Kelly’s whole body was convulsing, and tears, sweat, and snot were smearing her face. “Because it felt like there might be some meaning to it with someone to bring to justice,” she choked out. “It felt like there was a purpose.”

There was no purpose now. No answers left to find. No justice left to seek. No way of understanding the murder of her father.

Just a good man dead on the ground when he shouldn’t have been.

She’d thought she’d gotten to the lowest point before, but this was so much lower than anything else she’d experienced.

Kelly wasn’t sure she could survive it.

“It’s all…just…meaningless.”

The sobs kept coming, ripping, ripping her apart, ripping through her from her gut to her throat.

Reese scooted over on the floor until she was holding Kelly’s upper body in her lap. It sounded like Reese was on the verge of crying too. “Kelly, please. I don’t know what to do.”

There was nothing to do. No help. No fix. No answer.

Just the absolute injustice of the universe.

Kelly no longer had the energy to sob, and her throat was unbearably sore. She just rocked herself in a ball, whimpering.

Reese scrambled to her feet and returned with a damp cloth and pulled Kelly’s head into her lap.

Reese seemed to be more in control now that Kelly’s sobs had gotten less frantic. Stroking her hair and wiping her face, Reese was saying soothing words that Kelly couldn’t quite process.

They were in the same position several minutes later when there was a knock on the door.

Kelly hardly registered the sound, or the fact that Reese had gotten up to answer it.

When she returned, however, Jack was with her.

“Sorry,” Reese mumbled. “I called him. I was scared. Please don’t hate me.”

Kelly didn’t have the energy to hate anyone.

“Kelly,” Jack murmured, the handsome, grizzled face tightening as he sank down beside her. “Can I help?”

“No,” she managed to say.

He gathered her into his arms and lifted her up without any show of effort. He carried her over to the couch.

And she let him.

He laid her down with her head in his lap. “I can’t do much,” Jack admitted, in response to her last feeble comment. “But I took care of things, so nothing will be publicized through my guys.”

There were more tears now. “Okay,” she forced out, not able to articulate anything else.

She wasn’t really close to Jack, but he was more of a friend than anyone in her life except Reese. He knew the whole story. He was warm and strong and solid. And she needed him.

Needed something.

Her weeping built up in momentum again as she recovered from her first wave of exhaustion. “Oh, God,” she gasped, holding her stomach tightly as if she could somehow force the pain back. “Oh, God, I miss him. My dad.”

“I know,” Jack said, pulling her up a little so he could wrap his arms around her. “The whole thing is just one fucking nightmare.”

Reese had cleaned up some more, but now she came over to Kelly with a glass of water and something in her hand. “It’s a mild tranquilizer. If you want it. It might help a little…for a while.”

Kelly just couldn’t stop sobbing, and she would be grateful for anything that might help.

So she took a few sips of water, and when she saw that she could keep them down, she managed to swallow the pill as well.

She fell back on top of Jack, and eventually she fell into an uneasy sleep.

Kelly didn’t know how long she slept, and when she woke she was completely disoriented.

She was still on the couch, and Jack was still beside her. She blinked rapidly over her swollen eyes. Felt fuzzy, heavy, aching, and her head felt like it might pound her into the ground.

“Hi,” she croaked stupidly, trying to focus up at Jack’s face.

Jack had been relaxing back against the sofa, but at her voice he straightened up and looked down at her. “Hi,” he said softly.

Her eyes burned again, but she didn’t seem to have any tears. “Reese?”

“She ran to the store,” Jack explained. The sun was coming in through the window, which meant it must be morning. “She thought you might want some ginger ale or ice cream or chocolate or something. So she went to stock up on provisions.” He gave her a small half-smile.

Kelly almost, almost smiled back. “Thanks for coming,” she said, her throat still painful and dry. “I think I might have had a breakdown.”

Jack nodded. “I guess things kind of fell apart for you.”

He wasn’t prying, wasn’t presuming to demand answers she might not want to give. And because of this she was able to reply hoarsely, “Yeah. I’d thought…I’d thought I’d gotten over a lot of this. At least the worst of it. But it’s like an old wound was just ripped open, and it hurts more than it did at the beginning.”

It still did. Hurt so much. With no hatred or apathy or drive for revenge to shield her from the bitter truth of it, the loss of her father hurt more now than it ever had.

Jack was quiet for a long time.

Then he finally said, “I can’t imagine how much it must hurt. But maybe…maybe…” He paused. “Maybe it’s like you were saying before, when you decided to go back to him.”

“I don’t remember what I said.”

So he told her. “Maybe this time the wound will heal clean.”

—

One of the strangest things about life was you eventually started to feel better.

No matter how torn apart Kelly was, no matter how much it felt like the pain would actually kill her during the night, she felt a little better the next day.

Not good. Not anything close to good. But just a little better. Enough that she could take a shower, get dressed, and drink some coffee.

Jack hadn’t yet left, so the three of them sat around Reese’s small living area with their coffee, with a kind of bleak exhaustion that was at least a little better than the traumatic grief of the night before.

When no one said anything for a while, Kelly told Jack, “You need to shave.”

He rubbed his chin, the bristles making a rasping sound in the quiet room. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

“So what now?” Reese asked, looking from one of them to the other. “What happens now? Are you going to expose what you know? I mean, the whole story. I know you’re not going to put the story out there that Caleb did the killing.”

Kelly sighed and closed her eyes. “I’m not going to expose anything. I know Caleb and Moore were wrong. Obviously they were. But I just…” She cleared her throat. “I’ve been wrong too. And it doesn’t feel right for me to punish them, when I’m just as guilty as they are.”

“You’re not—” Reese began.

“Yes, I am. I know I am.” She stared down into her mug at the black coffee. “You don’t get to play with other people’s lives the way I did and claim you did something good. The truth is good. Knowing the truth is worth doing. But the way I got it…It doesn’t feel right to me. Not any more right than what Caleb did back then.”

She could still see Caleb’s face—how utterly broken it had been. She’d done that to him. She’d loved him, and she’d still broken him. “I don’t get to claim I did something good.”

“So no justice at all,” Reese murmured. “Are you going to be okay with that?”

Kelly shook her head. “Who could be okay with that? If there was justice available for me, I think I would take it. But the person who is really guilty is dead, he’s beyond justice now. And all that’s left would be…would be a gesture that accomplishes nothing.”

She could still hear Caleb’s voice on those old tapes—how horrified he sounded, how young and upset he’d been. He hadn’t taken any pleasure in her father’s death. It had twisted something in his heart that had never been untwisted.

Actions had consequences, even if they were never addressed in the criminal justice system. Caleb hadn’t been untouched by his sins.

Neither was she. She was paying for them even now.