Chapter 9: She Made Bail
Forty thousand dollars.
Ten percent down to a bondsman meant four thousand dollars.
Teresa had found four thousand dollars before the ink was dry on the arraignment paperwork.
"Who paid it?" I asked.
"I don't know," Mason said.
"It wasn't me.
I've been cooperating, Connor.
I swear to you."
"Could it have been Raymond?"
"He's the one who told me.
He seemed as surprised as I was."
I ended the call and immediately called Hargrove.
"I know," he said before I could speak.
"We were notified an hour ago.
The bondsman's records show the payment came through a third-party guarantor.
We're identifying them now."
"Is she allowed near my house?"
"As a condition of bail, she is prohibited from contacting you, Amy, or approaching within five hundred feet of your residence or your workplace.
Violation means immediate remand."
"She knows where I work."
"I'm aware.
I've already contacted your job site's main office.
If she shows up, they call us first."
I thanked him and hung up.
Amy was watching me from across the kitchen.
Frederick had gone quiet, sensing something, the way small children sometimes do.
"She's out," I said.
Amy picked Frederick up from the high chair.
She held him against her chest and didn't say anything for a moment.
Then: "Lock the back door."
I almost said something.
Then I realized she wasn't being dramatic.
She was being practical.
The back door was the one Teresa had always used.
The one she had a key to.
I went and changed the lock that night.
All three exterior doors.
New deadbolts.
New keys.
Two hours of work.
When I came back inside, Amy had put Frederick to bed and was sitting on the couch with her legal pad.
"She's going to try to contact you," Amy said.
"Not directly.
She'll use someone.
Betsy, maybe.
Or one of the cousins."
"Let her try."
"Connor." She looked up.
"I know you think this is almost over.
But she doesn't think she's losing.
She pled not guilty.
She made bail in one day.
In her mind, she's still fighting."
I sat down across from her.
"What do you think she'll do?" I said.
"I think she'll try to get to you through guilt," Amy said.
"She'll find a way to remind you that she's your mother.
She'll make you feel like pursuing this makes you the bad son.
She's been doing that your whole life — I've watched her do it.
Every time you set a boundary, she found a way to make you feel like the one who was wrong."
I didn't answer right away.
Because she wasn't wrong.
"Three days after Frederick was born," I said slowly, "she called me crying.
Said she felt left out.
Said Amy's family was getting more access to the baby.
I spent an hour on the phone reassuring her."
"I remember," Amy said quietly.
"Frederick was two days old.
You were on the phone in the hallway for an hour."
"She manufactured a crisis to pull me back in."
"She always did.
I just couldn't say it without sounding like I was attacking her."
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees.
"She's not going to get to me through guilt," I said.
"Not this time."
Amy held my gaze for a moment.
"I believe you," she said.
But the next morning, I found an envelope in our mailbox.
No stamp.
No return address.
Inside was a single photograph.
Me and Teresa, at my college graduation.
I was twenty-two.
She had both arms around me, her cheek pressed against mine, both of us laughing at something off-camera.
On the back, in her handwriting:
*I was there for everything.
Don't let her take you from me.*
I stood at the mailbox for a long time.
Then I put the photograph in an evidence bag — I'd gotten a box of them from Hargrove — and I called him.
"She violated the no-contact order," I said.
May you like
"Bring it in," he said.
"Today."
