’s up?”

She leaned against the nearest keg, still trying to find words. “Theo, we’re friends, right?”

“Yeah. Of course.”