Vain (7 page)

“Which one?”
he asked, this savior in do-me clothing.

“The soft pink one hanging in the window.”

He left me to browse while he took care of my purchase for me. I knew this little act just confirmed everything he’d accused in our dinner conversation
, but I still strove to hold on to the slightest thread of hope that I would never turn out so pathetically acquiescing as my mother or as cold-hearted as my father.
But isn’t that who you already are, Soph? You certainly cast your friends aside easily to screw their boyfriends, don’t you?
I shook my head.
Build the wall
, I ordered myself and just as easily, my facial expression eased and my thoughts turned an entirely different direction.

“Size, miss?”
I heard behind me, turning my head.

“A four, please,” I told the cler
k and she quickly scurried off.

“It that all you’ll need?”
Spencer asked from beside me after they’d adjusted the garment for a quick tailor. “I spied a shoe store nearby. I wouldn’t mind.”

“Thank you, Spenc
e. That’s fine. Shall we walk?”

“Of course.”
He turned his head toward the back room. “We’ll just be next door as you do the alterations,” he called out.

The clerk emerged and nodded discretely. “Give me half an hour,” she said.

Spencer led me to the shoe store next door and we perused the windows as we passed by. “What are you going to give me for buying these for you?”

“A swift kick in the junk?”

He laughed wholeheartedly. “I had to try.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I teased.

Inside, I immediately spied a pair of buttery-soft leather peek-a-boo’s in the corner. “Those,” I told him succinctly.

“Damn, you don’t waste any time.”

“I know what I want when I want it.”

“One can hope...” he trailed off.

“Really, Spence?”

“I’m sorry
, but I keep getting flashbacks of yesterday night. You were goddamn hot in nothing but your lingerie.”

I sighed loudly.

“No, no, I know. I’m just frustrated is all.”

“I’m so sorry about that,” I told him sincerely.

“Not as sorry as I am, but it’ll do.” He winked in jest. “Anything else, then? Purse, scarf, a frenzied escape across the southern border?”

“Please, Spencer, if I wanted to flee, I’d fly. I’m not a wanted felon, for
chrissakes.”

“Ah, but you’d be so hot on the posters. Bounty hunters across the
states would mortgage their homes to be the one to bring you in.”

“You’re seriously starting to chafe me. I’m nervous as it is.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, kissing my temple. I could feel his chuckle against my skin. “Would you like me to come with you?”

“It’s going to be humiliating enough. I don’t believe your presence would be soothing.”

“Damn, Soph.”

“I apologize, old habits die hard.”

“Fine, but as soon as you’re done, you’ll call me?”

I bit my bottom lip to keep it from trembling.

“The first.”

Seven in the morning is made for people who deserve nothing but death. If I were a judge, I’d schedule all my court dates after eleven in the morning and end them at three in the afternoon. I mean, my God, they went to school practically their entire adolescent and adult lives, probably rising before it was even light, only to graduate and begin working as a toiling law firm crony or in a political office position they’d had to commit no less than fifteen years of their heart-clogging lives toward only to reach for aspirations of waking at the crack of dawn to deal with the lowliest of the low? No, thank you.

But we all really know why they did it.
Prestige and power.
That’s
why they did it. And who could blame them?

“You look incredible, Soph. Convict-less.”

“Thank you, I suppose.”

Spencer pulled up front and I got out, nervous as hell.

He rolled down his window as I began the ascent into the courthouse. “Don’t forget to call me!” he shouted.

I turned and nodded once before meeting
Pembrook at the top of the steps.

“On time.
Thank you.”

“Something about my father getting the courts to agree to this has made me less than comfortable. I thought being on time would be, oh, I don’t know, wise?”

“Ah, so today I get facetious Sophie. How delightful.”

“I’m sorry,
Pemmy,” I sighed out.

“It’s fine. Follow me,” he bit.

Pembrook led me through the security checkpoints and into a cavernous marble lobby to a set of elevators. I counted the floors as we passed each one.
One...Surely the lesson is in the threat...Two...He wouldn’t risk the publicity...Three...He’s doing this because he loves me...Four...He does love me...Five...I know he does...Six...He has to...Seven...Doesn’t he?

The ringing bell announcing our floor startled my anxiety
-ridden body, stiff from tensing my muscles as if in anticipation of a beating. And that was what that morning would promise me. I knew it. Pemmy’s short answers and minimal sarcasm told me that better than words ever could.

“Through here,” I barely heard
Pembrook mutter. He opened the door for me and I entered the sunken room.

The smallest sounds resonated throughout.
The creak of the door, the taps of our shoes on the cold marble floor, the intake of every labored breath.

“Sit here,” he said, pointing to a bench reminiscent of a church pew just outside of the fenced
-in chamber in the public gallery.

I sat and the wood protested underneath me, warning me, begging me to act, to run.
Pembrook easily threw open the swinging half doors that separated the courtroom and approached the prosecutor’s table. I took in my surroundings and noted I wasn’t the only defendant in the courtroom, which was confusing. A singular man sat in the corner opposite my side of the room. This was typical for most minor criminal court cases, but for some reason I thought my father wouldn’t want the potential spectacle or would be willing to risk my being seen and would have arranged for a private hearing.

“You,” a burly guard with bright red hair said pointing to the lone man. “You’ve been reassigned. You should be in Courtroom C now.”
Of course
.

“Oh, so sorry,” the man offered. He stood and gave me a half smile.

