Commitment (86 page)

“I mean, think about it. H
ave you ever been so attracted to a woman it made you want to
rape
her?”

Tiny flinched.

“Exactly,” Riley said.
“Rape is not a sexual impulse.”

“Not
a sexual impulse,
per se
,”
Lorna clarified
. 

“What about the ones who think I did i
t?” Shawn asked.
He sounded strangely distant, as though
the question was
purely academic.

“They felt that
your being part of
the rap music scene would make it more likely.”

“That’s it,” Shawn said quietly.

Everyone looked at him, puzzled.

“That’
s
the juror I have to make sure
I don’t get.
”

Lorna nodded.
“I think
that’s exactly
right.”

“Will you help me?” Shawn asked her suddenly.
“
W
ith jury selection.”

Lorna leane
d back in her seat and blinked.
“You mean as a jury consultant?”

Riley
knew that tone.
She was intrigued by the idea.

“Yes,” Shawn nodded.
“Whatever rate you want to charge . . .”

“Shawn.
Yo
u insult me,” she cut him off.
“If I were to do this, it would be as
your mother-in-law.
Not as some hired gun.”

“Whoa,
whoa
,”
Riley
said.
“So basically Lorna would be
there.
But not me.
”

Shawn looked at her unmoved.

“That’s just insane,”
Riley
said.
She shoved back from the table and stalked out of the room.

Shawn watched as
Riley
walked out
in a huff then
turned his attention
once again
to his meal.
He could feel Lorna and Tiny
eyeing
him, waiting for his reaction.
He had none.
Riley
liked to say that he was used to getting his own
way, the truth was, so was she.
In a different way, but ultimately i
t boiled down to the same thing—
she wanted what she wanted, and was
unaccustomed to not getting it.

And under normal circumstance
s, he was happy to indulge her.
But these
were not normal circumstances.
There was no way in three hells he was going to let her sit in a courtroom and listen to excruciating details about his sexual encounter with another woman, all the while having
to pretend it didn’t hurt her.
And then run
a
gauntlet of photographers
afte
r
ward
s
?
It wasn’t happening.
And if that meant she was going to have tantrums
or
give him the cold shoulder
then so be it
.

“Are you going after her?”
Lorna asked. 

It wasn’t a recommendation,
but rather
an expression of curio
s
ity
.

“No,” Shawn shook his head.

Lorna stifled a smile, and Shawn couldn’t shake the
feeling
that she approved.

“
Tiny,” she
said brightly, getting up to follow
Riley
herself.
“When you’re done, I’ll sh
ow you where you’ll be staying.
And you’ll
have to tell me your real name.
I find nicknames tedious before very long.”

When she was safely out of earshot, Tiny looked at Shawn and laughed.

“Man,”
he said, “those are two
strong
women.
I bet they keep you on your toes
.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Shawn said.

He purposely ate slowly, drawing out the meal so that
Riley
woul
d have ample time to calm down.
Knowing h
er, she wouldn’t simply drop it;
she would expect him to defend his position yet again and
try to
chip away at h
is resistance bit by tiny bit.

She’d tried the same strategy in the weeks leading up to their getting married
,
giving him reason after reason
that they didn’t
need
to get married.
But there had been
no arguing him out of that one and there was no arguing him out of this either.
It was time for him to step up and take ca
re of her.
He’d failed in that when he allowed himsel
f to get caught up with Keisha.
But he wasn’t going to repeat
his
mistake
.
She may think she was prepared for the negative attention that would come th
eir way, but she had no idea a
nd he wasn’t about to allow her to find out.
 

Now that he was here, he had to admit, there was something about being ou
t of the city that relaxed him.
It was a state of
mind, a
sense of bein
g far removed and
unreachable that
was difficult to achieve when you were in Manhattan and
mere
steps away from the action.
He wondered whether it would be possible to go in
to
town without
attracting too much attention. M
aybe he would give
it a try and see what happened.
But probably better to bring Tiny along, just in case things got out of hand.

The town looked like it hadn’t changed in a hundred year
s.
There was a small
square, and a commercial
area that stretched the meaning of the word, consisting
as it did
of about three blocks of small boutiques and
a smattering of
three-story office buildings
.
Unlike Manhattan, there
was ample parking available and only a fe
w pedestrians on the sidewalks.
It was quiet enough that
Shawn
had
Tiny drop him off a
bout five miles from the house.
He left his
phone in the car and walked, passing
a grocery store that reminded him of the old-fashioned g
eneral stores in cowboy movies.
Next to the produce were bags of feed for livestock and next to that,
garden tools and rubber boots.

Testing the waters, he went in and
bought a bottle of kiwi juice.
The cashier looked at him a moment longer than necessary an
d he knew he’d been recognized.
She quickly composed her face and smiled blandly at hi
m as she handed him his change.
The kiwi juice took him back to the night
he and
Riley
met, and they’d
walked to the Starbucks in Herald Square
after dinner
.
When he looked across the table at her that night, he never would have guessed that he was looking into the eyes of his
future
wife
.

H
alfway
between the house and downtown
was a park
.
There were college students sitting in the grass, taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather, playing
Frisbee and sunning themselves.
He watched warily as they took him in, murmuring among themselves
when they realized who he was.
No
o
ne made a move to approach him an
d he relaxed.
It was funny how places
differed in that way;
in some cities it was a given that he was going to be mobbed and in others, people seemed to instinctively
maintain a respectful distance.

As the streets transformed from commercial to residential, he took notice of the
houses.
Some were modest ranch-
style homes but as he got closer to the college and to Lorna’s, the char
acter changed to much grander,
thoug
h understated in their grandeur,
residences
.
He passed a few women wearing sweatpants
,
walking todd
lers and pushing baby carriages
and a few
chattering
groups of kids who seemed to be walking hom
e from school or the bus stop.

When he got back to the house, he h
ad the impulse to keep walking.
The solitude and the chance to think
was something
he hadn’t had in a long time.
But
Riley
was sitting on the doorstep, looking
worriedly out at the street.
When he came into view, her face
brightened
and she stood to greet him.  Shawn took her in as though
seeing her for the first time.
She was wearing baggy grey
sweatpants and a white t-shirt.
A red sweater was tied about her waist
.
 

“How was your walk?” she looped an arm through his.

“Good.”

“Good.”

“I might do it again later,” he said.
“
C
ome with me?”

“Of co
urse,” she said
.

g