Just Mercy: A Novel by Dorothy Van Soest Page A

scissortails over the scrub oaks, mesquites, and cottonwoods; and possessing both the toughness of the ubiquitous cactus and the composure of the grazing cows that peppered the rolling Texas hills. But as soon as the low red-brick buildings and guard towers of the Gatesville prison compound came into view, the sinister six-stranded barbed wire on its double chain-link fences overwhelmed both nature’s beauty and her imaginary courage. They were here. Ready or not, she had to do this.
    “Don’t worry,” Regis said, reading her mind as usual. “No way I was going to let you do this alone.”
    She smiled at him. She thought she had been prepared to come without him, but now that they were here, she couldn’t imagine confronting Raelynn Blackwell again without Regis by her side. The rules didn’t allow it anyway; that had been made very clear to her.
    “Did anyone from the trauma team call you?” he asked. “Amy Whitehall, maybe?”
    “I don’t know why she would.”
    “They want to make sure witnesses don’t experience any problems after an execution—any physical or mental reactions.”
    “But there wasn’t an execution, was there?” Her face burned with guilt and not a little embarrassment for snapping at him again. Even though she’d apologized several times, she still felt bad about how she’d treated him the night everything fell apart.
    “You’ve had a lot to absorb in such a short period of time.” He smiled his forgiveness. Then he paused and, keeping his eyes on the road, asked, “You sure about this meeting?”
    “I need to know why she didn’t tell me about that letter.”
    “What if she didn’t know about it?”
    “Impossible.”
    “What would it mean to you,” he asked, “whether she did or didn’t know?”
    She repositioned herself on the seat. Her cotton dress was twisted into a knot under her, the edge of it stuck in a tear in the plastic seat cover. She yanked it loose. The first time Regis had asked her that question, she’d responded without hesitation, said that she was prepared to deal with Raelynn Blackwell’s answer, whatever it was. Such bravado. The truth that she’d kept not only from him but also from herself was that she wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure about anything except her need to know. So what if Raelynn Blackwell said she didn’t know about the letter? Would Bernadette believe her? She didn’t know that, either. Her stomach did a flip-flop—a warning that she might not be ready for this confrontation after all, that maybe she should have taken Marty’s advice and waited a few more days.
    At the red brick Texas Department of Criminal Justice sign, Regis turned left onto the asphalt road leading into the compound. In the adjacent field, a line of white-clad women marched in single file under the watchful guard of several gray-uniformed men on horseback. The threatening way the guards fingered their rifles made beads of sweat break through the surface of Bernadette’s skin—on first her forehead, then her arms, and then the small of her back.
    A burning sensation worked its way up her nostrils and down her throat when she saw that the temperature gauge duct-taped to the cracked dashboard of Regis’s ancient Toyota registered over one hundred brutal degrees. She grabbed her trusty battery-powered spray water bottle and misted her face, then held the bottle up to Regis. He shook his head. She misted her face again.
    “There’s no shade out there,” she said. “Even farmers provide shelter for their animals on days like this.”
    Even as the words were coming out of her mouth, Bernadette recognized the old dilemma for what it was. She sighed. It was a familiar conflict, her struggle between believing there should be consequences for bad behavior and the difficulty of determining what the appropriate punishment should be. She thought about all the times she had reduced her kids’ timeouts or the number of days they were grounded. Following her heart is what