Page 30 of Goodbye Days

“You’re a real help, dude.”

“I try.”

“This sucks.”

“I know.” Mars gives me that lopsided smile of his and adjusts his glasses.

“We maybe should have gotten together and tried to avoid this mess.”

“I’m already avoiding it.”

“Good point. So how you doing, man? Everything good where you are right now?”

But he’s already gone.

A door opens at the end of a short hall, and a guy who resembles an anthropomorphic coyote, with icy blue eyes and facial tattoos, swaggers out. He looks like an outlaw. A tall, portly man with shaggy, longish white hair, wearing a gray pinstripe three-piece suit, follows him.

“Mr. Krantz? Carver Briggs is here,” the receptionist says to the white-haired man.

Mr. Krantz comes around the receptionist’s desk, hand extended. We stand as he shakes our hands.

“Folks, Jim Krantz. Call me Jimmy. Pleasure. This way.” He has a syrupy drawl.

We enter a small conference room with a round mahogany table, bookshelves full of green and tan law books with gilt lettering, more leather chairs, green-shaded lamps, and more hunting and golf pictures.

“Sit, sit.” Mr. Krantz gestures. He pulls out a chair, sits with a grunt, whips a pair of reading glasses onto his nose, and pulls out a legal pad and an expensive-looking gold pen. “All right, folks. Tell me what seems to be the matter.”

I sit there, mute. My dad clears his throat and tells Mr. Krantz about the Accident and Judge Edwards’s call for the DA to open an investigation. Mr. Krantz grunts and takes notes. Then he leans back in his chair and nods at me. “Okay, son. Tell me about this accident. What was your role, if any? I remember reading about it in the paper just after it happened, but I don’t recall that they said exactly what caused it. Something about texting?”

My legs start bouncing again. I hiccup acid, clear my throat, and take a deep breath. “I was at work. Um. I was supposed to hang out with my friends, Blake, Mars, and Eli. They were coming from Opry Mills Mall, where they’d gone to an IMAX movie. They were going to swing by my work and we were going to go to the park and hang out. So I texted Mars, ‘Where are you guys? Text me back.’ That’s all it said.”

Mr. Krantz doesn’t look up from his note-taking. “Who was driving?”

“Mars. Edwards.”

“That’s Fred Edwards’s son?”

“Right.”

“Did Mars text you back?”

“No, but there was a half-finished text to me on his phone when they, um. When—”

“Okay, I gotcha,” Mr. Krantz says softly, looking up from his pad. “Now Carver, everything we talk about in here is strictly protected by attorney-client privilege, which means nobody can force you to tell them what we discuss. That goes for your parents too, because they’re necessary parties to your defense. And that privilege exists so that we can be completely open and honest with each other, so I can best defend you if it comes to that, all right?”

I nod.

“So I need to ask: were you aware, when you texted Mars, that he’d probably text you back?”

I feel like I do that moment right before I’m about to slip on ice. I try to blink away the tears welling up in my eyes, but some spill. “Yes.”

“Were you aware Mars was driving at the time?”

“Pretty sure,” I whisper. It hurts to say this in front of my parents. I know I’m letting them down.

“Why text Mars and not one of your other friends in the car?”

“Um.” I’m crumbling.