We’re all managing.”
“So . . . we should have enough for the wedding, right?”
“Yes, but do we want to spend it on that? We’ll be just as married if we do it more simply. We could walk across the street from my house and do it on our beach.”
“But we couldn’t invite all our friends. We couldn’t even manage much family without needing some kind of permit. And once you’re into all that, you might as well have a nice venue.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll think about it some more.”
“We could still get married in my church,” he said.
Cathy met his eyes, aware that he wanted it to be her church too, but she hadn’t made it her own yet. “Yeah, that’s a possibility. Or Juliet’s. She’d love it. She’d surely fill the place up with her friends.”
“I want people to celebrate with us,” he said into the phone.
“Maybe.”
He moved closer to the dirty glass, tapped on it. She met his eyes. “You sure you’re okay with this?” he said. “Getting married, I mean?”
“Of course I am.” Her smile caught in her eyes, and those tears shimmered back. “It’s just . . . kind of nostalgic, you know? I’ve planned a wedding before. Instead of happy, all these decisions just make me . . . kind of sad. And when you’re not able to plan with me . . .”
“I know.”
“I made all these decisions once. All the things I’d dreamed of, but I can’t do those same things now because . . . well, it just seems weird.”
“Yeah.”
“So I’m trying to make different decisions. Only I still like the same things.”
His gaze held her for a long moment. “Joe wouldn’t mind if you planned the same kind of wedding.”
“I know. I just don’t want to be thinking of him that day. I don’t want to be sad on our wedding day. And I don’t want you to be.”
“Maybe that’s the wrong approach. Maybe we do need to think of him. Maybe we need to make him part of it somehow.”
She didn’t know what that would look like, but as she left the jail, she tried to shake herself out of her melancholy. Partof it, of course, was that she hadn’t been able to hug Michael more than a few times since he was incarcerated, and then only because she was his attorney and was able to get into the same room with him now and then. The rest of the time, she had to sit with virus-crusted glass between them and talk to him on the phone.
She opened her purse and pulled out her latest letter to the governor that she had typed and sealed. She said a silent prayer over it, then drove to the nearest postal box and dropped it in. Please, God . . . I’m begging you . . .
Michael’s fate was in God’s hands. She would have to trust him, but meanwhile, she would follow up on every avenue he put into her mind.
CHAPTER 8
H olly stood in front of the bathroom mirror, the box of hair dye in her hands. The bleach should erase the pink tips. She had been dyeing the bottom half of her hair pink since before her pregnancy, giving her an edgy, two-tone look that set her apart. Maybe it had something to do with being a preacher’s kid. Her father’s betrayal of the family had created a rebellious streak in her. Pink hair and tattoos had been a way of thumbing her nose at those who judged her, but now she was sick of them. Her old life was wilted around the edges, like decaying flowers.
Hurrying to finish before Lily woke up, she opened the box and pulled out the bottles of peroxide and bleach. If she was going to locate Creed Kershaw, she needed to blend in. The tattoos were easy enough to cover with sleeves, but the pink hair was too memorable.
She read over the instructions then poured the bleach overher hair and worked it through, making sure it covered all the pink. As she waited for the developer to work, she got on the computer and searched for anything she could find about Creed Kershaw. Though she had access to a lot of Michael’s databases from home, she would probably have to go into the office to gain