Chapter 1
One
Philadelphia, 2009
"You know, don't you, that you're looking at twenty-five to
life?" Charlotte peered over the top of the file at the
seventeen-year-old with the rows of tiny braids who slouched
in the chair on the other side of the graffiti-covered
table, staring intently at his sneakers.
The preliminary hearing had not gone well. Charlotte had
hoped that the judge would take one look at Marquan's baby
face, with its wide smooth cheeks and the unblinking
almond-shaped eyes, and know that he was not a danger to
anyone, that he did not belong here. She thought that Judge
Annette D'Amici, who herself had once been a public
defender, might have a soft spot for a teenager with no
record of prior violence who was about the same age as her
grandchildren. But in a streak of phenomenally bad luck,
Judge D'Amici had called in sick, replaced for the day by
Paul Rodgers. Rodgers, a political wannabe who viewed the
bench as a stepping-stone to a higher state office, had
earned a reputation as a hanging judge during his first
term. He barely glanced at Marquan before banging his gavel
and remanding him to the juvenile wing of the city prison.
Normally, Charlotte would have chalked the hearing up as a
loss and gone on to her next file and courtroom, dispensing
with the morning's caseload. But Marquan was different. They
had met almost two years earlier when he'd been a scared
fifteen-year-old brought in on a petty drug charge. There
was a sparkle that told her he had intelligence, a quiet
dignity in his perfect posture and the way he looked at her
with those somber brown eyes, seeming to see right through.
He had promise. She'd done all the things she usually didn't
get to do with a docket of thousands of cases per year:
getting Marquan into a first-time offenders' track that left
him with no permanent record, as well as an after-school
mentoring program in his neighborhood. So why was he sitting
here now, dull-eyed and hardened, facing a murder charge for
a carjacking gone wrong?
Because it simply wasn't enough. The after-school programs
amounted to only a few hours per week, a drop in an ocean of
poverty and drugs and violence and boredom in which these
kids had to swim every night on the streets. There had been
a police chase that ended with an SUV crushed against the
pavement steps of a row house, two small children pinned
fatally beneath its wheels. Marquan hadn't meant to hurt
anyone; of that she was certain. He had a little brother the
same age as those kids, whom he walked to school every day,
escorted home again each evening. No, he had simply been
along for the ride when the stupid plan was hatched and he
didn't have the strength or good sense to say no.
Charlotte drummed the edge of the table, running her fingers
along a heart that someone had carved into the wood with a
knife. "If you would testify," she began. There had been
three boys in the car, but Marquan was the only one who had
not fled the scene. "I mean, if you're willing to say who
was there with you . . ."
She did not finish the sentence, knowing the proposal was
futile. No one talked where Marquan came from. don't snitch!
screamed the brazen T_shirts of the kids she passed in the
Gallery food court at lunch, kids ditching school and
hanging out, waiting for trouble to find them. Snitching
meant never going home again, never closing your eyes and
knowing if you or your loved ones would be safe. Marquan
would sooner take the sentence.
She exhaled sharply, glancing up at the water-stained
ceiling. "Anything you want to tell me?" she asked, closing
the file, watching for the imperceptible shake of his head.
"If you change your mind, or if you need something, have
your case officer call me." She pushed back from the table
and stood, knocking on the door to be let out.
A few minutes later, Charlotte stepped from the elevator and
made her way across the lobby of the Criminal Justice
Center, thronged with prospective jurors and families of the
victims and the accused who pushed past the metal detector
toward the security desk for information. On the street, she
swam through a cloud of cigarette smoke left by courthouse
clerks lingering before the start of their day, then paused,
her eyes traveling left toward the hulking Reading Terminal
Market. A walk through the open stalls, a gastronomic
world's fair touting everything from Amish delicacies to lo
mein and cheesesteaks, would have been just the thing to
clear her head, but there wasn't time.
As she reached the busy intersection beneath the shadow of
City Hall, William Penn peering down piously from his perch
atop the tower, Charlotte paused, inhaling the crisp
late-September air. There were only a few days like this
each fall in Philadelphia, before the persistent humidity of
summer gave way to the cold rainy winter.
