The next days passed in a blur, both frantic and interminable. Kristen moved back into the Almost Home. The pool was still empty. Most of the rooms around her were still vacant. But someone had redecorated her room. The orange bedspread had been replaced by a purple comforter, and the cowboy prints had been replaced with Asian mountain scenes. The woman behind the counter was Indian and wore the red bindi between her brows. Kristen wondered briefly what her life was like in Tristess. Was she an outsider like Marydale had been? And if so, why did she stay? But it didn’t matter how the hotel room was decorated; Kristen longed to be in her own bed in Portland with Marydale curled against her side.
On her third day in Tristess, Kristen called Doug Grady’s office, surprised to find that he was still practicing law, still the only defense attorney in town. He met her for lunch at the Heavenly Harvest, the new incarnation of the Ro-Day-O.
“So you just walked out in the middle of your case?” Grady asked.
Outside the sky was a thin haze of unshed snow. The spring that had come to Portland had not reached the high desert. Grady twirled a strand of spaghetti around his fork, the delicate movement at odds with his large hands. His cream-colored suit was immaculate.
“My cocounsel was there,” Kristen said. “I called my sister, told her to take care of my dog, and left from downtown. I didn’t even go home to pack.”
Grady put his fork down. “I always knew you had character.”
“You thought I was a bratty law student from the city,” Kristen said.
“You couldn’t help that.” Grady dabbed at his lips. “I liked what I heard about you and Marydale. She needed a friend who wasn’t part of this place. Is that why she moved to Portland?”
Kristen swirled the last drops of coffee around in her mug. “No. We lost touch…for a while.”
Grady nodded.
“I’m not going to let that happen again,” Kristen added. “She shouldn’t be in Holten. She shouldn’t even be on supervision.”
“Was she convicted under one of the lifetime supervision laws?”
“Yeah. It’s not right. If she were dangerous, if she were violent…but she’s not. I got a copy of her parole records. There was a two-year period where she was jailed at least six months out of twelve, and it was all for stupid stuff. She went to the Walmart in Harney County. She got a post office box without permission. Her house had been foreclosed on. She was living in a motel, and she got sanctioned for that, too, because she’s not supposed to live with other felons, and some guy with a record was renting a room on the other side of the building. She couldn’t win.”
“And then she got someone to transfer her to Portland,” Grady finished.
“She got a new PO, and she reported and paid her supervision fee. She did everything she was supposed to do, except the PO was supposed to transfer her supervision to an officer in Portland, and she didn’t. Marydale didn’t have a clean enough record to get a transfer, but she couldn’t stay out of trouble in Tristess. I think she was just too unhappy, and the rules were stacked against her. She wasn’t even supposed to date.”
“Did Marydale know it wasn’t legit?”
Kristen pushed the salad around on her plate. “She knew.”
“And now Ronald Holten is in charge of parole,” Grady said. “Word on the street is his ranch is failing. People are starting to say he never was a rancher, just a moneylender. One of the grass-fed cooperatives even sued him over easements into BLM land. He’d been charging people thousands to run their herd over some pathetic little strip of land he owned all around the big Clear Creek parcel. Court said he could do that, but then they seized three mile-long sections. Condemnation via eminent domain. They said they needed to run some utility lines through those sections. Now all people have to do is divert the herd a half mile this way or that, and they’re in for free.”
A waitress appeared at their side. Under her apron, she wore a T-shirt with the words LIFE IS GOOD printed across the front.
“For dessert we’ve got lemongrass gelato and rosemary-apricot pie,” she said.
“Gelato,” Grady grumbled. “What happened to chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry? Breyers was good enough for my dad. Things are changing around here.” He wiped the edge of the table with his napkin, then rested his elbows on the surface. “But it’s going to be tough. Ronald Holten’s going to say she didn’t have permission to be in Portland. She’s been on abscond. He’ll make her stay, and he’ll make her keep her nose clean.”
“By not letting her go to the grocery store…or date.” Kristen pushed her uneaten lunch aside and pulled out her tablet.
“What are you going to do?” Grady asked.
That was the question. Kristen tapped the surface of her tablet and the parole board website appeared on the screen. “I can help her petition for a transfer to Portland, and there’ll be a hearing to determine how long she’s in prison for this violation.”
“But she doesn’t deserve any of it.” Grady finished her thought for her.
“I’ve been looking into post-conviction relief. I know every felon tries for it, and it doesn’t work, but this time I think it might. But here’s the thing. I haven’t talked to my boss yet, but I’m pretty sure I’m getting fired right about now.” Kristen could picture the meeting. Donna would speak first. I recommend dismissal. The liability. She would talk quickly, as though that would prevent the other partners from remembering that she had championed Kristen’s promotion. “I don’t have time to set up as a sole practitioner,” Kristen went on. “I need to practice under someone else’s insurance.”
“Mine?”
“Yeah.”
“You come rolling in in whatever that is.” Grady glanced at Kristen’s Audi in the parking lot outside the restaurant. “Big-city lawyer, going up against the Holtens. Do you know what that would do to my practice if people knew you were working out of my office?”
“You said things are changing.”
“We got fancy ice cream. It’s not a revolution.”
“You said you moved back to Tristess so that what happened to Marydale didn’t happen to anyone else.”
Grady steepled his fingers. “It’s about time I pack up into the sunset anyway. You can practice under my insurance. We’ll go back to my office and do the paperwork today, but tell me, what kind of law do you practice in Portland?”
“Class actions, mostly cell phone stuff and Web advertising.”
“That’s what I thought. When’s the last time you did criminal?”
“When I was here.”
“So maybe you don’t know: the statute of limitations ran out on post-conviction relief. It’s too late for Marydale.” There was no gotcha in Grady’s expression. “I know because I looked into it when I came out here. It was too late then, too.”
Kristen sat back on her vinyl bench. She looked out the window. The name of the restaurant had changed, but the view was still the same: the Almost Home Motel with its empty swimming pool, its faded sign silhouetted against the sky. Beyond the motel, a procession of fast-food restaurants and payday loan shops marked a dozen dead ends.
“I thought life in the country was supposed to be beautiful,” Kristen said.
“Used to be. Still is sometimes, if you can get out of town.”
Kristen thought of Marydale in her thin orange uniform. “What do I do?”
“The only way you can get post-conviction relief now is if you find evidence that couldn’t have been discovered at the time of the trial.”
“A unicorn,” Kristen said, not so much to Grady as to the window and the empty pool and the lane of predatory lenders.
“A fucking unicorn,” he agreed. “A goddamn fucking unicorn.”