Page 5 of Jar of Hearts
“Yes.” She closes her eyes. She can still see the flash of steel when Calvin holds it up in the moonlight. The wood handle, the jagged teeth. Later, it would be covered in blood, skin, and hair. “The ground was too… there were too many rocks. We couldn’t dig a large enough hole for… for… all of her.”
There’s a movement in the courtroom. A rustling, and then a low murmur. Andrew Shipp has stood up. He looks at Geo; their eyes meet. He nods to her, an apologetic tilt of his head, and then her fiancémakes his way out of the courtroom, disappearing behind the heavy doors at the back.
It’s possible she’ll never see him again. It hurts more than she thought it would. On her lap, she twists the ring furiously for a few seconds, then mentally tucks the pain away for another time.
Walter Shaw, now with an empty place beside him, doesn’t move. Geo’s father isn’t known for being an emotionally expressive man, and the only evidence of his true feelings is the lone tear running down his face. He’s never heard this story before, either, and she won’t blame him if he follows Andrew out the door. But her father doesn’t leave. Thank god.
“How long did it take? To cut her up?” the prosecutor is asking.
“A while,” Geo says softly. A sob emanates from the center of the room. Candace Wong Platten’s shoulders shake, and her ex-husband puts an arm around her, though it’s clear he’s about to loseit, too. Their current spouses sit in silent horror, unsure how to react, not knowing what to do. It’s not their daughter, not their loss, but they feel it all the same. “It felt like it took a long time.”
Everyone’s eyes are on her. Calvin’s eyes are on her. Slowly, Geo shifts her gaze until their eyes finally meet. For the first time since she’s arrived at the courtroom, she holds eye contact. Almost imperceptibly, in a tiny movement only she can pick up on because she’s watching for it, he nods. She averts her gaze and refocuses her attention on the prosecutor, who pauses to take a sip of water.
“So you left her there,” the assistant district attorney says, walking back toward the witness box. “And then you went on with your life like it never happened. You lied to the cops. You lied to her parents. You let them suffer for fourteen years, not knowing what happened to their only child.”
He stops. Makes a show of looking right at Geo, and then at Calvin, and then at the jurors. When he speaks again, his voice is a few decibels above a whisper, so that everyone in the courtroom has to strain to hear him. “You left your best friend buried in the woods, a mere hundred yards from the house you lived in, after your boyfriend cut her up into pieces.”
“Yes,” she says, closing her eyes again. She knows how terrible it sounds, because she knows how terrible it was. But the tears won’t come. She doesn’t have any left.
Someone in the courtroom is crying softly. More like a whimper, really. Angela’s mother’s chest is heaving, her face in her hands, her bright red nail polish visibly chipped even from where Geo is seated. Beside her, Victor Wong is not crying. But as he reaches into the breast pocket of his suit to pull out a handkerchief to give to his ex-wife, his hands tremble violently.
The prosecutor has no further questions. The judge calls a recess for lunch. The jurors file out, and the spectators in the courtroom stand up and stretch. Phone calls are made. Reporters type furiously into laptops. The bailiff helps Geo out of the witness box, and she walks slowly past the defense table where Calvin is seated. He rises and grabs her hand as she passes, stopping her momentarily.
“It’s good to see you,” he says. “Even under the circumstances.”
Their faces are inches away. His eyes are exactly as she remembers, vivid green, with the same touch of gold encircling the pupils. She sees those eyes in her dreams sometimes, hears his voice, feels his hands on her body, and she’s woken up more than a few times covered in her own sweat. But now here he is, real as ever.
She says nothing, because there’s nothing to say, not with everyone around watching them, listening. She extracts her hand. The bailiff nudges her forward.
She feels the piece of paper Calvin slipped into her palm and curls her hand over it as she slides it into the pocket of her dress. She stops to say good-bye to her father, twisting off her engagement ring to give to him, the only jewelry she’s wearing. Walter Shaw embraces her roughly. Then he lets her go, turning away so she won’t see his face crumple.
The trial isn’t over, but Geo’s part in it is. The next time she sees her father, it will be when he visits her in prison. The bailiff leads her back to the holding cell. She takes a seat on the bench in the back corner, and when the bailiff’s footsteps recede, she reaches into her pocket.
It’s a torn piece of yellow notepad paper. On it, Calvin has scrawled a note in his small, neat handwriting.
You’re welcome.
Beside the two words, he’s drawn a small heart.
She crumples it up into a tiny bead and swallows it. Because the only way to get rid of it is to consume it.
Geo sits alone in the cell, immersed in her thoughts. The past, present, and future all mingle together, the inner voices chattering alongside the actual voices of the police officers down the hallway. She can hear them discussing last night’s episode ofGrey’s Anatomy, and wonders randomly if they’ll showGrey’s Anatomyin prison. She has no idea how much time has passed until a shadow appears on the other side of the cell bars.
She looks up to see Detective Kaiser Brody standing there. He’s holding a paper bag from a local burger joint, and a milkshake.Strawberry. The bag is covered in grease spots, and immediately her mouth waters. She hasn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, just a small bowl of cold oatmeal served on a dirty metal tray here in the holding cell.
“If that’s not for me, then you’re just cruel,” she says.
Kaiser holds up the bag. “It is for you. And you can have it… so long as you tell me what Calvin James slipped you in court.”
Geo stares at the bag. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He took your hand, and he gave you something.”
She shakes her head. She can smell grilled beef. Fried onions. French fries. Her stomach growls audibly. “He didn’t give me anything, Kai, I swear. He grabbed my hand, said it was good to see me, and I yanked my hand away and didn’t say anything back. That’s it.”
The detective doesn’t believe her. He signals the guard, who unlocks the metal door. He checks her hands, then checks the floor. He motions for her to stand up, and she complies. He pats her down, checking her pockets. Resignedly, he hands her the bag. She tears it open.
“Easy.” He takes a seat beside her on the cold steel bench. “There’s two burgers in there. One’s for me.”
