Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 136743 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136743 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
She’s stronger than she looks. I bet many underestimate her.
I won’t make that mistake.
CHAPTER SIX
SOLEDAD
How are the girls doing?”
Edward sounds as casual as if he’s calling from the office, not from a federal prison. I sit on the edge of our bed and squeeze the phone hard since his neck isn’t within choking distance.
“How do you think they’re doing, Edward?” I press my lips together to stymie a stream of vitriol. “They watched the FBI tear their home apart and drag their father off to jail.”
“I know.” He breathes heavily on the other end. “I miss them. I miss you. You should be able to visit in the next few days.”
“I don’t want to visit. I want you to come home.”
He pauses, and when he speaks his words are meted out with slow care. “I’m not sure when that can happen, Sol.”
“Brunson did say they’ll set bail really high. I don’t know what we can do since they’ve frozen our accounts.”
“What the hell?”
“I tried to buy groceries and couldn’t even do that.”
“You need food? Cash? Call my mom. She’ll wire you money.”
My mother-in-law and I have never been close.
“We’re okay for now,” I tell him. “I got food and have a little cash on hand at the house for emergencies, and Brunson says we’ll be assigned a court trustee soon to help with some basics.”
I decide not to mention that the food came courtesy of the man who essentially put him in jail.
“Right. Brunson did mention that,” Edward says, his voice dipping lower. “So there’s something we need to discuss.”
“You mean like what the hell is going on?” I’m deceptively calm. He’s kept me in the dark while speculation has run rampant in the news.
“Has the FBI questioned you?” he asks.
“Yeah. A lot. When they were at the house.”
“What did you tell them? What’d you say?”
“I didn’t have anything to say. I don’t know anything. Edward, what the fuck?”
“The less you know, the better.”
“You really think I’m going to accept that?” I huff an outraged breath. “Tell me what’s going on right now.”
“I can’t. I need you to trust me.”
“You say that to me? That I should trust you when I can’t even access our accounts and our credit cards are shut down? From what I hear, that’s just the first wave. They’ll come for the house next. Our cars. CalPot wants their money.”
“They should ask their wonder kid Cross where it is since he seems to have all the answers,” he says, bitterness making his words hard. “All I can tell you is that I’m securing our future.”
“Edward,” I whisper. “They mentioned offshore accounts and a summer house. What have you done?”
“Nothing they can prove.”
He did it. He really did it. Oh, my God.
The world as I knew it falls apart yet again, bits of his lies and deceptions flying around my head, projectile, sharp, cutting at everything I believed about life, about our past. About our future. Dread gathers in my belly and slithers up my throat while the silence elongates between us. I’m rendered speechless by his arrogance, by his recklessness. I don’t know if he’s done everything Judah accused him of, but he’s done something. Until this moment I had held out hope that it was the misunderstanding he had claimed, that they had the wrong guy. But Edward’s evasiveness, his refusal to assert his innocence, confirms a horrible suspicion that’s been lurking in the back of my mind since the FBI showed up on our front porch.
“Even if I’m prosecuted,” he finally says, filling the terrible quiet, “Brunson predicts I’ll do eighteen months, two years at most in some low-security spot. And when I get out—”
“Shouldn’t you be looking for ways to not get in? Instead of calculating how little time you’ll do?”
“Sol, listen to me.” He lowers his voice again. “When I get out, we’ll be set for life.”
“Oh, my God, Edward.” I lean forward, dropping my forehead into my hand and closing my eyes, trying to block out the awful truth he essentially just confessed. “Of all the stupid—”
“You say that to me? When I did this for you? For us? For our girls?”
“Don’t lie to me.” My head snaps up and I glare at the bedroom peppered with reminders of him. His watch on the bedside table. The shoes he discarded as carelessly as he handled this situation. “You can lie to yourself, but I don’t buy your bullshit, Edward. And for the girls? Don’t… just don’t.”
I cut myself off, packing down the rage and resentment to let in a deep breath I hope will clear my rioting thoughts.
“What do you expect us to do for two years while you’re languishing in this minimum-security facility you have all picked out? Lottie and Inez’s tuition check bounced. They’ll take our cars. They’ll leverage anything they can to pressure you to give them their money.”