Still thinking of Marquan, Charlotte entered the office
building. On the sixth floor, she stepped out of the
elevator and proceeded down the drab corridor. The voice of
section chief Mitch Ramirez, arguing with a prosecutor,
bellowed through an open doorway. "Are you going to fucking
tell me...?" Charlotte smiled as she passed. Mitch was a
legend among the defenders, a seventy-two-year-old dinosaur
who had marched in the civil rights protests of the sixties
and could still go toe to toe with the best of them when he
thought his client was getting a raw deal.
She stopped before the door to her office, indiscernible
from the others she had just passed. It wasn't much; a
glorified closet, really, with a small desk and two chairs
wedged close together-a far cry from the marble and mahogany
suite she'd had when she was a summer associate at a large
New York firm. But it was all hers. It had taken two years
just to get it, to fight her way out of the pit of rookie
defenders who shared the sea of cubicles one floor below and
have a door that closed so she could hear herself think.
Charlotte reached for the handle, then stopped, studying it.
The door was ajar. She was certain that she had closed it
when she left for court that morning, but perhaps one of the
other attorneys had dropped off a file. As she stepped
inside, her breath caught.
There, in the narrow chair across from her desk, sat her
ex-boyfriend.
"Brian?" she asked, as though unsure of his name. The word
came out in a croak.
He stood, unfolding from the chair. Brian had the tall,
broad- shouldered frame that fashion houses paid good money
for, brown hair that flopped improbably to his forehead no
matter how many times he got it cut to a shorter, more
professional length. Despite the muscular arms that
suggested a threat on the basketball court, he conveyed an
air of vulnerability that implied he might cry at a chick
flick and made women want to take care of him.
Looking at him now, it was almost possible to forget that he
had broken her heart.
"Hello, Charlotte," he said, his use of her full name a
reminder of the years that had come and gone since their
last meeting. He bent to kiss her and a hint of his familiar
Burberry cologne tickled her nose, sending her places she
had hoped never to go again. "You're looking well." He
brushed off his legs, his expensive suit woefully out of
place in her tiny drab office. She was suddenly
self-conscious about her black knit pantsuit, practical and
unflattering. His Chanel-and-heels wife would not have been
caught dead in it.
He waited for her to speak, then filled the silence when she
did not. "I didn't mean to startle you. Your secretary let
me in."
She did not, Charlotte reminded herself, have a secretary.
He must have been referring to Doreen, the office admin.
Doreen was usually too busy updating her Facebook page to
help visitors, but it was easy to see how Brian might have
charmed her into unlocking the office and letting him wait.
She studied him again. There was a paunch that bespoke too
many overpriced steakhouse dinners, missed visits to the
racquet club he once frequented daily. But he still had that
appeal that had sucked her in almost a decade ago-that had
gotten her in trouble in the first place.
She took a deep breath, centered herself. "What are you
doing here?"
His expression changed as he processed the new rules of the
game: pleasantries were to be dispensed with, business
stated. "I'm in town for work and I was hoping to talk to
you about something."
You've left Danielle, she thought suddenly. Realized after
all these years that you made a fatal mistake, that I was
the one. The scenario rushed through her head: his profuse
apologies and tears, her eventual gracious acceptance and
forgiveness. It would be messy, of course. There was the
divorce, the question of whether to reside here or in New
York. "About a case I'm working on," he added.
The vision evaporated, a raindrop on a warm, humid day, so
quickly gone she might have imagined it. So this isn't about
us after all, she thought, feeling very foolish. Brian
wanted something, but it wasn't her.
"Let me buy you lunch?" he asked.
She shook her head. Thirty seconds around Brian and he was
already toying with her mind. She needed to get as far away
from him as possible. "I can't. I'm due back in court in
half an hour."
"Of course. Dinner then. Does six work?" She could see him
calculating the time that the meal might take, whether he
could make the nine o'clock train back to Manhattan. Back to
Danielle. Her stomach twisted, the bile undiluted by the years.
For a second she considered taking back an ounce of the
control that had been stolen from her all those years ago
and declining his last- minute invitation. She might have
plans after all. Usually they consisted of nothing more than
Thai takeout in front of the television, a hot night of CSI
reruns with her cat, Mitzi, but he didn't have to know that.
Her curiosity was piqued, though. Did Brian really have
business in Philadelphia or had he come all this way just to
see her? And what on earth could it be about?
"All right," she replied, trying to sound casual.