UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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“Omigod. This is sooo much harder than it looked when John-Michael was doing it.”
Paolo glanced over Grace’s shoulder at the printout of the recipe. “Strawberry and apple turnovers?”
“I know. Puff pastry, right? What was I thinking?”
“You have to make your own jam!”
“Yeah, well, obviously I’m skipping that.”
Paolo put a finger on the liter-sized tub of chunky applesauce. “You’re not making the applesauce, either. Why even bother making the pastry? You could have just bought it.”
“You can buy ready-made pastry?” Grace looked awed.
“You can buy ready-made apple turnovers.”
“I’m running the bake sale, Paolo. The stuff’s got to come out of our own oven.”
Paolo looked at the tray of burned turnovers, black and shiny with caramelized jam and applesauce that had spilled beyond the loosely crimped edges. He picked one up and took a bite. The carbonized sugar crunched between his teeth.
“Tastes good.”
“Boys will eat anything,” Grace said dismissively. “We can’t sell them like this.”
He took another, larger bite. “Mmm. Real good!”
Grace just frowned. “Could you try to be actually helpful?”
“Why don’t I drive you to the store; we’ll buy some pastry dough and you can try again.”
He picked up two more of the burned pastries in his left hand and dug the keys to his car from the pocket of his board shorts. Grace followed him out of the kitchen mumbling, “I overfilled them. That was the problem.”
The air-conditioning in Paolo’s Chevy Malibu took several moments to get properly going. The day was cloudy and overcast, but still hot enough to make Grace begin to sweat the moment they were inside the car. She opened the window and let the breeze ripple over her.
“I think it’s so great that you’re organizing this fundraiser for Amnesty International,” he told her with a warm smile. “First time I’m ever going to one as a member.”
She beamed at him. “One day maybe you’ll be one of their lawyers.”
“That would be cool,” he agreed. “It would be so great to get to fly all over the world, meeting people who’d stood up to corrupt governments and all.”
“How’s it going with your letter writing?” Grace asked.
“I requested a woman, but they said they really needed more people to write to guys. So I got this one, Harrison Coyle, a black dude, twenty-six years old, on death row for a year now. Double homicide, including one police officer. And I wrote him just the way you said, with some friendly questions and some generally supportive stuff. . . .”
Now he turned to her with a quick grimace. “But.”
“But?”
“But bad news, is what. Turns out his appeal just got turned down. So I guess it doesn’t look good.”
Grace sat calmly in her seat. She turned on the radio. After a moment, she realized that Paolo was staring at her with a kind of appalled expression.
“Oh,” she said. She reached out reassuringly to touch his arm. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. This is all part of the experience.”
“Really?” His eyes went back to the road. “The thing is, I’m kind of freaked about supporting someone through an execution.”
She couldn’t stop herself from smiling a little. She squeezed his arm harder. He reacted with a brief, puzzled glance. Then back to the road. He was frowning now, confused and anxious. Grace couldn’t stop thinking about how cute he looked. Once in a while Paolo still had that little-boy look. It made him even more irresistible. She felt a sudden tug inside her chest.
She realized he was scared.
Grace remembered well what it felt like, that fear. The first time she’d written a letter, she’d felt a sickness deep within her belly. It had been hard to put pen to paper. The image of the death chamber, the gurney inside, a man strapped to it waiting to die before the watching eyes of the press, the victim’s family, his own family. And in one of those viewing galleries: herself.
She’d seen the schematics of that part of San Quentin. She’d memorized them. If Grace didn’t do something, one day for certain everything she had imagined would come true.
Paolo might be luckier. Although if his guy was a cop killer, probably not.
She loved that Paolo wasn’t afraid to seem vulnerable in front of her. Some guys were just so terrified to lose any kind of face in front of a girl, they turned into complete dolts. Grace wondered if Paolo had any idea how attractive it made him—and not just to those country-club cougars he’d confessed to sleeping with. She decided that he probably did. More reason to keep her own feelings in check.
“You have to stay positive, Paolo. He’s only been on death row a year, yes? This is probably his first appeal. If there were grounds for one appeal, there are probably more grounds. If he has a good lawyer, they can keep appealing. Maybe one day they’ll change the law.”
“You really think?”
“Hey, you could be one of the people to defend him.”
“I hope he’ll be out of jail by then. I read up about him. Harrison said in his testimony that the guy he killed died by accident, he didn’t mean to kill him. And he shot the cop in self-defense.”
Grace wasn’t sure self-defense was allowed if it was a cop shooting at you, but she didn’t mention that. “All I’m saying is that it’s a long haul. You have to steel yourself. My guy has been through three appeals so far. All turned down. But his lawyer keeps starting up the process.”
“Must be, like, majorly grim. I bet some of those guys just want it to be over.”
Grace said doubtfully, “I’m pretty sure they prefer to live.”
“Than be killed by the state? Of course. But they gotta get depressed.”
“They get horribly depressed.”
“I guess. Hard to tell—Harrison doesn’t write too well.”
“That’s often the problem,” she agreed. “Smarter guys, guys with good educations, they have a way with words, contacts; they usually get reduced sentences, or if they can really make the case for self-defense, they might even walk.”
“What’s your guy like? What’s his name?”
Grace hesitated. “I didn’t tell you the day we went to San Quentin?”
Paolo seemed to consider. “Nope, don’t think so.”
“Alan Vernon.”
“And he’s in for murder?”
“Yes,” Grace said. “But he didn’t do it.”
“You believe that?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Really? Because when I joined the program it said that you had to allow yourself some reasonable doubt. Doubt with sympathy, that’s the idea.”
Grace said nothing for a moment. Maybe it wasn’t safe to keep talking about this. She didn’t enjoy having to deceive Paolo. Better to keep the lies to an absolute minimum.
“You know what, I feel like we talked a whole lot about me and Alan when we were up in San Francisco. Your experience is valid also. We should talk more about that.”
Paolo laughed. “Hey, don’t worry about me. Look, it’s good to know that Harrison might get another appeal. That makes me feel better. I’m really not ready to go into the viewing gallery.”
“You don’t have to do that, you know.”
He shook his head, eyes firmly on the road. “If you’re there for them, you’re there for them. Least, that’s what I’d want. If I was on the other side of the bars, I mean.”
He didn’t speak for a while, turned up the volume on the radio station that Grace had selected. Eventually, he turned to her with a gold-plated smile. “Let’s get a lot of pastry dough.”