I wanted to vomit at the butterflies that gave me.
Worry
. You could see it in his eyes. Thick strain seemed to bulge the walls in all its sensationalism. It crawled over my body and settled heavily on my heart.
Pembrook called me to his table and sat me in a leather swivel chair. The animal skin ground against my own, cold and stiff to touch. The cumbersome weight of unease in the room settled over me with a finality that choked.

“All rise,” the bailiff said, surprising me from my thoughts. I looked up just in time to see Reinhold walk into the room.
Doomed.
“This court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Francis Reinhold presiding.”
Judge Reinhold refused to look my direction. “What’s on the docket today, Sam?” he asked the bailiff.
He meant “chopping block.” Reinhold knew.

“
Your Honor, case one this morning is Price vs. the city of Los Angeles.”
Reinhold finally met my face with zero expression, but his eyes were calculating, measuring, assessing.

“Are you ready?” Reinhold asked
my attorney and the prosecutor.

“Yes, Your Honor,”
Pembrook said.
The prosecutor nodded her head with a single, “Yes.”

The door to the courtroom groaned open in that moment and in stepped three people I would have paid not to have
step through. My father and mother moved to sit on the bench I had sat just minutes earlier, giving off the impression they had somewhere else they really needed to be but the real jest, it seemed, was Officer Casey in all his youthful, handsome glory and his countenance spoke volumes of hate, lust, anger, and want.

He earned a brief glance from me and that earned
myself a cruel smile in return. I kept my gaze on him, leaned imperceptibly his direction, lightly touched the tip of my tongue to the top of my teeth, smiled effortlessly and winked. This startled him and his own smile faltered, stuttered and fell off his face. I turned back to Reinhold, no one in the room the wiser but for Casey and his thundering heart.

“I understand an agreement has been made?” Reinhold asked the attorneys.

An agreement?

“Yes, Your Honor
,” the lawyers said in unison.

“Miss Price, please stand,” he ordered.
I obeyed, my booming heart clamoring to stay steady, and stood from my chair.

“I promised you the next time I saw you in my courtroom you would not leave as easily and yet here you are. Now, I’ve agreed to this plea bargain
only
because I feel it can teach you the value of your life far better than any amount of incarceration, rehab or community service.”
I wrapped my hand around the other to keep them from visibly trembling. I didn’t dare anger Reinhold’s already ice thin patience by asking him what the plea actually was. I turned to stare at Pembrook who stood beside me but he didn’t return the glance. I turned Reinhold’s way once more.

“Sophie Price,” he said with finality, making my stomach clench. My eyes closed tightly in preparation. “You are hereby sentenced to six months in Masego.” And with that, Reinhold slammed his gavel home, sending an icy shiver through my body.
I stood standing, mouth agape at the tabletop below me as the remaining people in the room stood when Reinhold exited.
And just like that, it was over.

When the room cleared, I turned to find my parents
, but they had already begun to leave. My father barely acknowledged me with a nod. Casey loitered near the swinging doors and I turned his direction wondering what he could possibly want.

He leaned toward me. I could only blink where I stood. “Good luck,
princess.”

He left chuckling under his breath.

Pembrook
. “Pemmy, what—,” I coughed back the choking sensation that had taken up residence in my throat. “What is ‘Masego’?”

Pembrook
sat in his chair and gathered all the seemingly unnecessary paperwork he’d strewn about the table before the short sentencing. He busied his hands and refused to acknowledge me with his eyes. “Masego is an orphanage in Uganda belonging to a very dear friend of mine I’ve had since primary. I expect you to work hard, Sophie. I expect you not to embarrass me. You leave in a week. The physician will be at your parents’ home tomorrow at three in the afternoon to administer the necessary inoculations. Be there, or suffer the court’s wrath. Also, here is a card your father has designated for you to purchase the necessities. Buy sturdy shorts, boots and things of this nature to weather the harsh Ugandan climate.” Finally, he looked up at me and took a deep breath. “I’m risking myself for you, Sophie. I wouldn’t do this for anyone else. You need a hard dose of reality and Charles will be able to deliver that to you.”

“You think to change me,
Pemmy?”

“You need to change and soon
, or you will be beyond salvaging.”

“Nothing can prevent me from becoming what I already am,” I proclaimed, honest
with myself for the very first time.

“True,” he said, setting his leather satchel on the table. “But people can change, my dear
, and I know you’re capable of being better than this girl you’ve created for yourself. I never speak ill of your father if it can be helped, for obvious reasons, but you have been treated poorly by him and for some unfathomable reason I feel it my responsibility to fix it.

“I’ve known you since you were small and sweet and innocent, Sophie.” He breathed deeply and palmed the handles of his satchel. “I cannot undo the things you’ve done
, but I’ll be damned if your future is as bleak as your past.”

Pembrook
kissed my cheek lightly and took a few of the tears I’d unwittingly shed with him. He abandoned me there in that cold room. I was alone.

I didn’t know much more than I had that morning. The only slight additional awareness I owned was that in one week I would be on a plane to Uganda to see an old friend of
Pemmy’s and to help out at his orphanage. Such a simple idea with such huge consequences.

I pinched the stupid card my father had left me between my thumb and forefinger, rubbing the new foiled number. I’d always considered them little plastic hugs instead of seeing them for what they truly were. To my father, they were obligations. And if my father did one thing, he always fulfilled his obligations.
 

CHAPTER FIVE