| |
The Coffee Shoppe enjoyed near-record business for days following Mary Eileen’s sentencing.
This day, Joy and Amanda were in their usual places; sitting on two barstools at the counter facing the front window. They had the best seats in the house to watch traffic move up and down DeVos Avenue while a montage of shoppers, tourists, and business people walked by on the sidewalk, most of whom stopped in for at least a vicarious thrill. It was so much fun to be this close to a killer!
“Did you ever think Christina would take over this place?” Joy said.
“If anyone was going to get it, it had to be her,” Amanda said. “She and Mary Eileen were very, very close.”
“She’s lucky the papers were signed before the police found the bodies downstairs.”
“I know,” Amanda agreed. “Otherwise the court would have been able to seize the business along with Mary Eileen’s apartment.”
Mary Eileen had transferred ownership to Christina the day before leaving town in an Uber car. Even before the discovery of the body parts of David and Hans, Mary Eileen was leaving town with no intention of returning to St. Isidore. As far as she was concerned her vacation with Sean was a one-way ticket out of mediocrity.
However, she wanted to be sure the Coffee Shoppe survived and wanted to return the favor of Christina’s devotion and loyalty. So Mary Eileen quietly signed the papers to give the business away.
“This is too much,” Christina said.
“It is hardly enough for all you have done for me.”
“I can’t do this. I can't own the Coffee Shoppe."
“If I had ever told myself that I couldn’t do it, I never would have started this business,” said Mary Eileen. “The only thing standing in your way is your fear. Break through. Be successful. I have no doubt you can do it, and if you let yourself, you will.”
“But you are just giving this to me?”
“When Sean and I leave, I don’t want ever to have to come back. I don’t want anything getting in the way. No attorneys, no closing costs, no terms, no nothing. The business is yours.”
“I don’t know how...”
Mary Eileen laughed and put both hands on Christina’s shoulders. “No one in this town knows better how to run the Coffee Shoppe than you, Christina. No one loves it more than you. You can do this. You have to believe that. I do.”
Christina looked down at the ground and then back up at Mary Eileen.
“Maybe I can do this.”
“There is no doubt that you will if you let yourself do it. Don’t let fear get in the way.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you, Christina. Besides Sean, you are my only friend. And that is the only thing that means more to me than the Coffee Shoppe.”
Tears were in Christina’s eyes as she signed the papers Mary Eileen handed her. Christina wiped a tear from her cheek as she watched her now former boss walk to the Coffee Shoppe’s door for the last time.
Mary Eileen turned the knob on the Coffee Shoppe’s glass doors, heard the small bells ring over her head, and took the first steps toward her new life. She was going back to her apartment for one last night.
Mary Eileen spent one more night in her apartment, and she did leave the Coffee Shoppe for good. She just never believed she’d spend the rest of her life behind bars, and the rest of her life without Sean.
During Mary Eileen's trial, there was a sizable contingent in St. Isidore who pitied her and felt her pain. It wasn’t sympathy. It was empathy. There were even some on the jury who felt that way, but they all voted to convict her of two counts of first-degree murder. What else was the jury to do? None of the jurors hated Mary Eileen. But she had shocked them. They were scared. Or course, their decision had to be based on the case, the facts of the trial and whether Mary Eileen was guilty of two murders or not guilty because of temporary insanity. But right or wrong, the jurors felt there was a more important question: Did they want to be responsible for letting Mary Eileen Sullivan walk the streets of St. Isidore?
During the press conference that followed the trial, Sally Randall explained to reporters the jury didn't buy the temporary insanity defense. She said that while they considered Mary Eileen's confession and her state of “considerable psychological damage;" there was also the fact that Mary Eileen took lessons in both marksmanship and concrete mixing, along with her decision to flee to Detroit.
As much as she felt Mary Eileen had to go to prison for life when Sally’s eyes followed Mary Eileen’s, and she saw Sean, Sally was thrilled. It was an emotional moment when his eyes met Mary Eileen’s. Sally wasn’t the only person on the jury who had been watching Mary Eileen and as a result saw Sean. Joy ran from the courtroom to report the verdict. Amanda stayed behind. So, Sally wasn't the only person with tears in their eyes.
“Sean loved her, still,” Amanda said. “No matter what she had done, he loved her.”
In fact, Sean had done more than stand by his woman during the most traumatic weeks of her life. Sean conceived and ran the Kickstarter fundraising campaign to pay Micheal Morris more than $750,000.
“I hear Michael Morris is running for Governor in a couple of years,” Joy said.
“Could happen. But this I know for sure, Patricia Fry is running for Congress,” said Amanda.
“No way! Who told you that?”
“Ha! You think I’ve forgotten the first thing you taught me?”
“What?”
“Never reveal your sources to the boss.”
“Funny, and true,” Joy said.
“I will say this; there is no doubt the party leadership will endorse her.”
“And after that, who knows where she could go. Nothing will stop her.”
“The only thing she has to fear is her fears,” Amanda said.
She and Joy concentrated on drinking their lattes for the next few minutes, watching a couple of college kids skateboarding down the sidewalk.
“She finally found love. Perhaps it was a little too late, but at least it was love,” Joy said.
“What about Sean? What’s he going to do? The State Police fired him, right?”
“They let him resign. That way he gets to keep his pension, two-thirds of his regular salary.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah, now he can be a stay-at-home dad.”
“A what? You are kidding right?”
“I am serious as a heart attack. Mary Eileen is pregnant. Morris didn’t talk about it at the trial. He wanted to bring it up at sentencing, but she refused.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know. There isn’t any answer for that.”
“But she’s going to keep the baby?”
“Yes, she’ll give birth in prison.”
"Then what?"
“Sean will raise the child, their child. He’ll bring the baby to prison whenever he can, as often as he can. Mommy will be in jail for the rest of her life, but she’ll get to watch her baby grow up.”
“Mary Eileen found true love,” said Amanda.
“She just found it too late,” said Joy, as she, for the first time, reached for Amanda’s hand.
She didn’t want to make the same mistake.